Afar beyond driven

The Live Stage at February’s Music Show spectacular provided an eceletic mix of rising stars and established favourites but it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that nobody brought the full-on sonic assault quite like Northern Irish math rock titans And So I Watch You From Afar. They made the baying crowd wait, but once the opening strains of ‘BEAUTIFULUNIVERSEMASTERCHAMPION’ took hold, there was no going back. More of a festival showcase than a headliner, it was something of a condensed set for ASIWYFA, but one filled with their trademark array of dizzying time signatures, sky-scraping melodies and onstage theatrics, all delivered tighter than Lars Ulrich’s snare drum circa St. Anger.

Their sound is something to behold – providing giddy thrills for the headbangers and plenty of, ‘How the hell do they do that?!’ moments for the more tech-savvy fan. There is an element of mystery to ASIWYFA’s output, one that recalls the guitar bravado of Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello. As a wide-eyed teen with zero knowledge of effects pedals, this writer thought the RATM man some kind of wizard, possessing a supernatural ability to make his guitar shriek like no other.
“I was the same!” laughs affable six-stringer Rory Friers. “I was like, ‘Right… what’s going on here? This isn’t just a dude and his guitar’. It’s just a case of finding those sounds and if you’re a fan of schizophrenic noise creation, than that’s it. Part of me feels like a total cheater, but from the very beginning we’ve had guitars that we tune down to get that big, gritty sound. Most of the sounds that people would connect with us are lots of guitar effects pedals taken to their limit to make the noises that most others wouldn’t bother with. I grew up listening predominantly to electronic music, stuff like DJ Shadow and Midfield General, so it’s very inherent in me now to recreate those bleeps and blips and sounds and rhythms.”
As you might expect, Friers and his bandmates adopt a particularly exhaustive approach to their art, compartmentalising every aspect of their sound before it ever comes close to the live audience. Early ideas that formulate in the practice room tend to take on new life once ASIWYFA embrace the tricks and tools afforded to them by a studio set-up. Wary of the trappings of repetition, Rory is keen to keep things interesting.
“Right now, we’re having fun flexing our muscles in another world,” he says. “We’re using a whole range of equipment that’s really quite new to us so we’re messing around with a lot more electronic stuff, using MIDI and samplers here and there. We’ve started to use Maschine by Native Instruments, and Logic to chop up stuff and drop it into other things. It’s relatively new ground for us but again very inherent, sound-wise, the kind of noises we’ve listened to all our lives and are now creating ourselves.”
There is, of course, still room for more traditional fare, with Friers keen to make his case for the adage that the old classics never go out of style.
“Until probably six months to a year ago I was probably just sticking to this one guitar, a 1978 Fender Telecaster Thinline – hollow body, two humbucker pickups, an absolute beast! It’s just so screwy and feedback-y and really hard to tame. As I’m getting a little bit older I’m starting to appreciate using different guitars a bit more. I never really use it live but between you and me, I’ve got a Les Paul Goldtop like Slash. Well, like a balding Slash at least.”
While it’s unlikely we’ll hear them belting out ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ any time soon (probably for the best, really), there does seem to be something of a ruthless streak to ASIWYFA’s musical journey. While they have established a signature sound, there is a notable narrative shift between 2009’s self-titled debut and last year’s follow-up, Gangs. Is there a deliberate, ‘rip it up and start again’ attitude at play? 
“Our sound is always morphing and things become redundant,” notes Rory, “but we do hold on to old stuff. It’s like the clothes you wear. You always keep the clothes that seem really tacky, that have become shit, because in ten or 15 years you’ll be like, ‘Awesome, this is cool again!’ Everything is on a cycle from becoming the worst thing, like, ‘How did we ever use this?’ And then it’s, ‘Ah cool, let’s use it again’.”
It might sound casual enough, but as anyone who has witnessed ASIWYFA in full flight live will attest to, mistakes and flubs are very much in the minority. Rory admits that they are especially hard on themselves and that everything has to be absolutely note-perfect. No room for improvisation then?
“There wouldn’t be many points where one of us would go off on a sonic adventure, ad-libbing jazz style, but there definitely are little bits and pieces,” he considers. “There’s quite a nice thing that happens with the band as a collective in that we’ve been playing so long that a tune will come down or maybe we pause for longer so there’s a kind of sixth sense about what we’re going to do. It’s funny in that one day’s ad-lib will be tomorrow’s permanent part of the song. We just discover little things. I always laugh because I listen to old recordings and they’re always so different from what we play now.” 
ASIWYFA’s methodical set-up is one thing, but has Friers ever been left mesmerised by his contemporaries?
“Last time we played with Battles was pretty full-on,” he nods. “Sometimes with those guys it can go wrong, but we played with them in Luxembourg and it was the first time I’d seen them since Tyondai (Braxton, ex-frontman) had left and it was fucking unbelievable. It’s so regimented and John Stanier (drums) has no in-ear monitors, no click track… he’s got two fuckin’ 8x10 cabs behind him and he’s just listening to the bass and it’s loop upon loop upon loop. It all has to stay in time and not start fading and then next thing some vocals start and the screens turn on and there’s a girl singing on the screens behind them. It’s just like, ‘Wait, what is going on and how is this not all falling to shit?’. That floored me when I saw it. John Stanier is definitely part robot!”

Gangs is out now on Richter Collective.