Inspired #306 - Vex Message
Lancaster-based synth rockers Vex Message recently released their single ‘No You Don’t’. We caught up with them to find out what it is that inspires them.
Who are your top three musical inspirations?
Leadbelly, for the spine-tingling eerie singing.
Kraftwerk, for the otherworldly innovative simplicity/complexity.
Talking Heads, for making it ok for a geeky white man do do funny dances whilst singing about abstract concepts.
What city do you find the most inspiring?
I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, so cities didn’t mean that much to me until I left home. Since then though, I’ve lived in lots of different places. I lived in London for a while and didn’t realise until I left that I actually hated it. It was too all-consuming for a bumpkin like me. What I have come to appreciate in my travels is the collective mindset that runs through the veins of post-industrial cities in the UK. Liverpool was my home for a while and I loved the distinctive camaraderie that exists there. Although, as with many places, absentee developers are trying their best to ruin that. My friend Jeff Young has written a very good book about it called, ‘Ghost Town’. Ultimately though, to answer your question, Glasgow for me is the most inspiring place. Musically, it is spawned some stuff that’s very important to me: Josef K, Fire Engines, all the Postcard stuff and Blue Nile etc. But above that, it is the place where Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, and more recently David Keenan, have written books that show that art is not some elusive far-off thing, it is what you see in what is around you. When I think of walking around Glasgow, I think of the collective struggle to see art in every nook and cranny.
Who is the most inspiring person to you?
I don’t think I can name a single person, but I suppose I can say the trait I most admire is resilience. Be it Billy Childish, or Mark E Smith, or Andrew Weatherall, or Fiona Apple. People who just don’t give up or give in. That Fiona Apple album that everyone was raving about last year to me was an act of resilience. No matter what obstacles had been put in place, she still just did it. That inspires me. People who keep going, no matter the consequence.
What were the inspirations for your recent single ‘No You Don’t’?
Social media. Before doing this band, it was something I had naturally just kind of shied away from, but you can’t really do that when you’re trying to hawk your wares. The more engaged with it I have become, the more I see it as a vacuous pit of opinionated idiocy, celebrated consumerism and a mode of futile distraction. That sounds very dramatic, I know, sorry. Basically, I wanted to write silly tongue in cheek fake advertising slogans to take the piss out of us all for using Instagram and Twitter.
Finally, how do you hope to inspire people?
I’m not sure it sits well with my personality to say I want to inspire people. But, I guess, going back to what I said earlier about resilience, I think if I could say anything it would be that: If you want to do something, make