The Glasshouse

Frankie Jobling: So we’ve been asking everyone that comes onto the podcast if there’s like a sound that they associate with Newcastle.

Matt: I live in like North Shields, and quite often from my house you can hear the foghorns from the ferries and the ships going down the Tyne. So that’s a big thing for me.
Sam: When you’re going through town and Newcastle playing at home, yes, and something happens and you hear that roar all around the city That’s pretty magical. Satisfying, yeah. Yeah.
Frankie: Hello and welcome to Music Lives Here, the podcast from The Glasshouse which celebrates the eclectic and endlessly versatile music scene here in Newcastle and Gateshead. I’m Frankie Jobling, and in each episode it’s my pleasure to invite artists from all genres to share the storeys behind their relationship with music. And their connection to the North East. Today I’m here with frontman Matt Baty and guitarist Sam Grant of the legendary white-knuckle noise-rock stoner metal band from here in Newcastle, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. So you want to just tell us why you’re here today?

Matt: Lovely sunny day. I think we’re gonna have a lovely chat about the band and Newcastle and how wonderful it is. Yeah, is it a cafe? Yes, can I get a coffee?

Frankie: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we have just grabbed a coffee in the cafe and we’re heading down to the Foyle Music Centre to grab a quiet little practice room and get chatting to the lads. Born from a joke name in the pub, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are a 5-piece Newcastle-based rock group that’s now an institution. A chest-beating, battle-crying, psychedelic stoner doom metal band with a little stage-side camp pantomime and a lot of noise. They’ve picked up a huge following and played stages around the world to crowds of thousands. Their debut, Feed the Rats, was released in 2017, and 4 albums later, Death Ridiculous launched in 2025. They’ve consistently picked up hype as one of the most entertaining, raw, and intensely joyous bands to see live, and I’m so excited to get started. Okay, cool. So Sam and Matt, welcome to Music Lives here at the podcast for The Glasshouse.

Sam: Hello.
Frankie: It’s good to see you both. I feel like we’ve met briefly before in Blank Studios, which you’re co-founder of?

Sam: Yeah, so we built Blank. We built the most recent one in 2018, or 2016 to 2018. We were in a place at Stepney Bank before that, many, many years before, but yeah.

Frankie: Lush. So, it’s a difficult sound to pin down. Some people have tried to label you as a political metal band and you’ve kind of rejected that in place of a psychological one and I want to dive into that a bit, but first I’ve got a list of ways that you’ve been described by critics written down in front of me here, so I’m going to read out a few and is it alright if you just tell me your thoughts?

Matt: Go on then.
Frankie: Yeah.
Matt: We’ve got a wide, wide range of opinions.
Frankie: So I’ll read through and see what you think. So, “The sound of grimy darkness being warped via hammer and tongue, orchestrated chaos that’s marinated in malaise and fried with distortion.” It’s referring to your latest album, “Death Ridiculous,” – “sounds like it’s been resting uncomfortably beneath a sweat-stained mattress for the last 30 years.” “Therapy through noise”, and then specifically Matt, “half naked Danny DeVito deranged penguin”. So what do you make of those? Are they fair?

Matt: Was that, was that a lot of them joined together?

Frankie: It was like, yeah, separate ones.

Matt: Yeah, because it kind of sounded good, a little bit frightening. I specifically remember the Danny DeVito one. That one, yeah, I’m gonna— I mean, it’s fine, isn’t it? I’ve tried to change that. I’ve grown a moustache since then, you know, and that might be why. I’m trying to step away from the— but to be honest, like, you know, if there was gonna be like a film made about my life, I think I would— I’d be happy with Danny DeVito playing the part of me.

Frankie: He’s a bit of a legend.

Sam: Yes, he’s an A-list. Exactly.

Frankie: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: Exactly. So yeah, I think I’m happy with all of that.

Frankie: Yeah, what about you, Sam?

Sam: To be honest, I— it goes over my head. I like to read the YouTube comments that call us all a bunch of dads that need picking up. Or the YouTube— if you mine those comments, it’s far more enjoyable. It’s predominantly abusive and disparaging, but there’s fun there. There’s fun in that.

Frankie: Yeah, definitely amazing. I might have a little read of them after this. So on this podcast, it’s really all about the music and most importantly why the music matters to you guys. So a bit of a broad question, but what does music mean to you both?

Sam: I’ll go serious here. It’s cliché, but it’s expression, it’s language. I know myself, Matt, and Jonny, we grew up together in Richmond, went to school together. And we communicate with each other and express through music in a way that I guess levels us psychologically, levels us emotionally. And it, I think, for the whole band, music has been and always will be, I mean, you said it earlier, like a form of therapy really. It’s never been a, a route to a broader means, like any sort of like commercial ideas or I guess any aspiration towards things outside of the self. Music’s always just been this sharing personal process.

Frankie: Yeah, that’s lush. It seems like that’s what your audiences get from it as well, which is nice.

Sam: I think so. I like, I know when we play, I really enjoy playing and getting into this flow state where there’s the 5 of us are just in this moment together. And I don’t mean it like to dismiss an audience, but there could be no one there and I wouldn’t, I would be indifferent. Or there could be like 2,000, 3,000 people there and it kind of, there’s an irrelevance when we do what we do in terms of the feeling of the music. And that’s pretty— that feels really special.

I think that’s why there’s so much longevity in our band. We’ve gone for so long because there’s… We’re quite flippant in that we’ll just do it because it’s just lush. It just, yeah, works for us. And that’s— as long as that happens, that’s fine.

Frankie: Yeah, that’s what it’s about. Yeah, it’s lush. What about you, Matt?

Matt: Yeah, that’s true. However, like, a few years ago, like, because we used to when it was— we weren’t touring as excessively as we are now. We used to get quite loose before we played, and sometimes, you know, there would be nights that, you know, you wake up the next morning and barely remember the performance. You had a sense of whether it was a good one or a bad one or whatever, but specific moments were hard to define. It was like, as we started touring more, I realised that, you know, the drinking and the, you know, the heavier schedule, they weren’t really compatible with each other. So I started dialling back the drink. For a long time, you know, I was doing shows completely sober. And at that moment, there are— I absolutely agree with what Sam said in terms of like, you know, finding that space in that pocket where you’re kind of so wrapped up in the music on stage that, the rest of the world seemingly dissipates. But there are moments now, which I think comes from being a lot more in control, I suppose, on stage in terms of like, you’re a bit more lucid because you haven’t been drinking so much and like you see people’s expressions and like you catch like, you know, there’s occasions, but not that I’m like, because that would be really intense if I was like staring out at the audience trying to make eye contact with people. But there are these fleeting moments throughout a performance where you do capture someone’s emotion, I guess, and you recognise that almost in each other, and that’s all through the music and through the performance, and like those moments are like really important and really, really special to me. So yeah.

Frankie: That’s lush, yeah. It’s like connection already.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Frankie: So you’ve kind of talked a little bit about playing live together then. I know you’ve played here a couple of times. So could you maybe talk a little bit about what music means to you here in this venue?

Sam: I really— I’ve got a long history with before when it was the Sage as it was, now The Glasshouse. Really positive history where with the band we’ve had 2 album launches. Was it both album launches? Maybe it was one. Anyway, we’ve played here in Hall 2 twice. Both shows were amazing. I mean, like, technically speaking, and I’m from a studio background, I do tend to keep an eye on the technical side of stuff. Like, the Sage Gateshead, or The Glasshouse now, is amazing for what it provides in terms of the sound. Like, the onstage sound is amazing, the lighting’s amazing, the acoustics of the space are amazing. And then I have another project that I do occasionally called Rubber-O, and I had a, I don’t know what you call it now, but it was basically working with The Glasshouse and I had access to the Hall 2 to rehearse the first Rubber-O album with the live band. And being given opportunities like that, that’s kind of exceptional. And it’s unparalleled in terms of the benefit it offers and did offer for me.

Frankie: Yeah, great. So I really want to talk more about The Glasshouse, but first I kind of want to hear about you both and the band and your relationship to music. So I thought we could talk about like your motivation and inspirations. Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs are difficult to pin down. They’ve got a sort of Black Sabbath thing going on crossed with post-punk Idles flair, a sludgy, riffy, white-knuckle kind of noise madness that’s heightened by the theatrical screaming and headbanging and belly rubbing performance by Matt on stage. It’s a thick layered patchwork of sweaty complexity. I want to know where a sound like that comes from and how they keep managing to make it sound both ’90s nostalgic and completely fresh.

Matt: Like, you know, we’ve been playing music together, especially me, Sam, and Johnny, since we were, what, like 16 years old?

Sam: Yeah.

Matt: And now we’re old. So, you know, it’s, it’s just something we’ve, we’ve always done as a way of you know, interacting with each other, socialising with each other, expressing to each other. And that’s at the core of it, really. And, you know, we were fortunate enough to meet two other people, Ewan and Adam, who share that exact same philosophy. When we started the band, we didn’t really have any aspirations other than, wouldn’t it be great to get out and play some shows and meet some good people, and we were lucky enough to be able to do that quite quickly. We fell down a rabbit hole of the sort of UK psych and noise rock scene quite quickly, and we were getting asked to, you know, go to Glasgow and play and go down to London and play. We were just initially, we were just doing like one-off shows, drive all the way down to London, yeah, play the Brixton Windmill, drive back hungover the next day, you know. We did the same in Bristol as well, Brighton. Like, you know, we just take off on a weekend. And yeah, that was the only goal really.

I mean, we didn’t put out our first album, which sounds contradictory because obviously Sam’s, you know, Sam’s role at Blank Studios and everything he does production-wise. But we didn’t put out our debut album for, I think, 4 years of the existence of the band. We did do a split EP. But we were just solely focused on playing live and having those experiences before doing anything else. Right or wrongly, I think it was a nice way of us to go about things. There wasn’t a plan, but it all fell together quite nicely because obviously once we came around to do the first album, there was a bit of an audience there ready to hear it. Who’d seen us live for a few years beforehand.

Sam: And a lot of road-tested material as well.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like that album, we pretty much recorded it in a few— like the actual live takes were done in a few hours, weren’t they? In the old blank studios, we just kind of went in, blasted through it. Ewan had messed up his diary that day and he was supposed to go to the beach with his kids and realised, I think on the very morning, we were going in to do the live takes. So there is a real sense of urgency in the performance of that album because you needed to get out of the studio as quickly as possible. But, you know, we kind of just played it as we were playing them live. So it works quite well. I love albums like that.

Frankie: I was actually going to ask about that because you’ve played live together before you got in the studio to do the album. And I was going to ask about like where the sound came from. And I know you’ve literally just said that in that, in the studio, you kind of get, get the album done really quickly. And I’ve got a quote from one of you saying that you will start the week ready to write the album, and in 4 or 5 days you’ve pretty much got the whole thing. So I was gonna ask about like what, what the secret is to the magic.

Sam: That’s in the more recent records. Back in originally when we were learning who and what we were, we would just come, one of us would come to practise with a riff and I can’t remember what the phrase was now, but it was like writing on a piece of toilet paper. You’d basically just add the riff to the process, to what we’ve got so far, and then realise that you could do callbacks to various different riffs and then change things and play around with time signatures. And like in the early days, songs suddenly became, in my head, I was suddenly thinking, well, this song’s built around the idea of 5/4. So we’ll revisit 5/4 a few times or something within those contexts, but they were long form. In more recent records, in reference to that, what would tend to happen is we would have various bits of material written to varying degrees. And then for the last 2 records, we’ve just gone to Wales to Giant Wafer, which is a really cool little residential studio. And just book it for a week and just wake up, go downstairs, open up the demo folder, present a demo to the rest of the guys, and then just spend the morning going around it and around it and around it, and then at some point start pressing record, and then before you know it, it’s 3, 4 in the afternoon and there’s something that feels exciting there, and then rinse and repeat, and then, right, we’ve got another idea here, open that file up.

And we’ve, for the last year, last 2 records, we’ve gone to Wales, with a little folder of ideas amongst us and come back with a demoed album. And there’s not like— it’s not— I know from my perspective, I tend to do a lot of the writing, or an amount of the writing, and I do spend a period of time in advance of that throwing the proverbial wall and realising that it didn’t stick. And having a folder with— I just list it. It’ll be like the year, it’ll be PIGS 25 or PIGS 24, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and just numbers and numbers. And if I’m just playing around with something, it doesn’t feel right, it’s just gone. It’s quite nice after the fact, like a few years later, you can go in the folder and open up something that you didn’t use and be like, whoa, actually there might be something there. But I try not to do that. I don’t want to go backwards.

Frankie: Interesting process. So you’ve been playing together for years and years and you’ve got all of these albums. For people who are coming fresh to your music who might not have heard of you before, what can they expect and where would you want them to start?

Sam: Phew. It’s, yeah, they should start with the last album.

Matt: One thing I will say is like, you know, when we start to get like exposed to a wider audience, I suppose, when like 6Music started playing a lot of the stuff off, the singles off King of Cowards, which is when like we had an audience already but it was firmly within that kind of almost a bit like underground noise rock psych scene, but then suddenly we were exposed to people who were listening to all kinds of different music, I suppose, and you know, certainly like music that’s a lot more commercially successful than ours, if you want. Success is the wrong word, but has a bigger audience. And we did see like a jump in like attendances, and all of a sudden we were able to play like large venues and more people were showing up, which was really exciting. But we were still doing our own merch at the time. We were just like hanging out at the merch table, and we were— there was like a noticeable amount of people that were saying to me, oh, I like— I didn’t know that I like this kind of music, or So you get people that will say, “I didn’t know I liked this kind of music and I heard you on 6Music and I really love it and I really love that,” which was lovely to hear.

Then you would get like the old guard as well, like these guys with like long grey hair in like really beaten up AC/DC or like Motorhead t-shirts that were like, “I’ve not been to a gig in 20 years and I heard your band and I came.” So I don’t know, I think like Sam says, we are in a weird space, like genre-wise, category-wise, and I think sometimes it is a little bit harder to define. But I would say to someone who’s going to take a little dive into our catalogue is that you might just be surprised that you like it.

[00:19:00.270] – Frankie Jobling
It’s cool. It’s probably appealing that it kind of doesn’t operate in a box.

[00:19:05.000] – Matt
Yeah, I think like rock and metal… Well, I mean a lot of genres, I suppose, but like rock and metal in particular, it does get sort of like boxed into this area that’s like deemed as being quite like specialist or— I mean, you know, rock and metal is absolutely huge, but it’s people outside of it that don’t listen to a lot of that. It’s that classic like, I’m a bit frightened to go into a, you know, a little record shop because the person behind the counter is going to know like loads about it, and you do get like a sense of that with especially metal, where it’s like, oh well, maybe I might like this, but it doesn’t feel like my world, and I’ll be overwhelmed by, like, I suppose firstly choice, you don’t know where to look to discover things, or just be overwhelmed by other people knowing far more about it than you do, so there’s maybe a bit of a barrier there, but once you’re actually in that world, you find that it is actually quite a lovely space to be in.

Frankie: Matt and Sam from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are here talking to me today about their unique connection to The Glasshouse. I want to find out more.

So you’ve chatted a bit about the people that come to your gigs, and you’ve chatted a bit about being in the studio as well, and you’ve compared the difference between making music in the studio and performing it live as the difference between writing the gospel and then slaughtering the beast on stage in front of your followers, which I thought was really cool. So if that’s the case, there must be a few sacrificial temples that you’ve killed in that compare to The Glasshouse. So how would you describe this place to people outside of the North East who’ve never heard of it? What does it look like to you?

Sam: It does look like maybe a fossil beamed down from outer space.
Frankie: I like that.

Matt: It looks like a melted disco ball.

Frankie: I love that. I’m going to steal that one. Yeah. You’ve kind of touched on what it meant to you. What does it feel like to play here? What kind of is the reception you’ve had from audiences here?

Sam: It feels like a privileged to play here. I mean, it’s because it’s— I mean, basically what you just said, this like impossible to ignore melted disco ball that exists on the horizon when you travel around the city. And when you’re a young musician and it just sits there, then to like get to the point one day where you’re like, I’m playing in that place and people are buying tickets to come and watch me play in that place, it’s pretty humbling. Yeah. I mean, we’ve been doing it for so long, to be honest, man, I’m probably a bit of a romantic, but like I still get so humbled and pinch myself that we play in some mad good venues and people are willing to spend money to come and watch us play. Feels weird ’cause still in my head what we do is pretty basic. I don’t know how it warrants it, but there you go.

Frankie: So Newcastle is a, what you’ve said, is a mental place to perform and an incredible community of fans and artists. But on the flip side of that, it’s a small intimate community and often has a bit of a reputation for being a challenging space to get noticed in. So in the past, I’ve got a quote, I think from Matt, that says, “Being in a band from Newcastle, people talk about it as if you’re on Mars.” So have you got any advice for like young Northern artists that are starting out and want to kind of replicate the dreams that you’re kind of fulfilling?

Sam: I don’t know if I take umbrage, but the idea… you used the word get noticed. And I think that that probably stems from a much bigger discussion. But I work in a studio with lots of artists, and I don’t know how healthy an idea it is for a lot of musicians to go into these processes looking outward. You just, you can do what you do and find the passion and the enjoyment in doing it, and make an effort to share it for sure. But I think that if it— like, no one knows what the secret formula is for the next Sam Fender or whatever. We didn’t set out or had an idea or an inkling of what we should do in order to get to a position where we would end up playing in these venues. There was so much luck about it that if you set out with the will or the want the desire to be noticed and didn’t get noticed, it’s far too easy psychologically to then have that reflect on yourself and think that that’s a fault of you. And that, I think that whole narrative is problematic, and I see it in so many musicians.

I think that the fundamental really is to focus entirely on how you treat music as a language in a communication And as you get better at fulfilling that language and that communication, more people will understand it. And as more people understand it, you may find that more people want to share in it. But I wouldn’t ever set out for that.

Frankie: Yeah, I think that’s really good advice. Yeah. Did you have anything you wanted to—

Matt: No, absolutely not. I, yeah, I agree, agree with all of that. I think there’s like— I mean, I’ve been in that position in the past. Like, I’ve been in, in former bands where we kind of had a little smidgen of what would be defined by a lot of people as success, i.e., you know, signing to an established record label. For whatever reason, you know, we didn’t get the rub of the green, or it just didn’t work out. And I think, you know, there’s such like a huge temptation for musicians to kind of look around and compare themselves to to their peers and be like, well, they’re doing that, or they’re releasing on that record label. Our music’s as good as theirs. Why aren’t we getting that? Why aren’t we playing those venues or that festival or getting these radio plays? But I mean, as Sam said, like, literally all you need to do is focus on your own music, your own performance, and hopefully over time things will click.

Frankie: Yeah, that’s a really good reminder. I think that a lot of artists, like me being one as well, would I will take a lot from that and might just have to put that on loop in my room, like, when this comes out. So, this is my last question. I think you’ve kind of, kind of answered it, but if there’s anything else that comes to mind in terms of something that’s really helped you two when you were starting out?

Sam: I, on a positive note, would say the community around us because, and that’s something to look at. I know I talk a lot about looking inward for your own language and your own communication, how you work and write and express, but when we were a young band, we didn’t— we weren’t shy and we liked other bands and we got in touch with other bands and we created relationships across cities because we just liked those artists and those acts. And we weren’t quiet about it. We would be like, “Well, we should have— can we play a gig with you?” Or, you know, like— and then before we knew it, we existed within a community in the UK which was really— it was super small, super niche, you know. Like, the folks in this city knew the folks in that city, and you could go from each city, and sometimes there’d be people that would come and watch the gigs. The London lot would come and— like, a few people from London would come watch a gig in Bristol or whatever, and you’d see the same faces. And then that, in the same way the small venues become like the foundation stones of a performance, those small communities you find become the base from which you can keep working and developing and understanding more.

Sam: And so yeah, communities, like, find community, find others and start sharing and/or collaborating or just being in the space with those people.

Matt: Yeah.

Frankie: Yeah. Great advice. Yeah. So before we let you get on your way, I know some listeners will be excited to know what is next for you right now. What are you up to today?

Matt: I’m supposed to be working, so I should say that, you know, I’m going, coming back in the office, opening up my laptop. It’s such a lovely day, isn’t it? I said to Sam earlier on, like… I run a, a music business as well and whenever there’s just even a 1-day like bank holiday, feels like the whole music industry grinds to a halt. Old Muggins here is still tied to a laptop just doing admin. Like, so with the weather being what it is, I might just, I don’t know, walk off and go for a stroll.

Frankie: Yeah, get some sun. That’s what I want to do.

Matt: Yeah, we are in a room with no windows.

Frankie: Let me out! Fab, can I tag along to enjoy some sun with you and we’ll see you out? Yeah, thank you so much.

Sam: Thanks for having us.

Frankie: Yeah, it was really fun to chat to you both.

Sam: Cheers.

Frankie: Thank you.

Matt: Thanks.

Frankie: I love talking to Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. I thought that it was so refreshing to hear that reminder about making music because you love the music and to look inwardly and not chase that outward recognition and fame and success and just doing music for the music because you love it and for the passion of it. And I just think that’s a piece of advice that I’ll take on board myself, and I think a lot of other artists will as well.

Frankie: Well, thank you so much. That was really lush and some really good advice there that I’m taking on board as well. So thank you. And yeah, best of luck and have a lovely day.

Matt: Cheers.

Frankie: Yeah, good to meet you.

Sam: Nice to meet you.

Frankie: I’ve had a blast and I hope you have too. If so, tell your friends and send us a like online, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Music Lives Here is brought to you by The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, a home for music lovers. With gigs, concerts, and classes every week in Gateshead Quays, out in communities across the North East, and online, anyone can join us in creating and celebrating outstanding music. Music lives and grows here.

Once again, thanks to the incredible Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. I’m Frankie Jobling, the producer is Jacob Dabb, and the executive producers are Debbie Kilbride and Jo Rowntree. The gorgeous music behind me was composed by Chad Rogers. This has been a Loftus Media production, and until next time, gan canny.