Tone Glow 161: Geordie Greep
An interview with the former Black Midi frontman about the strangeness of the internet, his decision to make a solo album, and the literary influences behind his debut LP 'The New Sound'
Geordie Greep
Geordie Greep (b. 1999) is the former frontman of the recently disbanded UK rock band Black Midi. The group released three studio albums throughout their run: Schlagenheim in 2019, Cavalcade in 2021, and Hellfire in 2022. Greep’s distinctive vocal style has been called a “warped croon” and “geographically unclassifiable” by critics, while Black Midi’s iconoclastic mishmash of influences call to mind Frank Zappa, King Crimson, and the Fall all at once. Greep’s debut solo album, The New Sound, releases October 4th via Rough Trade and finds him moving in a new but equally ambitious path. Eli Schoop chatted with Greep on September 28th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss Anthony Joshua, social media, K-pop, and the Talk Tuah podcast.
Eli Schoop: Hey, how’s it going?
Geordie Greep: Doing well, yourself?
Arsenal just scored a late winner, so I’m happy.
Really? I was just walking past that stadium today. I saw they’re playing, it was a big vibing-out sort of thing. So they won?
Yes, my heart was in my balls for a while.
Was it 2-1, 3-2?
4-2.
Good vibe, that’s great man.
Do you fuck with footy or nah?
Not so much, I don’t really follow football. When I was a kid, funny enough, Arsenal… that was my team. But it’s not my favorite sport.
That’s fair, I’ve seen you say you love boxing.
Yeah I kinda prefer it ’cause it’s just two guys fighting. I can see how football can be thrilling, but for one, if there’s eleven guys in a team, it’s a group effort—it’s slightly less personal and intense. And also, it’s about the vibe of the clubs—they just buy players from random places. Like sure, you’re Leicester City or Brighton, but you just play for the team that pays you the most money. I just find that a bit boring.
Like it’s less personal?
There’s less continuity. A club might have a rivalry but then next season, one player might be playing for the other team, you know what I mean? In boxing there’s all these crazy stories built up, and the actual match is so thrilling ’cause it’s like, “This has been building up for years and now we’re actually gonna see what happens between these two guys.”
Did you see the Anthony Joshua fight?
For sure, it was crazy man. I kinda forgot it was even happening and then the day of I was like, “Oh shit.” And you know, Joshua vs. Dubois was an interesting fight but it wasn’t the hypest proposition of all time, but then it started and it was like, “Whoa, this guy’s not messing around.” And yeah, [Dubois] just smoked him. Fair play to Joshua, he is a great fighter, but it’s been quite a while since he’s been himself—as his career has gone on, some aspects of himself have diminished, so at this stage he’s like a shadow of his former self. Then again, Dubois is a young guy so it’s good that the vision is changing. It’s about time for some new guys to have a shot at a championship, y’know?
Yeah it was crazy to see him get smoked ’cause I thought he was Him, I thought he was the guy.
He’s an old man, he’s 34. That’s the thing that goes first—the punch resistance, isn’t it? The stamina, the gas tank. Joshua, he’s still brought up all the skills he had, you just lose a bit of the energy. Once you’ve been beaten in a substantial way it’s going be less likely in the next fight. When Dubois saw he’d been beaten in a few fights, he’s gonna go in with confidence like, “Yeah, I can beat this guy.” Interesting fight and played out in a way hardly anyone saw coming. But it’s exciting, let’s see what happens next.
I saw you were just in the States, you were in New York when I was out of town. Do you fuck with New York or the States while you’re there?
Yeah sure, it’s stupid different to the UK. Me and my bros are like, “They speak English and stuff, it’s probably not that different at the end of the day,” but I think that even though we share a language, the difference between the UK and US is way bigger than the difference between the UK and Europe. Just the difference between people’s approach and manner and stuff. But America’s cool. You can do a lot of cool stuff and the bars are amazing. When I was in New York, the music scene was amazing. But certain things in day-to-day life I prefer in the UK.
I saw most of your shows for the rest of the year are in Europe, and then you’re touring more of America in 2025. The cities in Europe names are like Milan, Amsterdam, Berlin, while America is Kalamazoo, MI, and these bumfuck towns comparatively, so how do you feel about doing the slog in America?
It’s worth doing it early on cause that was one thing that was really good with Black Midi by the end, ’cause sure, we were able to do a big venue in New York, but we were also able to do pretty big venues in flipping North Carolina or Nashville or New Orleans or Atlanta—all these places that a lot of modern indie rock bands… you play there and the room’s full, and by the time you get to the random towns there’s ten people there. If you play those places earlier you have a chance of having a consistently full room across the tour, which is a good investment. So, from the beginning it’s worth it.
Speaking of indie, you guys were the “head” of the modern indie scene, or whatever you wanna call it. And then breaking it up was like, “Cool, I’m done with this.” How do you feel going solo and putting yourself as an artist out there.
I just thought that, at the end of the day, if you wanna do a solo album, you have to get rid of the self-consciousness—you may as well put my name on the album, may as well do all this stuff of personally pushing stuff out. ’Cause what have you got to lose, really? Ultimately the goal of doing a solo album and starting a solo career is to maximize the longevity, and to make sure to basically make my name viable as a musical product or whatever, so that I’ve got the most chance of doing this in 10 or 20 years. That’s anyone in music; that seems to be the common thread is they make their name sellable. It’s all good having a good band, but if you’re limited in working in a specific parameter with a specific set of people, you don’t know how things will change with time—if you’re done with the band at 45 and you don’t know what to do, your solo name isn’t a product, you can’t sell it. So I just thought, why not give it as much a chance to be able to swim? May as well go in, forget about it, and have a go.
Yeah obviously there’s precedence—Roxy Music, Japan, things like that. Does being a “rock star” appeal to you, like showing out?
Yeah of course. It’s showmanship, it’s performance—it’s cool. Even those examples you mentioned I’ve been thinking, anyone who’s had a successful solo career, usually it’s not years and years into the band’s career. Like when did Bryan Ferry do his solo albums—mid-70s, right? Roxy Music had only been going for four or five years at that point. The same with Japan, the same with Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, the same with Genesis and Peter Gabriel, anyone who transitions has a go early on. And even if you fail you may as well have a go. The way of “10 albums in and you’re 45” doesn’t seem to work—that seems like a harder sell. Just thought, why not? And even if it does completely fail, I enjoyed it.
I know Cameron Picton has a solo things coming out, do you guys still talk about stuff or is it more of a chill, acquaintance type vibe right now?
It’s neither here nor there, really. When you’re in a band for that long when you’re that young, at a certain point, it’s just one of them things. It’s like your best friends when you’re 15 and now you’re 25. You don’t even have to fall out or not like them or whatever, it’s just you look around at the bar or the party, and it’s mostly different people, and you don’t necessarily know when that happens, it just happens, y’know?
Right, that’s what I thought was so funny when you said Black Midi was breaking up, ’cause you cultivated a big fanbase in the scope of modern indie, and all these people were so distraught, and it’s like, “Were you waiting for them to jump the shark?” Three good albums, that’s enough.
There’s a weird thing with online music fandom—which is obviously great, it’s great to be into music and be fans of stuff—but it has an ugly attitude, an entitled kind of vibe, or where anything a band does, people start taking it personally. It’s more common with these guys who are huge fans of one band but aren’t necessarily into that much other music. That’s often the case, and it’s like people are more fans of the band than of music. It’s basically something that’s inherited from K-pop, of being so obsessed with every little thing of the member of the band or a performance and it’s not really related to music—it’s a different thing.
It’s all very parasocial. You don’t get that much, that parasociality, right?
No, it’s generally alright, it’s not a big deal or anything, but it’s just something I’ve seen creep in during the last 10 years with bands that gain a following in the indie or experimental rock scenes.
With The New Sound, you’re not losing fans or anything, but going into the salsa, bossa type stuff and drawing from guys like Marcos Valle and Sérgio Mendes. It’s like you’re making sure people who don’t truly appreciate the music see you’re doing it from the heart.
Anyone who can truly appreciate music and can see the connections from these types of music, it’s not gonna seem so far-fetched. But to guys who see music on a more superficial level are gonna be like, “Oh my god it’s completely different!” and abandon ship. But to be honest, with this new stuff it’s all in the same sort of world as the Black Midi albums, it just a different delivery of execution—it’s in direct continuation, in complete continuity. So I think for people purely in it for musical reasons, it’s going to seem very logical, very “in the same world.”
Yeah I read in the Quietus you said “next album will be like Keith Jarrett ECM,” what’s going on there?
I love the approach of ECM Records where every album they did until like ninety-nine-something was just done in two days, so they would just record it one day and mix it the next. And it’s basically the opposite of what I’ve done with this album—over 9 months, sporadic studio sessions, and after that mix it over a couple of weeks. It turned out well and it was necessary ’cause it’s an ambitious album—I wanted to get it right and be careful—but I’m into the challenge of going quickly and moving on straight away.
So what would your recording process be? Would you just have a bunch of compositions and come in and bang it out?
Yeah, I think so. Have whatever band, guys that come in on a day and try and smash through the songs and maybe do a couple overdubs here and there. The main challenge there is making sure the material is strong beforehand. Making sure you’re happy with the material, and all the vocals and all of the lyrics. Basically, a lot of times people go into albums without the stuff finished, and go along and be like, “Let’s record this overdub ’cause we don’t even have the lyrics written.”
Which is, y’know, that happens, but it’s a cool challenge to go in for just one day, especially on the mixing side. When you have a week or two, you end up overthinking every little element like, “Oh is the hi-hat too loud or too quiet?” The thing that people get wrong with mixing is that they think if they mix the song the best ever, it’s gonna make the song any better. So many of the greatest songs are mixed alright, and they could’ve been mixed better but would it have made the song any better? I dunno. Just trying to do something quickly and capturing the energy as much as possible makes the biggest difference—it’s the performance.
Right, I mean your songs have a lot of ideas—there’s still a chaotic element, a sporadic element that doesn’t make it too clean.
For sure, I like stuff that’s really arranged and rehearsed next to… it could be one thing, could be another thing. It’s not necessarily sporadic or improvisatory but more freewheeling; it has a degree of chance and risk in it, it’s kind of impromptu.
You’ve talked about this album being influenced by Joyce and Tolstoy, what are some of your other literary references across this record, what’re you trying to evoke?
Definitely someone that comes up would be Georges Simenon—he’s a Belgian writer and he wrote over 400 novels. His approach was just to keep writing books until they steadily got better. He’d write a book in two weeks. So what comes through is that they’re very stylish but also plain, and they’re the opposite of overwrought. They’re really naturally written.
They’re generally detective or thriller novels and they go into all these interesting areas. The way the detective—Inspector Maigret, he’s called—solves the crimes, there’s never any car chase or action. It’s like he goes to the bar, talks to everyone. He goes to the leads but in a casual way. So by the time he finds the killer, it’s usually the last page of the book and they go, “Oh, that’s that then” and there’s hardly any clichés of crime novels; it’s more just about the scenes, atmosphere, locations, the world of the case or crime. They’re just great books.
That’s interesting ’cause I think rock now is very driven by personal narrative, and I don’t get that at all from your music.
The things that get rated—the main virtue people are looking for—is thought to be earnestness, subtlety, and plainness, which can be cool but are ultimately bland. A lot of music and lyrics feel like they’re being written by trying to not make them shit, instead of trying to make them really great. It’s like people are scared to do something naff, so they just do something that’s… not even middle-of-the-road. If you write from your own experience in an oblique way, no one can say, “That’s shit, that’s crap,” because you can just say, “Oh, it’s my own experience.” There’s a degree of weird insecurity and it’s just unambitious. It’s like, “I just put on my shoes / Went on to the racetrack / Got a matcha tea,” whatever it is, nothing wrong with that but when the vast majority of music is written in that way it starts to become uninspiring.
What would you want more from the broader landscape of indie then?
Just ambition, y’know? Classic cheesy songs, they have this level of… someone’s writing a song and they’re like, “I’m gonna write about something and I’m gonna distill it down to one thing.” Or, fucking, write a song about the universe or death—“Across the Universe” by the Beatles or “Life on Mars.” Not necessarily the least abstract songs ever, but there’s a level of ambition, of trying to do big and poetic things. It’s a bit different from explaining your daily routine.
A lot of indie isn’t funny whereas yours is. I can see more of the humor on the album—similar to Donald Fagen or Leonard Cohen where it’s self-effacing.
It’s that same sort of thing where people take art very seriously and stone-faced.
Do you think people respond to that live? ’Cause it’s also very jammy and fun.
The humor?
Yeah, how it’s fun and spontaneous.
That’s the goal. At the end of the day I want to make music that has a positive attitude, a positive spirit, that can explore funny themes—or can be dark in some ways or have a degree of drama, but is ultimately lighthearted.
What are your expectations for how people will receive the record? Do you think people will get what you’re trying to do?
You know what, I was very, very reassured by the reaction to “Holy, Holy.” I had listened to it a ton of times and I still liked it, so I was like, “I think this track is cool, it’s interesting, it has a cool vibe,” but you never really know how people are gonna take to things—sometimes you love a song and it doesn’t really do anything, and sometimes you think a song is okay and people love it.
But “Holy, Holy” came out and the reaction was really strong, especially for a first release. No one’s heard the album, no one’s seen it live—not many people at least. So to have that kind of reaction was really reassuring and exciting. As for the album, I don’t think people are gonna say, “Oh I liked ‘Holy, Holy’ but this is crap.” I think people are gonna get more and more into it. I hope the fans will like it, but you never know.
Yeah I think it came out and people were like, “Oh this guy’s got his style, but he’s still got the Black Midi love.” Is there anyone you’ve wanted to collaborate with that you’ve been listening to?
Not necessarily. Sure, all the guys that I liked when I was younger. I mean that’s the dream—you always dream that one day you can play the guitar with Pat Metheny or something. Boredoms singer Yamantaka Eye, he’s a great DJ and sound artist and even if it was just to a remix, and all the Japanese guys—Otomo Yoshihide, Boris, and Melt-Banana, all them. Someone like Danny Brown, in theory, I know he likes a lot of great music and has a great approach. André 3000 playing his flute. I’m open for anything, I’m excited by all sorts.
I definitely got some Boredoms and Melt-Banana from Black Midi for sure. But the Pat Metheny-Keith Jarrett ECM collab would be interesting for sure.
You never know. Pat Methany has been famous for a lot of music that is on the cheesy side of jazz, right? I think he’s always been great and has always done great records, but there’s definitely some of his music that has gone for some melodic, semi-cheesy sort of thing, and that’s why he’s so commercially successful. But with that, he’s always done far-out albums, always done stuff that’s gone into free-jazz, jazz-rock, the experimental side of rock. So in theory it would work but I don’t know if I’d be able to keep up with his playing, but you can dream.
I see you’re saying he’s cheesy. As the generations have gone on, we more appreciate the jazz fusion or smooth stuff, ’cause it used to be that hard-bop was the “respected” type of jazz.
It’s this sort of thing where as the generations go on, that sort of stigma, that weird “this is cool, this is not cool” starts to fade away and it just becomes what people actually like listening to—what’s a good melody, what’s a good composition. Even like Weather Report, Chick Corea, all this stuff over time became like, “These are great songs, these are well put-together.” It doesn’t have to be the most trendy thing ever, it’s just well put-together, like Wayne Shorter or something. The same level of thought goes into it. Who cares if it’s not trendy or heavy.
I saw on your favorite albums list there was AC/DC love, they’re definitely one of those bands that are not “trendy.”
Well who gives a shit? Like the amount of trendy music that AC/DC has influenced is insane if you break it down. They were the first rock band to step back. Back then, all rock bands were like, “Let’s make it more ambitious, let’s make it more experimental, let’s get more progressive,” and AC/DC were one of the first ultra successful bands who broke through and were commercial, and they went back to the ’50s and basically did rock 'n' roll. Everyone likes to talk about punk music “democratizing rock” or whatever, but AC/DC were doing a very similar thing with a similar train of thought, just in a different way. No overdubs, no special effects, let’s just play songs that are cool and rock and that live album [1978’s If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It] is insane. It’s one of the best live recordings of a band that there has ever been. It’s amazing. Nothing wrong with that.
You seem like someone that doesn’t give a fuck, like not even trying to be a contrarian, but someone with eclectic taste. I was remembering when Japanese Breakfast went after Revolver and you were like, “You’re wrong.”
Maybe I was tweeting her and it was spur of the moment. Problem with Twitter is you can come across way more mean-spirited or negative than intended, right? So I wasn’t trying to be like, “I’m trying to make a dunk on this woman” or anything. I always think that train of thought is silly, “Oh if you like this one the best you’re an idiot.” It’s the Beatles. It’s like saying, “If you like pizza you’re an idiot, you should only like spaghetti vongole.” It’s the Beatles man, they’re all bloody great. Take your pick, it’s like seven masterpiece albums, who cares if you like this one more or that one more, it’s just different. It was fun, it happens.
You definitely didn’t come across as mean-spirited. But you seem to not care about any social media shit, like other musicians are really always online and seeing what people say, and you seem to not care.
It’s basically a tool. You can’t get wrapped up in that stuff. As soon as you start saying, “I’m worried about what someone says about this on Twitter,” like you might have 10,000 followers but there’s guys with like 200 million. It’s so easy with Twitter to have one little bubble and get wrapped up in and be thinking you’re Michael Jackson, but it’s nothing really, who cares. And the indie scene is so small, it’s nothing so let’s try and have a nice time, let’s say cool things to each other, let’s have a good laugh now and again.
When I see the Dance Dance Revolution Mario avatar it always makes me laugh, like “Ah, it’s the Greep”—do you have an explanation for that at all?
When I first did the account 10 years ago, that was the picture I put and I just never changed it. I have a weird sentimentality when it comes to profile pictures and stuff like that, I hardly ever change them. On my Instagram, you know when you set it up and it’s like, “Oh whatever, that picture” and every time I’ve got to change it I’m like nah, why would I change it. No story, really.
I saw on the Black Midi subreddit you were listening to NewJeans. You into them?
My Korean friend Juno, he was in town this week and we were hanging with another friend from Denmark who was saying he knows someone that wrote that song. Wrote that song in a random workshop in an hour. It became like this huge K-pop thing, and this person that wrote it basically lives off that now, makes like six grand a month.
Oh he knows Erika de Casier?
Yeah that’s who it was.
She’s Danish, yeah, that’s crazy. You ever gonna write any K-pop?
I’ll have a go, if anyone’s asking I’ll have a go for anything, what have you got to lose?
Who are you gonna ghostwrite for?
I’ll go for the classic, man, PSY, “Gangnam Style.” “Gentleman” was the follow-up, that was cool.
What are you most excited for with the upcoming tour and for when the album comes out? What are you looking forward to?
Touring is one thing, playing with all the different guys around the world. But mostly recording, the prospect of recording more music—and the pressure of recording more music and getting it proper—is really exciting. Keeping up this dream of doing an album every year and doing it right—that’s what I’m looking forward to. Just building up compositions, cause I don’t wanna tour and keep playing this album, I wanna be ambitious and get albums done and new material and this time next year, go on tour with 50 songs to chose from. That’s exciting.
You said you feel pressure—how much pressure do you put on yourself with recording?
A lot. I try to always have in my mind, “By this month, it’s gonna be done.” Like with this album it was the same sort of thing—it was going to be finished by this point. It makes you start working in the first place, which is the main thing. With whatever you’re doing—music, writing, art, anything—you don’t actually have a reason to start working, so it can be hard to find that motivation. Without sitting down and trying, nothing happens. There isn’t a moment where you just get inspiration. You do, but it only happens when you’ve made a habit of sitting down and getting your brain working on things. So if you say, “By July it’s all gonna be done anyway,” you have to live up to that expectation. It’s part of that pressure.
Is any of that label pressure, label constraints, or is it usually self-pressure?
No, it’s definitely from myself and it’s what you need. If anything, record labels don’t want you releasing too much music, they want to make the most out of every album. It suits the record label, music industry to release an album every 3-4 years. That’s the welcome standard ’cause any album that fails could cause a dent. The musicians that consistently grow have a high work rate and try to keep that up, by hook or crook.
I have a question here: what’s up with you and Talk Tuah, the Haliey Welch thing?
Uhhh y’know, if she has an open space on the podcast, I would definitely go on, ’cause I think it’s such an interesting turn of events. One thing I was thinking about was [Instagram] Reels. On the internet you can say all these negative things. Everyone has a short attention span, and everything is hypersexualized or hyperviolent—there’s all sorts of things wrong with it. But one thing that’s nice about it is that the people who are stars on Reels are ordinary guys. Reels is kinda like the new TV. Who watches Modern Family now? You’ll just be scrolling Reels and watching some lobster fisherman and he’s got millions of followers and is a major guy. Or you’re watching some random guy in China who has some skill. It’s even more than on YouTube; on Reels, random people can become stars and I think it’s interesting.
With this Talk Tuah, she’s just some woman that was on the street and said a funny thing, and now she’s got like, a multi-media empire, which I just find quite interesting and bizarre. And she’s doing a podcast called Talk Tuah, which is funny. Fair play to her. I think she’s probably got bigger fish to fry, but if there was a day I could go on Talk Tuah, I wouldn’t say no.
What do you think she’d think of your music?
I don’t know man I don’t really know anything about her. All I know is that she was on that video on the street where she was saying that “hawk tuah” stuff and then she was famous and then the next thing I saw, “I’m doing a podcast, Talk Tuah.” It’s just nuts. I don’t know how it’s doing, I mean this is pretty weird, isn’t it? This is something that wouldn’t have happened on the internet five years ago, ten years definitely not. This is a new development.
So you’re rooting for Haliey Welch?
Ehhhh, you know she has to do something that’s actually cool, y’know? She’s can’t just trade off this one video forever. But in theory, I’m big on this vibe of, average Joes getting big off the internet and then having a TV show. I have people on Reels that I think are actually epic and have a cool vibe, but it’s just very bizarre. Like imagine you’re watching TV and flicking through the channels and it’s all just random guys on the street in random towns.
That sounds dystopian.
Yeah I guess so, it’s dystopian in a way, but it’s better than, like, a soulless TV show or something.
Very Warholian, I suppose.
It’s interesting, there’s something about it.
What’s your “average guy” reel?
Me? I’d try and do a funny thing, like a funny challenge, a “Walk Down The Street” challenge or “Monkey Bar” challenge. That’s the thing—you can’t fake it. Stuff people actually like rises to the top. There’s a weird genuine ingenuity to it, it’s all weird, but there’s certain things on Reels where you think, “Actually, this isn’t the worst scenario, this is cool that a random guy can do three backflips in a row and get 10 million people to watch him in a little video.”
Hey shit, 15 minutes of fame. Thanks for talking to me man, fun interview.
Good stuff. Yeah I think it’s gonna be cool.
Thanks for talking. Talk Tuah, I guess.
Talk Tuah man, we just done our version.
Geordie Greep’s debut album The New Sound can be purchased at the Rough Trade website and at Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 161st issue of Tone Glow. TTYL.
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dope interview
Dope interview!