(First published in Electronic Sound magazine #94, October 2022)
CIRCLE OF LIFE
Cate Brooks is The Advisory Circle, and the retro synths of new album Full Circle hark back to her earliest days on Ghost Box Records. But, in a rare and candid interview, she admits itās been a āhell of a journeyā to get there
Words: Bob Fischer
āTo be honest, I thought Iād given up doing interviewsā¦ā says Cate Brooks.
To be equally frank, Cateā¦ so did we. Throughout a 20-year career of affecting and emotionally-charged electronica, sheās always been the most elusive and enigmatic of artists. There are no publicity photos. No live sets. No podcast appearances, a skeletal social media presence and barely a word said in print since the turn of the 2010s. Itās all in the music, and her stalwart residencies with two monolithic labels. On Ghost Box Records, she is The Advisory Circle. Stranded amid the faded daydreams and utopian visions of her 1970s childhood, she hides from the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water in a pebble-dashed bungalow with an avocado bathroom suite. For Clay Pipe Music, she makes solo albums with a more organic connection to place. There are the Somerset soundscapes of Shapwick, subsumed by Radiophonics and the tinkles of sinister music boxes, and the immersive sweeps of Maritime, filled with the ālonely beautyā of the shipping forecast and the Suffolk coastline.
Yet here she is, charmingly candid company on a Friday afternoon. We talk for almost an hour and a half, starting with the new album, Full Circle. If itās Ghost Box, it must be The Advisory Circle. And a beautiful collection of melodic instrumentals, split into four distinct parts and clearly harking back to the labelās formative years.
āI was listening to a lot of De Wolfe and KPM library music,ā says Cate. āMany of those records had different suites, especially in the late 1960s: thereād be the āPower Suiteā or the āConstruction Suiteā. So some of that feel came in. And a lot of it was orchestralā¦ so, although the music I was making was synth-based, I think I was quite ambitious in terms of the arrangements.
āAnd I was wondering how I could take the Advisory Circle concept back to where I started. These days itās less about Public Information Films and Schools TV, but I wanted to revisit some of those early sounds and textures. So Full Circle was me thinking about the roots of the whole project. My last couple of albums have been well received, but I think Iād lost a bit of how I felt when I first started. I really wanted to reconnect with those initial feelingsā¦ but in a new way, because I donāt want to make the same records twice.ā
Itās almost 20 years since Jim Jupp and Julian House formed Ghost Box Records to release their own music, recording as Belbury Poly and The Focus Group respectively. Cate ā already established as King Of Woolworths ā was their first recruit, and that opening salvo of releases still crackles with a visceral fizz. This isnāt wistful, warm-hearted nostalgia, itās almost angry. A generation whose lives have been scarred by the Central Office of Information and the residual trauma of worrying, as darkness descends on damp December afternoons, about the spectres lurking in the cubicles of school toilets.
āI still remember the week I first heard about Ghost Box,ā recalls Cate. āBefore theyād even released anything, a friend of mine ā Jon Tye from Lo Recordings ā sent me a link to a beta website that Julian had put together. He said āMy friend is starting a record label and I think youāll like itā. So I got in touch with them, and Jim sent me a few songs from his first album, The Willows. I remember standing in Mansfield bus station ā the worst bus station in the world ā on the way to visit my mum, playing them on my headphones and thinking āThis is amazingā¦ I want to be part of thisā.
āAnd when I made the first Advisory Circle EP, Mind How You Go, we were selling our house. So I took a couple of synths over to the in-laws who gave me their kitchen to work in! I remember next doorās cat coming in a lot. And when I listen to it now, I can see those images. Even how the weather was: quite warm, but really wet. All this random shit that wouldnāt mean anything to anyone else.
āAlthough my life now is totally different to how it was then. For obvious reasonsā¦ā
She doesnāt want the subject, she says, to be āthe elephant in the roomā. Until last year, in public at least, Cate was Jon Brooks ā an outwardly male artist in a musical field awash with Y chromosomes. In August 2021, she put a life-changing post on Instagram: āMy close friends and family now know me as Cate. My pronouns are she/her. Life is too short to be someone weāre just notā¦ā
A nerve-racking day, Iām guessing?
āOh God, of course it was!ā she laughs. āBut it had got to the point where I was feeling disingenuous, and I donāt like being dishonest with anyone ā even if I donāt know them. Iād been doing The Advisory Circle for a long time, and I almost felt like I was betraying myself. I was being steered towards a certain image, and that never felt right to me. So on the day I came out to everyone, a huge weight was lifted. It was me saying, āThis is authenticity. This is me being honest about where my life is, and who I amā. It wasnāt up for discussion, and I think people picked up on that. And from what I know, they were honoured to be treated with the honesty they deserved. Which was really lovely for me.ā
When did she first begin, I wonder, to question her birth gender?
āI was about five. Certainly pre-school. But the world was very different then, so it was kind of suppressed. There was no support, and people werenāt clued up.
āItās better now, Iām pleased to say. Iāve been with my partner for over 20 years, and itās never been a shock to her! My adopted family are wonderful. And the reason I can deal with this and be so confident is that they just didnāt have a problem with it. I told my partner from the first week we got together that there were some gender identity issues going on, and sheās always been really encouraging. She just wants me to be happy.
āSo Iām proud of finding the strength to make that change. And hopefully it might also make people think a little bit. I might be the first transgender person they know. And Iām not an activist, thatās just not my wayā¦ but from what Iāve been told, Iāve made certain family members challenge their own thoughts and how they perceive gender issues. And thatās really cool. Itās a quiet activism, really.ā
And does making music as Cate feel different to making music as Jon? She pauses for thought.
āIf anything, Iām able to express my emotions more, and put them into context,ā she says. āI was doing the same thing before, because the music was an outlet that I didnāt have in real life. But it just feels better now. The first thing I released as Cate was a little Bandcamp album called Chalk Sketchesā¦ a very stripped-back album, mainly piano and organ, and it was very cathartic to do.ā
Iāve listened to Chalk Sketches on solitary, late-night dog walks through my local woods, the perfect setting for a back catalogue steeped in the crepuscular. Vintage synths, upright school pianos, fizzling field recordingsā¦ Cate Brooks albums combine musical eclecticism with a distinctly melancholy stillness. Itās the result of a decidedly bittersweet childhood.
āMy dad was a professional jazz player,ā she reveals. āJack Brooks. A guitarist mainly, and he played with some quite prestigious artists. Johnny Dankworth and Tubby Hayes, people like that. I grew up near Oxford, and in the Home Counties all the jazzers know each other, so everyone was round our house at the weekends. He was never pushy, but he figured that I really liked instruments and recordings. So, when I was four, he gave me a cassette recorder and I started to make tapes. I remember one of my dadās friends, a jazz drummer, turning up and hearing me play a half-sized drumkit. And he said āYou know what? Heās better than some of the drummers Iāve had in my band!ā
āJazz was a huge thing for me, and still is. But also whatever was happening in the charts, because Iāve always loved pop music, too. I really liked Robin Scottā¦ M. And Roxy Music, and Blondie. āHeart Of Glassā was probably one of the first times I started to think about synths. It blew my mind.ā
Synaesthesia played a part, too. Since childhood, Cate has āseenā music as colours and shapes.
āāSugar Sugarā by The Archies was still a popular song on Radio 2 when I was a kid,ā she recalls. āAnd the main melody in that song ā played on a fuzzy marimba with distortion ā produced the most intense green lozenge shape in my brain.
āSo music gave me a real boost, and my dad was my best friend. He was so cool and I loved him. But he died when I was nine. After that, I went into my own world. I was very solitary, quite an unhappy kid. You know some kids go to the bottom of the garden and build castles? I took my tape recorder out to record sounds, then listened back to them and made collages. I got lost in a whole world of recording.ā
That immersion, I suggest, is a defining characteristic of introverted kids. When 1980s episodes of Doctor Who ended, I would immediately write down the plot so I could revisit it all in my bedroom later. Obsessing over the tiny details. The little things in life that made me happy.
āIāll tell you a funny story,ā she says. āThis morning, my other half was talking about Bernard Cribbins, and I said āWhen I had a train set as a kid, it came with a flexi-discā. And I remembered it was Bernard Cribbins talking about being two inches tall, and getting squashed by a Pekinese. So I went on Youtube, found it, and I was word perfect! I havenāt heard it since I was about six.
āBecause sweet and sour things happened throughout my childhood, that made me want to bubblewrap the nice things. I loved my gran, and spending time with her, so my album 52 was about her house. And my dadā¦ I had eight years with him, and those memories are so precious. And obviously we didnāt have ways of documenting them at the time. There were no digital phones or cameras. But those things had to be preserved somehow, and our brains are very good at holding onto the things we want them to.ā
Itās a sense of yearning nostalgia that comes over strongly in the music, I tell her. It reaches out across the decades, a lonely 1970s kid putting an arm around the shoulders of troubled 21st century adults. Her music has helped me through some very, very difficult times. Shapwick, in particular, is an album I associate entirely with the positive recovery from serious mental turmoil. God, itās partly responsible for that recovery. Cate seems touched.
āThatās what life should be ā doing good things for other people,ā she says. āIt doesnāt matter what youāve lived through, if that stuff comes out in the art you make then youāre turning it into a positive and that counteracts the pain youāve had.
āIām really glad it helped you. If I wasnāt a musician, Iād be a therapist. And Iāve been through therapy twice. I think you can heal through music, and thatās a huge thing for me. An honour. To offer just an arm of support, even though itās not personal. If you can do that, isnāt that an amazing thing?ā
Had she been aware, I wonder, of her reputation as an enigma?
āItās something Iāve been told, but Iāve never really thought about it,ā she says. āI donāt jump up and down and try to make myself more popular. Iām more about making the music and letting that that speak for itself. I suppose thatās given me a bit of mystery, but itās never been engineered.ā
Nevertheless, that 2021 transition has been a turning point for her social life.
āEven before lockdown, I was avoiding being sociable,ā she recalls. āTo the point where people who knew me would say āOh wellā¦ theyāre just shy or socially awkwardā. But no. Thatās not the way it is. When I came out to my family, we started going out again, and the whole world felt very different. Any excuse now to get together for a partyā¦ Iām there. Being born the wrong gender, and knowing it from a very early age, causes a lot of problems. It makes you very withdrawn, and you internalise things.
āGoing to family weddings, for example. In my previous life, Iād be expected to turn up in a suit and do the whole masculine thing. Which is fine if thatās what you do! But it always felt dreadful to me. I wanted to be in the fanciest frock going. I love my clothes, especially vintage stuff, so it was really getting me down. But in May this year, I went to the first wedding Iāve ever really enjoyed in my life. I had the best time! Itās made such a massive difference.ā
Itās been a privilege talking, I tell her. I hadnāt known what to expect from the interview, and would have been happy with a gentle, round-the-houses chat about Full Circle. But I canāt thank her enough for opening up in this way. Itās been an education and an honour. Itās late on Friday afternoon now, and she modestly accepts the compliment.
āItās life,ā she says. āYou just have to experience things, and they make you stronger. Iām very resilient, and a lot of that goes into my music. People say āYour music is really emotionalāā¦ well, I wonder why.
āBut I wouldnāt change anything. Itās been a hell of a journeyā.
Full Circle is available here:
https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/full-circle-129/
Electronic Sound ā āthe house magazine for plugged in people everywhereā ā is published monthly, and available here:
https://electronicsound.co.uk/
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