Interview from Probemusic (September 2001)

Guy Fire is a good guy with a thinking brain in the upper third of his body and words that make sense out of his mouth. I met him by mistake. He sent a genuine analogue cassette from his musical project The Guy Who Invented Fire to a friend of mine who runs Aspic Records here in Marseille. It was a Ben Harper promo perverted with TippEx correcting fluid and scotch adhesive tape. My friend's got no such antique as a cassette player. I have. I think it all started that afternoon listening to Guy's three-fingers-tunes, with tiny-but-real pieces of rhythm inside - like the wonderful melodies you'd expect to get out from the tiny speaker of a mutant Gameboy high on radioactivity.

In this technological age, Guy Fire insists on using old computers and basic software to make music. His defence? "When I started doing electronic music all I had was an old Amiga 500, and basic trackers were the only audio software around. I liked working within their really tight restrictions because it forced me to (try to) be creative rather than rely on powerful software to be creative for me. Most of the I Didn't Get Where I Am Today EP was recorded on the Amiga before the disk drive finally packed up. When I moved to the PC I did try more complicated software, but I'm happy with the way of making music that I have. And as my grandad used to say about his car: open the bonnet and let the devil in. By which he meant if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

There's a track, The Guy Who Invented Fire, on the first Shellac single. Is that where the name came from? "The name does come from the Shellac song. I love that sense of clarity and simplicity Steve Albini has when recording bands. I chose it because I wanted a name that didn't sound like it belonged to any genre of music." Damn, if we can't pigeonhole him that way, let's just ask what Guy Fire is all about "Well, what is any music all about? Guy Fire is an distraction. I doubt if any track I've ever done has taken more than a couple of hours; if something's not good enough by then, I usually throw it away. I want spontaneity and spirit, not perfection. I suppose I moan a lot about other bands so maybe Guy Fire is a way of saying if I can do it, I'm sure YOU can".

I Didn't Get Where I Am Today has been getting a lot of airplay from John Kennedy on XFM recently. It's out now on Intellectos. http://listen.to/guyfire

(Denis Del Nista)