AFTER 30 YEARS’ SILENCE, AMBIENT POP EXILES IT’S IMMATERIAL FIND THE SPACES IN BETWEEN
“We just went from year to year, writing.” JARVIS WHITEHEAD
“WITH THE process we have, it’s always evolving and we’re constantly modifying things,” says singer John Campbell, who, with instrumentalist Jarvis Whitehead, makes up Mancunians-in-Liverpool art-pop duo It’s Immaterial. “The problem is, where do you end? There’s these little misty areas in the music, these in-between places and in-between times… really, what we do could just be one long song that goes on and on.”
Sensitivity to time elongated and suspended is important in their story. Their most recent album, last year’s intricate and emotive House For Sale, was begun in 1993. It all started even longer ago: a student at Liverpool’s College of Art, Campbell was in Deaf School-inspired DIY art rockers Albert Dock, who Whitehead saw when they supported the Sex Pistols at Eric’s on October 15, 1976, and later, new wavers Yachts. 1980 brought the first It’s Immaterial single – a cover of The First Impression’s swinging London cash-in Young Man (Seeks Interesting Job), with Franz Kafka as cover star – followed by a series of striking, enigmatic 45s on labels run by their manager, low-key Liverpool legend Pete Fulwell. Then Driving Away From Home (Jim’s Tune), an oddball country and northern British road song, became a Top 20 hit in April 1986. Yet they were not natural pop stars, and September’s debut LP Life’s Hard And Then You Die peaked at Number 62. 1990’s remarkable mood-suite Song, recorded with Blue Nile producer Calum Malcolm, would fail to trouble the charts. “When you start out, you never wanted to end up being a one-hit wonder,” reflects Whitehead, “but as it transpires… you end up being a onehit wonder.”
Then in 1993, Malcolm was asked to review the then-new Tascam DA-88 digital recorder, and suggested Whitehead and Campbell come up to East Lothian and bag some free studio time. The 10-song sessions were fruitful, but were followed, as Campbell says, by “some difficult times”. Soon after, his partner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “Things happen to people, don’t they?” he says. ”People say, ‘What were you doing all this time?’ We were doing life.”
Yet, as the Tascam tapes gathered dust in the duo’s Liverpool studio, they continued to meet one day a week. “I don’t know whether it was professional, or a hobby, or we needed it as an escape from things, or maybe it was just good to see each other,” says Whitehead, “but we just went from year to year, writing.”
It was when they were moving studios six years ago that they rediscovered the tapes and decided it was a body of work worth finishing. After sourcing some now-obsolete kit to rescue the recordings, Campbell puts new lyrical additions to House For Sale at 40 per cent; Whitehead admits some once-modish drum loops of the Funky Drummer variety were excised. He approves of the removals: “You take something away and you’re somewhere else,” he reflects. “You’re left with this really rarefied space.”
There were other crisis points, such as original delivery method PledgeMusic going to the wall, and Campbell being diagnosed with cancer (he’s now in remission). Now House For Sale is on its second pressing, and another couple of albums
“at least” await completion. Of the new material, Campbell suggests a “rhythmic, more ambient setting with key phrases”. “There are all these songs that haven’t been released,” says Whitehead, who’s keen to make the duo a live entity again. “And I think our best album’s there.”
Get House For Sale at burningshed.com/store/itsimmaterial