"I didn't want it to be some heavy, introspective thing", says Gorky's Zygotic Mynci frontman Euros Childs of his long-awaited first solo album. "That would have been a bit boring for me, let alone everyone else".
Instead, enthused by the idea of making a whole record on his own, Euros decided to get "as close as I could to party music". The result, a deliciously meaty thirty-three minute feast called Chops, is anything but boring. In fact, from the terrifying Vangelis-meets-Black-Lace disco blowout of 'Donkey Island', to the exquisite closing eight minute techno/folk crossover landmark 'First Time I Saw You', this record packs more musical ideas into its compact running time than most people manage in their entire career.
Having been in GZM since he was fifteen years old, the idea of working as a lone wolf was always going to take a bit of getting used to. So Euros took over a room in his parents' house in Pembrokeshire for three months and put the whole album together in four track demo form, before heading to Gorwel Owen's Ofn studios in Anglesey (home to landmark recordings by Super Furry Animals among others) for the final sessions.
The record he made there combines the infectious playfulness of early Gorky's releases such as the legendary Tatay, with the beautifully realised folk-pop of the band's later years. And while it's a delight to hear long-departed founder member John Lawrence back in the fold playing pedal steel on the afore-mentioned "Donkey Island", it's the confidence with which Euros establishes himself as a solo performer that is particularly exhilarating.
The leap of faith required to pronounce the name Gorky's Zygotic Mynci was the first step into a world where anything was possible - a place where a song about English hippie legend Kevin Ayers could become a big hit with teenage girls in Japan, or a band's suspicion of record company 'doing things to get their record in the charts' could ensure a series of classic singles stalled just outside the Top 40. And now he's making records under his own name, Euros Childs finally looks set to reap some of the rewards that his talents have always merited.
In the course of the thirteen year musical odyssey from which they are currently taking a well-earned break, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci put together a back catalogue that few - if any - of their British contemporaries can equal. Indeed, if one of their landmark albums from the mid/late nineties were now to be rediscovered in a vault with a more distant recording date on the master tape, it would undoubtedly be hailed as lost folk-psych masterpiece.
In the same way that The Velvet Undergound or Big Star made the transition from commercial obscurity to legendary status, Euros Childs currently finds himself in an unaccustomed position of extreme fashionability. The funny thing about Gorky's Zygotic Mynci was, people always used to think they were behind the times, but in fact they were ahead of them.
From the sunny sibling harmonies of The Magic Numbers to the wilfully kooky confections of Devandra Banhart's 'Wyrd folk' underground, in 2005 the Mynci influence is everywhere. The truth is, that when it comes to the much touted acid-folk revival, Euros Childs not only did it first, he also did it best.
Raised in the idyllic surroundings of the Pembrokeshire countryside, Euros Childs grew up far away from the pernicious tendrils of musical snobbery. "Where we lived it was much easier to buy second-hand records than first-hand" he remembers. "If you wanted a new album you had to travel to Swansea or Cardiff, but you could get hold of the debut LP by Caravan without any problems at all".
"Everyone tends to be more open-minded about music now", he continues. "When we started, though, people would ask 'How did you get into Robert Wyatt?' I mean, you hear it on the radio and you go and buy a record don't you? But it seemed to frighten them. They'd say 'You're nineteen - you should be listening to Blur'".
The irony is that the very same people who would once have sneered at anyone owning up to a passing fondness for The Incredible String Band, can now be found passionately eulogising the cover art of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. But having been weaned on the heady ambrosia of pastoral psychedelia, Euros Childs was never going to succumb to the preciousness and closed-mindedness with which this music's most ardent adherents have sometimes been afflicted.
"I always hated the idea that if something was acoustic it was deemed to be more 'authentic'" he explains. "That's the point of the song 'Donkey Island', really. We had a really strange DVD on an American tour once of Can doing 'The Can-Can'. It was great, but really odd, and that's the feeling I was trying to get" Euros laughs... "Something like the really bad stuff Donovan did in the 70's: stuff that should never have been done".
Has there ever been a better time to get in touch with your inner Childs? I certainly don't think so.
Ben Thompson, October 2005
"Chops" - track by track
Billy The Seagull
An attention-grabbing opener in which a sleepy-sounding Euros reports back from the other side with a breathy snapshot of avian serendipity - "Saturday morning, flying so high".
"I wrote that in my sleep", he explains. "It's not something I've ever done before, but I woke up and I'd been dreaming the song. I had a dictaphone by the bed, so what you hear is me singing into that at two or three in the morning - the drowsiness isn't put on".
Donkey Island
"I was on holiday once" Euros remembers, "I can't remember if it was in Turkey or Greece, but a bloke was selling trips to 'donkey island', and I envisaged someone being shipwrecked and having to adapt".
The song's protagonist initially struggles to find acceptance - "A thousand miles over the ocean/I got a kicking at first" - before ultimately coming to the heartening conclusion that "donkeys are like you and me"
It's good to get your big socio-political statement out of the way early.
"The demo was much more disco-orientated", Euros confesses, "but I toned it down a bit..."
Dawnsio Dros Y Mor (Dancing Across The Sea)
"I'd got it into my head that I couldn't write songs in Welsh anymore". Euros remembers. "And even though these lyrics are pretty nonsensical - it's all, like, 'She lives in a cave with only a dwarf and nuts for company' - the first time I sat down to write them they took me ages".
Slip Slip Way
A small Yamaha organ supplies one of the best of this album's huge arsenal of fantastic keyboard sounds accompanying what might be a Dada sound poem, but probably isn't. "I suppose this one proves that the whole language thing is a bit of a non-issue, as some of the English lyrics don't mean jack shit either".
Costa Rita
One of this album's five or six classic pop melodies. Someone working on his brother's ice-cream stall embarks on a brief but touching relationship with a peanut vendor. The short time they share together is underpinned by a shrewd understanding of seaside town economics: "Ice cream sells when it's hot/ But it don't sell so well when it's not".
page 2/3
Stella Is A Pigmy pts 1-3
Think "Judy Is A Punk", but shorter. And in three parts.
My Country Girl
Another heartfelt romantic vignette, but this time with a distinct Nashville twang. "This is my homage to Rubber Soul. It doesn't sound anything like The Beatles, but I always love old records where there's just the one country track, so I thought I'd compress all my country impulses into a minute and a half".
Circus Time
A characteristically wistful Childsian lyrical landscape is elevated to a celestial realm by a timely stringed intervention. "I started this one four or five years ago: that's why Megan [Euros' elder sister and erstwhile GZM stalwart] has got the violin part - it was really nice to have her along".
Cynhaef (Harvest)
"This was the first thing I heard back that I'd done just as myself.... I didn't have a hi-fi or anything - just a cassette-player and some free airplane headphones - but I was still pretty happy to find I could do it".
Hi Mewn Socasau (Her in Chaps)
This sturdy piano-based rocker with Megan on subliminal backing vocals turns out to be another lyrical surprise package.
"It's set in a Welsh village in 1869", Euros explains. "The character in the song basically has to get a shoe for his horse before the break of dawn, so he's off to the local blacksmith, who is a woman. Everyone has warned him against her because she's got a bit of a reputation, but the chorus is him basically the two of them getting it on. There's lots of Carry-On style innuenedo - I think Gorwel was a bit shocked when I started singing it."
Surf Rage
More hard-hitting social comment - this time getting to grips with the dark underside of life in another supposedly laid-back seaside community.
"I'd got a bit depressed after reading an article in The Guardian about surfers attacking each other", Euros explains. The result is an exquisite piano-ballad built around the plaintive mantra "Don't steal my wave".
First Time I Saw You
Eight minutes four seconds of pure bliss. If Kraftwerk had been an acid-folk act, this is what they would have sounded like. "This one works quite well live", says Euros excitedly, "I taped the keys on the synth down and just left it running".
