HATS OFF GENTLEMEN IT’S ADEQUATE
Neuroscience meets prog from small but mighty London duo.
“WE’RE PLAYING AT A NEUROSCIENCE FESTIVAL WHERE WE’RE PLAYING OUR SONGS RELATED TO SCIENCE MIXED
IN WITH ME DOING A LECTURE
ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN.”
“It’s about gettIng off your bum and taking it to the audience, rather than waiting for it to come to you,” says Mark Gatland, one half of Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. Alongside Malcolm Galloway, the duo now promote their own shows and run their own label, but they started making music together back when they were in school.“We were literally in our first band with each other doing Queen and Iron Maiden covers,” says
Gatland. The band began as five-piece, but they found a greater sense of freedom – and practicality – in a smaller format. “We basically travel around, just us, the iPhone, a keyboard, bass and guitar,” says Gatland. “We do jump around a fair bit onstage as well so the fact that there’s only two of us and no drummer hasn’t been much of an issue, because we do put on a show.”
“It gives us lots of flexibility,” confirms Galloway. “And we do some fairly unusual shows. In Edinburgh we’re playing at a neuroscience festival where we’re playing our songs related to science mixed in with me doing a lecture about the evolution of the brain, which is something I teach in my day job. We’ve also performed on top of video projections at The National Gallery, so our gigs range from art galleries to HRH
Prog, an odd combination.”
Galloway’s aforementioned day job, as a consultant neuropathologist, feeds into their lyrics, alongside a love of sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick and Ann
Leckie. Their latest album, Out Of Mind takes memory as a theme while 2017’s Broken But Still Standing, “basically follows a story inspired by evolution,” says Galloway, “starting with the development of cells in the depths of the primitive oceans to the evolution of multi-cellularity and then cooperation in evolution leading to societies, and then eventually combining humans with artificial intelligence to form some kind of hybrid.”
2015’s When The Kill Code Fails is the story of an artificial intelligence that becomes self-aware.“But you can just listen to each song on merit,” explains Gatland.“You don’t have to follow the whole deep narrative that goes through an album. Hopefully each song can stand alone.”
Musically, Gatland and Galloway are both big fans of Pink Floyd and Marillion, but they’re happy to throw in some minimalist influences or something from left -field. “Initially I was worried that if we did such a wide range of things, which is naturally what I’d want to do, is it just going to be annoying?” says Galloway .“People might think,‘We like this song, which is a metal ballad, but this next one is an experimental noise sculpture,’ but we don’t seem to have offended people.”
“We’re progressive in the sense that we are constantly moving forward and changing,” says Gatland.“It’s like what Fripp said about King Crimson, that King Crimson is a way of doing things. Not that I’m comparing myself to Fripp in any way, but I think we’re like that. Hats Off… is a way of doing things.”