Altered Zones

By Richard MacFarlane

MP3: Martin Newell: "Gamma Ray Blue"

MP3: Martin Newell: "Sun Comes to the Wood"

I was first introduced to Martin Newell's longrunning Cleaners From Venus project on a drive to New Jersey during Rose Quartz's magnificent New York trip last year. Samuel Franklin and Luka Usmiani of Big Troubles were blasting "Mercury Girl," which the band had actually guest posted the previous week on AZ. It was an epiphanic moment for me-- the soft romance of the songwriting, the lo-fi production shot through with brittle, ultra-British Autumn light. I don't think his music's proximity to the semi-flawed pop of today is the only thing responsible for the recent uptick in interest in Newell's work, whether it be under the Cleaners' moniker or his own name. His early embrace of cassette and home-recording culture, linked somewhat to the post-punk movement of the early '80s, is parallel to the workings of fans like Gary War, Ariel Pink, and many contemporary American artists on the indie music peripheries. Newell's recent album under the Cleaners moniker, English Electric, is full of the same lucid poetry and jangly guitar arrangements as '80s classics like Midnight Cleaners (1982) and Songs For A Fallow Land (1985), which was recently reissued by Taylor Richardson and Gary War's own Fixed Identity imprint. The night I called him in Wivenhoe, where he is now (and has always been) based, he recalled the '80s in the spry storytelling mode of his manifold poems and memoirs.

AZ: Are you very familiar with Altered Zones?

Martin: I’ve come across it. In fact, I met someone who said, "Oh, you’ve been mentioned by Altered Zones." I’m trying to think who it was. It might’ve been Nick Nicely-- and he seemed to be think it was a really big deal. But I don’t do many interviews. It’s not that I’m adverse to them; I’m just more interested in interviewing people myself, though the kind of people I’m interested in interviewing tend to be, you know, farmers and people like that. I don’t meet many people in the pop industry these days, though I’ve known a few in my time, as you may imagine.