Feature: God's Wonderful Railway

Interview with God's Wonderful Railway - Electronica / Alternative / Rock

Describe your music and tell us why we should listen to it.
God's Wonderful Railway make instrumental electronica music. Its not really party music, but neither is it so avant-garde that I forget to put a groove in. Hopefully it doesn't sound especially difficult. Thats the game-plan anyway, if there is one.

What inspires you and the music you create?
At the risk of sounding corny I just make the kind of music I'd be happy listening to. Music I don't like inspires me as much as music I do like.

How did you first get into making music?
My older sisters like to remind me that I ruined all their records by spinning them on my knee before I could walk, so I was pretty much obsessed since then. I used to play guitar, but heard the first DJ Shadow album when it came out and switched to the sampler pretty quickly. I've been sampling for over ten years now.

What kind of equipment do you use?
These new tracks I am putting up as and when I do them are almost entirely done on a PC running very out-of-date software by today's standards that I wouldn't recommend anyone else use, but I know it like the back of my hand and don't want to switch, even if it does take an age to do a track. There are guitars and keyboards on most of the tracks too, often courtesy of David, who lends his talents to the material when he is needed to play something that I can't.

How does the music scene in the U.K. differ from North America?
I don't think the music I am interested in differs that greatly from country to country, really. Most people who listen to my music seem to come from mainland Europe tho. Maybe its a language issue, what with electro being mostly instrumental, but they seem less obsessed by that English indie-rock sound that rules supreme here in the UK. As for the difference between the UK and North America? You have more bad metal bands while we have more bad indie bands.

Where did the name God's Wonderful Railway come from?
The project gets its name from an early British rail network called GWR who were supposedly so well regarded that the people nicknamed them God's Wonderful Railway, altho my own guess is that it was the company thmeselves who said this in a fit of self-congratulatory publicity. I have been asked before if its a christian rock band, which is slightly worrying.

Thanks, anything else you want to say to our readers?
The tracks on myspace are little more than rough mixes that I put up as and when I do a new one I am happy with. I am currently working on an albums worth of material, when thats ready I will start to get things out there. At the moment I reckon its about 80 percent finished.

Thanks, be sure to let us know when you get the new album finished.
Sure thing.