2015 was a prolific year for Hey Colossus, one in which the sextet have emerged as unlikely radio botherers on BBC 6 Music and – most impressively – have bucked contemporary trends by being a guitar band by releasing two killer albums (their eighth and ninth) in a single year. The band formed back in 2003, and have since become favourites of the UK’s underground scene with their records veering from drone metal to noise to – most recently – something closer than ever to classic psychedelic rock. Before their sold out show at Islington’s Electrowerkz, DiS spoke to guitarist Jonathan Richards and drummer Rhys Llewellyn about the band’s stellar year, and its history to date.

DiS: So I guess we should start with the fact that Radio Static High has just come out, and it’s your second excellent album of the year. Is it a companion release to its predecessor, In Black and Gold? Did the two records emerge around the same time?

Jonathan Richards: Pretty much… we did In Black and Gold last summer… Rhys Llewellyn: Then we went back into the studio and finished it up around Christmas, but then before Christmas we went in as well and recorded a couple of tunes from the new one… JR: Yeah, that’s right. We’ve re-recorded a couple of tunes that we’d used before on the God Unknown 7” that came out… RL: Gigging In Black and Gold we were together on tour quite a lot, so therefore we spent some time in the studio together doing Radio Static High and we just wanted to get it out really. JR: Two in a year was a bit of a thing y’know? It was something we wanted to do because it is unusual…

DiS: I’m not 100% sure why really…

JR: I know, I agree. Personally growing up in the age of My Bloody Valentine, The Stone Roses, Metallica, etc taking five years or whatever to record an album, you really felt they must be doing it properly if they were taking their time. But when you’re not going on a global tour for years it doesn’t take long for you to wish you had some new songs to play… RL: For me at the other end of the scale there’s always The Fall, putting out record after record – one or two a year. That kept it interesting and exciting. We’ve tried to do that over the years but we’ve had limited success and some things haven’t gone our way but this year things have fallen into place. Rocket were up for it. Pressing plants have been challenging because everyone and their wife wants to put out vinyl at the moment…

DiS: This record – especially vocally – sounds a little cleaner to me than previous albums…

JR: It feels like the focus has come in a bit more. I think before vocals in particular were getting masked in this more atmospheric sounds, with abstract lyrics or just vocal sounds as much as anything else. RL: Here we wanted to strip the effects out of the vocals as well, have them more front and central, let Paul (Sykes, vocals) actually sing a bit more…

DiS: Was Paul into that?

RL: I think he was cool with it. We’re all doing something a bit different on this record. It’s challenging everyone a bit more. We also wanted to put something out that we could play live. The last few records we put them out and we could only play a couple of songs live in some cases from them because they were all mash-ups of different things. Less so with In Black and Gold but this one in particular we just wanted to be able to play every song on the record. So it was pretty live in this case… Jon was demoing a lot of it on his iPhone and sending it to us and same with In Black and Gold really. JR: Before we would go into the studio and everyone would have something – four seconds of an idea or whatever. Now we have more of an idea before we get together of where we’re going with stuff, we can practice it more if that doesn’t sound too ridiculous… Think about making stoner rock, or whatever it is we actually are…

DiS: Well, I was going to ask about that. You seem to be being grouped in with the so-called “psych revival” at the moment, which a lot of the time to me seems to be a bit overstated. Do you see yourself as a psychedelic band?

JR: Well, we use a lot of reverb… (laughs) RL: We’ve had our psychedelic moments, sure. I think everything is psychedelic depending on who you are or what the context is in which you are looking at or listening to something. We obviously grew up and have listened to a lot of guitar-based heavy music, and that obviously has a psychedelic aspect. I think it’s a good thing that this is happening. There are some really great bands coming out of it. Rocket are a good example of it I think…

DiS: As a loose thing I’d tend to agree. I mean to use three examples on Rocket: you guys, Teeth of the Sea and Goat are all being classed as “psychedelic” but are all totally different bands…

JR: Shit & Shine as well… which is more electronic music nowadays. Psychedelic fits so many things. If you look at the 1960s when this lifestyle kinda originated… rave culture takes it in along the way I think… it doesn’t fit like a genre. It isn’t a bowl haircut and a paisley shirt, or it shouldn’t be… it’s imagination…

DiS: The early records were more metal really weren’t they? They got lumped in with the “sludge” scene a little, although I appreciate neither of you were in the band back then…

RL: I think that’s what Joe (Thompson, bass) and Bob (Davies, guitar) wanted to do then. They wanted to make a band that sounded like a cross between Black Sabbath, Fudge Tunnel and Neu! Back then that wasn’t that cool. I went to see their first gig and it was brilliant. But different people have left and come in since then… JR: It’s twelve or thirteen years ago as well… RL: I still listen to that first Hey Colossus LP and think it’s great… JR: I begged to join in about 2003 or 2004… RL: Yeah, I did too! JR: I remember stopping James Parker, who was one of the guitar players, on the Monday morning leaving ATP one year and saying “I know you’ve already got three guitarists, but please let me play as well!” And I guess the message never got there at the time…

DiS: There are three guitarists now with you in the band. How does that work, because that’s quite unusual too?

JR: Well people have come and gone. Different line-ups have had three guitarists or electronics, but in 2010 I think the band were playing at The Windmill in Brixton and Rhys drove me and my friend Leon from Shit & Shine over. We got drunk and everyone was saying I should come down the next day and do some recording, and I thought it was just ale talking and then the next day they were calling me asking where I was. Leon was there already! RL: So an hour later you turned up… JR: I didn’t really feel like I was in the band for a year or so after that… RL: We recorded RRR pretty much that day I think. JR: It was very much “Make something up now” and then record it. I put some acoustic on later but even then I couldn’t really hear it back in my headphones what was what… RL: That’s when it went back to three guitars. It was three in the early days and then there were two for a while… It’s nice cause the electronics go and you add a guitar and it’s not overdoing things. JR: We were an eight-piece for a while… That was tough, travelling in a small vehicle as an eight-piece.

DiS: I saw you play in Shipley earlier this year at a Golden Cabinet gig with Karen Gwyer…

JR: Magpahi on first too. Amazing line-up. RL: What a group of people that are doing those nights though. We were going to leave after we played so we could get back to London. We just couldn’t leave when she was on, she was too good. It was like 90s ravers in shell suits versus old couples dancing arm in arm…

DiS: You’re big electronic music fans then? Has it changed the way you think about your own music?

RL: Yeah, totally. Personally, and I think Jon is the same. We all still hark back to the old guitar music we all dig but there isn’t much that excites me that’s guitar based anymore, unless you get something really different like Songhoy Blues or these bands that are totally next level stuff… opening your eyes up to another culture, a band from Mali doing it badder and better than all the other guitar bands. Electronic music is all I’m really listening to now though. I don’t really know why, I just find it more exciting. I mean I listened to the new Bloc Party song the other day. I was genuinely quite excited cause that first record I really liked and I thought that with a new line-up, etc it might be interesting… but I couldn’t fucking believe it. It’s terrible… I was really rooting for them and then it was horrible. JR: I’m much the same… guitar-wise it’s African reissues and the new stuff that’s coming through. Tal National I saw at Café Oto this summer and they were amazing. Maybe the best band I’ve ever seen. It was weird, it was like dance music but with guitars and stuff… It was a real eye-opener to say the least.

DiS: Do you feel it’s a good time to be a slightly more experimental guitar band though? Especially an independent one… it feels like there’s been something of a revival of interest in DIY music, as indicated by your new LP getting premiered on The Guardian…

RL: I think so yeah. We’ve been on radio three times this week, which is nice… alongside Morrissey or whatever. It feels nice to have some interest like that, but we’re all quite cynical about it. We know it’ll be someone else’s turn next week. JR: We’re not 22 anymore either. It’s not been something that’s happened overnight. I mean I remember doing a Peel Session (assumedly with Rhys in the pair’s former band The Notorious Hi-Fi Killers) that Bob and Joe organised through their Johnson Family label ages ago… and then he died and there was no one to play his stuff. A generation got cut off there I think… and nobody was prepared for the internet. I was spending all my money on stuff to keep my guitar working. I didn’t have time to see the possibilities of computers and technology and stuff. For ages we were analogue fighting, and it got to 2007 and we realised how great it was I think. You can make orchestral music on your phone. It’s amazing!

DiS: Surely you would miss the physicality of music if it was all digital though. Hey Colossus wouldn’t work in quite the same way if you were all fiddling about with electronics all the time…

RL: We make all sorts of music ourselves, but the joy of getting together in a room. The best thing about seeing a band play, for me, is the heat that comes from when a band turns their amps up and play. It doesn’t matter so much what the band are playing but they are all there and you can feel it in the room as well as hear it. It’s different to playing in an electronic band I think. JR: Stuff from last century. The amps and the drum kit, etc… it’s not going to be around forever. Guitar music isn’t dead – we play with guitar bands everywhere we go and it seems pretty alive to me! But it won’t be around forever. People will look back at guitar music in the way we look back at some classical music now. It seems less relevant and like it or not I think that will be the same with guitar music one day. RL: I struggle with classical music too because I can’t relate to it. It inspires me if I hear a good guitar record, and the same with good electronic music. Classical music never makes me want to go and get the cello out… same with jazz. JR: But you don’t need the cello now cause you can get all the sounds on your phone!