We’re dead excited to have Regal Worm, aka Jarrod Gosling of I Monster and Cobalt Chapel, aka illustrator and artist Varrod Goblink, serving up some suitably psychedelic and proggy accompaniment to our solo show with William D Drake on 1st November 24. Laura caught up with him for a chat beforehand.
You’re a man of many names – Jarrod, Varrod, Mr Worm, what do you want me to call you today?
Haha, Jarrod’s fine. The Varrod Goblink name came about because of an interview with a French magazine, where they misspelled my name. I think they got the Gosling right, but the first name was Varrod, and I thought it sounded like really cool European name, like Vlad the Impala or something. I used it when we were doing the design for the I Monster ‘NeveroddoreveN’ album and it’s kind of stuck. It also means people from school can’t find me so easily.
How did the Regal Worm project come about?
The first album came about in around 2012, it was a quiet period for I Monster and before we started Cobalt Chapel. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of prog rock album, just dive into it properly, but obviously doing it myself, with the computer, and not getting a band together and all that kind of thing. Just doing it the way I’ve always made music for the last 30 years on a computer, but with real instruments. So I thought, I’ll have a go, and I got all the equipment anyway, including loads of organs and the Mellotron I bought from the band Add N to (X) in 2001.
So I just started just making some mad music. And at the time, that was my take. I’ve never done full on what you call ‘prog rock’, yeah, because that’s the weird thing about prog. What is it? You know? Do you have to sound like Yes? So I think progressive is more the proper word for it.
I heard a clip of an interview with Rush in about 1979 or 80 and Neil Peart said, “there’s bands out there now that are more progressive than we are, like Talking Heads”, You wouldn’t say they were prog, but they were very progressive. XTC were progressive, weren’t they? And I think Public Image Limited are progressive, even though they’re not prog.
So to be prog does it have to have mellotrons? Funny time signatures? Do you have to have long hair and a beard? I think now people say proggy because it’s got a keyboard solo on it that sounds a bit proggy.
So with Regal Worm, I wanted to do something that was more traditionally proggy and different to what we were doing with I Monster, which is more kind of psychedelic. And the first three albums were definitely more in that kind of vein but the change in style came with the fourth album ‘The Hideous Goblink’ which is more electronic. And with this latest album ‘Worm’, it’s got to the point where Andy Thompson from Planet Mellotron was going to review it but had to get in touch to ask where the mellotron is on it. Actually there’s hardly any mellotron on it, partly because it’s knackered and partly because I was fed up with using it, you hear that sound all the time now on adverts and everything, though am sure they’re just samples or plug ins these days. I wanted to try more synths and drum machines.
I’m always really blown away by people that can write really complex music on their own, you know, without other band members to bounce things off. What does your writing process look like?
I’ve been making music with I Monster for a long time on computer, I’ve learned a lot of little tricks that you do on a computer, and little fills and all these little things that probably a live band, even if they’re very complicated, play intricate prog stuff or math rock or something like that might not do because they’re in a band in a room. Yeah, it’s only when you get into a studio with computer technology where you can sort of sit and play about with it. And I’ve always done that with I Monster, because that’s how we made music. We started off making bleepy techno in the early 90s, so all those little tricks that were picked up from I Monster making electronic and techno dance music.
I probably put electronic drum in first, just cycling round and round and round it over a few bars. And then maybe put a bass line on it, or something with the real bass. And then when it comes to putting the real drums on, I go back in and then play the drums to it over the loop, and then get rid of the electronic drums and you just build it up. It’s like with a painting where you start with a blank canvas, and then sketch some ideas out that don’t look like much, and then work on it a bit more, and then a bit more, and then it becomes maybe 20 seconds of music that sounds really good. Then I might get on a keyboard and try and go to a key change that works, or copy that bit over again, and then just pitch it so it’s a different key. And the technology is so good now that you can pretty much do anything on it. You can choose the key, change the speed, you can chop things up. You can reverse things. You can add another thing from somewhere else in the track and make that fit in, somehow, somewhere. And sometimes it don’t work. Sometimes you just get your happy accidents. It’s just a matter of just sitting down and working through it.
Are there times where the song comes first? I’m particularly loving ‘Dindy Super’ on the latest ‘Worm’ album, it puts me in mind of that Peter Schilling track ‘Major Tom’
Ha, well, can you see that? (Holds up Dindy Super branded C120 cassette tape) That’s my Dad’s tape. It says ‘A Lamb Lies Down on Broadway Sides 1 and 2’, he wrote it wrong though, ‘A Lamb..’, haha. Anyway, you know that ‘home taping is killing music’ thing with the skull and crossbones, that’s what I was thinking about and I thought I’d do a song about cassettes. That’s a very electronic one, that could almost be an I Monster track. But I think I probably wrote that over the track afterwards, maybe a chorus might have come into my mind, when I’m in the bathroom and singing along in my head. Or I go running a lot, that’s my place for coming up with ideas… and for complaining about the world. When I go running I talk to myself a lot, when someone walks around the corner I just pretend I’m on the phone. You can get away with that these days with headphones, just touch my ear as if someone else is there, haha.
Getting things from your head into the world is tricky. Sometimes you can hear something, I can hear it in my head, I can hear the orchestra, the production, everything. Then I try and sing it into my phone so I can come back to it later, but sometimes when I listen back to it, I don’t even really know what it is. Or you try and play it out and it just doesn’t sound like it did.
I wanted to ask you about lyrics, because I have a funny relationship with lyrics in that I can know every single word to a song, and I’ve never thought about actually what the words mean, it’s like my brain just processes it as music rather than as words.
Yeah, that’s what I’m like. I was thinking about Jon Anderson’s lyrics, the early ones, particularly the Yes albums, Fragile, Close To The Edge. And those lyrics are just like stream of consciousness and I just think it’s so interesting because you don’t know what he is on about, like, ‘battleships confide in me and tell me where you are’, you’re like ‘what’s he on?’ You know? And I think it’s stream of consciousness, words that just sound good as words rather than trying to tell a story.
I listen to loads and loads of foreign prog from the 70s, Italian stuff and Czech stuff and stuff like that. There’s loads of it out there, and it’s fucking amazing. If you ever listen to Italian prog, which is absolutely mind blowing from the 70s, 99.8% of it is singing in Italian. Obviously, I’ve not got a clue what they’re singing, but I love it, yeah, the patterns and the rhythms of it.
So you’ve been doing some live shows with I Monster again, how has that been?
Dean [Honer] and I had been threatening to do a new album for a long time and then that viral thing happened a couple of years ago – our song ‘Who Is She?’ went viral on Tik Tok and it just took over. ‘Daydream in Blue’ had got almost 60 million listens, but in short space of time ‘Who is She?’ overtook it, it was like Usain Bolt, it just took over, it’s got 156 million listens now.
At first, we didn’t know what was happening, we found out from the label. We had all these influencers on Instagram and Tik Tok using it on their videos or miming along to it, like Charli D’Amelio, Demi Lovato, Kim Kardashian – I didn’t know who they were, I had to ask my son.
It was 20 years since we did the NeveroddoreveN album so we talked to the label about reissuing that as an anniversary thing and then someone asked us if we’d thought about touring it. So it happened, and we were really scared about it cos we didn’t want to go out and play to a load of old folks, really. But we got a band together, and we rehearsed it, and then we went out to Europe to do it. The first gig was actually Dublin, and it was an amazing response there were loads of kids at the front, young women – when you look at the demographics on our Spotify, see where everyone is and who they are and everything. And it’s like, it’s mainly women, females between the age of about 15 and 25 they’re listening to I Monster music. And that’s what it was like. I feel it’s crazy when it’s like a tune, like tunes that you’ve made 20 years ago! There were loads of young people on the merch stands too and they’re all, like, really nervous, but could you sign this? Could you, could you do this one? We were there for about two hours after every gig in Europe, signing shit, people buying stuff. All with our fly head masks on.
Yeah, they were all just amazing, you know? And we’re just like, you know, this is it! This is amazing. I never want to go back. Yeah, it makes us feel young, I know we’re not. But it makes us feel young that these young people that you wouldn’t have thought would have been into I Monster music would be into it. It’s really refreshing. And it’s, yeah, we love it. Absolutely love it.
I know you’re a Cardiacs fan, and I love listening to people’s stories of how they discovered them as they’re all so different. How did you first hear them?
The first time I got into them, I was at college about 1990 or 1989, listening to a lot of prog stuff and a my friend was going out with someone who outside of college, a bit younger than me. He’s like, oh, have you heard a band called Cardiacs? So you’ll like them, if you like Genesis and stuff. I bought the Day Is Gone EP, when it came out. I remember buying it on vinyl, and you got a little Sea Nymphs seven inch with it and I’m sure they did have a poster with it as well. Anyway, Day Is Gone, EP, 12 inch, four tracks on it. Oh, my God. This is amazing.
And then the next the first album I actually bought was songs for ships and irons, which is, yeah, that’s my favorite. I know it’s not a proper, proper album, but it’s still a really incredible collection of songs.
Were you in the Yousletter family? With the badge saying ‘I am in it’? [Indeed I was!] I remember sending a fax, probably with my Dad’s fax to him. I can’t remember what I put in the letter apart from asking when are you going to do some new music and then it was like, I got a letter back, or, maybe a fax. Just saying ‘Soon. Love Timmy.’ That was great. I’ve got them all somewhere still,
So what are you listening to at the moment? Are you someone that’s always gathering new music?
That’s my listening pile of stuff that I bought, a lot of classical stuff from charity shops and CD shops, a lot of people are getting rid of CDs. There’s a really good St Luke’s up at Crookes, got about 12 CDs for about four quid the other day, there’s loads of stuff. And I’ve got a Fishbone album there. George Clinton, yeah. Prince, yeah. Beck, which ended up being 30p!
So what’s next for you, apart from DJing for us at the William D Drake gig?
We’re working on a new I Monster album, which we started before the tour last year but had to drop that to rehearse and prepare for the tour and do the tour, and now we’re back on it again. We’ve probably got, like, about 40 tracks not finished. We’re keen to get this out and finished with a budget behind it and tour support and then we can look at doing festivals and bigger gigs next year as well. I’ve not done any Regal Worm since that starting going again, and might not be doing any for a while as the next thing after I Monster will be Cobalt Chapel. I Monster has always been the main thing that I’ve done though, that’s what pays the bills.
Illustrations by Varrod Goblink – get them on a t-shirt or buy some of his prints here: https://regalworm.bandcamp.com/merch
Find out more about Regal Worm / Varrod Goblink:
https://regalworm.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/regalworm
https://varrodgoblink.bigcartel.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@RegalWormMusic
Jarrod Gosling will be donning his Regal Worm alter ego to play some records for us before and after William D Drake on Friday 1st November 2024 at The Dorothy Pax between 8 and 10pm.
Tickets are £12 (£6 concessions) and available here:
https://budsandspawn.nuwebgroup.com/