6.11.09
Interviewed by Mark Corcoran-Lettice & Ben Lowes-Smith
Your new album, 21st Century Man/Achtung Mother, is a double album. How much of a conscious decision was it to make that the case?
Well, it’s not so much a double album as two albums – if you were to take the Achtung Mother tracks and mix them up with all the 21st Century Man tracks, it’s wouldn’t really work, it’d be fairly incoherent. I had all these incoherent tracks, which became Achtung Mother, you see.
Your last two albums seem to have warned against the fetishism of nostalgia, is that a concern of yours?
It’s not a cultural concern, but it is a personal one: maybe it’s something I keep going back to. I don’t really mind repeating myself, that’s part of it. You develop a voice and a style, and you don’t necessarily do completely different things all of the time! Not that I’m making an excuse for my records all sounding the same – I don’t care if they do or not – but that’s just what I do.
I couldn’t really agree with that…you had a more electronic period in the late 90s, was there a concerted effort to go back to a glam sound recently?
The glam sound…really, there’s only a little bit of that, the first time I really did that, was on Bootboys. I don’t think the early Auteurs records really had that, only briefly really early on when we were aligned with Suede with this ‘New Glam’ tag, but the records never really sounded like that to me. I only really did that consciously on something like ‘The Rubettes’, and then I maybe came back to it on Off My Rocker, where it’s a bit more developed and a bit more pronounced.
One thing that seems to tie together the last album and this one are these songs about these cult, misunderstood figures – ‘Peter Hamill’ and ‘Klaus Kinski’ on 21st Century Man, the Glitter Band on the last one [on the song ‘Bad Reputation’]. Is there something that keeps you interested in them?
Yeah…well, the Klaus Kinski song is probably much less about Klaus Kinski than it is about me, really. It starts off with Klaus Kinski, and then jumps off somewhere else, and it’s quite autobiographical, and the Peter Hamill song is more of a straightforward homage. I had a track that sounded very much like something from [Peter Hamill record] Nadir’s Big Chance, and the only way I could justify it was just to call it ‘Peter Hamill’, and be done with it, otherwise people who’ve heard that album would say, ‘Luke Haines is just ripping off Peter Hamill now’, so it seemed a good opportunity, since I’d inadvertently ripped him off, to make it into a tribute track.
On the cover of the new album, you’re pictured imitating [early 20th century dadaist poet] Hugo Ball – do you consider him a 21st Century Man?
Hugo Ball was obviously a 20th century man – that original photograph would have been taken in the 1910s – it wasn’t saying that I am Hugo Ball! That period though interests me, when people seemed to flaunt all conventions, which I think maybe doesn’t really happen now. It’s quite difficult to try and invent anything new, certainly via music, and there are couple of homage’s on the album to that period. The track ‘Russian Futurists Black Out The Sun’ is a homage to a futurist opera called ‘Victory Over The Sun’, which is about two cosmonauts who were going to wage war against the sun and create a new reality. To me, that’s having a go, writing an opera about waging war against the sun…I can’t better that, so I thought I’d just doff my cap to it.
On that note, I understand that you’re in the process of writing a musical at the moment…
No, I wrote one a couple of years ago. But you weren’t to know, it hasn’t been performed.
Oh, right!
It was for the National Theatre in London, I spent a year writing it – it was called ‘Property’, and it got a long way, but ultimately they didn’t want to put it on, they probably thought it was too crazy. I didn’t, I thought it was very entertaining…
I understand that ‘I’m A Rich Man’s Toy’ from the Now I’m A Cowboy record was sent to Kylie Minogue people’s, which I thought was funny…
Well, they didn’t think it was so funny! I used to do that occasionally, just pitch songs to people.
Are there any contemporary pop you’d want to do that for now?
No [laughs]. I’m not very interested in modern pop music in any way really. I’m out of the loop really – I’m a man in his forties, and invariably I’m not very interested. I’d have to take an interest in young groups, which really would be a bit weird at my age, finding out what all the twenty-year olds are up to. My attitude is, good luck to them all, and I’ll leave you alone.
That’s a shame, I had a dream once where Girls Aloud covered ‘Mogadishu’ from the Baader Meinhof album, which I’d quite like to hear…
That’d be good, yeah, but I think that’s probably going to remain in your dreams, I’m afraid.
The Baader Meinhof album itself came out in 1996: do you think it would be possible in today’s climate to release an album like that in 2009?
I would have done it. I would have done it now, if I had just had the idea, but I wouldn’t have had the idea now. It’s a younger man’s record really – my interests at the time were terrorism, and music I hadn’t really heard before, like Funkadelic and Lee Perry, so it was a kind of art project. It wasn’t an endorsement of anything, it was just, I have this set of lyrics, and in my head it goes with this funk music.
There’s been some talk of a fourth Black Box Recorder album, is there any news on that?
It’s not going to happen. We recorded a single, but I think we all feel uneasy, and I don’t really want to be a group, or hide behind a group name. I think you can still do rock’n’roll when you get to a certain age, but you have to acknowledge that you are that age. Nick Cave does it well, obviously, while Morrissey doesn’t do it well: a fifty-year-old man still singing about gay adolescence …I’d be interested in Morrissey if he did a fifty-year-old man record. That’s the way old songwriters used to work, you’d be singing it from the view of a sixty-year-old, not from the view of a twenty-year-old.
Your Britpop memoir ‘Bad Vibes’ came out this year, and I’ve heard that there might be a second volume…
Yeah, I’m in the process of that at the moment. Chronologically, it overlaps a little with ‘Bad Vibes’, because when I wrote that I wasn’t planning a second, so it goes over and into a bit more detail about the start of Black Box Recorder, and it goes on to about 2002-03.
A friend wanted us to ask, what is the song ‘Secret Yoga’ about?
Someone else asked me that the other day, actually. It’s about the Aum Shinriyko cult in Japan, who did the sarin attack in the subway, and the chant in it is a version of one of their chants. Basically, the Aum cult works on being at a higher level of Buddhism, which equates to a higher level of being where life is not sacred, so the chant in it is based on an Aum chant.
Another question we’ve been given is just four words: Winston Churchill’s State Funeral?
Hmm, yeah. Do you know what that refers to?
Is it some unmade record…?
Yeah, on the internet, it seems to have become this myth, even when people say it doesn’t exist on Wikipedia, someone always puts it back on, but it never existed. The title’s not come from me…I kind of admire whoever came up with it, because in a way I wouldn’t have minded doing a record called The State Funeral of Winston Churchill or something, but it’s nothing to do with me. It still lingers on slightly though.
Earlier this year, a fan-fiction called ‘Truth and Lies in Murder Park’ came out: have you read it?
I have received a copy, but I haven’t read it. The guy who wrote it [Tim Mitchell] interviewed me many years ago, at the time he was writing a biography of me, and I agreed to be interviewed for it, and he seemed like a good chap…and I thought nothing more of it. Then ‘Bad Vibes’ came out and started to get some press, and then this popped up! I think he wanted to do a kind of dual promotion on it, do some interviews for it, but I said I can’t do that, because it’s a separate thing. He sent me a copy out of courtesy, but I haven’t read it, and the reason I haven’t read it is because I don’t want to read a book about myself. Where am I supposed to read it, this thing that’s got my name on, it’s pretty preposterous…I’ve got a family, and my wife would just laugh at me sitting there, reading a book about myself. Preposterous.
You also featured quite heavily in a graphic novel about Britpop that came out a few years ago, ‘Phonogram’, can you tell us any more about that?
I don’t really understand graphic novels, it’s not my kind of thing. I saw where the guys who did it were going, and had a look through it, and quite liked their take on it – although I would say that I disagreed with it, as is probably clear from my book – but they seemed to have enough imagination in it, so I agreed to write an introduction to it.
With Oasis having split up and the Blur reunion on hold, does it seem odd to you how your contemporaries seem to have ground to a halt while you’re still making albums?
Well, the members of Blur are pretty successful in their own right, and Brett Anderson’s still making solo albums. A lot of the glut of that period has gone away, but I always expected it to. I just carried on making records, and whether anyone buys them or not, I couldn’t care, I’ll just get on with it.
We’ve been given a few slightly stranger questions to ask you…
That’s fine, fire away. Just don’t expect the answers to be entirely cogent!
There’s a man coming tonight who’ll probably be wearing a straw hat, standing outside your dressing room, and he’s propositioned a pint with you, if you fancy?
Absolutely not! [laughter]
We just thought it fair to give you warning! He also wants to know if you like Sunny Delight…
I’m not really familiar with Sunny Delight, to be honest.
Slightly more seriously then, I did notice on the new album, there seemed to be a praise for suburban life that’s perhaps not been there before, in ‘Love Letter To London’ and ‘Suburban Mourning’…
It is actually my most upbeat record I think…I think the first album, ‘New Wave’, was quite upbeat, but it’s not a record from a man who’s reached a certain age but who’s ruined his life. I do think ‘Suburban Mourning’ is the most upbeat thing I’ve ever written, and there is no twist to it, and that was very deliberate.
There are some critics who are interpreting this record as being a bit of an epitaph, is that the case?
I think maybe they think, he’s written a song like ‘21st Century Man’, he’s written a memoir, and now they’re just waiting for me to cark it or something! I don’t know.
You will keep making records then?
Well, yes. The thing is, I don’t have the means to put out records as regularly as I used to do, where I had a major record label and I could go in, say ‘I’m making a record now’, and they would go ‘Okay, here’s a truckload of cash, go and make that record’. The music industry’s changed, and it’s a bit harder for me to make records, to try and pull everything together. I always use professional recording studios, which cost money, rather than just doing it at home or something.
Tuesday 10 November 2009
Thursday 22 October 2009
The XX Interview
Interview with The XX at the Cluny
03.10.09
Louise Morris interviews Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim
Louise: How’s the tour been going so far?
Oliver: It’s been really good, it hasn’t been too much yet, but we’ve got another year left so...
L: A full year’s tour!
O: Uhuh yeah- I’ll get back to you in a year and let you know.
L: I saw you had some dates coming up in America- how are you feeling about that?
Romy: We spent ten days in New York this summer, it was really weird being over there, people would actually come to the gig- it was really exciting.
L: How have you found audience reactions differing across different cities on the tour?
O: Yeah, I think in places like Germany they’re really intense, they’re there to listen, whereas I think in London- keep it short keep it sweet, in Germany we play longer sets and people are willing to listen for an hour, which is strange, it’s amazing.
R: I think over there they expect you to play for longer but in London it’s just “get in and get off”.
L: I’ve spoken to other bands about London gigs, who aren’t from London, and they’ve always dreaded it and say it’s the scariest show, obviously for you, coming from London, it must feel quite different?
R: I think it’s an attention span, I don’t know!
L: So having seen people’s reactions to your music what kind of a reaction would you hope to provoke from an audience?
R: We’ve been supporting for so long now that we’ve kind of been used to the idea that people aren’t there to see us and they’ve talked through our sets, but now we’re headlining for the past few shows, especially yesterday, it’s been really silent, which has been really nice.
O: We were here last week with Florence [and the Machine] for two days, it was a really good show, really fun, the audience were great but a lot of people were there just to see Florence so it kind of didn’t really work to listen to us...
L: Her music is very different...
O: Yeah, but there were a lot of people listening, and then headlining now, we’re not used to it I suppose. We’re going to do another support for Friendly Fires, again they’re like quite high energy which is maybe not where we’re at, kind of tempo wise, but it should be really interesting.
L: You’ve created quite a minimal evocative sound; how do you work together to create this? Do the lyrics or the music come first?
R: The lyrics usually come first, we work quite separately, we usually share them via the internet over ichat and work from them and build up a song like that, then we meet together and play guitar and bass and sort of link it together to make a song and then get Aria and Jamie along to make a rehearsal and it becomes a song.
O: It’s quite interesting ‘cos what Romy’s written she sings and what I’ve written I sing, and they’re love songs but Romy is my oldest friend, I’ve known her since I was 3 years old so it’s not a kind of Sonny and Cher relationship, I’m not really good at singing the songs to her and her to me and it’s just a case of coming together and sharing what we have.
L: I was going to ask, your songs all seem very personal –how much do you draw on daily life and experiences of friends and how much is imaginary?
O: I dunno, a lot of the songs we wrote when we were about 16 and then some only 8 months ago so time changes. Seeing as they are mostly love songs, when I was 16 I hadn’t had so much experience in [laughs] love! So a lot of it was writing from observation and what was going on around me, friends’ relationships and how I saw them to be, and recently it’s been much more personal and kind of from what I’ve experienced and they’ve gone darker from that, which is probably a really bad thing, but yeah.
L: You’ve got a lot of dialogue within your songs and I wondered whether you’ve ever been inspired by plays or whether it’s just musical inspiration you’ve drawn on?
R: I’ve never thought of that actually, I can’t say directly, maybe subconsciously! We’re never really addressing each other in the songs because we do work separately and it’s more of a reaction to each other, [when we write] we don’t explain what we mean, I take from what Ollie says what I think it means, so it’s like a conversation that never meets because it’s not actually to each other
L: I’ve read that you guys have quite a range of influences, how do you think that’s helped you form a more original, distinctive sound?
O: I think all four of us appreciate all different kinds of music; we’re the ipod shuffle generation, so, not being so attached to genre, and treating music song by song. I think it’s a case of trying to find a middle ground between all four of our tastes, I don’t want to say compromise, but yeah compromise and fusing a bit of everything we love I suppose
L: If you could play a gig absolutely anywhere, with no limits what would you do and where?
O: I recently saw pictures of Vampire Weekend playing in the foyer of the Natural History museum, with that massive dinosaur, I think it would be amazing to play there; they had fairy lights up and everything. I just imagine there being amazing acoustics...and yeah, I love dinosaurs!...I used to love going there.
L: I wanted to ask how you felt about being so lauded by the musical press, Rough Trade named your album “album of the month” and you’ve been named the “next big thing”- how does that affect you? Do you feel pigeon-holed at all?
O: I dunno, since the albums come out we haven’t had too much time to stop
R: Yep!
O: So we haven’t take in all that’s happening, like I’m still overwhelmed that we were on Jools Holland 3 days ago, we met Shakira, let me say that back to myself: we met Shakira! So haven’t taken it all in, I think if we did it might freak us all out a bit more. And hype can be really scary ‘cos it seems that the British press seems to love building bands up just to knock them down and er also I know I can react badly to hype, when I feel like a band’s being forced on me I can not want to like them, if anything just to prove that I can think for myself, it’s terrible, I wish I wasn’t like that but I can be like that. But on the other hand, the stuff that’s happened has been so nice- I’m excited.
L: So on the back of that, what’s been the funniest thing you’ve heard or read about yourselves in the press?
R: There’s a Pitchfork review of us that says that all our songs are about sex, and that’s led to a lot of European interviewers asking about it, so we’ve had a like 50 year old guy telling us how our song reminded him of his first experience...and I think all the interviewers had based their interviews around that review, and it’s not something that’s talked about generally as a whole, so that was quite annoying
L: So how would you rather the word of your band spread- through the press or word of mouth?
O: I always try to find music for myself, I mean the press can be dodgy at times and can build up false expectations, so I always feel really proud of myself when I’ve found a band I really like by myself. I haven’t really thought about it, maybe walking into a record store and hearing it
L: Your band seems to have developed more organically than a lot of bands, in terms of your relationship with the music press and especially with help from Young Turks, how do you feel that’s given you an edge over other bands who’ve been more moulded?
R: We’ve been given a lot time, a lot of time to grow up in and in ourselves, I mean we were 18 when we started working with Young Turks (well I’ve just turned 18), we only had 5 songs and they gave us a rehearsal space, and they just said we’ll give you a place to rehearse and get you some gigs and that was it there was no money or anything, and they left us with those tools- and I think if it had been more serious at the time then we wouldn’t sound anything like we do now so I’m really grateful for the time and the patience they had for us. Also I think at that age I would’ve been terrified to deal with all of this stuff. I’m aware that other bands haven’t had that, they just want to put it out as soon as possible, so it’s been really great.
L: How important was it for you to produce your own album, rather than anyone else do it?
O: We’ve worked with some producers before, we’ve worked with some amazing producers we’ve had some great opportunities, we went into the projects not necessarily wanting to do anything for an album, we just wanted to try out stuff and learn from these people and because we went in there wanting to learn we weren’t asking them to change stuff, we didn’t say “how about we do this?” we just wanted to take on any ideas they had. So, naturally the recordings came out sounding a bit more like them than us. Which was great ‘cos if we hadn’t have worked with them then the album wouldn’t have sounded like it does. But, Jamie who did produce it, who’s in the band and knows how every sound should sound and it was an honest relationship because he has no problem saying to us, “sing that better” or “play that better”, or “how about changing this”. So although he very much did produce himself, he made it more like a group activity/project producing it.
L: I’ve noticed that you’ve done some really interesting cover versions, and if other bands were to cover you in the future, who would you like to do this and why?
O: We’ve always said, well someone suggested it in an interview once...Sugababes, but Keisha’s left now so...
R: I think Girls Aloud- that would be hilarious; I’d really enjoy that. Oh- Beyoncé
O: Ah, I’m a hardcore Beyoncé fan! I went to see her concert in May and if you’re not a Beyoncé fan, I suggest you go, it was such a good concert...there was one part in the performance, when she comes out into the middle of the crowd and starts dancing with a mask on, takes it off, and you realise it’s not her- the lights go out, but she’s flying above you and starts singing, it’s amazing!
L: So can we expect those types of stunts in your gigs in the future?!
O: I think that’s why I love it, ‘cos I realise that I’m never going to be able to do that in my career, which I’m cool with but it’s amazing to see.
L: And finally, do you have any advice for students who are getting bands together?
R: Don’t rush, take your time to make sure you’re ready and just keep writing, play lots of gigs...we’ve played lots of gigs and I’m still scared!
Woodpigeon Interview
Woodpigeon Interview
Field Day Festival, London, 01.08.09
Louise Morris interviews Mark Hamilton
Woodpigeon are an ensemble of friends and musicians based in Calgary, Canada, mixing traditional folk sounds with haunting harmonies, narrative lyrics and very long song titles! The group’s format changes frequently so you are bound to hear new renditions of old favourite songs making each show unique. I met the ever (unjustifiably) self-deprecating Mark Hamilton at Field Day Festival in London’s Victoria park. Cross legged on the grass, Mark talked about fleeing from German police, only wanting to perform with mediocre bands and sightseeing the ugliest building in Britain...
LM: What was your favourite festival experience?
MH: A festival in Canada. Well, who played?...Deerhoof played. Do you know Sandra Perry, from Toronto? Well he played which was kinda special ‘cos we’ve made records together, we saw Lightning Bolts who were also amazing, Sonic Youth, just all these bands I’ve wanted to see for a long time. Um, yeah and everybody was just really kind, there were no queues for anything. Kim Gordon ran up to me at a party ‘cos she thought she knew me and then when I said hi she just walked away. So that was my Kim Gordon experience!
LM: Who would you most like to share a stage with if you had a choice-alive or dead?
MH: Alive or dead!? Gosh...I dunno every time I play with bands I really like I get so depressed because I think they’re so much better! So I’d like to share the stage with really mediocre, average bands. [laughs] To make me look better!
LM: I heard you played with Andrew Bird a while ago...
MH: There’s a perfect example! Of making yourself feel bad. We did a show once with Grizzly Bear, in a church and as they started I was just like I don’t want to do this anymore! I mean they’re incredible; it’s amazing to see what is happening out there.
LM: So how do you feel about working as a sort of collaborative of various musicians as opposed to a set group? How do you enjoy working in that way in a freer manner?
MH: Umm, it’s certainly got challenges to it, but it makes the songs really interesting for me, ‘cos some of them I have to play like a hundred times in front of a hundred different people, each song, probably by this point, has at least fifteen, twenty different ways to play it, so that’s really exciting for me. And I’m always trying to find new friends.
LM: So, how do each of you contribute to the different harmonies, when you come up with the song do others influence the making of it or bring something new to it?
MH: Yeah. Yeah there’s lots of suggestion and there’s lots of...I don’t know how to write musical notation out, so there’s lots of humming and humming seems to be like, what’s that game when you sit in a circle and everybody whispers round to each other?
LM: Chinese whispers?
MH: Chinese whispers! It seems like that. Every time you whisper a harmony to someone they then do it their own way, so that’s always really cool for me too.
LM: You seem to have a lot of really beautiful but long song titles, and I was wondering- is Love in the Time of Hopscotch inspired by Love in the Time of Cholera?
MH: [laughing] Yeah I’ve never had cholera. I thought it was like...well ‘cos I grew up in a nice Canadian city and at our school had these hopscotch fields, on the pavement, so just thinking about that really, and I think I’d just finished the book so I was just thinking about how brutal it would be to have, huh Love in the Time of Cholera! My upbringing was much commoner.
LM: A lot of your songs seem to have a storytelling element to them- were you ever consciously inspired by particular authors?
MH: Well, I wanted to write books and things. And do you know Cassio Tone the musician? Well he’s this large fellow from Portland, who plays keyboards, and he sings these really great narrative songs and I met him in Scotland before I played music. We both had similar backgrounds, we both went to film school and learned to make films but it never really worked out, and went to Edinburgh. So um he realised he could tell stories better through songs, and then I gave it a shot, partly influenced by him. I dunno. For me this method of storytelling i think works a lot better.
LM: It’s more interesting or...?
MH: I think if you were to write a book, there’s always that risk of just going on and on, but if you write a song you’ve got to fit it into a framework of some kind. And I think you can say a lot with five words.
LM: I’ve also noticed that travel seems to be an integral part of many of your songs- do you feel that it’s an essential experience to have had to become a better songwriter?
MH: Maybe to be a better person too, I think. But I’m always struggling to figure out where I should live, where’s the best place...and I thought I’d found that place when I was living in Scotland...but then it didn’t quite work out in the way that I hoped it would, so. I’m still trying to figure out the best place for me. It takes a lot of time in my head.
LM: I guess being on tour gives you that opportunity, to see more and to think.
MH: Yeah, yeah. You get to see a city in seconds. We played Ipswich the other day which I’d read had the ugliest building in the UK, the bus station, so I asked this fellow at the show to drive me out there to see it and I took pictures with the ugliest building in Britain.
LM: I think there are some contenders around London for that title...
MH: Do you have a favourite ugly building?
LM: Uh, I guess...they knocked it down though. There was this one right in the middle of a roundabout near Waterloo, it was pretty distinctive, but they bulldozed it.
MH: This British architect came to my city, William Alsop, do you know his work?
LM: I think I’ve heard it before.
MH: Well part of what he wants to do is restructure cities and make them more usable for people and he’s done an English city, I can’t remember which one, he showed us all these diagrams and then someone asked him what he would do to Calgary and he said “bulldoze it all down and start over!”
LM: What?! I also wanted to ask what you thought about this sudden emergence of Canadian talent that we’ve noticed over here. In the last few years in England it seems many of the really great new bands are Canadian. What do you think sparked this rush?
MH: Umm, I don’t know, well I think with a Canadian city you’ve got that element of being really isolated and so you’ve got kind of a bubble that you work within. The closest cities to you are typically a six hour drive and you don’t undertake that really often. As to why a lot of good stuff is coming out of Canada at the moment, I can’t really answer that, maybe it’s just...I remember reading an interview once I think it was with Björk and she said that the reason Iceland is so interesting is because there’s nothing to do but stay inside and make music or art. To an extent I think that may be true for Canada. And you know, we’re kind of making up our own culture, because we don’t really have an overriding culture, it’s not an old country, our culture is a shadow of Britain as we’ve been a colony for so long.
LM: Communities of bands seem to differ hugely depending on the place, how do you think the musical scene in Canada differs from that in say, London or Scotland?
MH: I’d say in Canada as opposed to Scotland everyone seems to be really nice and patient with each other for the most part. I don’t really know what London is like to be honest, when I come over I go to a lot of shows and there’s always a lot of crossed arms. I think there’s so much to see and to take in, people are just waiting to be really, really impressed. London is always maybe one of the shows you dread! [laughs] “oh this better be good!”
LM: I think that’s why it’s nicer for us up in Newcastle, because bands that will play big venues in London seem to play smaller ones up North.
MH: Well Newcastle’s still one of my favourite shows
LM: The one at the End bar?
MH: No it was one before that. It’s a name that starts with a “C”...
LM: The Cumberland Arms?
MH: That’s right, I loved that. That’s where we met Beth [Jeans Houghton]. We’re playing the Cluny next. Is that nice?
LM: Yeah it’s really nice, it’s supposed to be one of the best pubs up North. I wanted to ask you about your next album, what was it like working with Ryan Morey, considering he made such a big impact worldwide with a Canadian band, Arcade Fire?
MH: Well, um we sent it to him and asked if he wanted to work on it and right away he said yes I really do, and he’s just so easy and simple to work with, I mean it sounds amazing. He really did a good job with it and he always sends little nice notes and things. He’s a wonderful guy, I mean I don’t totally understand the mastering process but I just I went to see the last record being mastered and I didn’t understand it but I just wanted to be able to trust somebody with it.
LM: And how has your sound developed from the last few records?
MH: Well the next one we’ve tried to make like really, really big, really grand. We put together an orchestra of our friends who play classical instruments and we made a choir of thirty bands that play in Calgary, so it’s pretty big. The thing that I like the most about it is that I can still play the songs on my own, they hold together both ways. That’s my big plan!
LM: So you want to play more solo shows?
MH: Yeah. I guess it’s like really epic and really small at the same time, its good and Mark suddenly catches sight of another band-there’s First Aid Kit, they were awesome!
LM: I heard that your next record is really influenced by your German heritage and travels around Germany, I travelled around there myself this summer and was wondering if you had any recommendations of things to see in Berlin?!
MH: Ah well there’s this cool old amusement park called Spree park, right by Treptowerpark, I actually have another band called Spree park, it’s kind of stupid dance-rock. And Spree park is this amusement park that closed down in 1989 and its sat derelict, there was a couple of times that I’ve been able to jump the fence and climb in and you just wander around all these old roller coasters falling down, this ferris wheel that’s slanted and all these old rotting rides, funhouses and things. I remember the next time I went, I took a friend who’s a photographer and within five minutes it was swarming with security, so we had to hide under like this rotting umbrella in minus 10 weather and it was raining and gross, and we were sat there for 3 hours and they would actually walk by our heads, that’s how close they got. Um so after 3 hours we were like let’s just forget it, so we jumped up and ran, and jumped the fence again!
LM: Did they chase you?
MH: They did a little bit! It’s worth seeing if you can make your way in.
LM: Well thank you for your time, its been really interesting to talk to you, i guess you’d better get ready!
The Black Lips Interview
The Black Lips (phone) Interview
15.05.09
Louise Morris & Jared Swilley (bass & vocals)
Louise: Hey, how’s the UK tour been going? You played Brighton last night, right?
Jared: Yeah Brighton was cool it was a really good show, I like it down there.
L:So why are you missing out Newcastle??
J: Ah, well it kinda seems random how it happens, whatever works out really, we’ve played there before though.
L: Where?
J: I don’t remember! We did a tour this Feb around the UK too, Manchester and stuff, but we didn’t play Newcastle then either...Oh I remember we played in this like main square, it had a really big sculpture, kinda futuristic, it was a really good show actually. I remember it being freezing outside and there were all these girls in miniskirts- crazy!
L: Er, that’s kinda traditional up here! So, if I said English girls what three words first come to mind?
J: [immediately] Smart, funny and attractive.
L: Why thankyou..! Your live shows are quite notorious and have had you banned from some venues in Georgia, what kind of a reaction do you like to provoke from an audience and how do you do it?
J: I like to keep a good vibe, actually last night was perfect, it was really small and everyone was going crazy, jumping around, dancing, but it wasn’t violent, just happy. The best thing is to get the balance of good chaos, with no one getting punched or crying. I love it, i get to go crazy every night, it’s the best vibe! Sometimes though, at gigs there are these bouncers who abuse the gigs, you get these hooligans, we hate that, we try and make it as difficult for these guys as possible.
L: The Black Lips have attracted quite alot of controversy from the press [onstage nudity, pissing, vomiting and inter-band making out], do you feel a good band should be controversial?
J: No, i don’t think so, we don’t try to be controversial at all, we just have fun. I guess some people misunderstand us and react in the wrong way. The kids who like our music wouldn’t say we’re controversial, it’s a grown up mentality that creates that I think, I mean I’m over 18, I’m not a kid but...basically, there’s two types of people in the world, horses and unicorns. The horses are like the adults, cops and stuff, people who don’t understand and the unicorns are everyone else.
L: I’ve been to see you and Ian was playing guitar with his teeth, my friend saw you and he was using something else...So if you had to play guitar with any other body part, what would it be and what would make the best sound?
J: [laughs] Well I’ve never used anything apart from my hands. Maybe feet, like you know those people who’ve lost limbs, they’re amazing, the way they learn what to use instead. Yeah with feet- then I could play two guitars at the same time!
L: A lot of good quirky bands seem to come out of Georgia- what is it about the place that encourages this?
J: Well, it’s cheap to live there, the weather’s always nice and people have basements. It’s just a musical place, people have the space to play, like we really started out playing house parties. There’s a few houses around that are the venues for the town, it’s really cool, good fun. I grew up with music, my Dad’s a preacher and I always loved music so I was used to all this church music, gospel and stuff like that, then I got into Otis Reading who’s from round here, a lot of good music’s come from Georgia.
L: So, would you consider doing a house gig tour in the UK?
J: It really happens more in America, it’s hard in Europe lots of the kids live in apartments, but we have done a few house parties over here. We did this one in Leeds for all these under age kids who couldn’t get into the Faversham, it was great. Oh and we also did another house show...well it was more of a mansion show out in the Bass country, these kid’s parents had a huge house! We always try to slip in house parties, secret shows etc. It’s just economically hard to do a whole house gig tour over in the UK.
L: What made you decide to set up your own record label, Die Slaughterhouse Records?
J: Well, when we first left school, we got our own house and started to record some stuff but we didn’t really know any record labels or how to get records out, so we pressed them ourselves under the name Die Slaughterhouse Records, Die Slaughterhouse was what we called our house. Other of the people we lived with were in bands and so we put them out too, then went on tour and met more bands, so we started putting out records from European and even Mexican bands too- we really started the label out of necessity!
L: Can you recommend any music from Mexico?
J: Mexico has a great scene going on, lots of stuff’s happening there- I really like Los Explosivos and Slob City, Mexico City’s awesome, I wanna go there more if I can!
L: What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever read about you or the band?
J: People make stuff up all the time, the worst time, well in retrospect it’s quite funny, but it wasn’t at the time. It was in our local newspaper, Black Lips were featured in the music section and my Dad [the preacher] was featured in the religion section, and they said that during one of our shows I’d given Cole, our singer, oral sex! It was totally unture and so embarrassing as all my family and my Dad’s congregation read it...so embarrassing. But my Dad’s pretty liberal and supportive.
L: So as you’ve had experience both making records and putting them out, what do you think are the three ingredients needed to make a great record?
J: Good songs, and just being really into what you’re doing, not half-assing around, and getting on with your bandmates. I’ve seen bands that don’t really gel and it never works. We’re like a brotherhood.
L: Yeah i guess you guys have known each other for ages
J: Pretty much our whole lives
L: And if you could play a gig absolutely anywhere, where would it be?
J: We wanna play in outer space! We really admire Richard Branson, he’s trying to set up space travel and hopefully it will get cheap in the future. We’d love to be the first band to play in outer space- you know the White Stripes almost played on a Virgin airplane? It didn’t happen for some reason though.
L: What would you do about the lack of gravity?
J: Well I guess we’d strap ourselves down, but the pressure- it would be tough on the strings and drums.
L: Where do you see The Black Lips in five years?
J: Hopefully we’ll get to travel to more countries I haven’t seen, I’ll have a house by then- hopefully that will be sorted by the end of the summer and just putting out more good records!
L: And finally, everyone round here’s pretty stressed out with exams at the moment – any life lessons to give them?
J: Well, huh, that whole scene didn’t really work for me, so I’d just say drop out and do something else! But you know each to their own it depends on the person. Aside from dropping out, I guess I’d say the more you freak out the worse it will be.
L: OK, thanks for that it was great talking with you and I hope the gig goes well tonight- come to Newcastle next time!!
J: Ha, OK we’ll see, have a great evening.
15.05.09
Louise Morris & Jared Swilley (bass & vocals)
Louise: Hey, how’s the UK tour been going? You played Brighton last night, right?
Jared: Yeah Brighton was cool it was a really good show, I like it down there.
L:So why are you missing out Newcastle??
J: Ah, well it kinda seems random how it happens, whatever works out really, we’ve played there before though.
L: Where?
J: I don’t remember! We did a tour this Feb around the UK too, Manchester and stuff, but we didn’t play Newcastle then either...Oh I remember we played in this like main square, it had a really big sculpture, kinda futuristic, it was a really good show actually. I remember it being freezing outside and there were all these girls in miniskirts- crazy!
L: Er, that’s kinda traditional up here! So, if I said English girls what three words first come to mind?
J: [immediately] Smart, funny and attractive.
L: Why thankyou..! Your live shows are quite notorious and have had you banned from some venues in Georgia, what kind of a reaction do you like to provoke from an audience and how do you do it?
J: I like to keep a good vibe, actually last night was perfect, it was really small and everyone was going crazy, jumping around, dancing, but it wasn’t violent, just happy. The best thing is to get the balance of good chaos, with no one getting punched or crying. I love it, i get to go crazy every night, it’s the best vibe! Sometimes though, at gigs there are these bouncers who abuse the gigs, you get these hooligans, we hate that, we try and make it as difficult for these guys as possible.
L: The Black Lips have attracted quite alot of controversy from the press [onstage nudity, pissing, vomiting and inter-band making out], do you feel a good band should be controversial?
J: No, i don’t think so, we don’t try to be controversial at all, we just have fun. I guess some people misunderstand us and react in the wrong way. The kids who like our music wouldn’t say we’re controversial, it’s a grown up mentality that creates that I think, I mean I’m over 18, I’m not a kid but...basically, there’s two types of people in the world, horses and unicorns. The horses are like the adults, cops and stuff, people who don’t understand and the unicorns are everyone else.
L: I’ve been to see you and Ian was playing guitar with his teeth, my friend saw you and he was using something else...So if you had to play guitar with any other body part, what would it be and what would make the best sound?
J: [laughs] Well I’ve never used anything apart from my hands. Maybe feet, like you know those people who’ve lost limbs, they’re amazing, the way they learn what to use instead. Yeah with feet- then I could play two guitars at the same time!
L: A lot of good quirky bands seem to come out of Georgia- what is it about the place that encourages this?
J: Well, it’s cheap to live there, the weather’s always nice and people have basements. It’s just a musical place, people have the space to play, like we really started out playing house parties. There’s a few houses around that are the venues for the town, it’s really cool, good fun. I grew up with music, my Dad’s a preacher and I always loved music so I was used to all this church music, gospel and stuff like that, then I got into Otis Reading who’s from round here, a lot of good music’s come from Georgia.
L: So, would you consider doing a house gig tour in the UK?
J: It really happens more in America, it’s hard in Europe lots of the kids live in apartments, but we have done a few house parties over here. We did this one in Leeds for all these under age kids who couldn’t get into the Faversham, it was great. Oh and we also did another house show...well it was more of a mansion show out in the Bass country, these kid’s parents had a huge house! We always try to slip in house parties, secret shows etc. It’s just economically hard to do a whole house gig tour over in the UK.
L: What made you decide to set up your own record label, Die Slaughterhouse Records?
J: Well, when we first left school, we got our own house and started to record some stuff but we didn’t really know any record labels or how to get records out, so we pressed them ourselves under the name Die Slaughterhouse Records, Die Slaughterhouse was what we called our house. Other of the people we lived with were in bands and so we put them out too, then went on tour and met more bands, so we started putting out records from European and even Mexican bands too- we really started the label out of necessity!
L: Can you recommend any music from Mexico?
J: Mexico has a great scene going on, lots of stuff’s happening there- I really like Los Explosivos and Slob City, Mexico City’s awesome, I wanna go there more if I can!
L: What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever read about you or the band?
J: People make stuff up all the time, the worst time, well in retrospect it’s quite funny, but it wasn’t at the time. It was in our local newspaper, Black Lips were featured in the music section and my Dad [the preacher] was featured in the religion section, and they said that during one of our shows I’d given Cole, our singer, oral sex! It was totally unture and so embarrassing as all my family and my Dad’s congregation read it...so embarrassing. But my Dad’s pretty liberal and supportive.
L: So as you’ve had experience both making records and putting them out, what do you think are the three ingredients needed to make a great record?
J: Good songs, and just being really into what you’re doing, not half-assing around, and getting on with your bandmates. I’ve seen bands that don’t really gel and it never works. We’re like a brotherhood.
L: Yeah i guess you guys have known each other for ages
J: Pretty much our whole lives
L: And if you could play a gig absolutely anywhere, where would it be?
J: We wanna play in outer space! We really admire Richard Branson, he’s trying to set up space travel and hopefully it will get cheap in the future. We’d love to be the first band to play in outer space- you know the White Stripes almost played on a Virgin airplane? It didn’t happen for some reason though.
L: What would you do about the lack of gravity?
J: Well I guess we’d strap ourselves down, but the pressure- it would be tough on the strings and drums.
L: Where do you see The Black Lips in five years?
J: Hopefully we’ll get to travel to more countries I haven’t seen, I’ll have a house by then- hopefully that will be sorted by the end of the summer and just putting out more good records!
L: And finally, everyone round here’s pretty stressed out with exams at the moment – any life lessons to give them?
J: Well, huh, that whole scene didn’t really work for me, so I’d just say drop out and do something else! But you know each to their own it depends on the person. Aside from dropping out, I guess I’d say the more you freak out the worse it will be.
L: OK, thanks for that it was great talking with you and I hope the gig goes well tonight- come to Newcastle next time!!
J: Ha, OK we’ll see, have a great evening.
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Kill It Kid Interview
Kill It Kid Interview 7/10/09
Scott McLoughlin
Scott McLoughlin catches up with Kill it Kid singer songwriter Chris Turpin post-performance at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire.
Scott McLoughlin (SM): I’ve really struggled to define your genre, and I bet everybody asks you this as well (Chris laughs). What would you say it is?
Chris Turpin (CT): It’s a music born out of the folk tradition; it takes influence from American folk music, and the great American songs. Some say its Americana. It’s Kind of Delta Blues as well. Generally I call it blues.
SM: Hence the French Chart Reference
CT: Indeed yeah, well that’s what Itunes call us.
(Chris Turpin announced on stage, to some of the bands own surprise, that Kill It Kid are currently number 3 in the French itunes blues chart, despite never having been to France)
SM: Has it surprised you the amount of success you’ve had considering how fast you’ve got to where you are now?
CT: Yeah, it really has. I think as we got signed so early from becoming a band, that we thought that was normal. Then we thought that everything else would go at that sort of pace; whereas now actually it’s started to slow down, and we’ve become a bit more impatient.
SM: Having just released the album [Three days ago], are there any songs of particular importance to you?
CT: Yeah the last song on the Album ‘Taste the Rain’ is the last song that we wrote – that I wrote – before we recorded the album. It’s a very different set up to anything else on the Album. The drum kit was kicked to pieces; we stripped it all down. We played up symbols, and taped on tambourines and played the whole thing with hammers and mallets. It was quite emotional I guess as well. It’s the last song we wrote and the last song on the album, and we recorded it in two takes.
SM: I perhaps should have prepared more questions, this might turn into the shortest interview you’ve ever had (CT laughs). Yeah, so how do you go about writing your material? Do you listen to stuff before or…?
CT: Erm, usually it’s a couple of lines, and that will resonate. And you write them down, and you work them out in a book and you keep writing and writing, and see what happens. And then normally I’ll write words first and then put them to music. Whereas I used to just write music and then put words to it. It’s quite different. For example ‘taste the rain’; that was a complete set of lyrics before it even touched the music. Always try to put a little piece of yourself into the song, so its, you know, real and interesting and honest.
SM: So do you write independently then translate to a five-piece set up?
CT: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Like the song ‘Bye Bye Bird’ we do was written like a ‘Hollis Brown’; like a Bob Dylan folk song. I played it to the band and it turned into this sort of huge 2:4 kinda big drum rhythm. But yeah, I don’t tell any of the guys how to write their parts. Occasionally I’ll have a suggestion I had in my head when writing them. It’s literally, write a song, take it to the band, and it can go anywhere.
SM: Are there any artist that have been outstandingly inspirational to you? A source of inspiration? Or that you’ll listen to every time you are going to write something? Like a muse or something?
CT: Yeah, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan times they are a changing. The obvious one, erm. The very early blues players like Robert Johnson always play on my mind. Reverend Gary Davis, his very early recordings as well always on my mind. Tom Waits, sometimes. Mainly the first set though.
SM: What has been your favourite live experience so far? I know you haven’t been a band for a long time, and it’s early days yet.
CT: (Haha) yeah well, there’s been a fair few. We did one next door to the London dungeons very early on, like twice the size of this (Cabaret Voltaire), which was amazing. Like a huge cavernous area with these huge railway arches, that went for like the size of a football field. That was a great gig. More recent; waking up in Zurich that was an odd one.
SM: Yeah, I can imagine.
CT: Yeah, that was a very odd one. Actually to be honest, the best one was at the beginning of this tour. We played in ‘Moles’, which is in Bath. Which is our hometown. And it sold out, and erm yeah, it was an amazing show. ‘Send me an Angel down’ which was our first single; everyone in the audience was singing along, and we’d never had that before.
Scott McLoughlin
Scott McLoughlin catches up with Kill it Kid singer songwriter Chris Turpin post-performance at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire.
Scott McLoughlin (SM): I’ve really struggled to define your genre, and I bet everybody asks you this as well (Chris laughs). What would you say it is?
Chris Turpin (CT): It’s a music born out of the folk tradition; it takes influence from American folk music, and the great American songs. Some say its Americana. It’s Kind of Delta Blues as well. Generally I call it blues.
SM: Hence the French Chart Reference
CT: Indeed yeah, well that’s what Itunes call us.
(Chris Turpin announced on stage, to some of the bands own surprise, that Kill It Kid are currently number 3 in the French itunes blues chart, despite never having been to France)
SM: Has it surprised you the amount of success you’ve had considering how fast you’ve got to where you are now?
CT: Yeah, it really has. I think as we got signed so early from becoming a band, that we thought that was normal. Then we thought that everything else would go at that sort of pace; whereas now actually it’s started to slow down, and we’ve become a bit more impatient.
SM: Having just released the album [Three days ago], are there any songs of particular importance to you?
CT: Yeah the last song on the Album ‘Taste the Rain’ is the last song that we wrote – that I wrote – before we recorded the album. It’s a very different set up to anything else on the Album. The drum kit was kicked to pieces; we stripped it all down. We played up symbols, and taped on tambourines and played the whole thing with hammers and mallets. It was quite emotional I guess as well. It’s the last song we wrote and the last song on the album, and we recorded it in two takes.
SM: I perhaps should have prepared more questions, this might turn into the shortest interview you’ve ever had (CT laughs). Yeah, so how do you go about writing your material? Do you listen to stuff before or…?
CT: Erm, usually it’s a couple of lines, and that will resonate. And you write them down, and you work them out in a book and you keep writing and writing, and see what happens. And then normally I’ll write words first and then put them to music. Whereas I used to just write music and then put words to it. It’s quite different. For example ‘taste the rain’; that was a complete set of lyrics before it even touched the music. Always try to put a little piece of yourself into the song, so its, you know, real and interesting and honest.
SM: So do you write independently then translate to a five-piece set up?
CT: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Like the song ‘Bye Bye Bird’ we do was written like a ‘Hollis Brown’; like a Bob Dylan folk song. I played it to the band and it turned into this sort of huge 2:4 kinda big drum rhythm. But yeah, I don’t tell any of the guys how to write their parts. Occasionally I’ll have a suggestion I had in my head when writing them. It’s literally, write a song, take it to the band, and it can go anywhere.
SM: Are there any artist that have been outstandingly inspirational to you? A source of inspiration? Or that you’ll listen to every time you are going to write something? Like a muse or something?
CT: Yeah, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan times they are a changing. The obvious one, erm. The very early blues players like Robert Johnson always play on my mind. Reverend Gary Davis, his very early recordings as well always on my mind. Tom Waits, sometimes. Mainly the first set though.
SM: What has been your favourite live experience so far? I know you haven’t been a band for a long time, and it’s early days yet.
CT: (Haha) yeah well, there’s been a fair few. We did one next door to the London dungeons very early on, like twice the size of this (Cabaret Voltaire), which was amazing. Like a huge cavernous area with these huge railway arches, that went for like the size of a football field. That was a great gig. More recent; waking up in Zurich that was an odd one.
SM: Yeah, I can imagine.
CT: Yeah, that was a very odd one. Actually to be honest, the best one was at the beginning of this tour. We played in ‘Moles’, which is in Bath. Which is our hometown. And it sold out, and erm yeah, it was an amazing show. ‘Send me an Angel down’ which was our first single; everyone in the audience was singing along, and we’d never had that before.
Wednesday 14 October 2009
Yes Giantess! Interview by Christopher Hay
Yes Giantess!
‘We’re serious about having fun!’
‘Yes Giantess is about to get uncomfortably close to your girlfriend!’ Quite an audacious claim for a small band from Boston, USA. But after just a few listens to their achingly cool synth-pop music, the band’s charm is undeniable. Boys, lock up your girlfriends, because anyone lucky enough to see this band live will go weak at the knees and be swept away by their energy, sense of fun and enormous pop choruses. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Fresh from releasing ‘Tuff n Stuff’, the infectious feel-good soundtrack to many a euphoric summer sunset, Yes Giantess are in Newcastle. They’re playing the opening slot of the NME Radar Tour, and are determined to have a great time doing it. ‘It’s like getting hit in the face with a Red Bull!’ drummer Joey succinctly says of the band’s live act. Frontman Jan elaborates: ‘It’s a point of pride for us to be extremely energetic and just really happy to be on stage. We’ve moved past the point where we can watch a band play with frowns on their faces. And that’s pretty much where the idea for our live show started.’
‘The whole thing started with Jan just writing the songs for fun, and then my roommate and I just started producing them for fun. And we don’t wanna lose that. Even though we’re taking it more seriously now, we don’t wanna lose that energy of not taking ourselves too seriously,’ Karl, the band’s laptop magician, explains. ‘We’re very serious about fun!’ Guzzling sugary sweets while slumped in their chairs with their hoods up, at first the strains of a week on tour seem to have taken their toll. But tiredness quickly gave way to childish excitement. The four-piece’s enthusiasm for what they do is contagious. Jan’s eyes light up when he’s given the chance to talk about their music: ‘We wanna be in the crowd, really! If we could play on the floor, we would!’ he admits, and he you can tell he really means it.
Yes Giantess’s joyful music is constantly being compared to the likes of MGMT and Passion Pit, the forerunners of the new synth-pop movement. ‘Passion Pit are good friends of ours and they’ve been nothing but really wonderful to us – we’re nothing but thankful to them,’ Jan explains. But perhaps tiring of these easy comparisons, in an inspired thirty seconds the band bounces off each other to concoct a brilliantly surreal description of their music that the Mighty Boosh would be proud of:
Jan: [Our sound is like] early Prince meets C+C Music Factory on a beach at sunset. They run at each other in slow motion…
Karl: It’s on a beach on Mariah Carey’s private island…
Jan: …They jump into the air, time seems to stop. They high five, their hands connect, and the ripple of the clap echoes throughout the island.
Karl: And at that moment, fireworks explode…
Chase: …and a pop-child is born!
Karl: And then Journey flies by in a spaceship!
Beat that. And when asked what animal Yes Giantess would be, ‘a rainbow coloured unincorn!’ ‘a fucking wolf!’ and ‘Falkor, the good luck dragon from The Neverending Story!’ were the responses. Still not sure about these guys? Listen to how they chose their name: ‘Basically we were sitting round a kitchen table watching a video – it’s not really porn, more a ‘special interest’ video – and it was of a small man trying to leave his house. But he couldn’t leave his house because a giantess wouldn’t let him. He was going ‘Please can I go?’ and she was like, ‘NO!’ And it was just became one of those endearing jokes that stayed with us, and when we started out as a band, we were like, ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the name!’’ Obviously.
So porn aside, what’s the source of Yes Giantess’s seemingly bottomless pool of inspiration? They recently released an 80s-heavy mixtape on their myspace page featuring tracks from the likes of Journey, Aha and Michael Jackson. ‘Its strange because I don’t necessarily wake up and turn Journey on, but that mixtape is all about appreciation and about respect. We’re pretty much huge fans of everyone on the tape,’ Jan explains. What did they make of Michael Jackson’s death? A communal shout of ‘Denial!’ echoes through the hallway of Northumbria Students Union. ‘It’s amazing, people die every few minutes and then this one person dies and the entire world just stops. It showed how much power he had.’ ‘Joey, didn’t your mum send you a really cute email saying, ‘You guys have got to carry on his legacy!’’ Karl helpfully pipes up. Yes, Joey admits, she did…
The band have toured with dance acts like MSTRKRFT and Calvin Harris, a clear indicator of the direction their music is taking. ‘Yeah we do align ourselves with that genre,’ Jan admits, ‘but our material is definitely ‘band’ material. It’s dancey, but it’s not strictly ‘club electro’, its definitely still got a ‘band’ sound.’ After an E.P. release on November 4th, we’ll be able to judge for ourselves when the eagerly anticipated debut album is released in early 2010. It might surprise fans of their early work, Jan argues. ‘As we go into nicer studios, as we work with different producers, the sound’s changing. I’m sure the album is gonna sound a lot different from our original single releases.’ He draws on MGMT as an example of a like-minded band progressing their sound: ‘When they first started, they were a laptop/iPod type band, but when they signed their record deal, the first thing they decided to do with the money was to get an orchestra. It was baffling to me at the time but I see now that it makes total sense, thinking about what they are now – they’re kind of a psyche-rock band, a big arena sound, so different from their original electro.’
Talking of arenas, can Yes Giantess ever imaging themselves playing stadium gigs? After instant excitement at the idea, Joey gives a typically measured reply. ‘It’d be cool to do, but a lot of the fun of making music in front of people is being attached to those people. When you get into arena gigs it’s so impersonal, so far away.’ Karl agrees, ‘We’re making this very mainstream pop music and a lot of other artists associated with doing that are superstar types – Madonna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga – massive, untouchable people, and we don’t want to be like that. We wanna be personably accessible.’
Whether Yes Giantess will outgrow such commendable ideals will become clear soon enough. More incredible live performances such as the one they gave here in Newcastle will ensure that crowds of a couple of hundred will become crowds of thousands. Despite playing at 7pm to a surprisingly sparse crowd, from the first beat of ‘Words’ until the last beat of ‘Tuff n Stuff’, the band played as if their life depended on it. The set was frantic, exuberant, contagious. The band smiled, jumped and danced. Right on cue, the crowd did exactly the same. Surely the only people in the venue left disappointed were the next band on stage. It’s safe to say that Yes Giantess defines the term ‘hard act to follow’. But soon, they won’t be needing to follow anyone.
‘We’re serious about having fun!’
‘Yes Giantess is about to get uncomfortably close to your girlfriend!’ Quite an audacious claim for a small band from Boston, USA. But after just a few listens to their achingly cool synth-pop music, the band’s charm is undeniable. Boys, lock up your girlfriends, because anyone lucky enough to see this band live will go weak at the knees and be swept away by their energy, sense of fun and enormous pop choruses. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Fresh from releasing ‘Tuff n Stuff’, the infectious feel-good soundtrack to many a euphoric summer sunset, Yes Giantess are in Newcastle. They’re playing the opening slot of the NME Radar Tour, and are determined to have a great time doing it. ‘It’s like getting hit in the face with a Red Bull!’ drummer Joey succinctly says of the band’s live act. Frontman Jan elaborates: ‘It’s a point of pride for us to be extremely energetic and just really happy to be on stage. We’ve moved past the point where we can watch a band play with frowns on their faces. And that’s pretty much where the idea for our live show started.’
‘The whole thing started with Jan just writing the songs for fun, and then my roommate and I just started producing them for fun. And we don’t wanna lose that. Even though we’re taking it more seriously now, we don’t wanna lose that energy of not taking ourselves too seriously,’ Karl, the band’s laptop magician, explains. ‘We’re very serious about fun!’ Guzzling sugary sweets while slumped in their chairs with their hoods up, at first the strains of a week on tour seem to have taken their toll. But tiredness quickly gave way to childish excitement. The four-piece’s enthusiasm for what they do is contagious. Jan’s eyes light up when he’s given the chance to talk about their music: ‘We wanna be in the crowd, really! If we could play on the floor, we would!’ he admits, and he you can tell he really means it.
Yes Giantess’s joyful music is constantly being compared to the likes of MGMT and Passion Pit, the forerunners of the new synth-pop movement. ‘Passion Pit are good friends of ours and they’ve been nothing but really wonderful to us – we’re nothing but thankful to them,’ Jan explains. But perhaps tiring of these easy comparisons, in an inspired thirty seconds the band bounces off each other to concoct a brilliantly surreal description of their music that the Mighty Boosh would be proud of:
Jan: [Our sound is like] early Prince meets C+C Music Factory on a beach at sunset. They run at each other in slow motion…
Karl: It’s on a beach on Mariah Carey’s private island…
Jan: …They jump into the air, time seems to stop. They high five, their hands connect, and the ripple of the clap echoes throughout the island.
Karl: And at that moment, fireworks explode…
Chase: …and a pop-child is born!
Karl: And then Journey flies by in a spaceship!
Beat that. And when asked what animal Yes Giantess would be, ‘a rainbow coloured unincorn!’ ‘a fucking wolf!’ and ‘Falkor, the good luck dragon from The Neverending Story!’ were the responses. Still not sure about these guys? Listen to how they chose their name: ‘Basically we were sitting round a kitchen table watching a video – it’s not really porn, more a ‘special interest’ video – and it was of a small man trying to leave his house. But he couldn’t leave his house because a giantess wouldn’t let him. He was going ‘Please can I go?’ and she was like, ‘NO!’ And it was just became one of those endearing jokes that stayed with us, and when we started out as a band, we were like, ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the name!’’ Obviously.
So porn aside, what’s the source of Yes Giantess’s seemingly bottomless pool of inspiration? They recently released an 80s-heavy mixtape on their myspace page featuring tracks from the likes of Journey, Aha and Michael Jackson. ‘Its strange because I don’t necessarily wake up and turn Journey on, but that mixtape is all about appreciation and about respect. We’re pretty much huge fans of everyone on the tape,’ Jan explains. What did they make of Michael Jackson’s death? A communal shout of ‘Denial!’ echoes through the hallway of Northumbria Students Union. ‘It’s amazing, people die every few minutes and then this one person dies and the entire world just stops. It showed how much power he had.’ ‘Joey, didn’t your mum send you a really cute email saying, ‘You guys have got to carry on his legacy!’’ Karl helpfully pipes up. Yes, Joey admits, she did…
The band have toured with dance acts like MSTRKRFT and Calvin Harris, a clear indicator of the direction their music is taking. ‘Yeah we do align ourselves with that genre,’ Jan admits, ‘but our material is definitely ‘band’ material. It’s dancey, but it’s not strictly ‘club electro’, its definitely still got a ‘band’ sound.’ After an E.P. release on November 4th, we’ll be able to judge for ourselves when the eagerly anticipated debut album is released in early 2010. It might surprise fans of their early work, Jan argues. ‘As we go into nicer studios, as we work with different producers, the sound’s changing. I’m sure the album is gonna sound a lot different from our original single releases.’ He draws on MGMT as an example of a like-minded band progressing their sound: ‘When they first started, they were a laptop/iPod type band, but when they signed their record deal, the first thing they decided to do with the money was to get an orchestra. It was baffling to me at the time but I see now that it makes total sense, thinking about what they are now – they’re kind of a psyche-rock band, a big arena sound, so different from their original electro.’
Talking of arenas, can Yes Giantess ever imaging themselves playing stadium gigs? After instant excitement at the idea, Joey gives a typically measured reply. ‘It’d be cool to do, but a lot of the fun of making music in front of people is being attached to those people. When you get into arena gigs it’s so impersonal, so far away.’ Karl agrees, ‘We’re making this very mainstream pop music and a lot of other artists associated with doing that are superstar types – Madonna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga – massive, untouchable people, and we don’t want to be like that. We wanna be personably accessible.’
Whether Yes Giantess will outgrow such commendable ideals will become clear soon enough. More incredible live performances such as the one they gave here in Newcastle will ensure that crowds of a couple of hundred will become crowds of thousands. Despite playing at 7pm to a surprisingly sparse crowd, from the first beat of ‘Words’ until the last beat of ‘Tuff n Stuff’, the band played as if their life depended on it. The set was frantic, exuberant, contagious. The band smiled, jumped and danced. Right on cue, the crowd did exactly the same. Surely the only people in the venue left disappointed were the next band on stage. It’s safe to say that Yes Giantess defines the term ‘hard act to follow’. But soon, they won’t be needing to follow anyone.
Wednesday 7 October 2009
Thursday 18 June 2009
Nouvelle Vague Interview
Even though I speak French I have never had the chance to interview a French band, this changed at this year’s evolution Festival. Nouvelle Vague were in the UK for a couple of days, and on the 21st of May they were playing on the main stage in Newcastle. After their mint set I went off to interview them.
As we were in England it seemed like a natural thing to start the whole thing of on the topic of weather. Apparently the day before playing Newcastle they were very much impressed by the amazing weather conditions that Manchester had to offer for a festival over there. Having lived through the ‘floods’ (imagine this said with a French tonality to it) in Glastonbury and a storm in Brighton, and many other unbearable wet conditions, this was an amazing rain free weekend. Ok not all rain free, later, after the interview, it did start raining a whole lot more than all the skimpy dressed people could deal with.
But weather is not the only thing that we talked about, after all this was an interview about music. Nouvelle Vague listeners are probably intrigued by how the band decides which girls to take on tour, after all the CDs feature many different vocalists. For the Newcastle date there was only one girl, Mélanie, present. She makes sure that the other girls cannot make it to the … Well she sang on the first album, at the fist ever Nouvelle Vague concert, and can sing all the songs anyways, so the question is not even raised anymore if she should come along or not. Maybe I should have done a bit more research, because during the interview I found out, that the French singer Camille used to be part of Nouvelle Vague.
The success story of Nouvelle Vague is rather particular. I wanted to know how they managed to get themselves accepted internationally as a cover band, as a French band. French bands after all are not generally know that much outside the language borders (please ignore Air, Daft Punk, David Guetta and others), and well cover/tribute bands do not sell that well either do they? Quite truthfully they admitted that they themselves cannot really explain where this success comes from, but they are happy about it. They are accepted due to the creativity that goes into the songs. Their success in France is not the same as it is abroad. This is due to the fact that they have not played that many gigs in France, people have the music but do not think of them as a live band.
Their covers are different; they are special, covers of songs that people might not know that well. Of course one is bound to know “Love Will Tear Us Apart” or “Just Can’t Get Enough”, but not necessarily the other songs that are on the albums. Mélanie pointed out that you listen to a Nouvelle Vague Album like you listen to the album of any other artist, as there is something new to be discovered. For example in “Guns of Brixton”, light is shed on the lyrics as it is sung differently. The original by the Clash is very contextual. Or in the song “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, the suffering is not felt the same way. It is a calm, melancholic song, but there is not the painful history that comes with it. Nouvelle Vague’s music is a tribute to the original. It is a means of letting the younger generation access the music made by the people that are 2 or 3 generations away from original artists.
The Nouvelle Vague albums are a mixture of favorite songs, and songs that seem interesting to be covered by Nouvelle Vague. The new album (Out 29th of June in the UK) features a cover of Magazine, who they adore, and they hope that this will get people to discover Magazine. The new album features some of the original artists in the cover versions of their songs.
We also talked about music in general. France did not have something like the Beatles, the French music scene evolved in a different manner (musical Darwinism I’d call this). Today bands such as Nouvelle Vague, Justice and Phoenix etc. are getting a lot of attention outside of France. We can never have enough music in our life! New Wave music was a niche market music style. It was not for everyone, it is the beginning of indie music (not the mainstream indie). It was an alternative to the existing society. Later on in the day I watched the Maccabees perform, they were of Nouvelle Vague’s liking, after all they have a New Wave sound to them. I’d better not tell you how they perceived the View…
Thanks a lot to Marc, Olivier, Mélanie and Gerald of Nouvelle Vague for this interview that was 27 minutes long, and was marked by overlapping conversations.
If you can see Nouvelle Vague live, then I advise you to do exactly that. If you will be in France on the 23rd of June then check them out in Paris.
Interview by Solveig Werner
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Official Secrets Act
Rob Sellars and Dan Whyley caught up with Official Secrets Act before they supported The Rakes at the Cluny in April!
Click here to listen to or download the interview.
Click here to listen to or download the interview.
Wednesday 15 April 2009
School of Seven Bells Interview
School of Seven Bells, consisting of the sublime Deheza twins and their lynchpin guitarist Benjamin Curtis, are set to hit Britain by a magical tempest storm with their debut album Alpinisms. Their lucid-dream evoking sounds, created by the hauntingly beautiful voices of the twins, have had them touring with bands such as Prefuse 73 and currently Bat for Lashes, who’s almost sold-out tour is initiating them into the perfect British fan base.
Catching up with them before their 4th gig of the tour in Leeds, they seem pleased with how it’s gone so far. All they knew of Bat for Lashes (who they say is still “pretty underground in the US”) is “that song with the bicycles” – ‘What’s a Girl to do’ - which Alej insisted “blew her mind it was so good”. This little knowledge considered, it was a great fit for School of VII Bells to go before Bat for Lashes, and I was extremely deflated when after only half an hour they blew us away with their final song and modestly departed the stage.
When introducing School of VII Bells to an audience in the UK, you would expect there to be a good understanding of their shoe-gaze ambient pop, what with the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine’s perennial popularity. They agreed that these comparisons are often made about them, and with it usually comes a “… and I’m a hugee Cocteau Twins fan”, so the reference point is nearly always an encouraging hit. Ben talks of different sensibility in the U.S in more “base level” approaches to music, in contrast to the “appreciation of complexity” here; reactions which are different but equally good in both musical climates.
Both the twins and Benjamin were in previously successful groups before forming for this one, most notably the great cult band The Secret Machines of which guitarist Ben was a part of with his brother. The sound they have brought to SOVIIB is, however, remarkably different and has thus developed a fan base very much apart from their earlier projects. Ben admits that some SM fans “don’t understand the direction”, and most of their current bands don’t even know what their old stuff sounded like. When being determined to stay in the music industry, as they are, they realised that they had to challenge themselves. “Hearing the same music too long- you can fall into habits… when you want to be doing something for a really long time you have to develop your brain a bit more”.
They state that the dream-like atmosphere they invoke on record and in their live set is not a conscious effort; it is just a sum result of the three of them working together with a background in listening to psychedelic music. Hearing them on record, it is difficult to imagine just the three of them creating such an impressive sound. They say that playing live is “totally its own experience” but approached “with the same intention” hence it is just as good- or in my opinion- better.
Both Bat for Lashes and SOVIIB are headed by talented female artists; a fact which is unavoidably incongruous in an industry ever dominated by men. The twins smirk when we bring this up and explain it is something they are often reminded of. Alej passionately elaborates her views of the topic;
“I’m really surprised at how backwards things still are… Like when you’re at a venue and the engineer automatically bypasses the girl and asks the dude what’s going on. It starts there, but it can be anything from reading music press and girls’ voices are always “angelic”, or you’re “ethereal” or you’re a “banshee”. It feels like even if you’re singing with authority and in a very direct tone you’re still placed in the safe category”
As part of the music press, I can empathise with those who cannot help but describe their voices as ethereal, but there is also no doubt they are rifled with authority and blessed with a creativity that surpasses the uninventive mainstream sounds which are screamed down our airwaves. And with 69 more shows ahead of them, it seems that more people are actually tending to agree with this.
Catching up with them before their 4th gig of the tour in Leeds, they seem pleased with how it’s gone so far. All they knew of Bat for Lashes (who they say is still “pretty underground in the US”) is “that song with the bicycles” – ‘What’s a Girl to do’ - which Alej insisted “blew her mind it was so good”. This little knowledge considered, it was a great fit for School of VII Bells to go before Bat for Lashes, and I was extremely deflated when after only half an hour they blew us away with their final song and modestly departed the stage.
When introducing School of VII Bells to an audience in the UK, you would expect there to be a good understanding of their shoe-gaze ambient pop, what with the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine’s perennial popularity. They agreed that these comparisons are often made about them, and with it usually comes a “… and I’m a hugee Cocteau Twins fan”, so the reference point is nearly always an encouraging hit. Ben talks of different sensibility in the U.S in more “base level” approaches to music, in contrast to the “appreciation of complexity” here; reactions which are different but equally good in both musical climates.
Both the twins and Benjamin were in previously successful groups before forming for this one, most notably the great cult band The Secret Machines of which guitarist Ben was a part of with his brother. The sound they have brought to SOVIIB is, however, remarkably different and has thus developed a fan base very much apart from their earlier projects. Ben admits that some SM fans “don’t understand the direction”, and most of their current bands don’t even know what their old stuff sounded like. When being determined to stay in the music industry, as they are, they realised that they had to challenge themselves. “Hearing the same music too long- you can fall into habits… when you want to be doing something for a really long time you have to develop your brain a bit more”.
They state that the dream-like atmosphere they invoke on record and in their live set is not a conscious effort; it is just a sum result of the three of them working together with a background in listening to psychedelic music. Hearing them on record, it is difficult to imagine just the three of them creating such an impressive sound. They say that playing live is “totally its own experience” but approached “with the same intention” hence it is just as good- or in my opinion- better.
Both Bat for Lashes and SOVIIB are headed by talented female artists; a fact which is unavoidably incongruous in an industry ever dominated by men. The twins smirk when we bring this up and explain it is something they are often reminded of. Alej passionately elaborates her views of the topic;
“I’m really surprised at how backwards things still are… Like when you’re at a venue and the engineer automatically bypasses the girl and asks the dude what’s going on. It starts there, but it can be anything from reading music press and girls’ voices are always “angelic”, or you’re “ethereal” or you’re a “banshee”. It feels like even if you’re singing with authority and in a very direct tone you’re still placed in the safe category”
As part of the music press, I can empathise with those who cannot help but describe their voices as ethereal, but there is also no doubt they are rifled with authority and blessed with a creativity that surpasses the uninventive mainstream sounds which are screamed down our airwaves. And with 69 more shows ahead of them, it seems that more people are actually tending to agree with this.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Red Light Company Interview 11/03/2009
Red Light Company Interview 11/03/2009 by Rob Sellars and Daniel Whyley
Is this the first time you’ve played in Newcastle?
Well hopefully The Cluny will work better, are you guys looking forward to the gig?
Richard: Yeah we really like the look of The Cluny. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of people out. It’s been an amazing tour for people coming out, which has been weird but great.
So how do you find the touring experience in general? Do you like being out on the road or do you prefer being in the studio?
Richard: I like being creative, I think creativity is a really important thing with bands, and that’s the reason I got into music, to write. But at the same time, touring you get these moments of absolute elation that you can’t get anywhere else.
The gig tonight is sold out and so a lot of people are coming out tonight to see you, on one of your first big headline tours, so how does that feel?
Richard: We’ve done a couple [of headline tours] before this, and played to literally the amount of people on one whole tour that we’ve played to on one night on this tour. So we’ve done a lot of playing to no one, so its weird to see a lot of sold out venues regularly. It’s an amazing experience actually and something that because we’ve been going out and playing to no one, you really appreciate it when you have an audience.
The new album, Fine Fascination, was out recently, so have you felt there has been a lot of hype since then?
Shawn: I think after the album was released, you start getting feedback, critically and the like, and that has been an interesting experience, and it can get hectic at times, so it can be hard to adjust at times.
As the album was finished over a year ago, do you still feel it reflects you as a band?
Richard: It was written over the period of a year when we’d move to London and there were so many changes in our lives over that year, that every song is kind of a microcosm of a couple of months or a couple of weeks of changes in the live, so it wasn’t all written in one batch process, there are a lot of different stories going on, and every song has a different kind of feeling to me.
Shawn: To give you a bit of a timeline, Meccano was one of the first tracks that Richard and I put together, and that reflects a time quite long ago, and New Jersey Television came at the very end of that period for this first album, and I think you can see where it grows.
Heading away from the album and the tour a bit, how did you all meet? Have you been together as a band for long?
Richard: It’s been since 2006, we met when I posted an ad on the Internet looking for a bassist/writer and Shawn replied from Wyoming.
Shawn: I flew over pretty much immediately after we had a little bit of correspondence through email, he [Richard] sent me over some tracks, Scheme Eugene was the first track that I heard and I knew it was great so I flew over, I auditioned, we started writing and it just clicked and we kept spinning songs out. I’d say it was one of the biggest decisions of my life.
Do you all have ambitions to really take this band places then, to bigger and better places?
Richard: Sure, that’s always been there, we wanted to make a record that would take us places, and there was never any doubt that we wanted our songs on the radio. I mean, the music we were listening to at the time was bands like House of Love, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure and things, so we’re very much into that, and it has an innately big sound that seems to be kind of in vogue right now, but really it was just the music that we liked a lot and wanted to make. The album was written with bigger venues in mind, and it feels more comfortable in that setting, but that said smaller venues are great fun, and you can feel close to the crowd as well, which is something I really enjoy.
Do you feel that when you perform live there is a feeling that the crowd get involved with this big sound and enjoy the vibe?
Richard: Yeah sure, and its weird hearing live favourites, seeing which tracks go down best live, because it’s often things that you’d never kind of foresee. It’s a case of people getting the record and making their own minds up, rather than giving them singles and saying this is it. I like having the record out so people can make their own minds up. At the same time it means the set list always annoys someone, because you always have to leave one or two tracks off, you can’t do everything, and you want to fit some b-sides in, so someone always goes home unhappy. Well hopefully happy but wanting more!
So just to finish, a bit more of a trivial question, if you could share a stage with any band right now, who would you choose?
Richard: I’d choose Bowie! I’d love to share a stage with Bowie, that would be fun. He’d upstage me though!
Shawn: I think Radiohead would be pretty cool…
Richard: We did recently support Editors, and that was the first tour that we’d ever done as a band, and we were playing Alexandra Palace [London] and places in Europe. They really took us under their wing and there’s a lot to be said for that.
Shawn: Being able to watch the whole production that goes into Editors really left quite an impression, you could see where they had progressed and how they had grown, taking it to a bigger stage.
Is this the first time you’ve played in Newcastle?
Richard (vocals): We actually have played before, and we played at Digital. But we turned up and we were supposed to be supporting and they didn’t realise we were supposed to play, so we had to beg them to let us having driven from London…
Well hopefully The Cluny will work better, are you guys looking forward to the gig?
Richard: Yeah we really like the look of The Cluny. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of people out. It’s been an amazing tour for people coming out, which has been weird but great.
So how do you find the touring experience in general? Do you like being out on the road or do you prefer being in the studio?
Richard: I like being creative, I think creativity is a really important thing with bands, and that’s the reason I got into music, to write. But at the same time, touring you get these moments of absolute elation that you can’t get anywhere else.
Shawn (bass): There is a buzz to it [playing live] as well, like five minutes before going on stage, that’s what it’s all about really.
Richard: It’s amazing just to be seeing the world, and you can’t do that from your studio in London or wherever, so it’s nice when your music can take you places.
Richard: It’s amazing just to be seeing the world, and you can’t do that from your studio in London or wherever, so it’s nice when your music can take you places.
The gig tonight is sold out and so a lot of people are coming out tonight to see you, on one of your first big headline tours, so how does that feel?
Richard: We’ve done a couple [of headline tours] before this, and played to literally the amount of people on one whole tour that we’ve played to on one night on this tour. So we’ve done a lot of playing to no one, so its weird to see a lot of sold out venues regularly. It’s an amazing experience actually and something that because we’ve been going out and playing to no one, you really appreciate it when you have an audience.
The new album, Fine Fascination, was out recently, so have you felt there has been a lot of hype since then?
Shawn: I think after the album was released, you start getting feedback, critically and the like, and that has been an interesting experience, and it can get hectic at times, so it can be hard to adjust at times.
To the band, is the first album just the first step on the way to bigger goals, or is it something you’ve had to take a step back and really relish?
Richard: We actually finished the album a year ago, which is different to a lot of bands who get rushed into making a record, so it is something we’re still all very, very proud of, and I think it is a great first record. It’s definitely one of those things with that album, we wanted room to move, which ever direction we wanted to go, we wanted to make records that are interesting in different ways after that. We already have a couple of tracks written for a future record, and I think we have a lot of room to grow, and directions to explore, so I’m excited about writing again.
Richard: We actually finished the album a year ago, which is different to a lot of bands who get rushed into making a record, so it is something we’re still all very, very proud of, and I think it is a great first record. It’s definitely one of those things with that album, we wanted room to move, which ever direction we wanted to go, we wanted to make records that are interesting in different ways after that. We already have a couple of tracks written for a future record, and I think we have a lot of room to grow, and directions to explore, so I’m excited about writing again.
As the album was finished over a year ago, do you still feel it reflects you as a band?
Richard: It was written over the period of a year when we’d move to London and there were so many changes in our lives over that year, that every song is kind of a microcosm of a couple of months or a couple of weeks of changes in the live, so it wasn’t all written in one batch process, there are a lot of different stories going on, and every song has a different kind of feeling to me.
Shawn: To give you a bit of a timeline, Meccano was one of the first tracks that Richard and I put together, and that reflects a time quite long ago, and New Jersey Television came at the very end of that period for this first album, and I think you can see where it grows.
Heading away from the album and the tour a bit, how did you all meet? Have you been together as a band for long?
Richard: It’s been since 2006, we met when I posted an ad on the Internet looking for a bassist/writer and Shawn replied from Wyoming.
Shawn: I flew over pretty much immediately after we had a little bit of correspondence through email, he [Richard] sent me over some tracks, Scheme Eugene was the first track that I heard and I knew it was great so I flew over, I auditioned, we started writing and it just clicked and we kept spinning songs out. I’d say it was one of the biggest decisions of my life.
Do you all have ambitions to really take this band places then, to bigger and better places?
Richard: Sure, that’s always been there, we wanted to make a record that would take us places, and there was never any doubt that we wanted our songs on the radio. I mean, the music we were listening to at the time was bands like House of Love, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure and things, so we’re very much into that, and it has an innately big sound that seems to be kind of in vogue right now, but really it was just the music that we liked a lot and wanted to make. The album was written with bigger venues in mind, and it feels more comfortable in that setting, but that said smaller venues are great fun, and you can feel close to the crowd as well, which is something I really enjoy.
Do you feel that when you perform live there is a feeling that the crowd get involved with this big sound and enjoy the vibe?
Richard: Yeah sure, and its weird hearing live favourites, seeing which tracks go down best live, because it’s often things that you’d never kind of foresee. It’s a case of people getting the record and making their own minds up, rather than giving them singles and saying this is it. I like having the record out so people can make their own minds up. At the same time it means the set list always annoys someone, because you always have to leave one or two tracks off, you can’t do everything, and you want to fit some b-sides in, so someone always goes home unhappy. Well hopefully happy but wanting more!
So just to finish, a bit more of a trivial question, if you could share a stage with any band right now, who would you choose?
Richard: I’d choose Bowie! I’d love to share a stage with Bowie, that would be fun. He’d upstage me though!
Shawn: I think Radiohead would be pretty cool…
Richard: We did recently support Editors, and that was the first tour that we’d ever done as a band, and we were playing Alexandra Palace [London] and places in Europe. They really took us under their wing and there’s a lot to be said for that.
Shawn: Being able to watch the whole production that goes into Editors really left quite an impression, you could see where they had progressed and how they had grown, taking it to a bigger stage.
General Fiasco Interview – 04/03/2009
General Fiasco Interview with Rob Sellars and Daniel Whyley
This is your first headline tour, so are you excited about that?
Owen (lead vocals/bass): Sure, its good to come to gigs and know people have actually come to see you.
Do you get a lot more freedom on your own tour then?
Stephen: Sure, well we get to play for 20minutes longer, so get about 45minutes now, and get looked after a lot better, (points out the crates of beer stacked to one side…), we get our own room and everything!
How much time do you get to look around the cities you’re playing in, have you had a chance to check Newcastle out at all?
Stephen: Not really unless we get a day off really, then we get a bit of time to knock about a bit, but usually its just about getting there, then sound checking and that.
Owen: You don’t really get to bed too early, so you just kind of end up sleeping your day away then getting up and setting up and everything, so its just kind of sleep then play, sleep then play.
Do you enjoy playing live then, or is it more about the recording with you guys?
Stephen: I think with us, we like it in the studio, getting to see something on tape and being able to hear it back, its really good, but after a while, after these long sessions, its good just to get out and play. We enjoy both, but probably live maybe…
Owen: I think it probably depends on the atmosphere.
Stephen: You can have a really good day in the studio, or a really bad day, but you can have a really good gig, or a really bad gig too… I think live is where it’s at.
Owen: If there’s a good atmosphere and people seem to be enjoying themselves, it makes the gig really fun and easy.
Do you find that normally at your gigs, people do get into it a lot and enjoy the vibe?
Stephen: Sure, people seem to know a lot more of the songs than you might think, seeing as we’ve only put out like one vinyl single and a download, so maybe a bit of file sharing going on! Just weird when people are singing along to these songs, and it’s a bit like, how do you know that, it hasn’t been on the MySpace for over a year…
Owen: It’s an enthusiastic sort of crowd too, usually between like 14 and 19, so everyone’s got plenty of energy and a bit of a spring in their step.
Stephen: We’re pretty enthusiastic sort of guys ourselves as well!
Getting away from the tour for a bit then, how did you guys all meet and how long have you been playing together now?
Stephen: Well these two [Owen and guitarist Enda] are brothers, so [they’ve known each other] most of his life and all of his!
Owen: We met Stephen at school at about 16 when we moved schools, and we’ve been doing this for about two years now, we were all sort of playing in other bands around a similar area. I always wanted to play since I picked up a guitar really, but I guess it never hurts if it impresses the girls too…
We actually discovered you at Leeds Festival last summer, when we heard you playing on the BBC Introducing stage. How big a break was that for you to be picked by the BBC?
Owen: It was amazing, really sort of a surprise.
Stephen: BBC Introducing have been really good to us, like Huw Stephens and Steve Lamacq just started playing us as soon as we gave them stuff.
Owen: They’ve always been behind us, and it was just a big massive push to be involved, and they were the people that got us involved. It was great, we did Leeds and Reading, as Oxegen festival in Ireland, and Bellasonic.
Stephen: We did the BBC Electric Proms as well, which was amazing.
You were also picked by NME as 10 of the acts for the future from Leeds and Reading festivals, how big a surprise was that for you?
Owen: Yeah that was madness, they picked 10 bands from 3 or 4 stages, and we managed to scrape into it, with bands like Twisted Wheel and Fight Like Apes, so it was really unexpected, but obviously a massive boost.
So the last question and a bit of a big one, what are your ambitions for the band, are you taking it one step at a time or are you aiming to go all the way and make a go of it?
Owen: We’d really make to like a go of it. Obviously some bands do it quicker than others, but I think as long as we’re out there touring and releasing things, and being accessible to people, people will come to the gigs and get into the band.
Stephen: We just want to take it as far as we can, and we really appreciate all the stuff we’ve been able to do so far. We’ve already been able to do more than 95% of bands out there ever get to do, and I think if you say you don’t want to be successful then you’re just lying for the sake of being cool.
Owen: I think at the moment it feels like the fan base is getting bigger and bigger, so until that stops, or starts going backwards, we’ll keep on doing it. There is an album coming, but it’s a couple of singles away yet, this is still very early doors for us, but we’re thinking this year sometime, hopefully summer.
This is your first headline tour, so are you excited about that?
Owen (lead vocals/bass): Sure, its good to come to gigs and know people have actually come to see you.
Do you get a lot more freedom on your own tour then?
Stephen: Sure, well we get to play for 20minutes longer, so get about 45minutes now, and get looked after a lot better, (points out the crates of beer stacked to one side…), we get our own room and everything!
How much time do you get to look around the cities you’re playing in, have you had a chance to check Newcastle out at all?
Stephen: Not really unless we get a day off really, then we get a bit of time to knock about a bit, but usually its just about getting there, then sound checking and that.
Owen: You don’t really get to bed too early, so you just kind of end up sleeping your day away then getting up and setting up and everything, so its just kind of sleep then play, sleep then play.
Do you enjoy playing live then, or is it more about the recording with you guys?
Stephen: I think with us, we like it in the studio, getting to see something on tape and being able to hear it back, its really good, but after a while, after these long sessions, its good just to get out and play. We enjoy both, but probably live maybe…
Owen: I think it probably depends on the atmosphere.
Stephen: You can have a really good day in the studio, or a really bad day, but you can have a really good gig, or a really bad gig too… I think live is where it’s at.
Owen: If there’s a good atmosphere and people seem to be enjoying themselves, it makes the gig really fun and easy.
Do you find that normally at your gigs, people do get into it a lot and enjoy the vibe?
Stephen: Sure, people seem to know a lot more of the songs than you might think, seeing as we’ve only put out like one vinyl single and a download, so maybe a bit of file sharing going on! Just weird when people are singing along to these songs, and it’s a bit like, how do you know that, it hasn’t been on the MySpace for over a year…
Owen: It’s an enthusiastic sort of crowd too, usually between like 14 and 19, so everyone’s got plenty of energy and a bit of a spring in their step.
Stephen: We’re pretty enthusiastic sort of guys ourselves as well!
Getting away from the tour for a bit then, how did you guys all meet and how long have you been playing together now?
Stephen: Well these two [Owen and guitarist Enda] are brothers, so [they’ve known each other] most of his life and all of his!
Owen: We met Stephen at school at about 16 when we moved schools, and we’ve been doing this for about two years now, we were all sort of playing in other bands around a similar area. I always wanted to play since I picked up a guitar really, but I guess it never hurts if it impresses the girls too…
We actually discovered you at Leeds Festival last summer, when we heard you playing on the BBC Introducing stage. How big a break was that for you to be picked by the BBC?
Owen: It was amazing, really sort of a surprise.
Stephen: BBC Introducing have been really good to us, like Huw Stephens and Steve Lamacq just started playing us as soon as we gave them stuff.
Owen: They’ve always been behind us, and it was just a big massive push to be involved, and they were the people that got us involved. It was great, we did Leeds and Reading, as Oxegen festival in Ireland, and Bellasonic.
Stephen: We did the BBC Electric Proms as well, which was amazing.
You were also picked by NME as 10 of the acts for the future from Leeds and Reading festivals, how big a surprise was that for you?
Owen: Yeah that was madness, they picked 10 bands from 3 or 4 stages, and we managed to scrape into it, with bands like Twisted Wheel and Fight Like Apes, so it was really unexpected, but obviously a massive boost.
So the last question and a bit of a big one, what are your ambitions for the band, are you taking it one step at a time or are you aiming to go all the way and make a go of it?
Owen: We’d really make to like a go of it. Obviously some bands do it quicker than others, but I think as long as we’re out there touring and releasing things, and being accessible to people, people will come to the gigs and get into the band.
Stephen: We just want to take it as far as we can, and we really appreciate all the stuff we’ve been able to do so far. We’ve already been able to do more than 95% of bands out there ever get to do, and I think if you say you don’t want to be successful then you’re just lying for the sake of being cool.
Owen: I think at the moment it feels like the fan base is getting bigger and bigger, so until that stops, or starts going backwards, we’ll keep on doing it. There is an album coming, but it’s a couple of singles away yet, this is still very early doors for us, but we’re thinking this year sometime, hopefully summer.
Monday 16 March 2009
Socialist Student Protest Interview
James Meredith goes behind the scenes at the biggest student protest event this term. Click here to hear what he learned about the socialist students aims from occupying a fine art building.
The Hours Interview
Izaac Carlisle cosies up with The Hours in their hotel before their gig in Newcastle. Click to listen/download!
Howling Bells Interview
Mark Reynolds catches up with Howling Bells on their cosy tour bus after a gig at The Cluny. Click here to listen/download!
John McClure (of Mongrel and Reverend and the Makers) Interview 12/03/09
John McClure of Reverend and The Makers is renowned for being anything but tame, and catching up with him to talk about his new ambitious collaboration, Mongrel, is an exhausting experience in itself. The passion and intensity he holds for the new projects he has been a part of is testament to the inevitability of the success of Saturday 7th March in which their debut album, Better Than Heavy, will be distributed free with The Independent newspaper. The day is a product of the culminating revolution which started shaking long a go and which now, the strong-minded McClure believes, is about to explode in an epiphany of musical gritty reality.
“Music as you know it is dying”, he announces. “There is no way you can justify charging thirteen quid for summit that’s 50p”. Ever the voice of reason, his Yorkshire roots have proved to be swelled with antagonisms for the current apathy in the music scene, which in turn has made him ever the more enthusiastic to shake people up and beat the crowds. He talks a lot about the “former voices of rebellion”: - such as NME, punk bands and old Rock and Roll; all of which have merged into the docile establishment which, despite the masses of cultures, have insisted on ignoring most of them.
“Where is everyone?!” he asks with disbelief lacing every syllable. He waves a
“What’s rock music?” he probes me, in his idiosyncratic way which I soon see is embalmed in the depths of his soul. He wants to show the world that new music - passionate music - deserves a chance in the everyday world, instead of being confined to certain late hours on the radio. This is why at first glance, the collaborations with some of the best hip hop artists around perhaps seen incongruous for someone hailing from the
The new album is not only about producing fresh music, it is also embedded in the greater atmosphere of rebellion. The Independent newspaper is thus the perfect form of distribution, as McClure makes clear that Mongrel are “not afraid of telling the truth”- just as The Independent voices rebellious opinions and won’t stand short of contention. Is this new teaming of media the beginning of the end of music as we know it? With the credit crunch now in full steam ahead, collaborations such as this don’t seem too daft an idea at all.
See wearemongrel for tour dates and download info.
See instigatedebate and find your voice of contention.
Interview by Eliza Lomas
Grammatics Interview 11/03/09
Click here to listen/download Eliza's interview with Grammatics before their gig at the The Cluny!
Interview by Eliza Lomas
Interview by Eliza Lomas
Sunday 15 March 2009
The Chevrolites Interview 11.3.09, The Cluny
L: How did you meet each other?
J: Well, I was writing songs for a while by myself and then was coming up with more, band-type material and I knew Si already so from then on we just needed to find a bass player, and a guitarist.
L: What’s your favourite venue to play in Newcastle? ‘Cos you seem to have played in most of them!
J: The Cluny, just for the size of it. We play a lot of places like Head of Steam that a lot of people go there but you can only fit like, seven people in the place!
S: The Cumberland Arms, I love The Cumberland Arms- we’ve played that place one but was when I had a broken arm
J: Yeah it was after one of the recording sessions
L: How did you do that?
S: Do you really wanna know?
L: Yeah, go on.
S: We were recording in Billingham, and erm I got a little drunk and stumbled away from the crowd and then got jumped on by a bigger crowd and er, they stamped on my arm and broke it.
L: They stamped on your arm?
S: Yeah, they did. I couldn’t play The Cumberland Arms like three days later
L: How do you feel your sound has developed in the last year?
J: We used to have songs, six or seven months ago that were really poppy, like we seem to have sped up a little bit, trying to get a little bit darker,
S: Not darker but..
J: I’m trying to aim at a bigger audience than just 13-14 year olds
L: So was your previous fan base mainly 13-14ish then?
J: A lot of under 16s
S: I don’t know, when we first started out it was more poppy kinda..
J: Then we got a bass player and a lead guitarist and it became more...
S: Less jumpy and poncey
J: like in the last six months we’re trying to get away from that.
S: I think we’re in the right place now
J: We’re in the right direction
L: What would you say are your biggest influences at the moment?
J: Like lyrically?
S: I don’t even know!
J: Just like the social awareness of the population, more heartfelt lyrics. I quite like writing about our home town and our places, real things and real people rather than pretentious...
S: Anyone can write a song about taking drugs and getting drunk, know what I mean?
J: Exactly
L: So for you [Si] who’s your favourite drummer then?
S: It’s got to be Jon Bonham, and then faster stuff like Fab Moretti from The Strokes, like the high-hat really quick sounds really good, makes it sound jumpy.
L: So, I had a look at your myspace and some reviews, do you resent comparisons between say, you and Maximo Park?
J: I don’t mind Maximo Park, it’s the Arctic Monkeys thing
S: I duno you’re always going to be compared to someone
J: It’s just that someone wrote that we sounded like Arctic Monkeys, then every review after that, it seemed like they’d read that review, said a little bit by themselves then jumped on the band wagon.
L: Yeah I read the Maximo Park one and listening to you now, I don’t really see the similarity...
J: I know, it’s always Maximo Park, The Futureheads, The Arctic Monkeys...
L: Basically anyone that’s northern!
J: Yeah! [laughs]
L: So what’s your favourite funny thing that’s been written about you?
J: Probably our last review, about how some girl got up on stage [at a gig]
S: Oh man, I was struggling to get on that stage, right, and this girl was about four foot nothing and got on like that! She was dancing around, she was going mental.
J: And they wrote this massive review about the gig, there were about two lines on the band and the rest of the review was all about that lass...
S: How much of a legend this girl was!
L: If you could play a gig any place anywhere with no limitations, where would you play and why?
S: Good question...I would play on me own, with a bongo, in Maddison Square gardens. And it would sell out.
J: I would say something like Hollywood Bowl, where is that, LA?
S: Hollywood
J: You know, just a massive venue, the biggest place you could play.
L: So you’d rather play big stadiums than smaller venues?
J: Well, that would be the dream.
L: So on that note would you go for stadium rock or the three minute punk song?
J: I like the stadium venues but not the stadium music, I much prefer when like, Maximo Park play really close knit gigs, when the whole place gets steamed...
S: I really like all of that, but I think Kings Of Leon have done the whole stadium rock thing quite well
L: I still prefer the first album though,
J: So do I
S: Everyone does, maybe you should write about that! I would still prefer to play some sweaty little gig than somewhere like Bon Jovi, know what I mean?
L: So what festivals have you played at, if any?
J: Umm we played at this Newcastle one, The Green Gathering
L: I haven’t heard of that one...
S: It’s shit, it was absolutely pissing down with rain
L: What’s your favourite city to play in based on audience reaction?
J: I’d say Teesside really, just ‘cos it’s home. The Teesside crowd have way more energy.
S: ‘Cos you see in Manchester and Liverpool and all, there all standing back and we’re only there as the supporting act anyway...we played in London recently and if you don’t wear drainpipe trousers and pointy shoes then they don’t want to know you.
L: OK, this is quite a strange one; if you could invite any three people living or dead to have dinner with, then who would they be?
S: Ooh, I’ve got two already- Jim Morrison, Jon Bonham...and me Mam
J: Urr
S: You see I got three straight away!
J: John Lennon...
L: Why?
J: Jus ‘cos he’s an absolute legend
S: You’re not even going to ask me why are you? Just ‘cos I said Jim Morrison Jon Bonham and me mother!
L: Why then?!
S: Jon Bonham just to ask him how he did it
J: Can I say mine? Can I have four?
L: Go on then
J: Just ...The Beatles!
S: You’ve gone a bit wrong there- I’ve got me mother in there and you’ve got The Beatles! Oh, can I chuck my mother out and put in someone else?
L: Aw keep her- your poor mum
J: You’ve got to keep her!
S: I’d have Hitler
L: Err, why?
S: Just so I could knock him about
L: So on a similar theme, if you could have been born in any other era which would it have been?
S: The Seventies. I would say I’d want to be born in ’71 so I was like 6 or 7 when punk was born
J: I would like to have been in my prime in the ‘60s
L: I’ve just seen The Watchmen, so if you could be any comic-book hero who would you be?
S: You know Sin City, that really strong bloke, him
J: Wasn’t he played by that guy in The Wrestler?
S:....Mickey Rourke- I got that one for the record!
J: You don’t get many English superheroes, do you.
L: What’s your favourite song to make you cry?
J: I don’t want to say, it’ll be too depressing. I’d say “Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli
S: Mine is “Last Resort” by The Eagles
L: I would’ve said something by Elliott Smith
S: But you could top yourself to any one of his songs!
L: What is your most embarrassing musical moment?
S: I was in my first band when I was 18 and we were playing our third gig and I thought it would be a class idea to, half way through a song, walk round my drum kit and stand on the bass drum to play, leaning over the top- someone came up and poured a vodka and coke down me arse crack! I had a wet patch all the way down and I had to stumble round my kit and carry on with the gig.
That was a pretty good one, beat that!
J: I’m never really embarrassed
S: You’re that cool
L: So, what other instruments did you play before the band?
J: I’ve just always played guitar really.
L: You weren’t forced to play the recorder or anything?
S: I was the only one who wasn’t, my school had like a whole procession of recorder players and I had to sit on my own and watch everyone do it.
L: You didn’t play the triangle?!
S: Yeah I did!
J: I used to play the piano a bit, I dabbled
L: Ok catchy riff vs. Lyrical genius?
S: Lyrical riff
J: I would say lyrical
L: And finally, who were the best band that you’ve been on tour with or played with?
J: Datsuns definitely
S: Who I liked the most were The Datsuns, we played with them here.
L: Well thankyou for the interview
J: It’s been an interesting experience
S: The questions have been good
L: Thanks!
Interview by Louise Morris
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