A short history . . . 
Kev: The backbone of Warser Gate is Rich and Keith—they’ve been playing together for about 7 or so years.  I’ve been with Warser Gate for about 3 years.  Myself, Rich, and [then bassist] Darren have all known each other since school days. The name Warser Gate has always been around cos its the name of the street where we have our tailor’s warehouse/come practise space and where we record all our music.  Thinking Man’s Jibe [on Destroy All Music, now defunct] is my fave tape release.  It’s all acoustic and was a completely new direction for us.  It turned out really well.  I’d like to see a couple of these songs on 7” before too long.  Any offers?  The Revered Lies tapes [Part 1 on Kylie, Part 2 on BWCD] have been described as having a blues feel to them. 
 
Describe yourselves . . . 
Rich-drummer-nicest person you’ll ever meet, slight build, extremely fit and loves socialising (i.e. 12 pints). 
Keith-guitar-he’s a lovely young man! Loves beer and dancing.  Tends to get over-excited at times and sings ‘Bully Bully’ (Wolves supporter). 
Kev-singer-average build, loves curries and venues that play Tortoise. 
 

How does a WG song come into being?   Kev: Basically I fit lyrics to whatever sound Rich and Keith are coming up with, and we record direct to our very loyal 4-track.  The recording method is very immediate—fresh and not overworked. The skeleton if you like is then down and ready to be played around with.  All mixing is conducted by Keith.  Do you practice regularly?  Do you enjoy it?   Kev: Once a week without fail, for at least 3 hours each time.  That’s enough time to record ten or so new songs.  Times that by 52 weeks of the year and you’ll realise what sort of backlog of material we have.  Love it to death.  Your releases to date have been reasonably lo-fi—is this for aesthetic or financial reasons?   Kev: We record everything in our warehouse which gives us a very organic-sounding quality.  I love the sound we get from recording in this space and on 4-track.  Maybe we might get an 8-track and do some recording in this room, definitely got plans to.  We’ve been in studios, albeit shit studios with shit, narrow-minded engineers, and come out with a disgusting sound, with all the life sucked out of you.  Recently we’ve found a great studio and engineer who at least is somewhere on our wave length, so maybe we might clean up our act.  Who knows, we’ll see.  At the moment we’re all happy with our sound production; I’m really pleased with the raw sound of our album [their debut, All My Hates, All My Hang Ups on Rafter].

What role does improvisation play in your music? 
Kev:  99%.  Improvisation has a massive part to play in Warser Gate’s recorded output. Warser Gate are a complete, spontaneous combustion.  Our live sets though are a little more thought-out and practised, but not over-practised.  We still like the songs to be fresh and alive for us to play. 

How would you describe your music to your auntie? Are you ‘alternative’? 
Kev: Unfortunately, I don’t have an auntie.  Keith likes the term ‘Extra Zwaar’—it’s a Dutch beer, but he likes describing Warser Gate this way.  Don’t ask me why!  I like Greg [of the label Tremor]’s description of the album, “progressive, dark, trance, fucked up, psychedelic blues pop”.  I haven’t really got a clue how to describe our stuff; we’re kind of all over the place in styles so its hard to pinpoint anything in particular. Alternative?  Yeah, that could be it! 

Who else do you rate? 
Kev: I could go on all day with this one. Here’s a small run down on some of my favourite artists: Supreme Dicks’ An Emotional Plague—can’t get enough of these at the moment, New Radiant Storm King, TFUL 282, Bügsküll, Wing Tip Sloat, Helium, Space Needle, Mazey Fade, Sun City Girls, Peter Jeffries, Grifters, Polvo, Sone.  That’s enough . . . 
 

What’s been exciting you recently (no, not like that)?   Kev: Going to New York at Christmas.  Would love to catch Space Needle and Supreme Dicks live over there.  Getting our debut album out.  The thought of seeing Supreme Dicks live in November on tour, that would be brilliant if it comes off.  Sun City Girls’ latest single is superb.  Future plans?   Kev: Depending on how our LP goes, like to get another out next year [They did, see Reviews section].  Get some 7"s out.  Any labels out there?  Keep recording new stuff.  Try and gradually get down our backlog of songs.  Concentrate on getting some more vinyl out.  See you soon.

 
Warser Gate: c/o Kev, 41 Kenrick Rd, Mapperley, Nottingham, NG3 6HQ