A couple of weeks ago I wrote a review of a curious record named OMNIPOP, by Southend-on-Sea’s The Tumbledryer Babies. Although I’d seen the name around at various times over the last decade or so (I lived in Southend pretty much all my life until my wife, our son, and I moved to Scotland in December) it wasn’t until I stumbled upon the album via Bandcamp’s Discover feature that I actually heard a single note.
It goes without saying that I really liked what I heard. You can read the review here, but the gist is that I thought it was great fun and weirdly moving at the same time. Anyway, there’s barely any information out there about the band (or one-man band) also known as Andrew Moore, so I was really keen to reach out and attempt to redress the balance a little. Unfortunately it turns out that if you Google the band name, you tend to get pages and pages of news coverage from 2019 about a 26-year-old imbecile that was jailed for putting a baby inside a tumble dryer and turning it on. Just to clarify: the two are not linked. So yeah, other than the Bandcamp page and an article or two from a few years ago, there’s not much stuff out there to go on.
With such a vast body of work – upwards of thirty-odd (odd) albums and counting – Andrew Moore is one of the most interesting, prolific, self-deprecating, and unique talents that Essex has to offer. At the moment he’s gearing up to release a book of assorted Tumbledryer Babies lyrics, Making it up as I go, which you can pre-order here – so I thought that now would be an excellent opportunity to email him loads of meandering questions about what he does, why he does it, and how he does it. Fortunately he was keen to humour me, and it’s been a real pleasure putting this piece together.
(Note: as always, my interminable questions are presented in bold, and Andrew’s responses in plain text.)
• There’s surprisingly little information about you online. I mean, I’ve been aware of you in some form for quite a while – probably through hanging around the fringes of the music scene in Southend for over a decade – but I’d never heard your stuff until recently. Could you give a little background on the Tumbledryer Babies?
There’s not much information out there probably because I am a poor publicist and I give up easily. I’d describe myself as a maudlin one man pop group which I started in 2007 because I wanted to write my own songs. Before that, I’d always been in bands but never really brought songs to the table for fear of them being ragged on. I decided to go under ‘The Tumbledryer Babies’ rather than my own name because I had intended for it to be a group, where I was the principal songwriter, but after initially struggling to find anyone who’d get on board I decided to start doing it by myself. I was skint and I couldn’t afford to go into a studio to record, so I didn’t do anything about my new solo project until my friend Greg helped me record a song at his house so I had something to put on my myspace page. From there I started playing live, just me and my bass guitar, and it went over quite well, so I kept doing it. I was an absolute bundle of nerves on stage, something that’s never really gone away for me when I’m up there alone, and what with all that fear and me forgetting my words I think it was a bit of a freak show in the early days. After maybe six months of playing live I managed to get a digital 8-track, made an album as a way of teaching myself how to use the thing, and never stopped. I continued to play live for 11 years, and in that time opened for some good bands like The Lovely Eggs and Calvin Johnson, and I played at SXSW once, after I’d made a 7” with Kramer (Galaxie 500, Low, Half Japanese, Ween) and an EP with Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers, Daniel Johnston, Meat Puppets). After a couple of years it did become a three-piece for a while, but it turns out it’s easier to do whatever you want when it’s just you, so I went back to playing solo. In later years I replaced my bass with a Suzuki Omnichord and eventually just stayed at home making albums rather than gigging – I’m almost two years into a live hiatus at the moment.
• You released a ten-year retrospective a couple of years back. Not many artists stick with making music for anywhere near that long – especially now when everything has to be immediate. You always see them floating about – it’s the same band but they’ve changed their name and added a synth player. I guess what I’m trying to say is why do you do it? There’s a track on Pinko called ‘Stop/Start’ that I think kind of talks about this. I could be wrong…
I don’t really know why I keep doing it, but I feel like I have to in order to have some tangible evidence that I’ve kept myself busy creatively. Practicing an instrument, rehearsing songs and eventually putting out something polished and impressive is all well and good, but I often struggle with the concept of deferred gratification and I don’t have that kind of patience. If I had a more definite sound I wanted to achieve, I probably would’ve binned it off and started something new, but I don’t feel particularly stifled by The Tumbledryer Babies. Trying new things under the same moniker still feels true enough to the same project. I mean, maybe I should’ve just gone under my own name instead of such a stupid band name, but it’s too late now. I am also in a synth duo called Warm Boys, which allows me to collaborate with my far more knowledgeable bandmate Richard and do stuff I wouldn’t think to try under the Tumbledryer name, so I’m not adverse to a side hustle. You mentioned my song ‘Stop/Start’, which probably sums up my solo efforts best – it’s about how I like to tell myself I only make music to satisfy my own artistic itch, but nevertheless am on a permanent downer because no one cares. I should’ve just written a diary.
• How did you get into making music in the first place? Were there any specific artists that you idolised when you were younger? I mean, I can hear more obvious parallels with people like Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Darren Hayman, and Ian Dury but there’s also that restlessness of early Beck, or Weezer. Weirdos I guess. Funnily enough, ‘I Think We Might Be Weirdos’ also comes across like a backstreet Nine Inch Nails…
I got into making music as a thing to do with my friends. When I was high school I spent my evenings and weekends at my friend Nick’s house where we started a band and sat smoking and drinking and playing our songs on our guitars. That was how I spent my spare time as a teen, and by the time I was an adult I had no other hobbies so just carried on making music. In terms of pop idols, I was maybe 10 years old when I started sneaking cassettes and CD singles from my older brother’s bedroom, and that gave me access to Oasis, who I absolutely loved. But then I found my dad’s old Aladdin SaneLP at my nan’s house and that changed everything. I instantly became obsessed with David Bowie and remain so to this day. That’s who I idolised. Even though he probably isn’t an obvious stylistic influence on my music, his own approach, his ability to think beyond his genre and wear current influences on his sleeve, that blew my mind. Most of my favourite music I’ve arrived at via David Bowie, be it Devo or Daniel Johnston or Florence Foster Jenkins or Kraftwerk or Iggy Pop. And now that you mention it, Pulp is an influence I do see in my music. Recently, whilst reacquainting myself with their song TV Movie for my recent covers album, I listened to This Is Hardcore front to back for the first time in about 20 years and it’s a masterpiece – it’s melodic, catchy, sensitive, weird, poppy, baroque, sleazy, funny… that perfect mix of erudite Top 40 Britpop and Scott Walker sensibility that Pulp did better than anyone. So I do strive for Pulp I suppose, at least on my more recent albums anyway. When I started writing my own songs I was listening to Scout Niblett, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and The Crystals, and I think all of those influences can be spotted in my music to this day. Also, when I first started out I’d never heard of Young Marble Giants, so I was gutted when I first heard Colossal Youth… there I was, foolishly thinking I was maybe doing something new, only to find out someone else was doing it much better than I was, 25 years previously.
• There are 36 releases on your Bandcamp. It’s kind of Neil Young levels of output. I was wondering whether quantity is something you think about when you’re making stuff. Is there a self-imposed pressure to always be making another album, or is it just a natural pattern you have fallen into? Are you waiting around for ideas to strike or always working away?
Well, as a Neil Young fan, quantity is definitely something I think about. I love his archival nature. When I discovered R. Stevie Moore and his colossal back catalogue of over 400 albums, I was in awe. I like the idea of leaving an enormous back catalogue of music when I die, and when I got into R. Stevie Moore I fancied a crack at that for myself, although I’ve got some serious catching up to do. My initial intention was to release all my home recordings as albums but treat them as demos, then separate the wheat from the chaff and every so often make superior studio recordings of the best songs. That was the idea behind my EP Wheat – I gathered a few songs that I thought were my strongest and went to Austin to record them with Paul Leary. Rather than keep my demos on a hard drive somewhere, I find it more satisfying to group them into an album, give that a name and a cover, and publish it. I do enjoy that side of it almost as much as making the music. But it really is quantity over quality, what you might call ‘stream of consciousness’ if you were being polite, and again, to me it’s like a diary, a way of getting my thoughts out to stop me from exploding.
The work rate is self imposed to the point where it has become a pattern I’ve fallen into. I’ve done the ‘RPM Challenge’ (where you write and record an entire album in February) every year since 2010, so I’ve fallen into the habit of unnecessarily rushing through the process with arbitrary deadlines hanging over me for added stress. To spin it more positively, at least I go into each Spring with an album’s worth of new material.
As for my writing process, I usually keep a notepad and pen on me which I use to write down nice phrases I hear or read or come up with, so between that notepad and the notes app on my phone, I’m always drowning in rhyming couplets and titles. I get a little idea like that, a couple of lines or two words that rhyme, and I just write the song as I record it. I don’t have a good ear for melody so I rarely come up with anything beyond the words on the page before I sit down to record a song. I often just fiddle around with a beat on my 808 reissue or a few notes on my bass or Omnichord and then just force it until it’s finished.
• One thing that I can’t get my head around – bearing in mind I have one child under two – is how you can be so prolific with two kids. I made a comment in my review of OMNIPOP where I said it sounds like you record in the dead of night… but seriously, how do you find time to make music?
Again, it’s just having fallen into that routine I suppose. When I first met my wife I was recording for a couple of hours once or twice a week, so it’s all she and consequently our children have ever known of me. I don’t have any hobbies outside of making music, so to them it’s probably the equivalent of me having a season ticket at Roots Hall or going to the gym or the allotment or whatever. That said, I do mostly record at night, because when I’m not at work I prefer hanging out with my family when I can. It’s funny you should mention that in your review, because when I first started recording on my little digital 8-track I lived in a council flat surrounded on all sides, so I recorded vocals in hushed tones in my bedroom for fear of irking my scary neighbours. It was a combination of that and being very nervous about singing on stage. Where I live now, we use the box room as a home studio, so the need to keep the noise down isn’t so pressing, but it has sort of stuck and I do it anyway. The way I sing is a reflection of my meek personality I think, and it would feel inauthentic to do it any other way.
• How do you tend to write? Looking at pictures on your Instagram, you’ve got a lot of cool synths, old drum machines and stuff like that. Is there a method you tend to follow?
When I first started writing songs I was very anti-embellishment to the point where my first couple of albums don’t have any guitar parts on, just a bass, the on-board drum pads from a toy keyboard, and some very occasional notes from that same keyboard. I wouldn’t even repeat choruses or write intros or have instrumental passages between verses. I started to feel the limitations of that and gradually began using more instruments as a way of helping me write differently. When my wife and I moved in together we had to find space for a tonne of tatty instruments and effects pedals we’d each accumulated separately over the years (between us we’ve got various chord organs and synthesizers and drum machines and about 10 different Stylophones), and all these old unfamiliar machines, with their own sound and their own charm, I find to be good starting points for writing outside of my comfort zone. For example, with chord progressions; I can’t really play any instruments apart from rudimentary guitar and bass, but it doesn’t stop me trying. If I start with the bass part or guitar part, it will just end up with the same Chantels chord progression that I have to consciously try to get away from, so starting with an instrument I’m not comfortable with helps me come up with something new, whether it is a drum machine I don’t know how to program or a synth I can’t work through an unruly effects pedal. Sometimes I use my set of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategy cards, and on my lockdown album All Out Of Distractions I even used the old ‘tune your guitar in a weird way’ trick to come up with something different.
• Is there an album of yours that you’re particularly fond of? With so much stuff out there it’s difficult to know where’s a good place to start. Excluding It’s All For You, is there an album or two that seem like an ideal gateway? That’s one of the things I really liked about OMNIPOP actually – that I guess it’s kind of low stakes and serves as a good introduction…
Yeah, that is probably a good introduction because it’s me attempting pure pop music and getting it slightly wrong, which is a pretty good summation of my back catalogue. I think a good primer for my early material is the compilation Near Misses: 2008-2011. It’s hard for me to say how I feel about my albums because I only get a handle on whether they’re good or bad retrospectively… it’s one of the down sides of rushing them out; you think it’s good enough and upload it, give it a couple of weeks, listen again with fresh ears and think, “oh, maybe I should’ve dropped that song” or, “that hi hat is too loud” or whatever. Personally I think my best albums are Signs That We’re Alive(2015) which is a bit more powerpop than most of my other albums and only has one bad song on it, and my recent album Pinko which has got some pretty good songs on it. Songs From The Skies(2010) is a total drunken lazy mess of an album about outer space – I was reading about astronomy at the time, and was in a bit of a bad way mentally. It’s poorly recorded, but it feels very true to the person I was at that time. Probably one for the heads rather than a gateway.
• Can you elaborate on the book you’ve put together? It’s interesting that you talk about writing and recording being like a diary. Is the book everything you’ve put out, or choice cuts? Also, I quite like the artwork. Reminds me a bit of Pete Fowler’s Super Furries stuff…
I’m really happy with the artwork. It’s by Paul Stride-Noble, who people will know as the drummer from Beat Glider and several other bands from that scene. You’ll know his artwork if you’ve ever been in the Southend craft beer emporium Craftwerk. We got him to do the first Warm Boys album cover, and he’s doing the second album too. He’s great. I like those covers you only seem to see on old pulpy novels and paperback philosophy from the 60s, and I wanted the book to look like that. I gave him that really loose brief and his first stab at it is what you see on the finished article, he nailed it first time.
The content of the book is selected lyrics, so it isn’t comprehensive, but it’s most of the best stuff from my first album up to now. I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I’ve never come up with a good enough idea for a novel (I think I’m a bit of a frustrated writer, I’m a lot more self-conscious about writing prose than writing songs) and I’ve been meaning to put something out for a couple of years now in accordance with the increasing regularity of existential crises and thoughts about my own mortality. I pushed myself into doing the lyrics book just in case I don’t manage to write anything else before I die.
• Do you still record everything on the 8 track as opposed to Cubase or Logic etc? It’s quite interesting actually, because there is a tendency to just add track after track if you haven’t got that limit there. I mean, I used to have a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder and I’m constantly trying to get back to the spirit of things I made on that when I was 20. It was all terrible of course, but I think my ideas got a lot less expansive once I had all the tracks and effects to play with on the Mac…
Since my album Dum Dum I’ve used GarageBand on a computer, apart from when I accidentally poured a beer into my macbook and whilst it was in the shop I dug out my 8-track and recorded Cry Along With The Tumbledryer Babies on it. For the most part I’ve always liked the limitations of the 8-track – I never worked out how to use the virtual tracks or anything, so I just used no more than 6 tracks, bounced them to stereo, exported, erased, and started the next song. That was the only limitation I didn’t like, that because I only had the on-board memory, I had to erase each song once it was finished to make space for the next one. I’ve since bought a bigger memory card for it, but it means I have none of the stems from the recordings I made between 2008-2013 and therefore no scope for remixing the old stuff. I really like the intuitive nature of GarageBand, although I agree with you that you get spoilt for choice with computers, and that becomes a limitation in itself. My antidote to that is just not overthinking it, and those arbitrary deadlines I work to really help me draw a line under a song long before I overdo it. I got a Yamaha MT50 4-track cassette recorder at a boot sale about five years ago, one day I’ll make an album on that.
Cheers to Andrew for agreeing to do this and taking the time to give such interesting, detailed responses. Check out The Tumbledryer Babies on Bandcamp, Twitter and Instagram.
I stood up & I said yeah 
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