Spotlight On... Outblinker

For the unacquainted, Fraser McPhail, Luigi Pasquini, Chris Cusack and David Ian Warner make up the core members of Glasgow "electro/rock/kraut/post-whatever" outfit Outblinker. They've been working on their debut album for quite some time now, and the resulting six tracks – set for release on Friday 31 May – that make up Outblinker do not disappoint.

Songs are pummeling, cinematic, soaring, ear-shredding, tense and epic in equal measure, and feature a whole host of familiar names along the way. You'll find Graham Costello on drums and percussion, vocals from Siobhan Wilson and Raveloe on Grimey, maraccas from Moni Jitchell's Grant Donaldson on Cargo 200 and Benjamin Power (Blanck Mass; Fuck Buttons) on co-proudction duty, alongside some synth and guitar work on Grimey and DDDavid. We last spoke to Outblinker nine years ago when they were working on their debut, and with it only just about to see the light of day, we had to know what's been going on, so we catch up with Chris Cusack to find out.

The Skinny last spoke to you in 2015, when you said you were working on an album with producer Benjamin Power, so how come your debut is only coming out now? What have you been up to for the last eight/nine years; did the urgent trip to A&E as referenced in your press release have anything to do with the delay?
Hah. That is a good and very fair question. Grab a seat. Back in 2016, as promised to your writers, we did actually travel up to a converted church on a remote Orkney Island, surrounded by seals and fishermen and ancient houses older than the pyramids, to work on an album's worth of material with Ben.

It was an amazing trip for all of us; life changing, even (as some of our subsequent matching tattoos will testify to). But once we got back, we were pretty ruthless with the material we produced. We only ended up releasing about 30 minutes of it as The Remains of Walter Peck EP and then cannibalising other good moments and ditching the rest.

We were a new band. We were moving so fast as a group and the musical style was evolving so rapidly, as we all got used to writing together, that by the time most of those songs were mixed, they just didn't feel representative of us anymore. We had gone from being a fairly straightforward krautrock band to a much more complex and challenging noisy post-something electro project. So for some time we pushed those boundaries and opted to just release EPs and singles as we felt that would let us evolve more easily.

And let's be honest, the industry was going that way anyway. Music changed a lot when streaming took full control and the bands who were regularly dropping individual tracks did much better than bands who took years to do albums. That became our outlook more generally, so you can see a trail of EPs and singles and individual cover songs by us in those years.

Then in 2018, as you mention, health intervened. We had been rehearsing and performing a lot. Weeks at a time in mainland Europe especially, where we enjoyed our best support. We were all working hard at tough jobs back home to pay bills though and for a couple of us the strain started to show. There were a couple of scary trips to A&E and then some enforced time off involved. One of us ended up back in his home country for a good while recovering from a heart condition and the rest of us simply did not want to go on without him, so we slowed it all down a bit until he could get back on his feet. Which worked fine. At first. And then came COVID.

Literally one week before our full European tour was due to begin, the world went into lockdown. All those months of planning, the expense, all the new merchandise, the rehearsals; more or less wasted. It was a big blow given the previous hurdles we had faced. But we bounced back and even during lockdown we kept working. In fact we wrote almost an entire second record in the first few months, so hopefully the next album gap won't be quite as long.

During those times we would meet weekly for big Zoom hangouts (including Ben, various ex-members and even our drivers) then we would spend a few hours a day writing and recording parts remotely. Those sessions actually led to our weird viral hit, a discoed up cover of Super Sex by the super cool 90s band Morphine, that took off in Central Asia. One day during Lockdown #2 we woke up and the views of my homemade video for that song were sitting in the millions. Pretty strange times.

As soon as the world started to get back to normal we returned to our studio on a regular basis, completed this album (as well as much of the second) and began rehearsing and booking tours again to get back to being a proper live project. As a result, Autumn 2022 onwards was a special time, with some big shows in Europe and memorable adventures and it paved the way for where things are now.

We are all really proud of the album but, speaking personally, I am as relieved as anything else to just get it out into the world so I can emotionally move on and focus on new material.

As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and the album is sounding mega. Are these songs the same ones you were working on when we last spoke; if not, how have things evolved, and can you tell us more about Ben's involvement? I'd also love to know more about contributions from Moni Jitchell’s Grant Donaldson, as well as Siobhan Wilson and Raveloe. The latter two aren’t obvious choices for a psych-kraut-industrial record – how did these collaborations come about?
None of these songs existed when we first spoke to The Skinny. Walter Peck is the oldest of the batch and is on the new record because the first version from the EP didn't do it justice. We churned through lots of ideas since that time and have made more unreleased demos than hot meals.

As for Ben Power, we were already long-term fans of Fuck Buttons and later Blanck Mass. But I actually met Ben properly through the late Robbie Cooper of Laeto and we got close around the time of Robbie's Human Is Not Alone charity project for Marie Curie Cancer Care (the story of us temporarily losing Robbie's ashes when we were out for drinks in his honour is a belter, but I've probably said too much already).

Anyway, Ben is a guy all of the band quickly bonded with on both a creative and personal level. Outblinker is strange like that; once you're in the team, you're sort of in for life. Even ex-members and our drivers usually stay in the orbit, forming an extended (and dysfunctional) family. None more-so than Ben, who seems to enjoy the noise we make and always sees unrealised potential in us. Needless to say, his production skills are astonishing, his standards are incredibly high and bringing him in on projects consistently forced us to challenge our own limits. Put simply, he helped make us much better.

Kim and Siobhan are likewise two hugely talented Scottish musicians I greatly admire and consider friends. Outblinker always seems to benefit from outside influences and we usually arrive at more interesting musical conclusions when we set ourselves a challenge. Grimey as a song lacked something lush and warm and it was only [Kim and Siobhan's] eventual involvement that made it feel complete.

Grant Donaldson meanwhile actually used to drum with us, albeit briefly, and whether he likes it or not he has been forcefully inducted into Outblinker and the only way out is death. So we needed him on there somewhere or the lawyers would have gotten involved.

You say the record follows the path of six different characters across its six tracks. Can you tell us more about this idea and how it works for music which is for the most part instrumental, or features heavily processed vocals?
This idea first emerged during the Remains of Walter Peck EP. Much of what we do is instrumental, but we also wanted songs to convey some sort of meaning and purpose. So we began to name them after individuals (both real and imaginary) with compelling backstories or profound connotations. Walter Peck, for example, is, yes, the guy from Ghostbusters, but it was also the Facebook handle of Robbie [Laeto]; Techno Viking was that famous dancing guy meme, but most people don't know his life was later consumed by legal actions relating to royalties around those memes.

So yeah, on this record, some of the references are equally obscure and the tales often more alarming. But it is almost a bit of a game for listeners. We want people to investigate the names and fall down the rabbit hole of what each "person" might signify. That way they leave with at-best a profound eureka experience, and at-worst some quality pub trivia.

The approach to vocals in the music both inspired this same concept and partly reflects it. Given social media culture, so many musicians are painfully obsessed with being in the literal spotlight; being endlessly photographed and watched. Brand new acts build extensive online profiles before they have any actual music. It all seems so incredibly hollow.

We were looking to actively suppress our egos by contrast. So our own voices were concealed or deconstructed or replaced by guest performers. We also tried to take our faces out of play in the photoshoots. Basically, we tried to subsume ourselves in service of the music. Even on stage, we tried to dazzle people with the lights so it didn't really matter how scruffy we were from tour. We were trying to make Outblinker less about four band members and more about the horrifying, baffling, sprawling morass of humanity.

Image: Outblinker album artwork by Frank McFadden

The album’s artwork by Scottish painter Frank McFadden, a trippy swirl of overlapping faces is somewhat unsettling – can you tell us more about this collaboration, and how the artwork ties in with the overall album?
Well, perfect timing on this question. Because Frank's art, where face melts into face melts into face... what could be more perfect for that aforementioned band concept? We met Frank by happy accident. His daughter Frankie is a big music fan and introduced us to her Dad, of whom myself and David were already fans. Assuming it would never happen, we were slowly working up the courage to ask if maybe, possibly, perhaps, please we could use something of his on our (eventual) album cover...

To our shock and delight he couldn't have been more obliging. Once we got the green light, we wanted his images on there uncluttered by text. Pristine. Just one big human mess, like a mash-up of John Carpenter's The Thing and Picasso's Guernica. Since then we've stayed in touch. Frank is both a totally understated genius and a lovely man. He doesn't do social media though. Or emails. Or texts. Or telephones. Which is a bit of a challenge. But luckily he does do coffee so you just need to hang around for a while.

You’ve dropped a hint to us via email that alongside the album’s release on 31 May there will be a “creepy wee video” coming out for DDDavid?
Yes indeed. We usually make our own videos. Just like we book our own tours, make our own merch and pack our own sandwiches. Because we're a DIY group and we're always on a budget. But one benefit of that level of control is we can explore some fun ideas in things like cover art and videos without any pushback. I'm not sure a manager would have let me do this otherwise.

The video in question actually continues the theme of the faces and the wider human sprawl, but takes it to an absurdly specific place as it opts to travel all the way inside a body. No particular body – we don't know or see anything about the person – just all those weird skin folds and bubbles. It's surreal and uncomfortable and hopefully a bit deflating, because it reminds us how similar and gross we all are. Forget the filters and Photoshop and the tasteful lighting. We're all running from that one fact: inside we're gross. Read that as literally or figuratively as you like.

Given the inhuman nature of the synthesized vocals on the track we then decided to subtitle it in some unknown language as though it were some sort of alien karaoke. Maybe it is a bit of a pun on the old alien abduction and probe scenario. Or just some species trying to figure us out by looking closely at the physical, then realising how insufficient cold hard rationalism is when trying to understand the irrational riot that is humanity.

After the album comes out, what does the rest of 2024 look like for Outblinker?
It looks uncharted. The live incarnation of the band from the last tour isn't in place anymore, although over the years that sort of change isn't exactly unusual. We've had offers of shows and some talented people have volunteered to step up so there's some movement there. But as I mentioned at the start, the good news is we already have the bulk of a second album ready. So we'll get our heads down and get the remaining tunes finished and who knows, we might even get it out before COVID-25 or a third Trump presidency.

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Outblinker is set for release on 31 May via GoldMold Records (UK)