It's easy to lose faith in bands. You wait and wait to see a band you love play live, and they're a disappointment. They don't play your favourite song, the singer acts like a dickhead, and the crowd are all sharp elbows and low-key grimaces. Being jaded about bands these days is so easy that when you find a band that absolutely destroys a room, it's a revelation.
Glaswegian six-piece band Golden Teacher are one of those bands. Actually, they're not really One Of Those Bands, because I can't remember the last time I saw a band as weird and wonderful as this. The basement I saw them play in last was heaving only a few minutes in - singers Cassie and Charlie leaping onstage, barefoot, dancing like they didn't have bones - and the crowd soon joined in, too. Basically, go see Golden Teacher live. Trust me on this one.
Having released two brilliant EPs on Optimo Music (Bells from the Deep End, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night), Golden Teacher's next EP Party People pushes their divine blend of house, afrobeat, disco and electro to newer heights. THUMP have the lead single 'Love' for stream below, and we caught up with the band to chat about what's next.
Who influences the Golden Teacher sound, and what are you reaching for with this new EP?
Golden Teacher: Party People is the first thing we put to tape and it's the first time our two singers met; it's the sound of Charlie falling in love with Cassie right on top of a disco beat. They've found each other in the street and now they're looking for the party – that's a simple sentiment. That is what we do and that is what we reach for, the party Arthur Russell was talking about when he said "I wanna see all my friends at once".
You could say Party People epitomises our approach to making music; there's just a frission when everything comes together like that. More recently we recorded 'Love' featuring Charlie's vocals and there's an 808 kick in the mix, so that's, like, the club track on the 12".
It's about what rather than who influences the Golden Teacher sound. It's that just-beyond-your-body feeling when you're with people you love doing something that is much bigger than yourself. That's common to a lot of bands, it's common to a lot of groups doing whatever anywhere.
Like all great music, I've found it hard to describe your sound. How would you describe it?
Golden Teacher: We find it hard to describe our music too; whether it's great or not is for other people to decide. If everyone hears a little passage or a mood that reminds them of something or someone else, that's cool, that's active criticism. The more things you think of or feel when you hear, then the more critical and active you are as a human being.
How does it feel to be on Optimo Music, and how do you think Golden Teacher fit in with the Optimo ethos?
Golden Teacher: Living in Glasgow it's easy to forget how much Optimo differs from many other club nights or labels. It's seemingly unusual for bands to play club nights though that's what Larry Levan was doing at the Paradise Garage. But with Optimo we're not even talking about dance-oriented acts: Chris Corsano, Whitehouse and Blurt are not immediate choices for a 1 am slot. Over the years Optimo have more or less normalised such line-ups in the city, which is a good thing for live, loud music full stop.
Our releases on Optimo happened naturally, by word of mouth – one of our engineers, Emily McLaren from Green Door Studio, told JD Twitch that he'd like our music. We like Twitch and Wilkes' parties. It's not an interesting back story, but it goes without saying that they liked what they heard. Optimo Music's relationship with Kompakt has put Golden Teacher's music in some far flung places. It's nice to know that your record has sold out in Japan, even if Japan only got 10 copies. Is there a shared ethos? Yeah, probably, we played their Hogmanay party this year.
We don't want to keep banging the drum for Glasgow being this shining capital of culture, that's a line that the public's been fed for a long time now. We want to see what's important to people in other cities and how much time and energy they've put into their communities.
Live electronic music acts can be a slippery slope from utterly amazing, to utterly terrible, and it can be hard to find a balance between in-studio messing around, and translating that into a live setting. How do you go about putting together a live show, and what do you try and put across most at shows?
Golden Teacher: This is no more true of electronic music than any other genre. Of course at the end of the day you must admit like the Romans that "on matters of personal taste there can be no argument".
"Messing around" is something we value very highly both in recording and performing. When performing there's always structure, but it's important to give space to improvisation – even if there's a bum note or errant sound – that way the music can wander off and become wholly of the moment for us and the audience.
It can be tedious to hear an act achieve its ideal sound on stage. We aren't all Beyoncé, you know? Luckily there are six people pulling the music in different directions. We ask sound engineers to dub out bits of the live mix because those surprises are something we have in common with the crowd. We're looking for that sense of the unexpected too. We all have to work together however we can – on stage, on the desk, on the floor – in order to get into it and get something out of it.
That's what we want to share with every audience. It's like, for the next hour you're with your friends and Golden Teacher. Hopefully every little twist, turn and build-up is going to be as exciting for you as it is for us. Then there are further concerns like, what time is this happening at? Where are we right now? Was it a sunny day, is it raining? Theo Parrish has talked about this.
I know you don't play live shows very often, so this mini tour this weekend is a big step for Golden Teacher. How has the live show grown since you started out?
Golden Teacher: We play as often as we can, but we're selective about gigs because there are six of us. It's an undertaking to get everyone in a van. When we're all together, we're just looking for the next party, a nice place to sleep at the end of the night and somewhere to park. There are no big steps for Golden Teacher, we're just making music for party people.
Golden Teacher - Party People EP is due for release in April on Optimo Music. They're on tour pretty soon. You can catch them at the following dates here:
2nd May @ The Arches, Glasgow, Scotland
3rd May @ Sounds of the City, Manchester, UK
10th May @ Kellburn Garden party, Scotland
29th May @ Nuit Sonores, Lyon, France
31st May @ this not a love song, Nimes, France
You can follow Optimo Music here:@OptimoMusic, and Lauren Martin here: @codeinedrums