By Keith Walsh
Some of the best music on the internet today comes from artists working in their fifth and sixth decades. It’s not surprising, given the experiences of making tunes across musical movements and on various instruments, that these decades of experience play an important role in the forging of exciting new sounds. One example is Planet Neil’s new EP ‘Imperial Phase,’ with its groovy funk sensibilities and wry lyrics. I chatted with Neil Dyer who gives the project its moniker and its smooth sound. (My review of the EP is on Popular Culture Beat )
Synthbeat: Science fiction is a key factor in your sound and themes. In what ways have films, novels, comics informed your songs? (KW: While this may be a hasty or superficial reading, I’m referring to the entire presentation, and that the music of Planet Neil sounds like it belongs to the future).
Neil Dyer: ‘Say Hi To The Robots’ might seem so on the surface. That particular song simply uses the idea of welcoming robots to do the dirty work so that we humans can get on with enjoying life (incidentally I’ve nearly finished a new remix which should come out this year called ‘Robots 2023’).
‘My Rocket’ is another but it’s more of an analogy for love and lust being able to take you somewhere better. Maybe some of my themes accidentally relate to some of the underlying themes of Science Fiction writing, i.e. The humanistic bedrock behind the futuristic settings?
Films and novels (and also biographies and social histories) do inspire some initial ideas. I often take words or phrases from a book for a song title that will then inspire me to expand that idea in various different directions.
Inspirations for the latest EP in particular – some may be obvious others not:
‘Imperial Phase’ – famously used by Neil Tennant to refer to an artists golden age of creativity and success. I’ve used it to ponder whether Planet Neil is my own imperial phase, Success in my case is not measured in record sales or numbers of streams…
Two of the songs came out of my recent attempts to observe small insignificant encounters and expand them into something more profound. This is something I could see in Neil Arthur’s prolific output:
‘No Special Order’: Originally I thought it would be clever to make a list in song about all the little things that annoy me, but following a brief interaction with a mentally disabled person in my local library I narrowed it down to a brief comment on thoughts that may have been running through her head regarding her peace being disturbed by those in authority.
‘Waterbed’: Using a memory of an old Steptoe & Son episode from the seventies, I examine the sort of seduction fantasies that I might have entertained as a fifteen year old.
‘Overlooked’: an uncritical observation of specific behaviours of my own next-door neighbours which moves on to pondering aircraft passing overhead. The obvious double meaning implied is our universal desire in life not to be ignored.
‘A Little Bit More’: When I had just the instrumental, it reminded me of Can’s ‘I Want More’ so that turned into the lyrical theme.
Synthbeat: I find your vision of the future whimsical, even in the melodies. How optimistic are you about a technological future?
Neil Dyer: I guess you are referring to ‘Say Hi To The Robots’ there, answer as above – that song is whimsical in that I’m not necessarily convinced that we’ll actually be allowed more time to enjoy ourselves. We haven’t been given a two-day weeks and jet packs just yet. Universal Basic Income intrigues me but I bet it will be a long time coming.
I can’t comment on the melodies other than every song I do ends up having multiple melodies due to my inability not to try and make everything as tuneful as I can. Every song in its development uses somewhere between 40 and 80 tracks which are whittled down in the final mixes (this method can often help with extended mixes as I can often simply reintroduce some of the parts that had been edited out of the ‘radio’ version).
Synthbeat: What gear are you using? In the box, or hardware synths? What DAW?
Neil Dyer: I use Ableton 10 with a few downloaded VSTs added along the way. I have a midi keyboard but it’s been out of action for months so most is done by clicking notes into the grid and experimenting. Quite a few of the instrumentals I released last year used the Midi keyboard and I think you can hear the difference it made. I will eventually get around to walking it over to a friends house so he can fix it.
Synthbeat: What are your favorite synths and effects?
Neil Dyer: Some imported VSTs, the rest are from Ableton. Synthmaster is good. Simple delays and compression, and EQ Eight are on most songs. I have had to train myself to spend more time changing the out-of -the box sounds. I think there is still scope for coming up with new sounds as I work on this, rather than seeking to constantly download new devices.
Synthbeat: What is your musical education, and how did and when did you start making electronic music?
Neil Dyer: I went to classical guitar lessons from age 10 til about 14, and this also overlapped with attending a guitar club after school where our groovy Latin teacher photostatted chord shapes and lyrics to chart hits – he sang and played guitar and we all chugged along with him, then we could take the sheets home to practice them.
I gave up building more technique as soon as I was able to write songs from age 14 onwards. I used to record ‘albums’ on cassettes (which nobody else ever heard), until I left home for university in Norwich and formed bands.
In the nineties I got married for the first time, and became a father so didn’t form any bands. I did buy a couple of synths and a portastudio and make primitive recordings at home.
Many years later, after living in Australia from 2000 til 2013 (and not making any music at all), I returned to Norwich and made some music with Brett, the Screen 3 drummer, who by then had a home studio out in the sticks. He would put down live drum tracks on his own then we’d both construct songs over the top of them, with each of us recording keyboard parts, and me recording guitar and vocals.
When this project ground to a halt in 2016 I wondered how I would continue and another ex-Screen 3 member suggested I download a DAW, so that’s what I did and I started releasing as Planet Neil in 2017.
I was keen to put out music as soon as I could, and ‘grow up in public’ rather than worry about technical proficiency. When I listen back to the early tracks I can hear many imperfections in the recordings but my main aim is to write songs, so the technical improvements have just come along gradually along the way.
Synthbeat : There’s also a funky basis to your grooves. What bands influenced this aspect of your sound? I can’t but help think of Heaven 17, Human League and Thomas Dolby! Would you say this is in the British electro funk tradition rather than that of U.S. Funk?
Neil Dyer: All three of those artists are among my many influences, along with other not-so-funky names like PSB, Erasure, Blancmange and Depeche Mode. Bowie is a constant influence.
USA-wise, Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club.
I am a huge fan of Funk and Disco, which might influence the bass lines, as well as the occasional falsetto backing vocals and disco strings. The bass sounds I use are usually VST versions of real bass sounds rather than synth bass.
My love of a huge variety of types of music means that I use Ableton to create a mixture of synthetic and ‘real’ sounds, so although my music is technically electronic (and I have a great love of all sorts of electronic music, from Eno to Giorgio Moroder), what comes out is an amalgam of influences that serve the song. This is where there are probably some parallels with Thomas Dolby in that he tends to be classified as an electronic artist, but in reality he blended synths and real musicians over his longer career.The main difference with the songs I made in the eighties is that I used the guitar to write them. I never write songs on a guitar now. This makes a huge difference to the way they are constructed.
Synthbeat: How much of your personal life do you put into your lyrics, and what can you tell me about that!
Neil Dyer: Quite a few of the songs are inspired by my wife (Golden Girl, Rush of Glamour [that’s her on the covers!], Icing on the Cake and Practical Lover). Others are about aging or the gaining of wisdom (Just Kids, Growing Up, The End, Skill Set).
Synthbeat :I just found out about Screen 3 from the 80s. How did this inform your rhetorical and musical stance? What instruments did you play, and is there any video you can share?
Neil Dyer: Do you mean how did this influence my current stance?
I was singer/guitarist and main songwriter.
On my socials I do use the phrase ‘post-punk electronic pop’. This has occasionally been misunderstood, perhaps unsurprisingly.. Culturally, that era was hugely influential to me. Even though Screen 3 was originally a 3-piece guitar/bass/drums sounds (later expanded with trumpets – influence by Teardrop Explodes’ ‘Reward’, Dexy’s and Madness) I was listening to all the early synth bands and duos alongside bands like Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, PiL, The Slits and the continuing output of punk bands like The Damned, Adam & The Ants, The Clash. Smash Hits was a magazine you may not be aware of, but back then the charts were full of all types of music, so its glossy pages covered everything from Duran Duran to Fun Boy 3 and the Liverpool Scene. Even now, my musical tastes (though very wide) are essentially mainstream. Literally Abba to Zappa on my alphabetical shelves.
Neil Dyer (2nd from left) Fronted Post Punk Band Screen 3 In The Early 80s.
Screen 3 (1980-1984) and Planet Neil (2017- ). I’m sure you can see the difference that youth vs maturity make to the way lyrics come out. I’m more likely to be political (but still in a small way) now than I was then. Musically, tunes are still paramount.
Synthbeat: I just found out that Screen 3 was on Epic. What was the major label thrill ride like for you and the band?
Neil Dyer: It was of course exciting but I think it might have happened a bit too soon. We knew we were good, so it seemed logical that we were signed up, rather a just reward for years of hard work. Having said that, we were coming off the back of a youth movement (punk etc) so lots of young people were being signed up. When you look into the histories of figures from the time that reached real fame it seems that they were possessed of a far greater confidence than we ever possessed as individuals. We rested on the strength of the sound we made together (not that you can really hear that in the records that were released), and the quality of the songs alone but lacked the personal drive, determination and ambition to push beyond that.
I loved going down to London to talk to the record company (and blag free records and meals). We recorded in some excellent studios. We all loved being huge in Norwich! We got into one or two teen magazines – set up in anticipation of greater things to come.
We got to tour and gig with some great bands. All this was written up on a old out of date website which seems to have disappeared. If you really want to know I might be able to find some word documents that I used for it. Being on a major label lent the band more kudos with local pop fans, who would generally ignore Norwich indie bands, but the cool kids and local labels felt we’d gone commercial and we were critically ignored. Local bands who stayed indie figured high in the indie charts. We no longer counted in those charts but never made it into the pop charts – so stuck in that no-man’s land in the middle.
When the label dumped us after three singles it killed our confidence and we split soon afterwards. We may have stuck with it for longer otherwise, it’s hard to know.
It’s gratifying to see two of our songs appear on a couple of 4CD compilations in recent years. One from our short indie phase, and the other when we were on Epic.
Planet Neil dot com
Planet Neil On Facebook
“Imperial Phase” Review on Popular Culture Beat
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