Swansea’s H A R K play a blistering yet intelligent blend of sludge, stoner and prog. March this year saw the release of their debut full length Crystalline on Season of Mists. Vocalist, guitarist and artwork illustrator Jimbob Isaac took some time out before smashing up Camden alongside KEN Mode to have a chinwag about touring, drawing and the links between Wales and the Southern US of A.
HTF: You’re on the ‘home stretch’ of the tour as it were, how has Europe been? Did you hit any new places or any old favourites?
JI: Generally speaking it’s been really good. France and Germany are good to us so it’s been good to hit them again. Copenhagen was another highlight, Montpellier specifically was another highlight. We went to Barcelona for the Ritual Cult Fest which was really cool. Spain was new for us. For a change it feels nice to be back on the UK stretch.
HTF: Swansea is your last show of the tour, is that a home town thing for you?
JI: It is yeah. We use Swansea as a warm up show so this time it’s nice to do it the other way round. We’ll either be completely physically burnt out and destroyed, or we’ll be really well oiled, it could go either way.
HTF: How are you finding playing your material live as opposed to in the studio? Is there a different energy with it or do you try and keep the same spirit in both situations?
JI: I always try and go into a recording treating it as closely to a live situation as possible. Obviously they are really different environments and the end result is for a different effect. I enjoy both, they’re two different things.
HTF: The artwork for the album is stunning. Do you find that your illustration inspires your music and vice versa? Do you feel the album art is a continuation of the sonic themes of the record?
JI: Thank you. I’m kind of new to the game in terms of hand rendered illustration. I drew until I was 16. I took the graphic design route throughout college and uni, did loads of web design jobs, graphic design jobs, corporate stuff, it was only 6 years ago that I said ‘ok fuck this I’m gonna draw’… I think the Crystalline artwork was maybe the first time that I’d started to see how closer the art and music is becoming for me. Again I feel like the more my rediscovery of drawing continues, the more they come closer to being essentially one thing with the music … Crystalline definitely felt as though I was feeling my way through the band’s aesthetic while I was drawing that artwork … I’m rediscovering my geometric influences from way back in my school CDC classes … it feels quite genuine for me.
HTF: You were in Taint for a long time. Do you feel it’s a struggle trying to get fans to take your new music for it’s own values rather than as a sort of ‘Taint Part 2’, or do you feel like it’s a new crowd?
JI: I think it’s a mixture of all of that. It’s been quite tough to hear some people’s opinions. You realise how retrogressive people like to think, in the way that we’re in this period of reformations these days, and when a band like Sleep gets people more excited than High On Fire it’s like why is this? Is it because we have this strange retrogressive reflective mindset at the moment?
I think I’ve experienced that kind of attitude towards H A R K following Taint, but equally I’ve had some great positive feedback,. A lot of people have picked up on the band in the sense that we are moving forward whereas I felt that Taint just wasn’t moving forward in many ways, creatively, in terms of touring … for the most part I’ve gotten over those tougher criticisms and I also think it’s about time and place and people, so we are playing to different crowds perhaps different kinds of people, simply because things keep moving, life goes on.
Like I said about Europe, arguably becoming a bit more oversaturated with touring bands over the last 10 years, every other American band comes here cos they see it as a good ‘market’ or whatever. But for me the important thing is that H A R K is forward moving, and we believe that we are forward moving.
HTF: Is there any significance behind the name H A R K, and the spacing between the letters?
JI: The spaces have been quite interesting. We’ve turned up at gigs where promoters have put dots between and people think it’s an acronym for something. It’s simply kerning (the space between letters in graphic design), it’s about having some nice typographic space between four letters. The name itself was chosen in the sense that we wanted something as free of generic limitation or connotation as possible, we didn’t wanna be called ‘Bong Wizard’, and I’m still of that mindset from that mid 90’s influence where bands like Helmet, Clutch, Quicksand and Tool could all be from any genre. It’s not like ‘Electric Bong Face’. It’ll pave the way for our pop album. We don’t need to re-brand ourselves.
HTF: You worked with some pretty big names on this album, Neil Fallon and Kurt Ballou. What was it like to work with such esteemed characters? Are you big fans of their work?
JI: Yeah of course. I was a big fan of Clutch since I first saw them in 1993 … So they were a big influence. Taint covered ‘Impotus’ by Clutch on our first mini CD from 2000 (Die Die Truthspeaker). I’m trying to get it put out for free digitally, I’m working on that at the moment.
Having Neil say yes to singing on our record was pretty special. The way that happened was because they took us on tour for two weeks in Europe two years ago. At some point during the tour Neil commented on ‘Clear Light’ that the part at the end reminded him of King Crimson, and then when we were in the studio recording it popped into my head to ask him and he said ‘of course’ and he laid the tracks down in his basement studio at home … and that was it.
The Kurt Ballou thing, basically he’s one of my top three record producers, simple as that. The way he makes heavy bands sound makes perfect sense to me. We were confident we had a really good studio in Wales … we knew Kurt would make it great.
HTF: The lyrics on Crystalline are very well written. How do you approach lyric writing? Do you have thematic concepts in mind or do you just let them flow?
JI: I keep ongoing notes, whether it’s in my phone or physical notes dotted around my place. I just write whenever anything comes into my mind. When I know I’m in that frame of mind I’ll try and get as much down as I can, it’s all just quite fragmented stuff, stream of consciousness and you can’t really predict where it’s going. When it comes to laying those lyrics onto the songs you rearrange stuff, shoehorn stuff in … some stuff can be quadruple meaning stuff to me within two words, and the the third or fourth word in that sentence could be really throwaway, so it’s always a mixture of meaning and non-meaning. But then the non meaning in of itself, the irreverence of it is kind of meaningful in a way … The fact you’ve highlighted the lyrics in this interview means a lot because people rarely touch on it.
HTF: Sludge and Doom seem to be having a renaissance of late. Is this something you think is here to stay? Do you have a lot of influences and friends within these genres?
JI: I think it’s here to say in the sense that stuff is always here, it’s whether people’s attention swings to it or not. In the mid 90’s you could say stoner rock exploded then, but it’s funny how 10 years later bands like Wolfmother re-popularised it and took it to another mainstream level. I think it will always be here, it’s whether or not the masses pay their collective attention to it or not.
I know people from bands that influenced me, the Clutch guys, Mike from Eyehategod, Scott and Dave from Neurosis. All these bands understood Taint and they showed us some respect, and they’ve been really kind about what they’ve heard of H A R K so I feel really lucky about that. I know all the Kylesa people, Baroness, all those guys, we’re all in touch. I guess the Americans somewhat dominate, I think that’s a cultural thing, but when they give you props it means a lot.
In Swansea … I think we have a very similar mentality to the Southern American bands. Just because we’re a bit dislocated from the rest of the country and it’s a bit of a slower pace there. There’s not much to do so you just smoke weed and play heavy music. Maybe it’s just a geographical coincidence.
