Edwin Pouncey AKA Savage Pencil is a legendary British artist, musician and music journalist who has bought us comic book delights with such luminaries as Alan Moore, some fantastic album covers for The Fall and Sonic Youth and Big Black among others and wrote for NME way back when it was an “inkie”, Sounds magazine and currently Wire. You’ve know him, you just don’t know it yet.
BCR: Do you smoke?
SP: I used to. I gave it up years and years ago. I was living in a small flat with my girlfriend who’s now my wife who didn’t smoke and I felt bad filling the place up with smoke. And I got sick of being an addict so I stopped. I don’t like addictions really.
BCR: You say you don’t like addictions but there are certain themes that you’re fairly addicted to in your work.
SP: Are they addictions? Just interests. I don’t have to listen to Black Metal everyday.
BCR: In terms of music, haven’t you got a fairly impressive vinyl collection?
SP: Is that an addiction?
BCR: I think vinyl, music can be an addiction…
SP: Ok, that’s one addiction I really like. An addiction I can’t really live without. And it doesn’t harm anyone, except my bank account and if I don’t have any money then I won’t steal or anything for vinyl.
BCR: What are your bands doing at the moment?
SP: Well, the band is a kinda... it’s in transit all the time. It’s not really a band as such but if we decide to do something we do it. It exists in a kind of slumbering state.
BCR: So it’s more organic than a proactive state…
SP: It’s definitely organic because we just kinda drag people in… it’s got three core members.
BCR: And it’s kept its genre pretty intact through the years, it’s thrashing noise.
SP: Its noise yeah, mainly because I don’t think any of us can play music properly, I don’t think any of us are really interested in playing music properly. I’m not really interested in learning how to play an instrument but I am interested in the sounds an instrument can make. It has a lot to do with my drawing.
BCR: Maybe not in the primers, but the collage particularly seems really immediate. Do you think it has a basis in a punk ethic, that frenetic, thrashing immediacy?
SP: It isn’t very quick to do the work. The Primer work is lots of hard work. I do associate the writing with the work very much. I understand I’m making marks on paper. But now you’re using a computer and before that you were using a typewriter and before that you were using dip pens and quills and ink, they were making marks on a surface. If someone wrote a horror story, like H. P. Lovecraft, do you know what I mean? He was kind of like, making a drawing, something from his imagination that would trigger off your imagination. If your imagination comes up with the same thing he was writing about depends but you probably came up with something just as horrifying as what he was writing down. It has got an illustrative thread running through it. Making marks on paper.
BCR: It’s definitely a similar thing – you’re creating an image or a story. But more in terms of how you’ve configured the lines. They’re very much like a nightmare scape. They look like you’ve used a knife to do it.
SP: I don’t know if I’m doing it that violently. I’m doing it more in a dream state. Some people would call that doodling but doodling sounds like anybody could do it whereas I’m doodling in a very different way. I’m finding lines in what I’ve already drawn, over and over again. I could show you a doodle if you like.
BCR: It’s the same as doing a 1st, 2nd or 3rd draft. Or automatic writing and then a redraft…
SP: And automatic drawing - it’s all the same thing. I just starting doing this sort of stuff. Drawing within drawing. I don’t really need fancy sketchbooks to do it either. It’s like embroidery or … It could almost be archaeology of the mind. Using an instrument to dig away at it and uncovering all these things that were lying under the surface that you didn’t know were there and only you can do it, in a way.
BCR: Well, if you’re uncovering your own bones…
SP: Yeah and being surprised at what you find. The big drawings of the owl and the dog and all that. What I was first doing was laying down the whole thing with graphite and working within that. When I started joining things up all these symbols started coming out. Which was obviously related to black metal – you know the way bands write their names out in indecipherable letters... Magical grimoires– things like that. It wasn’t intentional they just started coming out. Oh, there’s another pentagram, what the hell’s that doing there? You know. I didn’t remember doing that. Is it coincidence or it’s just happening. I think you’re sort of discovering things that you didn’t know were there. Does that make sense?
BCR: Well, I’d be scared to call it an autobiography of the moment… like channelling Burzum or H. P. Lovecraft because that’s what you’re listening to or reading at that moment.
SP: well, I wouldn’t want to channel Burzum, haha… and I’ve always read H. P. Lovecraft. I threw the Lord of the Rings in the fire in disgust. I’ve only very recently started listening to black metal in a passionate, mad way in the last three years, which isn’t very long. And believe it or not I wasn’t listening to any when I did those drawings. But obviously something filters in.
BCR: So what do you think was the influence?
SP: I don’t have any influences. Me and me alone. I mean, everything’s in there so… I was probably listening to Radio 4 … in fact I have normally got Radio 4 playing away.
BCR: So, these menacing monsters, you know when you look at council flat wood chip wall paper you always see a face in it, your work almost seems like that…
SP: Oh, I love that, I find it fascinating, the face in the wardrobe…
BCR: Do you think these monsters are a product of your comic book upbringing? Rat Fink and Marvel?
SP: Of course. It’s like a big congealed lump of all these things that you’re constantly raking through. Famous monsters of Filmland Magazine, Mad Max magazine, comics, horror movies. It’s also this obsession with the extreme, things that people would normally shun away from, things that people wouldn’t want up on a wall. Horrible things that are also kinda fascinating. It’s an ongoing process. From when I was about 10 when I saw Flash Gordon’s Ape on TV or Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.
BCR: Why did these extremes hold so much interest for you?
SP: Just because it wasn’t like everything else. It was another world I suppose. It’s the fantasy element, the fantastic element. Something in a Salvador Dali painting that you imagine to be real.
BCR: Is that what the dogs are about in this new show? The large dog is like this sinewy giant rather than something you’d see out of the corner of your eye, but then the four dogs are like something Richard Sala would draw.
SP: Well, they’re companion pieces. I heard something on Radio 4 and they were talking about the Guytrash, which is this legendary black hound from hell that wonders the Yorkshire moors, and then about the Hound of the Baskervilles and then I went home and weirdly enough Peter Cushing’s version of the Hound of the Baskervilles was on TV so I had to watch that for the 18th time. And then about the same time there was that story about that Pitbull ripping that girls face off . I thought… hmm, this is very odd and then there was this big thing on Dispatches about the dog fights and I thought this is all fitting together nicely.
BCR: So, do you follow coincidence like that?
SP: Yeah, well, you know. These have become - the Staffordshire Terriers and the people who can’t control them –they’re kinda like the dogs from hell right now. The Dogs of Hell live next door. They’re living on a council estate or walking down the road in Brixton. People are in fear in of those dogs now like they were of Guytrash but I guess Guytrash wasn’t real… But I just wanted to do a drawing of something big and I thought Guytrash was kinda perfect.
BCR: Have you done a piece that big straight onto paper before?
SP: No, no that’s the first one. 5x4 that one. So, they’re all kinda related. I call those four The Pits.
BCR: How did you name the dogs? Shock, Shag, Gabrielle and Striker…
SP: From the names that Guytrash was given. I wanted to work with pastels and I thought it would be nice to have a bit of colour.
BCR: Yeah, there’s not a lot of colour…
SP: Well, I like Black and White…
BCR: And about the sculptures, I’ve never seen any that you’ve done before, is this the first time?
SP: Well, I more supervised those. My wife made those. She makes cake decorations.
BCR: Cake and the Occult?
SP: Yeah, big cakes with very intricate decorations. She thinks well in three dimensions and I don’t think very well in three dimensions. But what I am good at is explaining exactly how I want something to look. That came out of me coming home from Bremen from a previous exhibition I put on there being on this really boring train ride back from Luton airport and just drawing on a piece of paper and those creatures just came out. I thought I’d do some drawings of these when I got home and I looked at them again I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to do a sculpture of this. I suggested this to Jill, my wife and she said she’d help me out.
BCR: Would you do that again?
SP: Oh yeah, I’d like to do that again.
BCR: It would be interesting because your drawings feel quite three dimensional anyway, the forms of the line tend to draw you towards particular features and things look very rounded… Even the primers look like relief’s…
SP: I don’t know if it’s intentional, I just kinda do it. I know that’s the lamest of lame answers. I supposed I’m just a bit stupid! I’m just not aware I’m doing it. I just sorta think, oh that looks good. I don’t want it to be flat and boring, I do want it to leap out. I guess I’m trying to pull something out and not make it flaccid and boring. I’m trying to make something that leaps out and grabs you by the head.
BCR: So do you think you’re focusing your work down now? Pulling it more towards an art basis rather than commission or popular media?
SP: Yeah, I’m working into an art moniker, trying to get work done for art shows. I don’t know how successful I’ll be but this is the way I want to go for the rest of my life.
BCR: Do you not think that right now is a good time to get into it? People are thinking more towards DIY ethic and collage and definitely poster art…
SP: I think it’s all coming to the fore. A lot of those skills that people had in the 60s and 70s for poster art. It’s all coming back. People are interested in hand drawn typographies and elaborate images. It’s becoming a lot more involved and interesting. I think it’s because of computers and that but I’m not really interested in computers I’m more interested in more hands on stuff. I can appreciate it though.
BCR: I don’t think you’d benefit from computers because the work you do looks like a person produced it.
PS: People are just rediscovering it and saying wow, there’s nothing like this around. It’s like you’re kinda ahead of your time really. When you do it the first time round no one really takes any notice because they can’t get their head round it. It’s very rare that people are discovered in the time that they’re doing things. I’m noticing that a lot of people are coming to me now and asking me to do stuff and I say yeah, alright and they’re astonished that I said yes. It’s ridiculous. Little labels and stuff. Just guys saying would you do a little logo for me? I’m flattered by it but I kinda back away from it as well. I don’t have a big placard on my back but I sorta… I have an artistic nom de plume…
BCR: You’ve never had anything where that’s Savage Pencil and that’s what he does and I’m someone else.
SP: Well, I’ve said it before in interviews but it’s not really that at all.
SP: Well, I still write for Wire but I’ve stopped doing the big articles because I can’t get my head round interviewing people or anything like that anymore because I’ve asked all the questions to all the people I wanted to ask them to.
BCR: For someone who interviewed Tom Waits among others…
SP: Oh, that was the early Swordfish Trombone days. He was really great - he told me about Harry Partch. That was when you could go to Virgin records and they had a big record stack all for around £5 and Harry Partch would be in there. I talked to these guys when they were really young and just getting started. I don’t know if there’s anybody out there that I’m that excited about. The only people I’d want to talk to these days are black metal bands and I don’t know if they want to talk to me anyway and I don’t know where I’d publish them if I did. Wire wouldn’t put it in. And I wouldn’t ask them to put it in because it wouldn’t fit in to the magazine.
BCR: Do you think that’s a problem now? Everything’s become too niche.
SP: Yeah, everything’s too niche! I’d like there to be something more interesting, something odd that you wouldn’t expect to find out there.
BCR: So do you think the music press is deteriorating?
SP: Oh, yeah, it’s useless. It’s just rubbish. It’s been taken over by broadsheet newspapers that don’t have the first inkling of what they’re talking about half the time. They should just stick to the Iraq war or what Gordon Brown had for breakfast. Going into the deep and dark waters of extreme music or what they think is extreme music but really isn’t. It’s such an awful thing. It’s just appalling. I think they should just keep their noses out of it.
BCR: But NME is just the same…
SP: NME us just Smash Hits.
BCR: Well, it’s got stickers…
SP: Stickers of who? The Klaxons?
BCR: Yes…
SP: You’re kidding?! Do you remember when they were into Suede? That’s all they want really, keeping advertisers happy and everybody safe. Wire is independent so it can write about what the hell it likes. I just like writing record reviews really, I like the weird ones now. I really hate the ones that are really formulaic like, we’re the biggest nastiest band on the planet, here’s our album. They can get lost. I want to hear some kinda creepy freak in his bedroom messing around so it just sounds creepy and horrible. Have you heard of Gnaw Their Tongues?
BCR: No, ‘fraid not.
SP: They’re not for watching, I think they’re just creeping in a corner somewhere covered in dust. They’re pretty good. There’s this guy Vorak. It’s kinda like Nietzsche or Wagner… He just looks nuts. Long hair and leathers holding an AK47… They just give themselves up to it, no matter how foolish it looks or staged or theatrical, they’re giving themselves up to something. I guess that’s kinda what I’m doing, I’m not corpsing it up but I am giving myself over to some absurd ideas. I’m hoping people might accept it…
BCR: So what’s your favourite process? Is it the collages or the acid etchings or the sculptures?
SP: All of them really. That’s a really crap answer isn’t it? At the moment though, it’s the big drawings I’m really proud of. I really think they’re great, even though I say it myself. I put every ounce of myself into that damn thing and I think it works. You’re in bed and thinking about it and you can’t wait to get back to it and I haven’t felt that for a really long time. I’m probably going to start using monoprints. Big thick colours. I’ve got this theory for the next lot of stuff in my head but I’m not going to tell you about it.
BCR: Do you want another glass of wine?
SP: What? In the hope I’ll tell you about it? Yeah, go on then.
BCR: It’s weird, you don’t really have that metal presence here in England. Even the Borderline [music venue in London] is veering away from metal/punk…
SP: I think the UK is attuned to pop and dance and this laughable thing they like to call R’N’B but isn’t R’N’B. The UK likes pop rhythm. It’s not really a rock nation. I’ve been raked over the coals about this. So it’s hardly surprising that not much metal is big in America, apart from Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath were the cause of it really, I mean they were. Black Metal is from Birmingham and that’s all there is to it.
BCR: I think that’s why the Scandinavians do it so well…
SP: Well, they live in the fucking dark all the time. And Birmingham is black as pitch, pissing down with rain all the time. Nice place though.
Savage Pencil kindly provided us with his top ten Black Metal bands. Enjoy!
1) Abruptum
2) Deathspell Omega
3) Rehtaf Ruo
4) Wolok
5) Dead Reptile Shrine
6) Spektr
7) Rev. Kriss Hades
8) Vorak
9) Gnaw Their Tongues
10) YcosaHateRon
Savage Pencil Official site
Savage Pencil is exhibiting new work entitled Creatures of the Night along with a retrospective of Wire magazine work. You can visit 96 Gillespie gallery's website here for directions.
