Sun Dial

GARY RAMON OF SUN DIAL INTERVIEWED BY NICK BENSEN

Via e-mail Fall 2003

INTRODUCTION

Guitarist/singer Gary Ramon has been making worthwhile music since '80s, starting with the small edition-cassettes and records under the band name The Modern Art. His first album with Sun Dial, Other Way Out, is an outstanding achievement of the indie psychedelic revival. Reflecter continued the spirit of the first Sun Dial album but brought in a more modern polished production style. Libertine ventured more into the pop song format but retained the distinctive guitars. The initial phase of Sun Dial came full circle with Return Journey, an album of unreleased tracks recorded during the same period as Other Way Out. The final studio statement from Sun Dial in the '90s, Acid Yantra, found a balance between metallic singles and more psych/prog longer tracks. With the exception of Live Drug released in 1996, Sun Dial was not heard from again until the 2003 CD Zen For Sale.

Gary Ramon remained busy during the intervening years with his studio, the Prescription label and side-projects including Quad. Now, he's back with a new inspiring configuration of Sun Dial, made up of friends from other bands he's worked with. The current band has produced some of the best Sun Dial recordings to date. The strings, keyboards, and deep fuzz bass work perfectly with Gary's guitar playing and laid-back vocals. Zen For Sale is a welcome return from one of indie psych's top bands (read my review on Free City's Music Reviews page). Acme Records has also put out an expanded, remastered version of Other Way Out, which is one of my favorite releases of 2003.

INTERVIEW

Nick Bensen: What first inspired you to become a musician? Who were your favorite bands growing up?

Gary Ramon: My inspiration must've been the Beatles although I didn't get into them until way past the time they split really. It was deeply unfashionable to like them because new wave was the in thing and I used to pull out my Beatles records while people were listening to some punk thing. I used to watch a British pop music TV institution called Top of the Pops....used to have crazy bands on there and thought "wowee! I'd like to play guitar - looks fun!".

NB: What did you do musically before The Modern Art?

GR: Complicated question in the sense that, there were lots of projects and different line-ups of bands. There were my school friends, Anthony Clough and Dave Morgan (both of whom were in the first Sun Dial record)..but before The Modern Art and also at the same time as that band, I played guitar for a garage band called Mystery Plane. There was also WeR7which was Anthony Clough's band - more experimental electronics mixed with songs, and also another band featuring same line-up as Sun Dial called AD Ordinary. This was my first band - just basically a freeform jamming outfit really - we attempted to rehearse songs but always ended up jamming which sounded better anyway!!!

There was also The Lord too, I played guitar and some bv's. They were an early psych-garage band. As you can see, complicated!

NB: Can you fill us in on some of the things The Modern Art put out on cassette and vinyl but didn't end up on the All Aboard The Mind Train CD?

GR: There were lots of cassettes to be honest. Some I can't remember now - but I think there were (I think) about 12 in total. But "released" is almost too strong a word for it! None of them ever sold, and they were made and some given to friends - so, I was lucky if 10-15 were sold. Apart from the first one, Underwater Kites, they all had printed labels/sleeves as I had a printer friend who used to knock out very short runs for me for next to nothing. But in reality, no more than 25-30 of any tape were ever made. Unfortunately, some have been bootlegged and you can easily see that they are because they are just photocopied sleeves. There was a 7" single, 500 copies pressed, maybe sold about 150. I left a whole bunch at a flat I lived one time. The first album Stereo Land was in an edition of about 250 copies. I hand-stencilled all! of them There was also a flexi-disc - there were 500 copies of that too. Most given away with a German magazine. Funnily enough, there's getting to be a lot of interest in those early cassettes. I saw those cassettes as being like just demos really, some more experimental than others, but they were done to get some interest.

NB: How did you put together the CD version of All Aboard The Mind Train? I gather that the vinyl version had a different track list.

GR: I listened to the album and I didn't like some of it, basically. So, most of it was remixed and substituted some other (better) tracks from that period. I tried not to tamper with the whole feel of it generally.

NB: What prompted the changes in band name and style from The Modern Art to Sun Dial?

GR: Well The Modern Art was mainly just me, occasionally getting in other people for some of the tracks, and after releasing 2 albums, I thought it was time for a change. Also the songs were changing a lot from how I originally saw Modern Art - which was more psych-pop or pop-psych. Also I hated the name, it was an ironically dumb name, inspired by bands who took their names from art movements, etc.! But even that joke was wearing thin for me! Sun Dial was a more loose kind of band. If I wanted to play a 6-minute guitar solo then I was - anything went as long as it sounded good and groovy. I wanted Sun Dial to be more open-minded musically, and with more sound experimentation. The name change was all that was needed. I think (and hope) that I've retained that philosophy since the beginning.

NB: What kinds of music do you enjoy listening to these days?

GR: Favourite music.....hmmm...always listening to someone new every week...currently listening to a Minnie Ripperton anthology but have a few favourites...Beach Boys Pet Sounds has to be one....Love Forever Changes is two, and maybe Monkees Head makes three...and if I pick a Beatles album..then it's the new Let It Be minus the Phil Spector strings.....but to be honest the original sounded fine too.....

NB: Other Way Out is a brilliant record, among the best of modern psychedelic albums. What do suppose gave it such a special quality? What was your mindset when writing the songs and what were the recording sessions like? I'm particularly curious about "Plains Of Nazca" since that song completely blows me away every time.

GR: Thank you. I think for me, part of its charm was that we didn't make the record for anybody - we made it for ourselves, just for fun, and I think it's that element that I've tried to keep with everything. In fact that was part of the reason I needed to have a break from Sun Dial was because I felt that I was beginning to put records out for the sake of it. It had less excitement for me, now I have that excitement back and it's fun again. The recording sessions for OWO were not particularly out of the ordinary I guess, in themselves. I used to get Anthony and Dave over sometimes together, sometimes only just one, and we'd work through stuff. But when I started playing the rough mixes to people, and seeing their reactions, it seemed like we were making a worthwhile record.

NB: Sun Dial has recorded multiple versions of some songs, such as "Mind Train", "Slow Motion", "Fireball" and "Never Fade". What about those songs made you want to revisit them from different angles?

GR: Well "Slow Motion" only existed (originally on our first 12") as an instrumental as I'd not put vocals to it. It later turned up on Return Journey (which in fact, chronologically should have been our second album, as opposed to Reflecter. I guess even then, we were having our Let It Be moments! The song was re-recorded for Reflecter with vocals as it hadn't come out at that point, but subsequently I like the original - with vocals and it ended up on Return Journey. "Never Fade" was a rushed job originally on the b-side of the Overspill EP, so I just felt there was a better version, so it was re-recorded, the same with "Mind Train". I guess this song originally started off in The Modern Art, but it became a live favourite in Sun Dial and so it seemed obvious we'd re-record it for Sun Dial, which we did on Reflecter. Again, an earlier version was attempted and later released on Return Journey. We have other versions, in fact we could release an album, purely of different versions of that song. I guess it's our "Dark Star"!

NB: The Sun Dial sound went through some changes after Other Way Out and Overspill, with the introduction of electronic/dance elements and a turn toward more pop songwriting on Reflecter, coming to further prominence on Libertine. Acid Yantra showed another new direction combining metallic singles with longer psych/progressive songs. What prompted these shifts in style? What kinds of new things do you see Sun Dial exploring in the future?

GR: Well, my philosophy with anything is that I really don't want to go back over previous ground. Why attempt to make another Other Way Out? I want every album to have a slightly different feel, and I think we achieve that. It's all sound experimentation for me, sometimes it goes right, sometimes not. But we're always trying to find new things. But it's not like we're changing styles, I think there's a thread to all the albums in some way. If you look at the Modern Art stuff, the earlier things were based more on pop songwriting, so that element would have come through on some stuff. The dance/electronic thing, well. there's only three songs I know of, and two of them, I had nothing to do with - it was kind of pushed by the record label at the time. We worked with Mickey Mann from the Shamen for a period and he added some great samples to our live and studio work at that period, but then the record label gave him all our tapes, and a lot of songs were totally sampled out of existence! I'm talking about the Fazer EP. In itself, an interesting remix release, but it wasn't Sun Dial apart from one song. I think it should've been labeled as such.

With Acid Yantra - it was a reaction to all things electronic really - a stripped down 3-piece power trio and I enjoyed making that album immensely.

NB: What are some of your own favorite Sun Dial tracks?

GR: I think stuff from Acid Yantra and Zen For Sale. I'm into that right now. Although when we made our own return journey and started playing live again, we revisited Other Way Out, and for the first time played most of those songs live.

NB: A remastered version of Other Way Out with bonus tracks has just been released. Mark at Acme told me that the other Sun Dial studio albums are slated for expanded re-release at some point. Will Reflecter be the next one to come out, and if so what are the bonus tracks? Will Return Journey be included in the reissue series?

GR: I think Reflecter needs to be re-issued, and I think it'll include all the demos for that album, and it's funny because I listened to those tracks as demos and I prefer that rougher quality missing in the final released album. I guess it's that Let It Be minus the Phil Spector strings vibe. Return Journey will also be reissued, and again, with additional material that was left off from that album. Technically it was the second album in fact, but it was scrapped, and we just moved on to working on Reflecter. I did it with Zen For Sale, there was another album we made about 4 years ago, that was scrapped too!

NB: Can you fill us in on some of your other projects and releases from your Prescription label?

GR: I started prescription at the time I finished with Sun Dial, although I didn't know it at the time. I also started working with other bands like Hypnosis, Chemical, Fantasyy Factoryy, and others. We had a studio in London Bridge in London. It was in an old debtors' prison two floors below ground! It was a studio originally built by Iron Maiden and became known as Samurai studios (I think Motorhead recorded an album there) The Stranglers took it over for awhile, then we took it.

With Prescription, I wanted to let artists loose in the studio to make what they wanted. With that freedom, I think it worked well. I played on most of the albums in some capacity. Coil made an album Astral Disaster there. They subsequently reissued it with different mixes and track listing. Azalia Snail made a great album there. The Leitkegel album was mostly a solo album by one-time Sun Dial original member, Anthony Clough. I'd been trying to get him to make a record for years, and finally got him to make one! The Attack Wave Pestrepeller album was a total jammed album, with some overdubs. They also made an album on SFTMI. There were eight albums in total. I'm actually planning another series. But only on CD, and for this I'm planning to dig out some archive early material. Not just Sun Dial but I think all the bands I was involved in. Should be an interesting project.

NB: Are there any plans for wider release of the Quad records?

GR: I think in the same reissue series there will be the first Quad album reissued on CD, there is also a 3rd album in process. It's a half live/half studio album.

NB: The new Sun Dial album Zen For Sale came after quite a long absence. What provided the momentum to get Sun Dial going again? The line-up on the new CD sounds great and you sound refreshed and inspired in their company. When did the current band come together?

GR: I think after the last album, Acid Yantra, the band kind of dissolved around me, and it was hard to get back into it really, and I was keen to record bands, and that's what I did for a number of years, and I got further away from the band than I thought. It made it harder getting back to it, but as I mentioned, an album was made around 1997/1998, but even that, I just didn't have the momentum with it, and it stayed on the shelf, and when I listened to it again, several years later, I just felt the whole vibe had gone from it - so I started from scratch - with mostly new songs, only one or two were re-recorded. I think the turning point again for me, was in 2001, I was asked by Current 93 to play guitar at some of their shows in London. And it was this that partially inspired me to get going again. So with the new Sun Dial I didn't want to audition people I didn't know so it was great to be able to just work with friends I knew instead. The current line-up, which is quite flexible, sometimes we play as a 5-piece, sometimes as a four piece, is Laurence O'Toole on keyboards, guitar, he also has a band called Hypnosis (and an album Apple 13 out now on Beard of Stars label in Italy, an album I produced in fact!!) Joolie Woods on flutes and violin and keyboards, she also plays in Current 93. Russell Barrett on bass I've known for years when he was involved in Chapterhouse and he also has a garage band called The Bikinis. We're currently working on completing an album by this band at the moment. On drums is Danny Maidens who used to be in London garage band Val's Basement. A great bunch of people, love 'em!

NB: Is there anything we haven't covered that you would like to mention?

GR: I think next for Sun Dial is a European tour in February/March time, but kicks off with a gig in London end of January at the 100 Club (I think 29th January). Plans are to come over to the USA too, so we hope to organize something soon, we hope! We've had a few offers. There will also be a new album too next year, more than half of it has been recorded already.

NB: Thanks for the interview Gary. I hope to see Sun Dial play in the U.S.

Sun Dial website: www.sundial.org.uk

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