Photo credit: Nathan Clarke
I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to ping some questions to Karen Reilly (vocals), Mark Howe (vocals and guitar) & Jon Baker (bass, keyboards, programming, vocals).
HC: You are often described as art rock mavericks with a throbbing art punk noise, how do you define The Neutrinos sound in your own words and how has it evolved over your 20 plus years of doing it?
MARK: We maintain an eclectic approach to music making, each song has its own journey if you like, and we habitually bend and blend genres and moods… but behind all that is something quite raw that is energised by the urgent and pure act of making music within the context of a “rock” band. Those instincts and impulses haven’t really changed much, but there are certain refinements to the approach and personal interests that have become integrated over time. Perhaps most significant is the fact that we assume most of material that we generate is going to appear in a particular context, a type of show (often a KlangHaus) with some kind of an overarching theme and with a particular function, to help the audience move, dance, laugh, cry…
HC: KlangHaus has become a significant part of your identity, blurring the lines between music and live art. What was the initial spark for this immersive experience and how did you develop it from concept to reality?
KAREN: The sparks came from many different directions. If I look at the list of sparks, or nudges, a lot of decisions that led to KlangHaus came from disappointments, or problem solving something annoying that had happened.
- The touring model for us was not much fun, partly due to our location in Norfolk as folks say, ‘from here it takes 2 hours to get to England’. Hours in a van, set up your gear, play for half an hour, pack up your gear, get back in the van, travel for hours, unload the gear, and repeat. Question, if we were based in Leeds, near all those lovely cities of Sheffield, Bradford, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and big towns, would we have gained more traction being in a band and loved touring more?
- Back to our dilemma of hours in the van… we wondered… what if we set up the gear once and did loads of shows? What if we actually got to know people in the venue well, saw them on a daily basis, became colleagues, friends even? What about that for a gig model!
- Late night at the museums became popular in the early-mid 2010s, we were invited to play at the Sainsbury Centre Gallery in Norwich but it’s a grey box and the sound for bands is not ideal….so we asked, ‘can we play behind the walls and muck about with the tannoy system? Can we set-up in that carpeted room and play loud with an audience with the lights off?’ Being a gallery and this night run by generous, clever and open minded artists not scared of saying yes, they did say yes to all our requests to ‘play’ with the building.
- A trip to Berlin to make an album in 2008. We lost a drummer just before the journey (a habit of ours;) so we took another band with us, BK & Dad. We also took a visual artist, Sal Pittman, a writer, a sound engineer and a technician. We couldn’t afford a studio and all leads pointed to The Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, then semi derelict, now in 2025 a jewel. We loaded the van, this time excitedly and took lots of recording gear to Berlin. The building turned out to be a 1000 roomed ex DDR radio station. We were so wowed by the space that we recorded the building, its ghosts, history, the acoustic and the architectural features. The building being part of the show, perhaps even part of the band, definitely part of our musical palette, was ignited.
- The first sort of KlangHaus was called Stories from the Basement and took place in the lower ground floor of Westlegate Tower in Norwich, now a bicycle shop, a fancy restaurant and luxury flats. It was fairly derelict and the Producers at Norwich Arts Centre were terrified we’d do someone an injury. We played with the building, we got filthy dirty, the audience loved it and after the show they disappeared into the out-of-bounds towerblock… everyone loves to nose around buildings they’re not supposed to be in. We felt some kind of show/experience was emerging.
- A galvanizing step in the KlangHaus story was Pasco from Norwich Arts Centre saying, ‘You should go to Edinburgh Fringe’. We were bemused, ‘that’s comedy and theatre not music.”, we replied, but following his astute guidance, we took KlangHaus to the Fringe in 2014, supported by an incredible scheme called East to Edinburgh, where Anthony Roberts from Colchester Arts Centre scooped up lots of East Anglian artists and chaperoned us through the Edinburgh Fringe experience. To our amazement KlangHaus was a hit. The reviews were career-changing, “One show that truly delivers the shock of the new, the most innovative presentation of live music I’ve ever seen – a total game-changer” said Alex Needham in The Guardian.
HC: KlangHaus actively puts the audience in and around the band, what are some of the most memorable or surprising audience reactions you witnessed during these shows?
MARK: The KlangHaus:InHaus shows in particular have a very “make yourself at home” vibe and it’s great when people feel comfortable enough to relax into and relate to us and each other in a very natural way within the performance environment, whether that’s getting comfy on a sofa or taking that difficult step just a little bit closer to the drummer, or maybe joining in the Spitfire Dance…
The Edinburgh run of InHaus a couple of years back was particularly interesting from a movement point of view. In some of the very earliest shows of the run, a number of dancers, mostly people associated with other shows in the fringe, came in and their natural response was to dance, and quite emphatically with no qualms, using space, working with the shadows and light. It really helped us understand and elevate the show, we were able to embrace, integrate and encourage free movement from ourselves and within the audience, something we would have previously shied away from.
HC: You have performed in incredibly diverse locations from animal hospitals to London Royal Festival Hall and even in complete darkness, how does the chosen space influence your performance and the audience’s experience? JON: The shows are very much a collaboration with the buildings we play in. We respond to the acoustics, the history of the space, its location, what it was used for and its imagined ghosts. We realised quite early on that playing in the dark allowed the audience to become almost disembodied and liberated, and we’ve taken that knowledge into our Darkroom show, which is a soundscape for one audience member at a time in pitch black. We’re currently looking at ways of expanding the audience size. In the larger spaces (for example, London’s Southbank), we guide the audience through the various spaces so the audience get to experience multiple performances along with the projected films on pretty much every surface.
KAREN: Sometimes the space was unforgiving acoustically and we would sound like your least favourite band in a church hall. When this happened we would dismantle songs, re-arrange them, slow them down, pull them apart to work so they would work with the acoustic we had. The building always won and when we worked with it, we got rewarded.
HC: Given your experimental nature and immersive shows how do you approach
songwriting and musical creation as a band? Is it a democratic process or are there distinct roles?
JON: It’s pretty democratic really. One of us may bring an idea to the table for development or maybe a completed song – it depends. We like to write music especially for each venue and this can develop over time, particularly if we’re doing a long residency.
KAREN: Ha, a short answer to the most mysterious of questions. What happens when you write music? How do you write songs? They arrive, and you work them hard with a light touch. Sometimes they are quick, a few days in the making, some songs take years.
HC: Your Darkroom installation at COP 26 aimed to be an emotional wakeup call about climate change, what was inspiration behind this specific project and what impact do you hope it had?
JON: We developed Darkroom with the help of climate scientists from UEA’s Tyndall Centre, an anthropologist from University College London and even a professor of Climate Psychology from Liverpool University. The impact the show had was quite profound, with one COP delegate saying “it took me from my head into my heart”. We wanted to make Darkroom a visceral experience – one that doesn’t preach to people but which allows them to ‘feel’ the crisis through their senses and emotions.
HC: You have stated you enjoy pushing musical and instrumental boundaries, what keeps that experimental fire alive after so many years in the industry?
MARK: The maxim “there’s nothing new under the Sun” is a bit of a mantra for us… It seems to be about trusting the process, the combination of whatever skills, attributes, experiences and so on that we and the team bring to the table. Then it’s about how the elements are blended and the mysterious way in which, when we collaborate and interact, the full intention and the intensity of the process is embraced. Something emerges that is greater than the sum of its parts.
HC: Beyond the obvious art rock influences, are there any unexpected artists genres or even non-musical inspirations that have significantly shaped you/The Neutrinos work?
MARK: It’s amazing how those early years musical backdrops permeate pretty deep. So in the family household, Jim Reeves, John Denver, Neil Diamond and any of mother’s go-to happy tunes, keep popping up in my own playing, thinking and melodic impulses. Then of course there’s all those sit down snacks with David Byrne at David Lynch’s Haus.
JON: Loads of other influences from Pixies to PJ Harvey; from Television to John Cage. Karen: Non-musical influences include German art, Kurt Schwitters, Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, Hannah Höch, Bauhaus, Dadaism, Surrealism, Leanora Carrington, Miro, photographers, Lee Miller, Joel Peter-Witkin, Annie Leibovitz, Julia Margaret Cameron. Cities like Barcelona, Berlin, New York, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Toronto. Thinkers, peace-makers, outer-space. Smells! Rubber, creosote, wood smoke, sandalwood, new carpets, new cars, old books, new books, shoe polish, rain on hot pavements (petricore), warm bread.
HC: Being a ‘John Peel favourite’ is a significant accolade, what did that recognition mean to you and do you feel it impacted your trajectory as a band?
JON: It was a real honour to have our music played by John Peel. It’s difficult to overstate what a champion he was for the UK music scene, and now he’s been gone for over twenty years, it’s fair to say that nobody has ever come close to filling his shoes. I liked that he was always keen to promote ‘outsiders’ and didn’t care for ‘hipness’. I think it did impact the trajectory of our music and helped our experimental side.
KAREN: We were in Mark’s van, we turned the radio on but we thought we’d hit play on the CD player to one of our tracks and then John Peel’s voice said “And that was The Neutrinos”. We looked at each other with disbelief and utter joy….it was a moment.
HC: Experimentation can be challenging, what are some of the biggest obstacles you faced in developing and presenting your unique brand of music and performance?
KAREN: The biggest gift to, and enabler of a KlangHaus is if a venue Artistic Director or funder has experienced a show. If they haven’t and we try to describe a) the show and b) justify why we need a four day get-in and to stay set-up in the room for a week, things become challenging convincing folks that it’s a good idea. KlangHaus is not an obvious capitalist’s dream.
The audiences are small and intimate, but let the show run for a month it more than pays for itself and the show is a ‘forever’ experience, not just a tingling for a few days.
Writing and coming up with songs and show content is never the problem, it’s always convincing the venue owners that it’s a good idea to host us. That’s partly why we turn our house into a venue at regular intervals, it’s just easier. We want our primary energy to go towards the art, not the admin, but it is invariably the admin that takes the most time.
HC: You still play conventional live shows on a stage, how do you balance the energy and approach of a traditional rock gig with the immersive nature of KlangHaus?
KAREN: A gig somehow has immediacy, power, there we are on a raised platform with the glorious spotlights making us heroes in the moment. We stand firm, we give you everything. With KlangHaus we emerge and appear next to you with a cup of tea and sing in your ear or leap from a table with a crash of drums next to your mum. We encircle you with films, layers of films, and appear within, through, behind those films. We might brush past you, you’ll feel the vibrations of the piano permeate your bones, you might lie down. Being onstage elevates the energy, creates synergy. Being in a KlangHaus disperses the energy to every corner of the room via your nervous system. They are different, they celebrate music through different channels but they are ultimately the same big dopamine hit of otherness, togetherness, noise and abandon.
HC: With the rise of immersive technologies where do you see the future of live music and performance heading, and how might The Neutrinos continue to innovate in this Space?
JON: On many levels, the music business is in a dire state at the moment. But in other ways, it’s thriving. The rise of immersive technologies is exciting, but really, when it comes down to it, not as exciting as the raw power of guitars, drums and vocals. We all want to feel something after all. And we want connection with other people. It’s how we’re hard wired as humans and technology, while it can help (and admittedly, we’re pretty nerdy), it’s not the tech itself, but people’s ingenuity in using it.
HC: You have mentioned that blending and bending musical styles keeps you engaged challenged and it’s a laugh, what’s the laugh element in your creative process?
MARK: As well as the usual band banter, we quite often have fun with some of our lesser known and very distant tunes, all of which had merit in their time but that now we perhaps view less favourably… Better In Your Head is a particularly good example of that! But also, when we are devising or developing a show we will always ask the question “where’s the funny?” It feels really important to have a range of material and approaches that at least graze a variety of emotions and moods, but humour has to be present to balance it all out.
KAREN: We were rehearsing on King Street in Norwich, the rehearsal room backed onto the river. There was some kind of air vent to the outside. After a stint of playing, we stopped and a voice entered the room through the air vent saying, in a long and exasperated tone, “Give up”… we still laugh uncontrollably when the memory is sparked and the phrase re-enters the room, this time from us.
The Neutrinos new album Last Haus on Earth will be released this autumn with early copies available at the Norwich Arts Centre gig. Previous albums and singles can be heard at https://theneutrinos1.bandcamp.com/
