Six Dumb Questions with Wight
Included at the bottom of this post is a live clip of German stonerly trio Wight performing in their native Darmsdadt. Taken from the band’s upcoming DVD Wight Home Weedio (get it?) and the same audio source as their split 10″ with Stone Axe, the song is the title-track from their 2011 Wight Weedy Wight debut (review here), which was self-released through Fat and Holy Records and among the most sincere executions of unabashed stoner groove I heard all year. If you watch the video, you’ll notice the band has trails.
Now, that could be an effect put on in editing, but I prefer to think that wherever Wight go, they have those trails with them. They’re just that stoner rock. So, if Wight goes to the cash machine? Trails. Wight orders a sandwich for lunch? Trails. Wight lets loose some awesome languid riffing and heady jams? Trails. In fact, even if that’s not the case, don’t tell me. I’d rather live with my fantasy, however contradicted by the fire and sundry psychedelic visuals that come up later on as the song progresses.
Wight Weedy Wight followed a simple and familiar enough formula for crafting cool and natural sounding heavy psych, and though it was still obviously a first album and pretty rudimentary in terms of style, it rocked and showed potential for righteous jams to come. Having already previewed the follow-up sophomore outing — to be titled Through the Woods into Deep Water — with a free download of a new demo called “You!” (streaming here), Wight look to already be developing the classically spaced-out side of their sound and balancing it with their organically jammed mentality. Right on.
Before Through the Woods into Deep Water hits this coming spring, I wanted to bug the three-piece with Six Dumb Questions just to get some basic idea of what they’re all about and what went into making Wight Weedy Wight, and caught them just as they were hitting the road with Bushfire on their “Malakas of the Universe” tour.
Wight is guitarist/vocalist Rene Hofmann, bassist Peter-Philipp Schierhorn (also of black metal outfit Fallen Tyrant) and drummer Michael Kluck. Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:
1. Tell me about how the band got together. What was it that first sparked the idea for Wight, and how did the three of you join up?
Rene: When I came to Darmstadt, I wanted to found a new band because I had a lot of ideas. In all of my previous bands, I was only the vocalist, and this time I wanted to play guitar too in order to combine my ideas for vocal and guitar melodies.
Peter and I met in late 2007, and after some months of searching we found a drummer in April 2008. We started with some of my ideas, and with the input of the other two band members we developed a heavy, doomy style. On our first demo and a lot of unreleased material you can hear that. We played a couple of gigs in 2009 before we parted ways with our old drummer. Michael and I knew each other from working in a record store. Michael joined the band in February 2010, and we really started all over from there. We developed a really awesome workflow and wrote, arranged and recorded Wight Weedy Wight within a couple of months.
2. How much of Wight’s songwriting comes from jamming out on the riffs? How are the riffs pieced together, and if that’s the way it goes, how are the songs kind of carved out of those jams?
Peter: Rene usually comes up with the riffs, we start jamming on them in the practice room and Michael and I develop our parts. Usually, Rene also has some rough ideas for the structure, and we refine them together. On one or two occasions, we also started from a drumbeat or a bass line, but usually Rene‘s guitar riffs are the base for our compositions.
3. Tell me about recording Wight Weedy Wight. How much of the album was recorded live, and as your debut, how much does it show what you want the sound of Wight to be?
Rene: We recorded the album live, together in a 200sqm studio. It was a cool experience recording that way. Our engineer Jorge [Medina] also helped a lot with that. I recorded some guitar overdubs afterwards, as well as all of the vocals.
It is important to know that we recorded 
Wight Weedy Wight after only about half a year together as a band. So the songs have a kind of impulsive vibe to them, which really forms the sound. It’s always that way when we write new songs, and you will hear that on future recordings.
4. How did the split with Stone Axe come about? When were those jams recorded, and will any of that material make it onto Through the Woods into Deep Water? Do you know yet when the next record will be out?
Michael: Yeah, man, ask Tony.
Rene: Michael and I saw Stone Axe at Roadburn 2011 and were blown away by the performance. I took out my camera, filmed two songs and sent the videos to Tony [Reed] later. I told him about Fat & Holy Records. Together, we had the idea to release a split because I told him we had recorded a jam session during the Wight Weedy Wight sessions – the “Cosmic Rhythm #2.” He said he was about to record three jams in the studio with his band for the B-side. The other Wight track on the split LP is a live version of “Wight Weedy Wight” which was recorded in Darmstadt early this year.
Peter: The tracks are exclusively released on the split, they will not be included on the new album. We will release Through the Woods Into Deep Water in March or April, but we do not have a fixed date yet.
Rene: It all depends on how soon the mixing and the layout are done.
5. You guys have signed on to play the Berlin Desertfest. Will you tour around that, or do other strings of dates in Europe for the new album? Any chance you’d hook up with Wiht from the UK and do a “Wight on Wiht” tour?
Rene: We don’t have any tour dates confirmed for the new album. We will play a couple of gigs in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in February and March together with our friends from Bushfire, though. We hope to play 
some more gigs around or after Desertfest. The Wiht guys seem to be nice, I hope to see them live or even play with them some day. Like they said, a “Missing G Tour” … ;-)
6. Any other plans or closing words you want to mention?
If you ask something like that, we go Darkthrone on you and just drop a bunch of names of bands and friends you should check out: Bushfire, Fallen Tyrant, Black Lizard, Godless Funk of Bonanza, The Wolves, Manges, Burden, The Gasoline Disaster, Okta Logue, 1000mods, Sun of Nothing, Cherry Choke, Coogans Bluff, Hyne, Toner Low, Broken Spirits, Negativvm, Robotnik.
Tags: Darmsdadt, Fat and Holy Records, Germany, Wight
