Label Focus: Pumf Records and pStan Bercow

Pumf Records is a label that brings real joy to my cold, dead heart. It is the very epitome of DIY and is fiercely independent and, frankly, its name should be shouted loud from every spire and steeple across this land. It is run by a gentleman by the name of pStan Batcow (the p is silent!) - a jolly fine chap if ever there was one and a prodigeous artist/musician to boot.

There is a unique charm about every Pumf release, whether it be the lo-fi punk of Def-A-Kators or the cut-up sound collages of Quougnpt; you almost feel as though they were recorded just for you. The music is weird and unequivocally wonderful. pStan is not just the curator of these slices of aural loveliness but is integral to the music - almost every Pumf release has involved pStan. The Def-A-Kators, Howl in the Typewriter, BILE!, Troll, Gravelin, and Rrrrrrr are all Batcow vehicles and he also played in the mighty Ceramic Hobs (of which there is plenty in the Pumf catalogue). For a while he was also a member of another of Blackpool's finest exports The Membranes.

It is Pstan's solo project Howl In The Typewriter that first drew me into the Pumf web. HITT releases are diverse; from jaunty lo-fi 'pop' to the excoriating treatise on consumerism that is 'Manifesto' (reviewed in these very pages here. ) Every HITT release sounds different from the last and yet retains that distinct aura of homespun genius. I would urge everyone to check out the HITT and other Pumf releases on ther Bandcamp page here or the Pumf website at www.pumf.net

Pumf is also responsible for a series of compilation CDs by the name of 'godspunk' (read that as you will). There are currently 23 in the series. These comps have introduced me to soooo many fine bands (I first heard Litterbug on a godspunk CD and I still think they are one of the best punk bands in the UK!) including the delightfully monikered The Large Veiny Members and Nil By Nose (amongst many, many others). My words do no justice to wealth of unique and wonderful wonky sounds found on these comps so, once again, I encourage you to check out the Bandcamp page)

I will leave it to pStan to explain more about the ethos of pumf and much more:

S&V: First of all, many thanks for doing this pStan. How are you keeping in these weird, weird times?

pSB: I reckon that the description 'weird, weird times' is quite subjective; all times should be described as weird from one viewpoint or another. Not striving for a degree of weird in your daily existence could be seen as allowing yourself to be overwashed by the banality of society. One should do something, however small, to express the difference between oneself and others and avoid descending into the dreary, dull day-to-day slog endured by the majority of humans.

The general weird that has overshadowed the world in the last couple of years is only one that has been forced upon us by a miniscule parasite, albeit an astonishingly successful one, giving possibly the largest collective experience of weird in living memory. Wasn't it interesting just how quickly that weird became a new normal, though . . ?


S&V: Congratulations on the last two HITT albums. 2 very different but equally good albums. Do you go into the new album process with a specific ‘feel’ in mind? What’s the writing process?

pSB: The writing process varies from album to album - and sometimes might only be identifiable after the fact. 'The Sound Of Musick' was a couple of years in gestation, and started with the idea of creating a concept album working around the theme of sound / recording / music. I find that making notes and having ideas floating around for a period of time helps tie disparate strands together quite effectively, giving me time to come up with ways of connecting the separate parts to create a coherent whole*. The guest voices recurring throughout the album was one facet of this, and I included soundbites from many other places to try and make the album seem like a wide-reaching discussion of the subject. In one sense, the music(k) on the album was a secondary element. *This was taken to the extreme on the 'Manifesto' album, which I worked on for seven years - that became an obsessive project. I wanted to make the best possible tirade against consumerism, which I think I ultimately did. There was a lot of time spent working on making the music flow throughout, with recurring themes and a never-ending barrage of advertising slogans creating a reflection in microcosm of the way that consumer society swamps life.

Howl in the Typewriter ('the Red Album') came about in a much looser manner; whilst I was aware that the songs I was recording were destined to be heard together as a whole, there was little planning to make them fit together. I think often a band or artiste's songs will relate to others of their songs recorded in a similar time period simply because they are at a specific stage in their writing process, musical influences, life experience etc.

Generally I try to record the basis of a song and then leave it alone for a couple of weeks, coming back to it with fresh ears. Sometimes this means I make changes to arrangement, maybe composition, and sometimes start over completely. It's also a good way of mixing, not allowing yourself to become deaf to problems by being over-familiar with the sound.


S&V: What’s the story, if there is one, behind the name Howl in the Typewriter?

pSB: From memory, I think it was something about one night when I was writing articles (between 1981 and 2000 I wrote and published a fanzine which, after a couple of name changes, reached issue eleven). It was a winter's evening circa 1983, blowy and cold, and as I sat tapping away at the keys of the typewriter there was a draught coming through a broken windowpane in my flat, and in writing I exaggerated the air movement somewhat and came up with the phrase.


S&V: HITT is predominantly a solo vehicle but you have played in bands - which do you prefer, going it alone or being part of a collaborative process?

pSB: There's a very different end result in my experience of the two - the bands I've been in have always been as collaborative as possible (rather then having one person write songs that the rest of the band played, almost as session musicians), though certain songs would end up having more of one person's influence stamped across them. I've worked towards creating some great music as a band member over the years, but I think I prefer working alone. It's sometimes very difficult to compromise when working with other people, especially when what's being worked on can be so personal and precious.


S&V: Gigs? Do you play live very often?

pSB: The last Howl in the Typewriter gig was in 2013, when I was dragged out of retirement for a John Peel Day event, in which they wanted performers who had played on John Peel Sessions in the past. Most of the songs for that gig were pre-recorded and I did a lot of performance art to an afternoon audience of only a handful of folk (it's up on YouTube should you wish to watch *S&V: see below). Before that I played live quite regularly from about 1983 up to about 2010 in various bands - A-void, Dandelion Adventure, Ceramic Hobs, Heffalump Trap etc. I also played about 30 street gigs per year as leader of a Brazilian samba-drumming band between 2000 and 2020.


S&V: I absolutely love the Quougnpt albums… They have an almost dada aspect to them. Those cut-up albums always seem to be very labour intensive…trawling through hours of source material for that one sample. It must be a process you like?

pSB: I've always been interested in taking found dialogue out of context and juxtaposing it against other dialogue to create alternate scenarios, nonsensical and surreal situations, or the atmospheres that can result from repeating phrases over and over against musical backing ill-fitted to the subject matter. I have one ear constantly cocked for the unusual or quirky, much to the consternation of those people with whom I watch films - I'll often leap out of my chair and grab paper and pen to make a note of the running time on the DVD at that point so as to be able to grab a soundbite later, or pause and backtrack to be able to record sections of speech there and then. Not particularly conducive to the uninterrupted viewing experience people usually expect! I'll also make recordings of completely mundane, day-to-day, real life situations. As a result of this I have a fairly sizeable collection of soundbites at any one time, which is a usual starting point for work on a new Quougnpt album. The bigger the collection I've amassed, the greater the likelihood that several of them will dovetail together nicely in subject matter.


S&V: Pumf is a real breath of fresh air – keeping alive the DIY spirit in the face of corporate hegemony. How did it all begin?

pSB: It was precisely because of that hegemony that I wanted to create my own alternative. In 1983 A-void (the first proper band I was in) had done some recordings which deserved to be heard by the world. It seemed fitting to simply release them as a cassette album and shift copies at gigs and by mail order. Following that, there were other albums recorded by myself and other folk associated with Pumf (there have been a lot over the years!), plus the inevitable compilations of songs by other like-minded worthy bands and artistes. It's certain that the music would have reached a much wider audience if I'd sourced an outlet through a larger, music-biz-wise company, but it was never really about that. It was about doing it independently, and getting the music out there to those people who were prepared to search a bit harder than by simply popping into their local branch of whatever major independent record store was in vogue that month. Over the years I've copied thousands of cassettes, and burned thousands of CD-Rs, all of which have been sent out into the world in hand-packaged parcels rather than being spat off the end of a conveyor belt.


S&V: In a similar vein, you have adopted a cooperative approach with the godspunk albums with the bands contributing financially and benefiting financially. It’s a brilliant idea…was it important to you to go down this route?

pSB: Pumf has never had any financial backing other than what I could afford to put into it from out of my pocket; I guess it could be described as the most expensive hobby in the universe! On the occasions when Pumf has had albums manufactured in large numbers, the dual problem has been the cost and then the distribution of the albums. It struck me, when considering making another compilation album, that other bands / labels must be in the same situation, and it started me thinking about making it into a shared problem. If all the bands / artistes who were featured on the album shared the cost and then shared the distribution of the albums, it made both problems much smaller for all concerned. Therefore, everybody pays an amount of money towards the cost of manufacture, and ends up with a pro-rata number of finished copies of the album. The first volume of godspunk came out in 2003, and volume twenty-four is in the pipeline now (should be released early in 2023), so the notion of releasing albums as part of a collective seems to have been a popular one.


S&V: The godspunk albums have introduced me to so many good acts (Litterbug being a good example) – how do you find them or do they approach you?

pSB: I approach people whose music I've enjoyed or which has interested me, music that I'd love other people to hear, to get them to contribute - but conversely I've been approached by loads of other people who have heard volumes of godspunk (or other Pumf-released music) and enjoyed them enough to want their music to be included. Like all good compilations, godspunk invariably presents a wide range of musical styles (though which all seem to have a common strand running through them; maybe just a certain outsider-ness?) so that there should be something to appeal to most musical tastes.


S&V: How important is Blackpool to you/Pumf? I was up there recently and it seemed steeped in faded grandeur but definitely had a feeling of vitality.

pSB: I don't think there's any great Blackpool influence behind Pumf - though it's a moot point, as nobody can tell what Pumf would have been like had it not originated here. There was an incredibly vibrant live music scene here from the late 1970's up to the mid 1980's, which certainly helped me along the path to where I am today, but who's to say that wouldn't have been the case wherever I'd lived? At the time when most people leave home to go to university (whilst telling anyone who'll listen that their home town is boring, then settling down for life in the arbitrary town their chosen university was in) I was touring the UK and Europe playing gigs, so only spent about half my time in Blackpool. Whilst I never really wanted to live in Blackpool, I never found anywhere different that I really wanted to live so ended up staying here by default. Blackpool seems to undergoing constant regeneration, but at a not quite fast enough rate - so that by the time one area is glistening with fresh paint and sparkly new buildings, two other areas have degenerated to the point of near-collapse. It suffers one of the highest rates of social deprivation in the UK, and the population in general has massive underlying health problems. Employment is mainly seasonal / tourist trade, and there are migrant workers drifting in and out annually. Not great prospects for the people who live here. I live on the outskirts and rarely venture into the town centre, wishing to avoid the vapid hordes of drunken oafs brawling in the streets.


S&V: You are a talented artist as well as musician, some of your sculptures are stunning…which do you prefer if push came to shove, music or art?

pSB: Kind words indeed, for which I thank you - perhaps you could tell your readers that some of my artworks can be seen (and purchased) at www.batcow.co.uk. Although I think art and music go hand-in-hand, if forced to choose I'd say that the creation of 'the strangest music on the planet' - as Pumf Records proudly proclaims - is my reason for existence.


S&V: Pumf recently acquired a Bandcamp presence, somewhat reluctantly it seemed. What do you think of the ever increasing push for everything to become digital? It would appear to be the very antithesis of Pumf?

pSB: I have always strived to be as different as possible to the mainstream, the majority, the acceptable norm, whereas mostly all I see (even in 'independent' circles) is people desperately trying to be like everybody else. I think the digital race is just another way for people to strive to be like each other. I've always considered that a physical product - something to hold in your hand and appreciate, packaged in artwork supporting the music - is really important. It means that you've made an effort to find something unique, made a choice based on the amount of money you have to dedicate to your record collection. Digital formats seem to me to be far too generic - in my experience, mostly they're downloaded or listened to without payment, so one's collection is enormous and based on what other people have suggested rather than on personal taste. The importance of the music is hugely dissipated. I decided to put most of the Pumf back catalogue (and any future releases) on Bandcamp because digital formats for Pumf releases were being sporadically requested. So far there have been thousands of plays of Pumf songs on Bandcamp, but only a handful of sales. Financially it hasn't been at all worthwhile - but I suppose that the music's being heard, and that's what it was always about. Grudgingly I'll have to provide two positive points for digital formats: there is much less plastic being used to create physical product; and reproduction of sound through a device with no moving parts, or possible damage to the storage medium, must give a better listening experience.


S&V: What do you listen to at the end of a hard day?

pSB: The neighbours' children screaming through my walls (but I suspect that wasn't the answer you wanted . . .) My musical tastes are many and varied, so it could be anything. This last couple of weeks I've been listening to Negativland, Flux of Pink Indians, Venetian Snares, Akron/Family, Philip Glass, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Residents, NOFX (and plenty of Howl in the Typewriter, of course, as I'm in the middle of recording sessions for the upcoming godspunk volume twenty-four compilation album).

Links:

Pumf Bandcamp Page

Pumf Facebook Page

Pumf Website

Batcow Artworks