Whyte Horses Locked Themselves in the Italian Countryside for Three Months

Whyte Horses is the result of three months spent in the Italian countryside with battered analogue gear and cheap guitars. The band wanted to explore the themes of the human condition; and pretty soon a strange sound started rising out of the dilapidated cottage where they were staying, deep in the Frosinone mountain range.

The record sounds like it belongs in another world; all psychedelic, hazy, dreamy melodies and mutated instruments. Dom, from the band, is a music chronologist - and, with that in mind, he's made us a mix. You can listen to it above. Then you can read our interview with him below.

Noisey: Hi Dom, where are you and what are you up to right now?
Dom: At the moment we're sketching out arrangements for the album from our Manchester base. We're finalising what will become the first album; the songs are all written and whittled down now. I read somewhere that Van Dyke Parks composes on as many instruments as possible to see what suits a particular part and we’ve been trying our hand at that a bit. I’ve always seen music quite visually, so the idea that the music is being layered akin to photocopied physical material makes it feel more real to me. Over the last few months we've been watching a load of films by Manzuk Khalid, a kinetic artist, that's starting to feed into our live shows and I think its been rubbing off on our music too. You help run an archival collective/label called Finders Keepers. When did you start that and why?
I set up Finders Keepers with the intention of it becoming an accessible outlet to share music that had been previously squirreled away by connoisseurs and paranoid hi-brow collectors, I mean the serious types who keep their records in air-locked caves. There were these seminal records like the Selda album and Les Monde Fabuleux Yamasuki (a record by the father of Thomas from Daft Punk) that were begging for a wider market, I just thought it would be nice to present this music with decent packaging and get some credit to these obscure artists who deserve recognition. I’m not actively involved in the day to day running anymore and feel like my work there is done. I put out the records that I wanted to hear myself and I’m still into the idea of unearthing those kind of oddities but I really got into making music and doing something a bit more challenging with that knowledge. I’m working on a new project called Bandits Roost which will pull music and other medias together in an interesting way.

What’s the most interesting project you’ve ever worked with as part of Finders Keepers?
The Turkish series was the most interesting in terms of backstory and anecdotes. I travelled to Istanbul to personally oversee the contracts with some of the artists and label bosses. It felt like stepping back in time, a little like that program Ashes to Ashes, everyone smoking in the office and nattering on ring-dial phones with curly leads. Having travelled 3,000 miles to secure a signed contract to be met with the greeting ‘Why do you want to bootleg my record?' is a bit disarming, but I came to realise the music industry in Turkey has had a tumultuous time and is extremely suspicious of outside intervention. It seems like there was a huge propensity for bootlegging in the region, so naturally they were a little wary of us barging in to exploit their recordings in the West. I always find a synergy with the Turkish Anatolian Rock acts and the Brazilian Tropicalia movement, the incredible pressures they were under, putting their lives on the line just to get their message out there, not something you really see in music anymore.

On paper, Finders Keepers shouldn’t work. What do you think keeps it going?
It’s not easy to keep churning up life-affirming music and it definitely has a shelf life as does pop music or any genre. I think Finders Keepers can last forever providing the delicate well of incredible, uncovered records doesn't run dry.

What do you think is the next trend for record collectors?
Probably buying up the early Stereolab records and music from the not too distant past that’s still affordable. In twenty years those records will be worth top dollar. It’s always hard to predict what niche will make a comeback but Disco seems to be a popular cyclic event in collector’s circles, every four years there’s a new regurgitation of some form of Disco. That’s why I called one of my mixes ‘The Exploding Disco Inevitable’, there’s not really much disco on it, it was just in-vogue at the time, so I thought it would turn on some other people on to more esoteric sounds.

With the advent of the internet it's almost pointless going on a digging journey to a psychedelic hotspot like Turkey to buy records, nearly everything is documented and the bargains are scarce. It’s more for the type of digger who wants to enjoy the experience of a rustic neighbourhood of Istanbul even if the records are costing you more than they would on ebay. I suppose you can always instagram a picture of the limbless vagabonds on your walk through Taksim Square which isn't an everyday occurrence trudging down Oldham Street to Piccadilly Records.

How big would you say your own record collection is?
Most of my collection is ruined and worth nothing. That’s the juxtaposition of being a collector and a DJ, it’s like having a split personality. Playing rare records in public is pure Russian roulette. They end up scratched, with drinks spilt on them or going home with some light fingered individuals. The majority went when I had a flood in my house a few years back and my records were left floating in the lounge. In retrospect it freed me from the clutches of that ridiculous, self-obsessed hoarding, now I’m happy to have a few nice things and I never mourn their loss. My main focus has become making music, not how many records are on my shelf, that’s what excites me now.

Do you have any “prized items” that you love more than any of the others, or is that like asking you to pick a favourite child?
I do have one record by a Turkish poet-come pop composer called Ozlem Hakuk, it has the most incredible close-miked drums and bone-shattering tremeloed fuzz saz sound. We're just working on the re-issue for the Bandits Roost imprint, it's a one of the best things I've heard in last ten years.

As a collector and a distributor, what are your views on Record Store Day?
There’s the talk of it being detrimental to the smaller labels as the majors see it as a cash cow, all those extra records flooding the market at the same time does have a knock on effect on production plants throughout those months. On balance you could argue that for all its faults it’s still a talking point and gets people buying records. There’s always a way of working around an idea like Record Store Day, there must be some clever anti-record store day marketing that could work, labels will have to get more creative to counter it if they can't compete with the money of the majors, it’s always good to have something to fight against. I think if there’s more money floating round in the vinyl market it can’t be a bad thing if it’s sustainable.

You’ve kind of described it in music, but how would you describe Frosinone, the place, in words?
The base we had in Frosinone was in a tiny village towards Lazio where the rocky mountain faces are peppered with vegetation; to me it feels like hopeful place, especially when you see the green of the trees on the would-be barren land. The population of the village is tiny, only a couple of hundred people so you’d see the same faces everyday, the sun beats incessantly and it's a lazy lifestyle. We had to escape Manchester for a while to get excited again and find some solitude. The scenery seemed to evoke lost memories, we began to reminisce on pivotal moments in our lives such as seeing H.R. Pufnstuf for the first time, discovering El Topo and remembering childhood sensations like the look of a bottle of cherryade on a sunny day. I spent a lot of time in the desert as a kid and that shaped the things I loved, I'm just a sucker for mountains and sun. On our last night there we watched a pseudo-western 'A Girl is a Gun' and listened to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians at sunset with some of the old folks we'd met and their kids came and brought us some local wine. Recording the demos there was a really important move for us, we really found our sound.

What about Frosinone, the mixtape - how would you describe that?
An hour of looking at a sun drenched mountain range through kaleidoscopic glasses. Acid folk slacker anthems do battle with desert pop breaks and Led Zeppelinesqe Eastern ballad standards.

What are some of your favourite moments on the mix and why?
I think the first track and the last capture the idea of what the mix is trying to achieve. The first track should always set up the mix to draw you in and set the tone and I’m a massive fan of bookending ideas, so there's always a connection between the beginning and ending. I see mixtapes as little movies that need to have light and shade, to settle down and rest and then to have its peaks. Coming from Manchester I have an inherent love of hybrid sounds, I was always as much into guitar music as I was into acid house, so there’s a constant battle of sonic favouritism. Being a purist and switching off to what doesn't fit into set parameters is crazy. Personally I’m not a fan of mixtapes that try and show off how many super rare and obscure tracks you can fit into an hour, that’s not about an experience for the listener, it’s an ego trip for the DJ.

The mix is really diverse but also really cohesive. How did you approach putting it together?
There has to be an emotion shared by the tracks and that can sometimes be difficult to put into words. I've always had that magpie mentality that scavenges from different sources, but the cohesion seems to be in the simple fact that each song makes me feel something. I think we're programmed a certain way in what appeals to us in music and that can be tricky to articulate. I suppose we try to approach making music much in the same way. For me the ultimate goal has always been to make a record that sounds as if its always existed, that is, its existence is something that sounds so natural and evolved it just slips into the psyche as if its always been there.

Whyte Horses is a relatively new project. You have an album in the works called Pop Or Not, could you talk a little bit about what we can expect from that?
There’s an agenda and a loose concept to the record, initially it started out as an imaginary band. We wondered what a desert pop band playing in an old church in Mexico would sound like. We settled on the idea that we'd find some girls and write an album for them, but then a pretty heavy event happened and it started to form the rest of the way the album was written. We decided we'd make it ourselves the challenge then became to make the record that was missing from our collection. It’s a bit fragmented and it has something of a soundtrack quality to it, hopefully it will move the listener on different levels throughout and there is a narrative to it which helps with the writing process. We’ve always been hooked on the idea of mixing pop songs with things that have odd hooks and instrumentation, crowbarring sounds from zany artists such as Harry Partch with proper well-crafted pop songs. When I think of the music of the girl groups era the sounds were insane, but you don’t question them because they’re great songs, I love that trick.

As somebody with such an eclectic music taste, what do you usually look for from an album?
I can’t listen to an album from start to finish if it becomes too samey, whether that’s in tempo or song style. Someone like Dylan I find much better to listen to for just a couple of songs, I suppose that’s why the mixtape culture is prevailing these days. Looking back at my favourite albums there's always interesting arrangements that give each song its own world, not an hour of the same song repeated.

What’s the last record you bought?
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour 7” boxset. I highly recommend checking them out, they’re a great band if you've not heard of them.

Whyte Horses play The Islington on 25th October.