INTERVIEW: Russell Haswell

Image by Rachel Deakin

Multidisciplinary artist Russell Haswell’s various creative outputs include DJing in support of acts like Autechre, producing black metal-influenced noise recordings, creating art installations and most recently writing an opera. His accolades haven’t gone to his head however, as throughout our conversation he is affable, enigmatic and down to earth – which is all part of his charm.

“I got started quite late. I was 18 in 1988 so I grew up with Model 500, early 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald, but at the same time it was also Napalm Death, Carcass, Nocturnus and Confessor,” he explains, outlining what interested him musically growing up. “Then I came across Vangelis and [Iannis] Xenakis because of the alphabetical order of the lending library… I thought, who has a name that begins with ‘X’?”

He thinks back fondly to his days as a paperboy, reading music magazines like NME and Smash Hits before popping them through a letterbox. “I’m not really a musician, I just make sounds. I don’t consider it to be music. I come from an art background and I ended up doing gigs. I studied performance art and conceptual art, massive art that is formidable. I always drew a parallel between noise and performance art. To me, listening to Merzbow is like being inside a giant Michael Heizer sculpture,” he says, which leads us onto discussing the concepts underpinning his upcoming album Deep Time.

I’m not really a musician, I just make sounds. I don’t consider it to be music

“It’s about the massive scale of the earth. I recently got into geology and rock structures. Living up in Scotland has meant I can visit the islands and see all of these things,” he enthuses, but you’d struggle to pull that from the sounds alone. There are retrogressive elements to his sound, old synths and drum sounds from the 80’s, arranged together from the perspective of now. It’s all very conceptual.

Like most of his recorded output this new record is improvised. “When I play live it’s all improvised, but when I come to Middlesborough in August I’m going to try and reproduce what’s been improvised on the album. If it doesn’t work out then that’s fine, the album won’t be out by then, so no one will have heard it yet anyway, but it should resonate in their minds when they hear the album in the future.”

Russell operates in a niche, admitting he usually polarises his audience; he finds there is more of an appetite for his performances in Europe or Japan. “This is only the second time I’ll have played in Middlesborough. I had a great time last year and I’m over the moon to have been asked back.”

We chat about the struggles facing travelling artists post-Brexit, -lockdowns, -cost of living crisis which has meant he’s played more gigs in the UK in the last 12 months than he has in his whole career. So, what keeps him going? “I want to get one over on all of the beige, vanilla, run-of-the-mill artists selling out mega stadiums right now. I get a lot of encouragement from fellow artists and honestly, I wouldn’t know what else to do at this stage of my life… go down the job centre?”

Russell Haswell plays Disgraceland, Middlesbrough on Friday 30^th August.