Making A Statement

The Age

Friday November 2, 2007

Dan Rule

THERE'S no obvious sense of rebellion to the sleepy, lovelorn vignettes that colour Markland Starkie's international debut as Sleeping States. There are no political statements, no youthful sloganeering, no jarring sense of sonic dissonance.

Instead, There the Open Spaces' sparse detuned guitars, delicate field-recorded backdrops and wondrous, soft-focus vocal harmonies deal only in the most economic, simple and gently affecting of narratives.

But in the context of a music world so often bordered and bound by traditionalist form and genre, according to Starkie - the 24-year-old London-based songwriter behind the project - writing such unashamedly personal and minimalist songs is about the biggest statement you can make.

"There isn't actually any bass on any Sleeping States record," he says proudly, as if announcing some great victory. "I've always just used guitars and kind of done things like tune them down so they have an almost baritone quality.

"It was kind of a political move for me," he laughs. "I think that people start a band and they just automatically impose a certain line-up, and then they feel that they have to use that line-up - two guitars, a bass and drums - for every song that they do, and I just feel like 'Why do you need to do that?' "

And the same goes for lyrics. "So many musicians that never really seem to be saying anything, and it just really frustrates me," he sighs. "I've always written in the first or second person in that very conversational style. I think as a listener, it's really important to feel like you're being addressed personally."

Yet, Sleeping States' intimate song-craft was anything but planned. Having grown up playing in indie bands in Stratford on Avon, Starkie never saw himself as a frontman. But after moving to London in his late teens to study, it became something of a necessity.

"I had this full intention of starting another sort of noisy rock band and it just never materialised," he says. "When I moved to London, I really felt this real sense of isolation and dislocation. I didn't really know anyone or know the city."

"I used to go on these walks around London just to kind of find my bearings."

Starkie's wanderings began to manifest themselves in the shape of songs, and with only the crudest of equipment - a guitar, a loop medal and a four-track tape machine - he sketched the initial musical drafts that were to become Sleeping States.

And for Starkie, his songs' strengths are in their imperfections. "I think what's really important is a kind of documentary approach to recording," he says. "I'm not so interested in getting the perfect take; I'm sort of much more interested in something that's slightly more off-the-cuff and captures what really happened in the process."

It's a sensibility that's central to There the Open Spaces. Indeed, rendering Starkie's beautifully tonal guitar arrangements and soaring, pitch-perfect vocal harmonies is a distant, but still detailed din of street and studio sounds - children playing, a car rumbling off, rattles, clicks and tape hiss.

There the Open Spaces is out now through Etch'n'Sketch/Inertia.