Name: The Routes
Current members: Chris Jack (guitar, bass, percussion), Bryan Styles (drums, percussion), Toru Nishimuta (bass)
Interviewee: Chris Jack
Current release: The Routes's new album Surfin' Pleasures, a collection of surf rock arrangements of Joy Division songs, is out via Topsy Turvy.

If you enjoyed this The Routes interview and would like to know more about the band and their music, visit Chris Jack's official Instagram. The group are also on Facebook.

For a deeper dive, read our The Routes conversation about Kraftwerk and their album The Twang Machine.



Joy Division aren't exactly the first band I'd have thought of for an album of surf rock cover versions – what sparked the idea?

For me they were the perfect candidate. They are a band I have listened to since my teens, and a band whose music I could never get bored of. The lead guitar and bass melodies are simple, and stick in your head note for note.

Our drummer Bryan took a little bit more convincing, as he considered playing around with the music of Joy Division as being sacrilege. Once we laid down a few rough songs, he was persuaded.

Time-wise, Joy Division followed right in the footsteps of Kraftwerk, with a short overlap. And after the end of both bands, members would even work with each other on projects. What is your personal connection to this phase in musical history – and what makes it so fruitful for you?

For me personally the connection is my childhood. I have an older brother. He was always really into music, and he was an avid reader of music magazines in the 80s, as well as an avid radio listener. We would fight constantly, but when he went out, I’d watch his videos and listen to his records.

He had a VHS tape of Joy Division called Here Are The Young Men. I remember watching that as well as the music video to Love Will Tear Us Apart which was on one of many videos of stuff that he had taped off the TV.



He also had a VHS video of Buzzcocks called Auf Wiedersehen (we also recorded a surf album of Buzzcocks tunes called Reverberation Addict). He would tape stuff of the radio. I would do the same.



When I was about 9 or 10 years old I recorded Kraftwerk's “Showroom Dummies” from the radio. It really blew my mind, as I had heard nothing like it before. That was my first exposure to Kraftwerk.

So, if anything all this music holds fond memories of simpler times.

The choice of songs for this album is interesting and not a carbon copy of a typical Joy Division Best Of. What guides your decisions in this regard?

Arranging songs as surf numbers isn’t actually very easy. Some songs fall into place, some take a bit of wrangling, and some just don’t work at all.

I think the selection is partly down to the songs and melodies that I like best, but also partly down to stuff I can hear as a surf song in my head before I go about making it.

There is a fragile balance between creating your own, personal versions of a beloved song and staying true to the original. How did you approach that for this record?

The drummer Bryan and I just play around with the songs, trial and error, until they sound interesting to ourselves. We bounce a lot of ideas back and forth, and suggest different things to each other.

We try to avoid making direct covers, as it would just end up sounding like karaoke backing tracks, or 100 yen shop background music. My thinking is always something like “What would this song sound like if a 60s surf band (Surfaris, Dick Dale, Ventures) were to play it”.

I think it always ends up sounding like us in the end, and not like the original song, and not like the band I imagined performing it.

Tell me about how you go from songs with lyrics to instrumental versions – including the arrangement and especially with regards to transferring the vocal melody?

We pick melodies from all over the songs. They are just melodic or rhythmic hints that we play around with. Sometimes the songs or the vocal melodies themselves are monotonous, so we’ll add notes or put in key changes to make the songs work better as instrumental songs.

On this album “Passover,” “Transmission,” “Digital” and many more of the songs change key for the verses or choruses.



At their core, these are very simple, straight-forward songs. Was this project easier or harder than the Buzzcocks and Kraftwerk ones, where the original arrangements were a lot more colourful?

Each project has been completely different. Kraftwerk was the easiest because we originally made it for our own pleasure, with no plan to release it. It was like being kids working on an art project. It was really enjoyable, and the arrangement ideas just flowed really quick as we got really carried away doing it.

Buzzcocks and Joy Division are very different to Kraftwerk in terms of composition. Buzzcocks made great pop songs with tons of melody to pull from, but too much melody and speed to the point that some songs were physically quite hard to play as instrumentals. “Orgasm Addict” and “Promises” being good examples.



Joy Division wasn’t as physically hard to play, but the arrangements were hard as there is less to pull from (their music being quite cold and minimal).

After the Routes have played them, these songs don't sound nearly as dark and depressive. Part of that is of course simply down to your approach. But do you feel as though that darkness or lightness, in general, is not so much in the songs as in the musicians playing them?

Of course with Joy Divison a big part of the “darkness” is the lyrics and haunting voice of Ian Curtis.

I do also think with Joy Division the cold production and the minimalism in terms of instrumentation played a huge part of making the dark atmosphere of the music.

Your portfolio of cover versions, especially after this release, is remarkably diverse. Are there songs, nonetheless, which simply did not work in a Routes arrangement?

There have been a few songs that I tried to arrange that just sounded weird and ended up being abandoned.

As far as the stuff we have released to date, I was happy enough at the time to let them out into the wild, and I don’t listen to anything with regrets.