"I defy you to find anything else that sounds quite like this..." The Tasty Fanzine ~ April 2010

SEPTEMBER 2009

Ghostfire are a London-based steampunk rock band who co­alesced around their guitarist, Andii. Foregoing the lure of airships and lairs of mad scientists, they instead shuffle down the dark and ill-lit side streets of the Victorian slums, plucking beggars, murder­ers and lost souls from the doorways and casting them in menac­ing melodramas, opium-tinged fairy tales and alcoholic ballads. Andii kindly agreed to answer a few questions while we sat in a Tyburn doorway, sharing some jellied eels while the rope was be­ing tied.

You have a couple of inches on the playbill to sell yourself to passing trade.  How would you encapsulate everything that Ghostfire is?

A day trip to Olde Paddington Fayre.

Say we’re in some dead-end tavern, with poor lighting and sawdust on the floor.  You’ve managed to coax us into one of the gloomier, danker corners and brought us a drink.  What’s in that battered old box you’re trying so hard to sell to us?

Absinthe, opium, laudanum, forged copy of Psalm 51, daggers, alchemist’s gold.... Copy of The Times.

I do hope it's a copy of a pre-Rupert Murdoch Times.  Or, if not, it's wrapped around some fish and chips...

It’s a perfectly preserved copy from the infamous ‘Thunderer’ days – artfully concealing a copy of The Sun (which we only buy ‘for the sport…’)

Your music and your lyrics sound different to most other self-confessed steampunk bands - for example, there’s a distinct lack of synthesisers, drum machines and airship pirates.  Are you purposefully trying to define a different sound for yourselves?

Definitely! We’re trying to represent the darker side of steampunk. Within our songs there’s always been a strong lyrical focus on tales from the underbelly of English history – Victorian and beyond – and steampunk is a great way of getting these stories out to a historically astute audience. While the more whimsical side of steampunk is certainly important to the culture – probably best encapsulated by Abney Park – the English have a reputation for grit and that’s where Ghostfire are coming from. In terms of using ‘real’ instruments, we believe in the rock and roll ethic – we’re a loud, rude band when we play live, and people seem to respond to that.

Tell us a story about your greatest triumph.

The Triumph Stag – a work of art. I’m also quite keen on the Herald.

Can you recall a time when you wished that the lights would dim and the guy with the hook would hurry up and pull you off stage?

Several of the small pub gigs we played in the early stages of our live career. The absolute worst was just before Chistmas last year – some hole in the backstreets of Camden , nobody there, and a useless soundman who wouldn’t soundcheck us, listened to the whole gig through the mixing desk, and cut our set short. Which was a blessing actually, our singer was ready to hit him…

What is your preferred method of transportation?  Airship, paddle steamer, or something more exotic?

Peppercorn class A1 Pacific steam locomotive 4-6-2 . "Tornado".

http://www.a1steam.com

Do you think that the UK steampunk scene is different to the scene in the US ?

The US scene seems more defined and developed. Over here, currently, steampunk seems to be regarded as the latest offshoot of the gothic scene. I’ve heard it described as ‘goth for engineers’, for example. I’m not saying I subscribe to that opinion, but in the UK steampunk is still very much an emerging scene and the associated bands (not that there are too many of us), are if anything even more diverse that those in the US.

Do you think that diversity is going to be maintained as the scene grows, or are some artists going to split away and find a different path?

My personal feeling, based on years of experience of the UK music press, is that they will attempt to pigeonhole steampunk via a few bands, then a load of inferior copyist bands will jump on the bandwagon. It happens over and over again and it’s depressing because it usually ends up destroying scenes that were initially vibrant, unique and musically exciting.  I really hope this doesn’t happen with the emerging steampunk music culture, but unfortunately there’s not much anybody can do if the mainstream decides to gatecrash… The bands and artists who split away from any established genre in order to find their own path are usually the proto-scene innovators anyway, which is something of a paradox I guess.

Your EP, Drunk Lullabies came out in October last year.  You’ve had a couple of personnel changes since then and plenty of time on stage.  We hear that you have an album due out in early 2010. How will it compare to Lullabies?

It will be better recorded! When we made Drunk Lullabies we’d never gigged as a band. Rob, our keyboard player, had only been in the band for two weeks and I didn’t have a decent functioning amp. The past 12 months of gigging/rehearsing has established our sound and this time we know exactly what we want and how to get it. We want the new album to be more powerful and dynamic than the EP, but we also want it to crystalise the Ghostfire sound while retaining the essential sonic elements that many people seemed to like about our first endeavour. We’re working on some great new songs at the moment, and we’re very excited about recording them – hopefully in October.

When the apocalypse happens, what skills are you going to bring to your rag-tag group of survivors?

We will have caused the apocalypse – too much curry and beer! Like a very flatulent form of Skynet.

Ah! Credit! Or blame, depending on how things turn out...

Where do you as a band, and you as people, expect to be in five years time?  Will there be cake?

We will be living in France: owners of our own personal vineyard, producing the infamous Ghostfire Chablis and drinking all the profits. There will be a shoe-cake.