The Séance is a brilliant radio show that broadcasts out of Brighton. Saint Etienne co-founder, Pete Wiggs, and James ‘Dem’ Papademetrie produce and present it.
The show, running since 2008, is packed full of weird and wonderful sounds that you’ve likely never heard before. In truth, you won’t hear the tracks again unless you keep your ear to the ground. Or go to the fellas’ DJ events. Which is why you should channel The Séance! Follow the show on Mixcloud by clicking here.
I interviewed Pete for City Sound Radio. You can listen to our chat by clicking the image below. Pete speaks about the upcoming Saint Etienne Sunday Session at the British Library, Foxbase Alpha (natch), and his film and TV soundtracking.
Dem spoke with me separately. His appreciation of music, and culture at large, is a pleasure to behold.
The Séance is an aesthetic with unspoken but mutually understood rules that has developed over the eons that we’ve been churning out our oeuvre. Occasionally we’ll test the boundaries of what is considered Séance-worthy but generally we aim to please and surprise each other and the listener with each week’s stash of findings. Some days the curation process is lengthy but on others the number of show-friendly offerings is almost overwhelming.
Pete Wiggs
Dem, please tell us about your alter ego
There’s no alter ego. It’s just my nickname: Dem (pronounced ‘Dm’), as shortened from Demetrie, as shortened from Papademetrie by a generation of the family for interesting but convoluted reasons. Lucy and Heidi bestowed it upon me during maths on a Friday morning in 1979. It was the day after Tubeway Army had been on Top of the Pops. For the most part, only my family have called me James since.
When did you first cross paths with Pete?
We both lived in West London in the 90s and frequented some of the same discos, while alighting by chance upon the same neighbourhoods. I once spotted him in the flat directly opposite mine, above the chip shop on Ladbroke Grove, stood under a dim, naked bulb like an apparition in a Polanski film. Then, in a park in Maida Vale, a few years later one morning when I should have been at work.
All back to Dm’s
Some mutuals who’d piled back post club to a flat I shared in the latter parish pointed out that he lived underneath us. A bit of a mass afters unfurled with alternating shifts happening on the stereo involving some tunes I’d grabbed from upstairs. The only one I can recall is Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children. I was obsessed with it at the time. Discursive small hours music nerdery ensued and became something of a template for us. He, and his pop partner Bob Stanley, DJed in the bar at a messy club night I was co-running with Matt Timms in Shoreditch. Then Pete and I played a night at The Social in the West End. Things moved on – but very much in fits and starts – from there.
Whose idea was it to start the radio show known as The Séance?
The Séance began as an irregular all-day DJing thing we did at the Hotel Pelirocco and then in various pubs in Brighton not long after Pete moved down, a few years after me. This might lend a bit of context to the name. Pete came up with it: curtains drawn against the day, old (and new, to be fair) tunes invoked for the edification of those gathered in a darkened parlour. That kind of thing.
A couple of acquaintances had shows on Radio Reverb, which was Brighton’s sole alternative broadcasting platform then. Securing ourselves a vehicle to indulge our broader and not necessarily pub-friendly musical tastes and inflict them upon the listener seemed a fun and logical next step. The Reverb crew graciously agreed to have us. Slack City and Repeater Radio (and, briefly, others) have broadcast us ever since.
Is it your first foray into radio?
Yeah, other than sitting in on and contributing less than minimally to a show hosted by Everett True, whose Plan B magazine I was writing for at the time. But I trained in radio as a student a many years ago using long-since obsolete kit.
The man who ‘discovered’ Nirvana
Everett True was a leading journalist back in the pre-internet days when the weekly magazines, such as NME and Melody Maker, set the musical agenda.
How do you plan your shows? Do you decide upon a common theme or is it more ad hoc?
There’s barely a plan as such. Apart from our continuous Hallowe’en mixes, the closest we’ve veered to any themes was a mid-show feature we used to alternate with but have since put on ice. We linked three segued tracks by title or subject or whatever.
It’s never been a random gig. We each turn up with a bunch of tunes we want to cram into the hour and try to balance the new with old. This doesn’t always pan out. The only structural constant is that we kick off with something recorded in the previous century (I’ve no idea how we landed on this) followed by a new or pre-release promo-type piece. And we’ll only play something we’re really into. No filler required.
The Séance’s raison d’etre?
The overarching ethos though, if you like, is to always play otherwise underexposed works and artists. We’ve frequently been known to scrub a track from a show in advance, if it’s been spotted or heard on a recent playlist elsewhere. This isn’t a point-scoring exclusivity flex. There’s just a colossal amount of other stuff to put on, which hasn’t been aired elsewhere. As far as any lofty sense of providing a ‘service’ goes, it’s most likely this. It’s as much about self-indulgence to be honest. I scanned our archive recently and, though one says so oneself, I found it to be a pretty respectable repository of the otherwise underappreciated.
The images chosen to accompany each show are quite freaky. I bet you have a lot of fun sourcing those?
The Séance family album is a rich cornucopia of moods and memories.
What inspired your interest in the esoteric and the arcane?
Do you mean culturally or ‘serious/mysterious face’ philosophically? In keeping with your content, let’s go with the former. It’s commonplace for the more obsessive head to go rooting about in the backwaters and margins for their pop thrills. For those of a certain age, it’s a well-trodden trajectory that begins with the migration from Smash Hits to the NME and onwards, all undertaken with a classic adolescent sneer at the mainstream and an accompanying disdain when your heroes ‘go commercial’ or a younger sibling gets into them, before hopefully getting the fuck over yourself by some point in early adulthood.
There’s an equally common back-engineering thing that occurs throughout this journey, seeking out those sub/cultural motherlodes namechecked by your current crushes. From 2-Tone to Trojan. Electro to Kraftwerk. On-U Sound to Black Ark. Foetus to Phillip Glass and Stockhausen. Bowie to Velvets and assorted Germans. From Coil to everything on their sleeve notes. And so, these discursive routes and their respective treasures inevitably lead one into inhabiting what might reasonably considered esoteric. With deeper and deeper diving comes deeper listening, I suppose.
From a young age, I was affected by the moods evoked by a piece. The goosebumps stuff. Noises facilitating glimpses of something as ineffable now as then, and whether another listener got it. All the above can apply as much to literature, art and film, obviously.
I’m far from averse to pop music per se. Lana Del Ray is obviously brilliant. A Let’s Eat Grandma gig last year completely blew me away. But for most of my life this kind of excitement has overwhelmingly emerged from an artistic ‘underground’, if you like, where things get more adventurous. Less confined by commerce or fashion, or songs or compositional structures or whatever. Or even definable music.
Never mind the wilful obscurantism bollocks
Wilful obscurantism is just bollocks really, though isn’t it? DJs refusing to divulge track names or sources and all that risible gatekeeping shit. We’re evidently doing the opposite, one would hope. Forever the excitable late teenagers of limited social aptitude muttering ‘Listen to this! It’s fucking brilliant!’ I was a mixtape evangelist in my distant youth, always pressing a meticulously sequenced C90 upon someone whose mind I aspired to blow and coolly waiting for reactions out of them afterwards. The Séance is just an extension of that, but less cool and less meticulous.
Other projects?
We have a small and sporadic catalogue of our own noises which we’ve contributed to other projects. Among them are three tracks for the book and CD series A Year In The Country. And a recent remix for Academy Of Sun mainman Nick Hudson’s Khevsureti EP, the proceeds of which go to humanitarian organisations in Gaza. Please see his Bandcamp page. We’ll be putting more music together on the other side of Pete’s current Etienne commitments and some monumental works pending at the homestead here. Working to a brief is fun but we’re looking forward to some free-range manoeuvres.
We’ll be called something other than The Séance, though, which just about works for a radio show but which we’ve so far found unsatisfactory as a pretend band.
Tell us about The Séance live events
The first corporeal Séance to feature live acts occurred at the Rose Hill in Brighton on the Winter Solstice of 2023. Penelope Trappes, Pefkin, Agnes Haus, and Sairie (Séance crushes all) did a set each, punctuated by our usual carefully prepared but ultimately haphazard DJing. December magic was invoked and we had a beautiful evening. The following summer saw us hosting Rapid Eye Electronics Ltd., Kemper Norton, YOU&TH, R.dyer, and a graciously returning Agnes Haus. We are beyond psyched with how these went. Interested Séancees are minded to look out for forthcoming gatherings. And do come and say hello if you do attend. As much as we’re preoccupied with the astral, interactions on the physical realm are forever welcome.
Listen to The Séance below
Editor’s note: I have chosen the show above as Dem and Pete selected a track from an album I co-released. Many thanks to them. Read all about the Kontakte LP by clicking the image below.
Sincere thanks to Dem and Pete for their time. Why not support their efforts to expand the musical horizons for all discerning musical lovers and check out their Mixcloud site?
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I’m beyond excited following the announcement about the Spiritualized Pure Phase shows. Check out my appreciation of (one of) my favourite LPs here.
