Waldo's Gift: 'It's weird and it works' | LOUD Bristol Issue Three
Posted on: 30 Dec 2021This article was first published in the third issue of LOUD Bristol, 365Bristol's dedicated music magazine. Read LOUD Issue Three and browse our first two editions here.
Waldo's Gift
Hypnotic, knotty and captivating. Just don’t call it jazz. LOUD catches up with Waldo’s Gift for a chinwag about labels, improvisation, and their second EP, Normflex.
“I don’t really know how we ended up being labelled a ‘jazz’ band,” James Vine, drummer in Bristol trio Waldo’s Gift, says via Zoom. “What’s funny is that we can play a tech metal festival as easily as we can play Ronnie Scott’s. It’s weird and it works. We don’t have to change the music.” To his right, guitarist Alun Elliott-Williams and bassist Harry Stoneham nod in agreement. Despite their fondness for the genre, the easiest comparisons they can draw to themselves - Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus - are a world away from it. Truthfully, the trio’s catalogue echoes such a vast array of genres and styles it’s hard to pin down a predominant influence.
Constantly blurring the lines between metal, rock, electronic music and indeed jazz to name a few, the band’s second EP, Normflex, is proof that trying to pigeonhole their music is a fool’s errand. “I feel like we’re almost the perfect example of how sometimes absurd it is to try and categorise music,” Alun says. “I don’t even try anymore,” James admits. “If anyone asks, I just say weird shit.” His bandmates light up beside him. Finally, it seems, the trio have found a tag they feel is appropriate. “Weird shit! Yeah! I like that,” Alun continues, excitedly.
To date, nothing about the trio’s journey has been by the book. Ever since 2017 when James locked eyes with Alun across a misty dancefloor at three-in-the-morning in an illegitimate club, Waldo’s have been on a unique trajectory. On beat with this smokey encounter, Harry, a university friend of Alun’s, moved to Bristol. Upon the trio’s assembly, The Gallimaufry offered them a weekly residency, which they hastily accepted. Every Wednesday for three years after, Waldo’s were a permanent fixture at the venue – part of the furniture. “We wouldn’t exist without that venue. It’s where we found our sound, got to know each other and got to know each other musically,” James says.
“What’s funny is that we can play a tech metal festival as easily as we can play Ronnie Scott’s. It’s weird and it works”
The trio immediately got busy embedding themselves at the forefront of Bristol’s musical ecosystem, often playing 90-minute, non-stop slots. Firing off hypnotic improvised tracks with searing intensity, their high-octane, in-your-face, and utterly captivating sets marked them out as one of the most striking acts in the city. These formative years were, at least from the outside, a baptism of fire. “We weren’t one of those bands that were in our bedrooms together shredding until we were ready to go out into the world. We were in the world from the beginning,” Alun says.
Did you feel any pressure? “Yeah, loads of pressure!” he says. Not buckling under the strain, Waldo’s learnt to be quick on their feet. “We were there every week and had other projects, so we didn’t have time to think about every slot.”
“Fuck no!” James agrees. “That’s how we got into improvising. We were doing shows where we were making it up on the spot.” Playing over 150 gigs without repeating a single note, the trio got to know each other musically, developing a lasting shared sonic language that informed their most recent material along the way.
The emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 and the subsequent closure of The Gallimaufry proved to be the end of the line for Waldo’s Weekly. Over the next 18 months, opportunities to play gigs were few and far between, but, during a fortuitous juncture in October 2020, a scarce chance to get up on stage presented itself. Seizing the opportunity, the trio played a gig at Trinity Centre, which, through a bootleg recording, laid the foundations for Normflex: the final improv of the set becoming the title track on the EP. “We thought, this is sick! That should be a tune,” James says. “It didn’t take much to slot a few things into place to make it a four-minute song instead of a 15-minute, undulating thing.”
Despite this early spark, the transition from three years of live improv to writing a studio recorded EP wasn’t completely smooth sailing. At first, the group assumed the switch meant focussing on what they couldn’t do in improv and quickly wound up in a dichotomy; the written tracks weren’t keeping the off-beat sonic identity they had forged since forming. By trusting their process rooted in improv, the band hit their stride in no time. The searing four-track EP is authentically Waldo’s, holding all the blistering energy of their old weekly set, blending shared and separate influences, ebbing and flowing between chaotic abandon and poised restraint.
“This EP was like, what are the sound worlds that we authentically and naturally evolve towards, and how can we distil and form those into something a little bit more concise and approachable to the average person,” Alun says. “It all comes from improv,” James adds. “In a way because we’re just jamming, just us three, we’ve developed a way to write that still feels respectful to the Waldo’s improv process.”
The course of recording Normflex proved to be a revealing one. “When you’re playing live, there’s a lot of scope to let ideas run,” Harry says. “This doesn’t really work on record. It really let us see the core of what we were. It sucked not being able to play live, but I felt like it presented this different shade of the band that we could explore. Definitely something I never want to repeat in my life, though.”
Photos: Gina Tratt
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George is a journalism graduate and writer passionate about music and culture. Get in touch via email at george@365bristol.com
