In conversation: Alec Empire on Shivers, Patrick Wolf, and Financial Meltdown
Written by: Hugh Platt
When I first interviewed Alec Empire, over a sterile exchange of emails, I mentioned that I was glad of the arms’ length distance - no-one wants to find out that a musical hero, once off the pedestal we make for them, turns out to be a bit of a cock. So it was with some trepidation that I found myself sat next to my phone, awaiting a call from the man himself to discuss his new mini-album, Shivers, and the career-spanning ambitions of his forthcoming The Past-The Present-The Future tour.
I needn’t have worred though. As an interviewee, Empire isn’t what you’d expect. He is neither the ice-cold Teutonic electro-pioneer as his recent stage manner would suggest, not the perma-snarled noise warrior that carved Digital Hardcore out of the dripping wounds of the music industry during the 1990s. Over the phone, he chuckles as he dissects - at no short length - every question we can think to throw at him. After over 15 years of pushing the musical envelope in directions it was never meant to go, Empire can barely contain the enthusiasm in his voice as he describes his current projects, or the derision for corruption and - not once do we not think that he still means it.
So here, unabridged, is Music Towers’ most recent conversation with in Alec Empire.
The new mini-album, Shivers - why release it, when you’ve got a full-length album coming out later in the year?
“The idea was to release tracks that didn’t or wouldn’t really fit so much on the album. One of the themes for the tour is this past, present and future theme. We’re going to play a lot of stuff from older records, and also very new material that nobody’s heard yet. While in past years we’re always touring an album or something, maybe through two or three singles, so we really want to approach the show in a totally new way. That’s why we compiled Shivers a bit in that direction. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but its very different kinds of material. ‘Control Drug’ is a bit like the direction of the Digital Hardcore sound, but it’s not really DHR like used to sound, but it’s a song that in a way taps into that area. The last track, which is the German word for “dead”, ‘Tot’, this goes back to way when I started, it has its roots in when I started making electronic music. I did a lot of acid house and electro records. I approached this track with that kind of mindset.
“Shivers is a collection of very different kinds of pieces, which kind of describes my history in a way, but I didn’t just want to repeat myself and just do something that I’d already done before [chuckles]. I think some people might get a little confused with that approach, but on an album I couldn’t have really done stuff like that. So this was really the idea to get something out and stuff that people can’t really predict. I think at the moment there seems to be some confusion - some people think I’m doing like goth-industrial rock or something, other people think I’m doing breakcore, and totally different people might think I’m doing…ambient stuff [laughs]. I don’t know. It’s very strange. I think people have to get used to the idea that you can’t really put me into just one category of something.”
You’ve mentioned the tracks on Shivers wouldn’t fit on the new record, and that the new material is going to be a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven. What can we expect from the new record?
“First of all I have to say, even though if I’ve said it was a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven record, for a lot of people they might find it’s a…huge step [laughs] forward, because basically what I did for this record, and because I’m already in the middle of making it, its kinda like almost an insane approach [laughs] - not insane for me, but for other people, that’s why I have to laugh a little bit.
Watch the video to ‘On Fire’ by Alec Empire
“I really went back to a lot of really German themes, Nibelung, and the Wagner-type of themes. I wanted to make a record which was completely disconnected from pop music or rock music as we maybe know it from the last century. I think of lot of music that’s been made today is so connected to that one recipe of song writing, and the way records sound, and I was just getting so bored with it. Some stuff is synthesiser pieces which maybe ended up fitting more into a film or something, as it’s very epic and very big sounding stuff, which I was just getting into. In Berlin there was a lot of that minimal techno sound around for years, and everybody was trying to simplify music more and more to make it maybe have a wider appeal, but I was just getting really bored with it.
“One thing that we tried - and we’re going to do it over the summer again - there’s outside of Berlin there’s an old bunker from the war, and we went in and recorded some stuff there. It had a really strange and weird vibe. I just want the next album to be more, not just a collection of a bunch tracks or something, but to be one piece that works…almost like, y’know, Intelligence & Sacrifice? It was always seen as one piece of work, rather than as a selection of tracks, and this is kind of like the mindset that I’m approaching the new record with. But that doesn’t describe the sound of it. At the moment I’m into very precise and more cleaner sounds, which also have a lot of punch of course, and energy. But I think most of the noisy stuff I’ve done…in my opinion, bands like Justice, even they even include digital distortion sounds now, so to me, I don’t really want to go too much into that field anymore.”
You mentioned disconnecting yourself from traditional song writing - how do you do that in a culture such as ours in which music is so ingrained?
“It really starts with the way in your mind…I think that’s why maybe the link to The Golden Foretaste of Heaven this record, as at that time I was really getting into these Russian synthesisers, and I was playing for the first time in St Petersburg and Moscow. That brought back a lot of memories from when as a child when I visited East Germany for example, where it was just such a difference in the way music was perceived. Maybe the most famous record would’ve been maybe a Beatles song collection, for a lot of people in the GDR. They were just looking at pop music or rock music in a completely different way.
“Because I grew up in Berlin, I was stuck in the middle of both of these two worlds, and over the past maybe 10 years or so the West has taken over so much of most of the Eastern Europe countries. With something like film scores, everything non-Western is very interesting for me. When somebody maybe does an electronic soundtrack in Los Angeles, for me is very predictable as I know almost what it’s going to sound like. While if someone from Japan or something scores a really weird film,even if they would use some of the same instruments, they would just have a different way of looking at music.
“The next very important step of course is to not even want to please anybody. At the moment I hate that atmosphere in the music industry where everyone is so scared of not selling records, or of not selling out shows, and things like that. People’s sense of themselves is almost being taken out of the music-making process, when it’s just about ‘how many people can I please with one thing’, or always looking to please the majority. For me, art and music, that’s not what they’re about. It’s almost at the peak of trying to make profits from music, while at the same time with the digital age and everyone just taking the music, it’s an important moment where we stand now.
“For myself, I’ve just made the decision, “okay, I can make music that does stuff for me”. Not just in the sense that I like the music, but that it challenges me too. And if that is commercial or if it’s not commercial, I can’t really make that decision”. The music scene is a reflection of stuff like Wall Street even, with the MySpace boards and everybody’s trying to fake their profiles, and make it appear on Last.fm like they have thousands of listeners. I just think, why even fake this appearance? For me, if I listen to music and only ten other people in the world understand it, that’s okay. Why do we have to always think about accepted by the majority? This plays a lot into writing music, how I approach music at the moment.”
Watch the video to ‘Too Dead For Me’ by Atari Teenage Riot
Do you not feel that an established experimental artist, you’ll always have a safety net of dedicated fans that will follow you regardless?
“Hopefully. The weird thing is that’s the feedback I keep getting. Even much later…sometimes we get emails, or people talk to me after shows, and they tell me that they now understand the record that I made ten years ago. They were angry - “why doesn’t this sound like Atari Teenage Riot…it’s so weird…is he taking the piss?” - but then they’ve said they see the structure and precision and the skill, if you want to call it that, much later. It’s almost like a language. It’s the same with books - you read a book when you’re sixteen, and then maybe read it again ten years later and understand it a whole lot more, and interpret it in a different way. I think with music it works like this as well, at least with my music.
“But I also know fans who hate that, and want me to make the same stuff over and over. One reason why I put this track, ‘Shivers’, on the EP was really to piss these hardcore genre-fans off! There’s some journalists over here [in Germany] once said to me [sneering] “I think the day you write a piano ballad, that’s the day which you should stop making music”. Of course, the next thing I put out, I put a long piano track on it! Of course it didn’t sound like a normal piano ballad - it was mainly in the sort of approach how maybe Cluster would have done it - but I feel really challenged when people try to tell me what I should do. And for myself - can I do it? I work a lot with piano when I write scores for films.
“It was the same when people in techno were telling me you can’t use guitars. And right now, it’s almost as if electronic music cannot live without guitar sounds, with that whole indie-dance thing. I think it’s very stupid to judge music or musicians in that way. We always try to go against that. I think it’s fun to see if you can pull it off. Of course, you also get a lot of shit for that [laughs] from these people who just don’t want to question you again. Some fans they would rather prefer that you always do the same thing so they don’t have to think about it again. With my audience, people like that fact, that it’s not always the same. I think that’s very different to other musicians somehow.”
Do you still feel like an underground artist?
“It’s very strange - I feel very connected to that way of thinking. I don’t see music in this sort of hierarchy, like this “person is more famous, that person is less famous” - to me it really only matters what it does at that point. I know musicians who are amazing but nobody knows their music almost. To me, that’s equal to something which is really successful at the moment. I really don’t think that matters for me.
“Of course if somebody says to me, ‘hey, what do you think about that project?’ or “do you want to get involved in that?”, very often I would say ‘yes’ to things where other people wouldn’t expect me to jump on to. I produced one track with Patrick Wolf that is not out yet, which is called ‘Together’, that is very melodic and very pop almost. Some people will think “why would he do that stuff?” Maybe that’s the underground mentality I grew up with all the time, when I started making records and playing shows. For me, to network with other musicians in very important. It’s not just a thing about thinking about combining forces to sell more records, or something like that, for me it’s really personal almost. When I meet younger DJs, they don’t have that mindset at all, but from the 90, you couldn’t survive without that way of thinking, of a connected world of other sound systems in other cities. You just had to be connected in that way, whereas at the moment a lot of people think “I’m gonna make money, I’m gonna get it from music industry. Make my money, take it out, then leave”. Which is very strange for me to witness that, but then I don’t really have to deal with that.”
You mentioned Patrick Wolf - it’s a strange collaboration, and a lot of people were shocked when it was announced you’d be working with him. How did that come about?
“Somehow he had come to an Atari Teenage Riot show years ago, which I then of course forgot. Years later, when we talked about it, about certain things that happened at the hsow, I remembered: “that was you?”. He had given me some music already back then.
“He played a show in Berlin, I think about two or three years ago, when The Magic Position came out. I got this message from Universal Records, which put out the record over here, and they were like “we have this artist who really likes you, and you music, do you want to come down to the show?” It was a bit strange, because as at the same time and in the same place, on another stage, Jon Spencer and Suicide were playing, so I was in the place anyway. I thought it was really boring that show there. It wasn’t the musicians fault - it was some kind of weird theatre kind of place, where the music just sounded kind of flat in my opinion. So I was going to see this other thing, and I was really blown away by the performance that he did. In this packed place, It was so alive. For me, the contrast couldn’t have been bigger, wider, compared to this other stuff which for me was the obvious show to go to.”
Watch the video to ‘Vulture’ by Patrick Wolf
“I saw Patrick without even knowing the music. I knew some of the early EP stuff that he had done, kind of programmed beats, almost like Warp or something, intellectual fucked-up programming. He would play strings on top of it and stuff like that. But the show that I’d seen was completely different, full of energy. And we talked about it, ‘yeah we should really do stuff’, and then it took quite some time - a year or something - for anything to happen. I sent him a track, and I didn’t hear back…. Then he came over to Berlin and we spent quite some time in The Hellish Vortex Studios over here. I think it was a really good collaboration as I think he wanted to push his sound into a new direction, and I think the whole Berlin thing was good. The way we approached a lot of the other material he was working on is that….there’s this kind of myth about Berlin, with Eno, Bowie, old synths and big reverbs and stuff…in a way it feels out of that tradition somehow. I don’t know why that is, but it’s maybe because that’s the Berlin I grew up in at the end of the 80s, middle of the 80s, where that kind of sound was really still around and important for people. The Patrick Wolf tracks, all the stuff that we’ve done are like very different from each other. ‘Vultures’ is more like a harder electro track that he really loved, but there’s also a track called ‘Battle’ which sounds maybe like what most people would expect from it, very hard guitars and very hard beats. It could’ve been an Alec Empire track, just with different vocals and I think that’s great.”
Talking about Past-Present-Future Tour - what made you decide to re-incorporate ATR material into the set?
“I really wanted to avoid that all the time. To me, it would’ve been…I just couldn’t. I felt with the Atari Teenage Riot songs, when Carl Crack died, and the way the whole thing ended, I didn’t really feel that I wanted to go back to that at that time. I think now, one reason, to be honest, the political situation made the decision for me. The past maybe six months, or even longer, I feel so angry about just about the banks and all that stuff. For me, I haven’t looked closely enough at the British situation, but the way people react in Germany it’s like…are they walking zombies? It seems like so many people don’t want to see where their problem is. A lot of these songs that we’ve written with Atari Teenage Riot describe it so well, what has been going on with the Iraq war, and they way the financial world is tied in with all that. To me it was “why don’t we play some of these songs?” I don’t even need to re-write new stuff, because we’ve had it.
“Also, what I quite liked about the idea was we have to re-work that stuff to see if it works now. The songs won’t sound so different that you can’t recognise them anymore, but it certain stuff had to be updated. I felt also distanced enough, it was the tenth anniversary of the May Riots, when we played the streets of Berlin, and it really made me think back about what has changed, how do people react to the political situation, and somehow I thought I can’t ignore this.”
Watch Atari Teenage Riot perform at the Berlin May Day Riots in 1999
“For example, a record like The Golden Foretaste of Heaven I would not have done this year, because it just not felt like it. I think the weird thing is that a lot of people at my shows now don’t really know Atari Teenage Riot so well. That’s the feedback I’m getting most of the time. People go ‘you played in this another band?” as they were just too young when it happened. Most people maybe when I started years ago, they started with Intelligence & Sacrifice. It’s kind of strange. We’ll see what the reaction will be, but we’re looking forward to doing stuff like that again.”
On the last tour, the vast majority of the set was the lighter, Golden Foretaste material. How do you marry the harder stuff up with your newer electro sound when playing live?
“I always remember when we once did a 3CD compilation called The Geist of Alec Empire, which was almost like a ‘Best Of’ from all Mille Plateaux albums I did in the 90s. I remember when we compiled it we were like ‘can we even do this? This might not even fit’. The weird thing is, when we compiled it, it made perfect sense. I find that very often with my music that even if one record feels to be so different from another one - maybe if you were to play them next to each other and you don’t know the context, it would be weird - but in a live situation, these things are much more linked together than most people would think.
“To give you an example, we played a show in Spain last month, and tracks like ‘New Man’ and ‘The Ride’ and harder stuff, completely was working very well next to each other. I think sometimes it’s much easier than some people think. And it wouldn’t like “now they’re going in one direction, then they’re going off like this”, it’s because there’s this signature on all of these tracks. I haven’t found this to be a problem so far to be honest.”
Watch the video to ‘The Ride’ by Alec Empire
On the subject of film scores, do you ever have difficulty in writing to someone else’s specifications, as opposed to following your own creative path?
How do you translate that into the performance of playing the instruments and stuff, it’s very complex. But I don’t find that a problem at all. I think its fun most of the time. I really like doing it. You can actually do stuff in films that you could never do in tracks that are supposed to be set to the radio or something. You can score a scene in a film which is very dramatic and very intense, something that even a more mainstream kind of crowd would think that it’s an exciting scene, while if [the score] would be played on daytime radio, they would all turn off the station. Maybe, that’s a theory. Sometimes the people run these things think maybe people are too stupid to be challenged, but I think films, even mainstream cinema, you can do stuff like this.
People thought with The Fast And The Furious when this Atari Teenage Riot song appears in this one scene…when we put [‘Speed’] out, most people were going ‘oh this is so crazy!’, ten years later it appears in a Hollywood film [chuckles]. Maybe it’s also got something to do with the way the images go with the music…but I really love doing stuff like that.”
So when is the full-length album out?
“We’re trying to really wrap it up as soon as possible. If we didn’t do the tour [laughs] then I’d say I’d finish it at the end of May (which is still the plan…), but the idea is to put it out the end of August, maybe early September. At the moment there’s no delay or anything, as most of the stuff is done.”
Apart from the upcoming shows, the album, subsequent tour…what’s on the agenda?
“There’s a lot of stuff! At some point Big Pink wants to come over to record more stuff here in Berlin. There is such a hype right now over them, they are always so busy that we’re always trying to figure out a date where we can all make it. [laughs]
“One project I really have to start working on, which might happen in Spring 2010 - but we really have to do all the work for it this year - is a theatre piece about Mozart. It’s going to be showing in Berlin. I don’t know if you know of the French performance artist, Costas, he’s slightly older than me, and performs very outrageous kinds of performances. There’s a very interesting screenplay that an author gave to us, which is basically a very confrontational story…you can’t really prove it, but there are certain signs that Mozart was abused as a child…so I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but a lot of people look at Mozart as a composer in that neurotic way, and you can’t really mention any negative sides, and it’s almost as if the bourgeoisie has completely absorbed that composer and that theatre piece is going to be insane. I’m doing the music for it and it’s going to be a really exciting project.
“Over here at the moment all the tabloids are so angry….there’s this film coming out, Chaostage - Days of Chaos - it this German punk film, and it’s starting this month I over 40 cinemas over here. There’s a very controversial scene where a cop gets shot. Now the government want to index the film already. Bild-Zeitung, it’s kind of the equivalent of The Sun in England, ran this really large article about how this kind of film should be shut down and stuff like that. I think at the moment it’s an exciting time as with certain statements people feel so provoked, they react in such an extreme way, it really feels almost like something is changing. People are so busy keeping things down, and to be active against so many ideas even, stuff like that. I’m working all the time.”
The new mini-album from Alec Empire, Shivers, is out on Eat Your Heart Out Records on May 8. Empire is also touring the UK before its release.
Alec Empire May 2009 tourdates
01 London Camden Underworld
02 Manchester Satan’s Hollow
03 Glasgow Ivory Blacks
05 Norwich The Waterfront
Bangkok Rock: Jumpin’ Johnny Flash
Written by: Dene Mullen
The condensation runs down my bottle of beer, soaking the mat below. Despite the tricks that my eyes and ears are playing on me, my mind is still lucid enough to reassure me that I am not in the late 80s, watching a proponent of perhaps the most ridiculed musical ‘movement’ of all time.
No, it’s 2009 and I’m sat in the upstairs room of a huge pub in balmy Bangkok, along with about 10 other people, witnessing one of the most unbelievable performances of my life.
Anyone who has been to Thailand’s capital will tell you that, no matter how noble your intentions upon arrival – sticking solely to cultural wonders such as the Royal Palace and the magnificent reclining Buddha – eventually it will get you. And we’re not talking about an attack of Bangkok Belly after sampling the delights of the innumerable street vendors here either. No, what will lure you in, against your better judgement, is the infamous Khao San Road.
At times it resembles a particularly gratuitous street scene from one of those god-awful ‘documentaries’ that were so popular in the late 90s, sporting titles like ‘Mad Reps Get Fucked in Faliraki’. Yet at the same time, it has an unabashed sleaze and slight sense of danger, making it strangely thrilling to behold. While the natural warmth and exuberance of the locals only adds to the allure of the place.
After ignoring the advances of yet another helpful tuk-tuk driver who enquires whether I’d be interested in seeing a ‘ping-pong show, boss?’ (complete with finger-flicking-out-of-inner-cheek ‘pop’ sound) I continue my march toward a pub called ‘The Place’ which promises ‘Rock Show Tonight!’ on a billboard outside. Perching on a ludicrously high stool, I order a couple of Chang beers and try my best to get comfortable in time for the show. What greets me is beyond my wildest imagination.
There are four male members of the band I later find out are called Roadkill, and a female vocalist who totters onto the stage occasionally to provide harmonies. They are all Thai and the lead singer is perhaps the most outrageous human being I’ve ever seen.
Lunchtime on the Khao San Road:
His hair akin to the infamous Colombian footballer, Carlos Valderrama, and a personal stylist who seemingly has Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet DVD on a constant loop. I would also estimate he weighs roughly nine stone. When he addresses the audience, his English is pretty much perfect but has a strange pseudo-American twang to it. He says his name is ‘Johnny Flash’ and I barely stifle a laugh as the opening chords crash out of the sound system. Immediately, he is off; bouncing around like an ADHD-sufferer on the pop for the very first time.
In sharp contrast to the madman with the mic, Roadkill’s bassist is the kind of man who makes you feel relaxed just by looking at him. Baring an uncanny resemblance to Chief Bromden, the huge native-American in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his hunched frame hardly moves with the music but his nimble fretwork is what drives the music here.
Similar to Red Hot Chili Peppers in that respect, there is also something of the Kiedis in Flash’s rockstar moves. They are all clichéd beyond belief: the attempted aerial splits, the mic stand pushdown, even something resembling a Jagger strut but when he actually sings, his shoulders become scrunched up around his neck and he holds the mic with both hands.
They perform songs with names and lyrics so outrageous they almost transcend into genius, their self-titled paean to a lover who “wore me out, like roadkill” being a particular highlight. In amongst the senseless rock there are one or two softer moments, although they are as contrived as Aerosmith’s Armageddon theme tune, with lines like “I’ll run through the night, to hold you tight”.
It is clear this is Flash’s band and he is, obviously, meant to be the main event. Songcraft thrown unashamedly out of the window - along with taste - it is nevertheless hard not to feel something approaching admiration for a man who performs like he is headlining Glastonbury when he is, in fact, commanding the attention of five northern lads with ‘comedy’ nicknames on the back of their t-shirts, a couple more interested in getting to know the insides of each other’s mouths than watching the band, and two twentysomething blokes who had tans months before they even arrived in Thailand and are both the proud cultivators of those half-spiky, half-swipy haircuts so popular in the nightclubs of Essex.
Our man takes on Khao San Road after dark:
Aside from this beguiling cross-section of humanity there’s just me, and four bar staff. Not exactly Wembley Stadium. Yet this doesn’t stop Johnny Flash from expending roughly enough energy to power a small country for a week or so.
With ten songs down, Flash’s knife-on-glass screeches are punctuating a chorus which consists solely of the words “come and get me”. He begins swirling like a particularly lightweight helicopter before falling theatrically to the ground just as his drummer pulls up one stroke shy of demolishing one of his toms.
As someone who has spent far too much of his time watching jumped-up little pricks strut around tiny stages in London, dripping with cocksure attitude despite playing to a similarly small audience, Johnny Flash is somewhat refreshing. Unlike the school-night rock-flops of London town, this is clearly a guy who acts like he does because it comes naturally, not because he thinks it is what’s expected of him. His appeal is certainly kitsch in its most lavishly affected form, but Flash is intensely likable. I’m not advocating a return to the dark days of hair metal, but as I drain the last drops of beer from the bottle and leap to the floor from my stool, I can’t help but wonder whether the London scenesters would benefit from toning down the swagger and turning up the ‘flash’.
Feature: 60 years of 45s
Written by: David Harrison
A knock on the door and my loyal postman gives me a small square package, I know what this is. Killing a finger in the process in the excitement to get it open, a as new copy of Nightrain by Guns n Roses on 7inch.
Recently me and the other half (pictured) were in an antique store and found an old classy looking radiogram for £40, we took it home and fixed it up. Suddenly we had this classic sounding turntable and stereo for the price of round of drinks in a poncy bar.
In the run up to Christmas: skint like the rest of the country looking for something that would mean a bit more for presents. Thought I would check out Alan’s Records in East Finchley. An ‘Alanadins’ cave of vinyl if you will. If you want ANYTHING, it is likely he can find it, get it, or has it in some garage somewhere.
And not a computer or search box in sight.
Now each weekend is become punctuated with a trip into the record shop. Playing music has become more valuable. Found afternoons to ourselves sitting around with our little seven inchs examining them, looking to see who produced it, looking what year and when. Best of all they are cheaper then Itunes.
It gets more fun with one of those Numark portable turntables. Ok so I can’t fit my whole f**king record collection in my pocket. But I don’t want to! I want some morsels to be savoured one tasty morsel at a time, not spray painted all over every where I walk or at the back of a bus. Somebody spent a lot of time recording this song, we should pay time and respect listening to it.
So new years eve we are outside a pub with the Numark, a collection of cheese and classics on 7inch. We only had 45’s so we had to listen to a few more then once. Serving some illicit mount gay rum. I have another look in the Birdcage, ok the DJ is playing some non-descript 12 inch dance remixes. Oooh this might be hard.
I ask to play a half hour of cheese? He says maybe, I whip out the 7inch, 7inch vs a 12inch. 7inch in this case is showing dedication to the cheese. Straight Cheesy Flush beats 12“ Full House we are in.
You should of seen the people on tables singing Jennifer Rushes Power of Love. This would not of happened if I turned up with a poxy Ipod an adapter.
The most beautiful moment was requests,
‘Do you have ? Soandso by whatever’
‘No I have 45 songs, that is it, you will hear them all’
‘Well how about?’
NO, I have nothing but 45 songs, there is no search option, there is no interactive universal lets all be DJs about this. There are fourty five 45’s and that is it. When they are done I will go, get up then and play something if you want?
The ipod or mp3 collection is something that sits in the background when you are working. But the enjoyment of music is a pastime in itself, not something you have in the background to pass time.
Bill Drummond at a performance of the 17 tells us, the first time he went home with Strawberry Fields and listened to it again and again. Looking at the light in the vinyl, wondering how each sound was made and how this tune came to be. It was a day before he even realised it had a B-side. How he has been searching for that elusive moment ever since.
Now not saying you will have the same epiphany of putting a 7inch bit of vinyl on a funny oversized disc. Not saying it is practical or efficient. But if an ipod has all the convenience of a city Smartcar. Indulging in 7 inches is like driving a nice classic Morgan at the weekend…
…but without the need for garage, or any mechnical skills, or a driving licence, or Jeremy Clarkson telling you about it.
Interview: Rev78’s search for that sound
Written by: Chris Watkeys
Rev78’s music is a collision between dark, clashing soundscapes, and bright, catchy melodies which seep like honey through a toxic sea. Think The Killers playing hooky three-minute versions of Godspeed You Black Emperor tracks and you’re halfway there; somewhere in that swirling maelstrom is the chemistry needed for rock ‘n roll greatness. Their music screams out for a voice truly worthy of it.
The departure six months ago of their original singer left the band somewhat cut adrift, and forced them into a seemingly fruitless search for a new frontman. Yet after a series of false starts, the band finally found their voice; his name is Ed Quick, and he just might be UK indie’s next superstar frontman.
“Without wanting to sound clichéd, I do feel at home on stage, do you know what I mean?” says the shy but engaging 21 year-old. “And every time I sing, I want to sing to the best of my abilities, and get as much emotion across as I can.”
Ed Quick’s voice is immensely powerful and utterly dynamic, with the kind of chasm-spanning range which might have Muse’s Matt Bellamy looking over his shoulder. Ed was described by a fan as “Ian Curtis and Morrissey’s bastard lovechild”, which is as close to the mark as we think we’re gonna get.
It wasn’t easy for Rev78 finding their man, however. “It was a tricky few months trying to find someone who could replace the old singer, and put a new slant on it” says guitarist Dave Gritzman. A string of nearly-men raised and dashed the band’s hopes in quick succession. “We were putting ads in giving influences like Steve Marriott, Jack White, Interpol… you know, really distinct, powerful voices” says Jimi Laffoley – bassist, founder member and, together with Dave, Rev78’s creative core. “And some of the guys who came in… “ … here Jimi trails off, and shudders. “We had one guy come in who sounded like the guy from Maroon 5.”
Then there was the guy who’d won the Israeli version of The X-Factor. “He was a fabulous singer, but he was very Pop Idol, that kinda thing” says Jimi. “And one guy who looked like Meatloaf” adds sticksman Dan, Dave’s brother. It’s fair to say that at that point, things were looking increasingly bleak for Rev78. Yet at the same time Ed, unbeknown to them, had just arrived in London from Norwich, looking for a band. So what did he think when he first heard Rev78’s music? “I just thought it was something so raw, and there was something so beautiful about it, and I thought I could at least try and really put some good lyrics to this, you know. The band I was in before, there was always this kind of punk ethic, and it was all very… it wasn’t really so much about the vocal performance. So with Rev78 I thought I can sing again, you know.”
The first gig with the new line-up was at Camden’s Purple Turtle – “That was a bit nervy” says Ed. “It’s like giving birth, isn’t it – it’s good to get your first one out of the way!”. The new band now have a handful of shows under their belt, including a gig in front of two thousand fans at the VW Van Fest, and an incendiary performance at the soon-to-be doomed Metro on Oxford Street. Things are going well; recent recording sessions with Russ Keffert, whose past collaborations include Clinic and The Rakes, have pushed the band to the next level. Of the fruit of those sessions, ‘Every Bone’ is a sky-scraping, towering ballad which literally begs for airplay, while ‘Us Against Them All’ is an acerbic, energised shot of pure rock ‘n roll adrenalin. Both songs are among the contenders for a single download release slated in for early spring.
Chris Watkeys
www.myspace.com/revolution78music
Reasons Not to be Christmassy: The State of the UK Record Industry
Written by: David Harrison
Bah-chuffing-Humbug. I my mind, Christmas isn’t a time of merriment, it’s a time to reflect on how this year was a bit crappier than last year, and how next year already looks like it’s going to be bloody awful.
Christmas TV these days seems to kick off with a teenager saying
“I have been through so much to be here’
If I hear one more, I will have to start burning effigies of Simon Cowell in Trafalgar Square. This year I was unfortunate enough to watch about 8 episodes of the blimmin’ X-Factor. No longer content with being an X-Men spin off, they ditched all the original characters (The Beast, Angel, Marvel Girl, Cyclops) for a bunch of sniveling cretins.
It is an endless guilt trip of how they will commit suicide/murder a puppy/murder the rest of their family if they don’t get to put out a flaccid Christmas single before fading into annonimity again. Maybe with these reality TV shows they should just skip the singing and dancing and have a crying competition.
For the fifth year on the trot, an X-Factor contestant has done a smaltzy cover and bagged the Xmas number one. Simon Cowell has single handedly ruined Christmas. Again.
Christmas in musicland is also ruined by the annual realisation that the industry is smaller, more disparate, more desperate then ever before. As my tax return deadline comes into view, I notice the shrinking of clients budgets in glorious excel spreadsheet technicolour.
While Alexandra Burke cries ‘Halleujah’, I’m taking stock of 2008 and am finding it a miserable experience. Some of the major players are struggling to exist, with the infrastructure of the UK recording industry crumbling faster than Zimbabwe’s economy. It seems like we’re approaching the tipping point.
The UK’s largest independent distributor, Pinnacle, and previously largest-cheesy-pop-that-goes-in-Tesco’s distributor, EUK, are both in administration. Past giants in retail are now minnows, with Woolworths, the biggest retailer of music of the 90s, twitching in its death throes. This time last year we had Fopp and Virgin Megastores, but now there is just a struggling Zavvi and a loss-posting HMV. It’s got to the point where the music industry can’t sell enough records to support a single high street chain.
My local high street has more Sushi bars than stores where I can listen to or buy music. The last 8 years have trained a whole generation that music is something to be had for free. Electronics outfit, Maplin’s, sell a terrabyte hard drive for £70. Who needs Peer 2 Peer? Just pop round this afternoon and take ALL THE MUSIC THAT WAS EVER RECORDED on one hard drive.
The recent industry conferences in London all seemed to be called things like ‘We are all really feckked - does anyone have any ideas?’ or ‘Can we get someone a bit famous to charm an MP, maybe that will help?’. Nobody did have any ideas, but the MP was a bit charmed by it all, so maybe there is hope. Although the sea will rise before there is a music tax included in the license fee.
Oh, but the live scene is booming you say? In 2008, the live scene reached the apex of a ten year boom; from here on in it is down down down, so grab a decent bobsleigh. In the last 12 months the UK has been lucky to have a pretty strong pound, $2.1 to £1 this time last year, to just $1.4 to £1 now. This means that those dollars you pay Kings of Leon for their umpteenth miserable festival appearance might just double.
Most of the profits from the last few years has been shipped out of the UK in the form of giants Live Nation or AEG. And I can’t remember the last time a live events company put any money into developing acts, as instead they’re saving all those pennies for gut-busting deals with Madonna or Jay Z. As our money goes stateside by way of those colossal artist fees and share dividends, UK acts, and in turn those medium-sized shows, dry up. Big tickets get more expensive, and control in in fewer and fewer hands. Across the board, old hands get let go as younger, cheaper, and easier to shag command staff get hired.
With the country approaching two million unemployed, I think punters’ casual spending on a round of £4-a-pint beers might be replaced with a renewed vigour of smuggling in some booze. People will start skipping behemoths like Glastonbury, as it is rubbish and a bit samey anyway. We spent most of the festival at the campsite watching people trying to do handstands.
The long and the short of it is that during a time when more than ever before, more music is being created, listened to, carried, watched and moshed to, never has it been more impossible to make a living from it.
Which, unfortunately, was what I did up until up until now. Bah Humbug.
I have a band, a myspace page, now what?
Written by: David Harrison
So you have written some bitchin’ songs, made a MySpace page, and maybe even bought a domain name. You’ve had a few local gigs – but what now? Well, it’s going to cost you a bit of money, and a lot of time.
1. Organise your mailing – even if it is just one from your Outlook Express. Allow people to get on it. You can use a lot of third-party solutions such as Yahoo Groups / Wufoo / Icontact Zookoda - whatever service you feel is suitable for your costs or project.
2. Don’t over-plug your projects - people get very bored if just signed up to you out of politeness. Ask them to add you to their Safe List, as otherwise you’ll end up in the SPAM box.
3. Make your own webpage that isn’t MySpace – you don’t know how?
4. Use blogger.com and post news regularly. Link to friends’ websites, and ask nicely if they will link to you in return. If you feel the need, let a few free tracks to get out.
5. If Blogger does not ‘do’ enough for you – use Drupal and an automatic install of it on Machine Networks for £3.50 a month. Sony use Drupal for their artist websites, and The Onion use it for their very popular news site. Wordpress and Joomla are other alternative free content management systems to consider, this page is a Wordpress page.
6. Install Google Analytics on your page – this will let you find out why, when, and how people use your website. It sounds fancy is actually easy-peasy, and will help you in the long run.
7. Find some relevant music blogs, and/or aspiring writing people to review your work. To your face, usually everyone will tell you they like your work. If they have to put their opinion into words with their name in the byline, they may not be so inclined to be gracious.
8. Everybody still loves it? The record is still the best thing the world hasn’t heard? Excellent.
9. Are you sure? If you push your band before you are ready, you can garner black marks next to your name for years, as people remember “oh, that band from ages ago? They suck!”. Oh, still cool you are? Let’s go then.
Don’t hate the Media; become the Media
9. Channel 4 Slash music / Bebo / Trig / Moblog / Sellaband / Slice The Pie / YouTube / Yahoo 360 / Upcoming / Last.Fm / www.scoutr.co.uk / musicnation.com / Facebook….
There are a million social and music networks out there. None will make you famous, but they all can contribute to awareness about, and drive traffic to, your precious project.
Make sure they all link to each other (that’s how Search Engines work). Ideally, if you can use RSS feeds from your Blogger/Drupal page to do that it will save you updating them manually.
10. Post any cool articles about yourselves onto Digg / Shoutwire / Technorati / Del.icio.us or similar.
11. Register with the http://music.podshow.com/ Get any airplay? Blogs say nice things? Quote them on your website. Tell all the Podcasts where they can buy your stuff.
12. Get a mate to write a review on Playlouder.com / DazedDigital / Bizot.ch or similar contributed editorial websites.
13. Register your tracks on www.Last.Fm. Play them a few times. Make sure your friends that use Last FM have copies and play them a few times. If you have a budget you can force a 1000 plays on people for a £100.
14. If you have got this far, then you seem to be taking this whole thing seriously. Well done
15. Sign up for My MCPS/PRS / myPPL / www.catcouk.com / and go get yourself some ISRC numbers (congratulations, you just made yourself a record label). Make sure that these ISRC numbers are in all your records and the outlets that sell send them on, as that is how the charts are made.
16. Want more info about making a label? Check here: http://www.bemuso.com
17. Set up and Indiestore page – put a couple of tracks up for sale, and throw one in for free. Make sure your Myspace / Indiestore / Homepage all have relevant links to each other.
The Dark Arts of Distribution
18. Okay, this is all very well, but we want to see our releases on iTunes and on Amazon. These companies do aggregated distribution for independent artists, and it will cost you a bit more. If you were Radiohead, you could cut a deal…but you aren’t as famous as them, so you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way:
www.dittomusic.com
http://www.emubands.com/
http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.cdbaby.com/
19. Okay, you want your releases in local record shops. Ask them about stocking them on a sale and return basis. Keep an Excel spreadsheet of your distribution.
20. Don’t understand Excel? Find a manager that does, and love him for it. Offer to pay him and hope he says ‘no’.
21. HMV: you want our releases in HMV round the country… erm I must confess I don’t know how to do that.
Some of the distributors that feed into them are: Vital:Pias / Pinnacle / Cargo.
Call them up, ask them questions, and prepare to be ignored.
I know from previous experience, when I have said we are expecting to sell 2000 copies of a release, they still don’t get back to me. It is tough for them. It’s only if you can guarantee you are going to flog 20k records, ask them for an advance.
22. By now your marvellous Record is stocked with main online retailers. Logged with MCPS / PRS / your performances are on PPL. Everything is in place.
23. Read this Radio Play guide: http://www.tomrobinson.com/writing/radioplay.htm and do what Tom Robinson says.
24. Make some printed CDRs in see-through sleeves, with very simple details of the tunes with the release date on it. These are good for promotions. If you want to sell to the public you will have to get some nice ones made (don’t use the Impact font or I will send assasins to kill you).
. Send it to radio stations, hand-picked and hand-written like that Tom Robinson said.
26. If you can’t come up with a suitably controversial publicity stunt, how about calling up the radio and requesting your own track, that you know they have as you sent it in? Just don’t tell them that you’re in the band.
27. Press: there’s a lot to be said about understated presentation. Club together with some like minded bands and pretend you have a press company. Copy the format of this Duffy Press Release (Congratulations you have a Press Company - charge for it!). Politely nudge and convince writers that they like they are onto a winner if they cover this band, and offer to do some interviews.
Find the review writers of magazines, email them and ask for a contact address to send them a promo. Then send on your CDs. Be subtle and charming.
28. Web Traffic: use digg / shoutwire / blogs / if you have a show make sure you are linked too. Get the blogs that cover you to link to you. Ask the indie music sites if they take advertising? Might only cost you £30 here and there.
They say that money is the live show
29. Can’t get gigs? Book your own shows you will make/lose more money if they work that way. Makes sure you can make them more of an experience and get known for good parties, rather then be on that 8:00pm 20-minute slot where you’ll be playing to the barstaff and that guy sweeping up.
Use wegottickets.com to sell tickets they are independent ticket agent.
There are always ailing pubs that want a few people in.
DON’T label things as showcases – it is very pretentious.
DO build a scene without exploiting your friends.
DON’T stick stickers in the toilet there is an ancient curse that it means your band is sh**t.
30. Approach some promoters of new band nights, and arrange to have a few gigs here and there. Send the listings to Gigs@PAentertainment.com and/or clubs@paentertainment.com . The promoter should be doing this, but they might not. This is the universal organisation that flogs gig listings to the newspaper websites.
31. If you have made a CD or T-shirts. TAKE THEM TO THE GIG AND SELL THEM. Chances are you will make more money from them then the show.
32. But you want to get some good support slots?
For that you need an agent, but they aren’t going to be convinced until they think there is a load of money and success behind it. Generally all agents will only take on a project if a label or significant press is behind it.
Find a band that you would suit a support, and find out who is their agent is, and approach someone in their company, asking if they have any slots to fill - local or otherwise. You will only get £50 though, even if it is at Wembley – but you will sell merch.
X-Ray | Coda | Helter Skelter | Itb | Primary | The Agency | CAA | William Morris will probably cover most bands between them.
33. Try and get on festival bills…it doesn’t have to be Glastonbury or Reading, these days there are a million and one smaller festivals around and they need bands to fill their stages. Approach promoters in advance (not just when it starts to get sunny and you fancy playing outside) – they often book 9 months in advance.
Publishing
34. Registering with the PRS and PPL is the grounding for this. All your monies from Radio Play, TV, Films, etc, around the world will be fed through these guys. If you are not registered, you won’t got anything. It’s that simple.
35. Take PRS forms with when you perform, and send them off yourself. If you know any DJs, get them to include some of your tracks in their PRS playlists.
36. Sync: Now is the time to exploit the family and friends. Use yourcontacts. Anyone work in advertising / TV / Films? Send them copies of CDs, with a concise biog of your press and radio play. Don’t harass them, but do find out if they listened to it.
Now this is possibly the most important one. If you can get your tune on a big advert, you could expect anywhere from £20-60 grand. That is bigger then most record deals you are likely to get.
37. Are you now saying something like “I can’t believe that we did all that and haven’t had any sort of break yet!”
Or maybe “No label is interested / No publishing company got in touch / No magazine ever covered us / No Agent ever replied / we never sold any downloads” or similar?
38. Maybe you are just not good enough. If you did all that, then you should have a press company and a small record label by now and have learnt how to make search-friendly websites from scratch. Maybe your skills weren’t meant for the stage?
39. Maybe your sound isn’t in fashion (it happens)? It took Pulp ten years to get a record deal. Work out how much you are prepared to put into this project, in both time and money, before calling it day.
This list isn’t complete
40. “You left out a lot information about Merchandise / Publishing / Tour supports / Branding / Compilations / Video Promotions / Web Animation….” Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes I get the idea - this list is a work-in-progress, and I have tried to write about things I have done.
Mime That Tune
Written by: David Harrison
Since when did today become a music quiz day? When we found absolutely nothing of interest to rant about, that’s when. Over at our friends site, The Quietus, they have made, erm, they made…
Well, quite frankly, the most difficult game since Expert Level on Guitar Hero 2. If you’re interested in proving your album cover knowledge, or just like skinny men in Lyrca, give it a go.
Courtesy of the Quietus
Interview: Naughty Jack is tempted out of his castle of solitude.
Written by: David Harrison
Naughty Jack, aka Adam Morley, is reclusive character. Earlier this year, he popped his head out of his shell for a spot of promotion of his album, Good Times, and to do a few appearances on the festival circuit. In turn, this generated a maelstrom of interest and gig offers that were met with polite declines. Why? Because Naughty Jack chose instead to rewire his house and consider the next album. Music Towers caught up with him and quizzed him a bit.
So it if it isn’t too obvious, what is Good Times about?
“It’s about nostalgia, which is a feeling I really enjoy; when you get a connection to all the good things that have happened to you, or even not so good things. All those things are part of you, and it’s important to feel them. Music does that for me and helps me get clear my head of any cloudy, stressy, numbness that might be in my head from everyday life.
“The track ‘Good Times’ is about me and my friends sitting in the sunshine in our old age, after all the business of life has ceased to matter, looking back at our youth when we didn’t give a shit.”
There are numerous references to alcohol on the record - do you have something that you want to tell us?
“Good alcohol helps me to get in touch with what’s important in life. It’s not the alcohol that I’m referring to, it’s the urge to suck up life and make the most of it while you can.”
Good Times, are you sure you are qualified to be a blues singer?
“No. I’ve never claimed to be a bluesman. I’m coming from a different place in a lot of ways. If I was to go around trying to be a bluesman, it would be really embarrassing for all involved. I haven’t really got the blues, I’m really pretty happy. If something bad happens, I don’t tend to dwell on it. But I’ve loved blues since I was a boy, so the influence is bound to be there.”
Your album cover proudly displays your influences, citing Professor Longhair, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits and Howlin’ Wolf among others. But the album maintains a pretty unique style throughout, despite the range of influences.
“I was really exciting about all these artists at the time I recorded the album and I wanted to bring it all together. On the other hand I didn’t want it to sound like a Sol Hoopii cover followed by something by The Band, for example.
“I knew that the dobro and double bass were pretty distinctive. So as long as stuck to this format and didn’t mess around with backing vocals, percussion or other instruments, I could allow the influences to flow strongly and still create a valuable, clearly defined sound of my own.”
Good Times is very laid back album, are you that laid back day to day?
“The album sounds like how I felt when I was recording it; by myself, snowed in, no-one to talk to, but with all the time in the world to write, play and record. I was emotional, nostalgic, excited, inspired; I had a supply of whiskey and I was relaxed.
“But at the same time I was very focussed on what I was doing. It felt good and right to be putting down these recordings.”
There’s an effortless quality to it despire the complexity of the playing. Did the parts come easy?
“Definitely, songs that had been bothering me for months came together easily. I recorded all the vocals in one three-hour drunken session, most are first takes. They came out croaky and a bit sloppy, but the recordings captured a feeling that I’d like to remember. I knew that if I went back to it afterwards, I’d risk losing that.”
Who would you like to work with?
“A lot of the people I’d really love to work with seem to have died recently, like some of the original calysonians and blues players. But a great piano player would be good - Pinetop Perkins is still playing, I hear.”
Where can we see you next?
“Well, I’m currently re-wiring and plumbing my house and deciding if the bassment is going to be a flat or a recording studio, and musing on the next album. So first I need to work out how this boiler is going to fit under the stairs.”
For more info on Naughty Jack, go and check out his official website.
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Interview: Seventeen Evergreen love ATP Festival and Chicks
Written by: Beren Neale
Seventeen Evergreen land in London for a one-off show and talk to Beren Neale about their debut album, floppy cheese and those lazy Pavement comparisons.
Seventeen Evergreen are a San Francisco band, but their explorative music can be linked to no terrestrial region. Having fed a lifelong passion for all things unearthly, drifted around the West Coast of America when growing up and soaked in influences from their travels across Europe, the delicate, magnificent music of Caleb Pate and Nephi Evans is more akin to finding a spider’s web in the corner of a moon crater than any current trend.
Since the US release earlier this year of their debut album Life Embarrasses me on Planet Earth, the two have visited London only twice. But the band is familiar with the city, as Caleb lived here in 2001. It was during this time, after an enjoyable but fruitless search for new musicians, that he returned to San Francisco with Nephi to regroup, refocus, and “make Seventeen Evergreen a more serious proposition”.
Why the move back to San Francisco? Is there a scene that you identify with there?
Caleb: Maybe if they’ll have us. It’s a very hipster-driven, cliquey scene. There are a handful of really cool psychedelic bands, noise bands, but I’m probably more into some of the indie hip hop stuff in Oakland… A handful of bands we like: Deerhoof, The Papercuts, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. They’re a Comets On Fire kinda band - heavy psych, buzz stuff.
It sounds like an All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up…
C: ATP is the best festival I’ve ever seen. I went to the Tortoise one, and it was amazing – Boards of Canada, Television, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop. That was 2001, around the time I lived here.
I regret missing the one Steve Malkmus curated.
C: He should have read all the erroneous reviews that we sound like Pavement, and he would have invited us.
Just googling you guys you see…
C: Pavement 1,000 times!
I thought I’d sneak that in there, subtle like.
C: You did a good job - I normally don’t talk about it. (Journalists) can be very lazy. Like, the Pavement thing is understandable because of geography, and the way we speak possibly. But Pavement is like the older brother of everyone that plays music. We happen to come 90 minutes away from where they come from (Stockton, CA), but I think to say that our music is derived from them… I think that’s slighting.
Nephi: I don’t think that our music has been influenced by Pavement at all. They’re just another band which I like. If we’re writing ideas and I hear something that’s too similar, I’m very aware of that.
C: To a fault we’re this way. Jokingly, I tried to rip of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, cos I thought it’d be funny, and put it in this song and he (Nephi) had such an issue with it that I had to write a completely different part real quick. I’m not self-conscience in that way - he perhaps a bit more so. But, I don’t think we’re particularly good at ripping off other bands, because it’s better what we come up with.
There’s a strong otherworldly theme through the album…
C: I think that the album definitely encapsulates some of my youthful obsessions. As long as I remember I was always really interested in the moon and space travel and aliens and these sorts of things. I have so many illustrations that I did when I was a little kid drawing spaceships.
Talking about illustrations, I remember some questions I emailed you before about zines, and you mentioned something about Floppy Cheese…
C: Nephi reminded me of that actually, cos I showed it to him long after I made it. It was a zine that an old friend and I did together. Basically, really bad music reviews, fake skateboard contest coverage, photocopied vinyl dudes made by Fisher Price (?) Just a really juvenile thing.
What inspired that?
The inspiration was my uncle had written a play called Floppy Cheese, which was based on this (living) blancmange idea - very Monty Python sort of vibe. I was like 11, right. So at one point we recited it and that became the title of the zine. Actually, me and my uncle used to do some really bizarre early electroacoustic music together using reel-to-reel tape machines, glasses and water and all kinds of things. His name’s Eric Simonson. He’s a composer. Why did you ask that? I was interested why you’d ask that.
I’ve got a friend that runs this zine… It was just a shot in the dark. What other art mediums inform your music?
C: Chicks!
Chicks?
C: That’s what’s on my mind at the moment.
Any luck in London?
This time? Not as many. I’ve seen London as virtually a smorgasbord in the past. This time I haven’t really been vibing on it.
Fair enough. Going back to another answer from a previous question - about how you wanted to “give back more than you get.” What did you mean?
C: I think it’s nice to give back, to try to express yourself in a way that you think needs to be expressed. I’m not speaking about giving back to the public or listeners. I’m actually speaking about giving back to the musical canon. Because (assumes mock lofty tone) the people will be enriched eventually by us enlarging the canon… I mean, giving back to ‘the people’ is simply giving them another Strokes. That’s all they want, right? They want another Killers, Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, you name it.
N: We’ve had comments from people, like ‘I was driving home to one of your songs and…’
C: … I totalled my car listening to your record’. We have various stories: ‘I had driven home from my wife giving birth to our first kid, listening to your record.’ It’s kinda like, wow, people live to our music.
That must be satisfying, as that album was entirely your own vision, with no interference…
N: Absolutely. We did everything [on the album] ourselves.
C: We had no label interaction when we made the record. We weren’t signed to anybody. We released it ourselves first and then we found labels coming to us later. They’ll probably be interested in working with us more closely on album number two, but we’ll see if we want to take their advice. We definitely learnt a lot from making it and I think the forty or so songs we’ve written for the next record illustrates that.
End of interview.
It’s time for the guys to get ready for the gig, and Nephi leaves to catch the end of support act Kyte. After some rambling chat with Caleb about psychedelic folk-rock innovator Merrell Fankhauser, we too head over. Entering the venue, we’re both stopped in our tracks by the music being played down the corridor: ‘Bud-ids-no sac-ah-rah-fiees’ wails a disturbingly familiar voice. “Not a good Billy Joel”, says Caleb. “That’s Elton John” I politely correct him. “It’s Billie Joel!” he demands. Although not my finest hour, I assure him I’m not mistaken, as I bought the track on its release in the 90s. “It’s Elton!” he concedes with a grin, and we launch into a unique rendition: ‘Col col heart. Hrr-dun-by-yoo’. “Hey!” exclaims Caleb. “You’ve got to put this in your piece. This is your end.” And so it is.
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Interview: Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip
Written by: Hugh Platt
While we’re sitting down at one of the many tables in the guest area, Music Towers’ interview with Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip keeps getting interrupted by a seeming never-ending stream of small children asking Scroobius Pip to pose for photos. Perhaps it is his – and I speak as a connoisseur of facial grooming – magnificent beard that makes him so easy to spot.
“The beard is seeming to make a comeback,” Scroobius looks up from the pad he is scrawling on for the little girl asking for an autograph. “It’s got to be done. I feel the greatest facial hair tragedy is Hitler. No-one can wear that moustache now. I don’t know if anyone did beforehand, but you don’t see that about now at all. He’s ruined that for all facial-hair people now.” But oddly enough, Stalin’s beard is still acceptable, and he killed just as many people.
The duo have relaxing after bringing their unique marriage of Scroobius Pip’s spoken word delivery and Dan Le Sac’s laptop-based production to the Dance stage, and blowing the roof off with their tactical musical nuclear strike on pseuds and idiots, ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’. It’s a towering monster of track that could’ve over-shadowed a lesser act.
“I hate it when bands get too precious over songs. We get a good reaction from it, which is really pleasing, so I’m perfectly happy to keep a banging tune in there.” Scroobius reflect. “We like to get some variation in there, and if it does become a continuing thing, it’s one that we can easily change and update. It could develop with us quite comfortably.”
“We’re quite lucky that the reaction for the next single has been so good. In a less novelty way, in a more serious way.” adds Dan Le Sac. “It’s nice that we can have ‘Thou Shalt…’ there as this calling card, but it’s backed up by other things. When we released it as a download we made sure people could also download ‘Angles’, which is as far from ‘Thou Shalt…’ as you can get. It’s about a kid killing himself.”
‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, for those of you who have somehow not managed to hear it, is a series of new commandments for the modern music fan. Most of them are self-explanatory (Thou Shall Not Read NME, Thou Shall Not Buy Nestle Products), but there was always one that confused us: “Thou shall spell the word phoenix P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you”.
“I’ve had sleepless nights over it – it annoys me. I genuinely have. The English language likes to bastardise Latin and most other languages, which is cool, but if we’re gonna change stuff a bit, let’s change it to how it sounds when we spell it and say it? Why spell it foe-ee-nix? Or say it as foe-ee-nix, don’t say fee-nix, say foe-ee-nix.”
“Why isn’t it F-E-N-I-X?” Dan Le Sac interrupts.
“Because that would be Fenn-ix. I like to spell things how I want to. ‘The Scroobious Pip’, the poem, is spelt different from how I spell it. [Edward Lear] spells it I-O-U-S, I spell it I-U-S. I’m a bit of a stickler for spelling things how I want. Development of language, I call it.”
So are there any other words that annoy Scroobius? “I’ve been so focused on phoenix for so long, it’s hard to think of any others. I want to get that one sorted out first, and then we’ll move on.”
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During their performance earlier, the band mentioned they had just been booked to support hip-hop legend, Rakim. “We’re doing a gig with Rakim! That’s what it’s all about, really. Getting to do stuff like that.” There’s a sense of excitement churning around inside Scroobius, which manifests through a grin that shines out of his beard like pearls stuck in seaweed.
“In Dublin, of all places. Second time we’re going to Dublin and we’re supporting Rakim . Ages and ages and ages ago, we did an interview for a magazine out there called Foggy Notions, and they do promotions as well. They booked us for Electric Picnic, next weekend. It’s probably the biggest festival in Ireland; Bjork’s playing, we’re playing – it’s that sort of scale” Dan’s cheeky laugh sums up his persona perfectly – ever so slightly amazed to be where he is, but in no way being awed or taking it too serious. And in addition to Rakim, the pair are lined up to support Gogol Bordello in London come November.
“Once our headlining tour is over, we’re then just really concentrating on the album, so we’re only taking good support slots for a bit so we don’t gig as much for a while.” Yes, the album, we were getting round to that.
“The problem we have at the moment is we keep writing and then it gets better,” Dan sighs. “ We’ve got three in the pipeline that are stronger than things that would’ve gone on the album. We’re going to stop writing in the next month or so because if we keep on like this we’ll never release it. You only get to release your first album once, so it’s gotta be good. You can’t let people down and release your cack.” So have they cleared the Dizzee Rascal sample for ‘Fixed’, their UK-Hip hop-baiting track of contempt?
“He didn’t clear the Billy Squires track that he sampled so I dunno why we should. But it’s one of those tracks that we’ll clear what we need to clear if we decide to put it on the album. We’ve got quite a lot of bangers stashed away,” he says, tapping his nose conspiratorially.
“I’ve always seen it as a possible as a live b-side. We might sling it out as a free download and not have it on the album,” Scroobius shrugs. “It goes down well at the moment – and it’s not having a go at Dizzee Rascal, as we try to make clear as often as possible.” He makes a big show of banging the table with his palm to emphasise this point.
“When I walked passed him yesterday he didn’t hit me, which is a good sign.”
Moving away from whether or not they’re marked for death by Rascal, why did the pair settle on their unusual stage names?
“It’s taken from an Edward Lear poem, called “The Scroobious Pip”. It’s about a little creature that wakes up in the jungle and doesn’t know what it is, and it goes with the lions for a bit, but it’s not a lion, so it goes with the insects, and so on and so forth. And in the end it decides it doesn’t have to go into any of those categories, it can just be The Scroobious Pip. So that’s where I nicked that from. It’s not just a silly name. Obviously, it is a silly name, but not just a silly name,” he says as he switches his attention from the tape recorder to his musical partner in crime. “And yours [indicating Dan], is about testicles, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Basically. I’m Dan The Bag. That’s my name. There’s not really an explanation to be had.” That’s a good enough reason in Music Towers’ book. “If I was in France and actually in a bag, I‘d be Dan Dans Le Sac, which isn’t bad either.”
The way the pair bounce off each other, interrupt the other in the middle of speaking, and generally correct, contradict and tease each other, they must’ve been finishing each others sentences for years.
“We’d known each other donkey’s years, lived in the same town, worked in the same shops, that sort of thing. It weren’t until June last year, when I did a couple of remixes from [Scroobius Pip’s] solo album, and then it seemed to be working. People seemed to be receptive of what I was doing to what he was doing, so we just wrote together and it seems to have exploded. It’s popped, really.”
“It’s been an amazing reaction,” Scroobius takes over. “It’s shedding more light on an already hugely popular and very strong spoken word scene in the UK, so it’s good that it’s having that effect. It was surprising, but a very welcome surprise. It proves there are more people listening.”
“A lot of festivals this year have done spoken word tents and it’s been great.” As soon as he’s said it, the name that simultaneously pops onto everyone present’s lips is Latitude.
“Awesome. I spent the whole time in the poetry tent. Polar Bear and David J, and a few others just blew me away – absolutely amazing.”
Scroobius Pip and Dan Le Sac aren’t the only act incorporating spoken-word into their work. Reverend & The Makers, playing on the Carling stage, incorporated spoken word pieces between their songs, and have done loads of stuff with John Cooper Clarke as well.
“Eddie Temple-Morris [XFM’s minmaster extraordinaire] has said that the two best lyricists in music today are Scroobius Pip and [John McClure] of Reverend and The Makers. I tried to see him on Friday at Reading but they’d swapped slots with Cajun Dance Party – fucking had to sit through Cajun Dance Party [shaking his head in disgust] – no, no, it was alright, it was…pleasant.”
The expression on Dan Le Sac’s face tells us that the Cajun Dance Party experience was actually anything but pleasant.
And so to the WigDogs: like every other act Music Towers has interviewed this weekend, can they describe them in ten words or less? Apparently not, as Scroobius Pip, man of words, seems unable to do anything except stare at the picture with wide-eyes and giggle.
“I am literally speechless. That’s amazing. It’s the future of canine fashion.”
The pair are giggling and smiling, clearly pleased as punch that everything is going so swell. They’ve achieved what so few people thought they’d be able to do, and escape being just a one-hit wonder with the mantra-manifesto of ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’. With new single, ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ getting warmly received by everywhere they play,
But we’ve got last question, after the tour, after all that, after everything’s been said and done – give people one more commandment in the ‘Thou Shalt…’ manner, what would it be?
“Thou shalt…buy our album. If that’s all said and done, and that’s all we’re ever gonna do, let’s do it, let’s make some money!”
Interview: Rosie & The Goldbug - the dark side of pop music
Written by: Hugh Platt
“Back then we were very piano-orientated. We’re now more bass-and-drum-orientated,” says Rosie Vanier, she of the band’s name. She’s talking about when Music Towers first encountered her band, when they were the only real shining star at a lamentable corporate battle of the bands-type affair, where Music Towers described their performance as “vaudeville brand of gothic ephemera as a more than welcome change from the indie-boys-with-haircuts-and-guitars”.
“It’s a lot more focused around Pixie and Plums being in the band, with the piano riffs floating on top,” Rosie explains. “I was very restricted with the piano and it was a little bit boring - we realised we had to make an adjustment with the instrumentation. It’s a lot more ballsy and feisty, before it was quite melodic, and we were going for that really epic sound, whereas now it’s all about vibe and having a good time.”
Completed by drummer Sarah ‘Plums’ Morgan and Lee ‘Pixie’ Matthews, Rosie & The Goldbug formed in Cornwall, and along with pasties and Straw Dogs, they’re set to be the next thing to come out of the toecap of Britain that will get people talking. “ Cornwall is a beautiful place and there’s a lot of music going on down here, but it’s very different to London. London you can hop on the bus all the time, whereas down here you’ve got a little bit more time to explore and create your own thing and anything can happen. There’s a lot to be inspired by.
“It’s hard to say it without sounding derogatory, but I guess its sometimes a little bit ‘behind the times’ here,” Vanier mulls. “You make up whatever you want instead going with what’s ‘hot’. There’s a lot more freedom and a lot less restrictions.”
The promo video for ‘War Of The Roses (Because You Said So)’:
That experience has led to a series of songs that range from the dark-disco stomp of ’Heartbreak’ through to fragile ‘Springtime Dreaming’. If Katie Jane Garside stopped chasing garden sprites to front Dragonette for a night, then it could’ve resulted in the ‘War Of The Roses EP. But this hasn’t meant they haven’t taken a cosmopolitan approach to songwriters.
“My instant reaction was to think ‘oh no, I don’t want to write with anyone’ because I was really precious about my song-writing,” Rosie sighs. “Then I thought \this is ridiculous – I’ve got the opportunity to work with some people I really admire’.” And it’s true – the list of people who’ve come on board to help pen songs is admirable indeed. “Before I knew it, I was writing with Marcella Detroit – I was an absolute Shakespeare’s Sister fan when I was younger, so that was a bit of a dream come true, writing with her. Jim [Eliot]from Kish Mauve [writer of ‘2 Hearts’ – Kylie Minogue’s top 5 hit] – he’s a bit of a wizard. I wrote with Pär Wiksten as well, from The Wannadies, which was a great experience.”
As well as playing a host of festivals over the summer (culminating with an appearance on the BBC Introducing stage at Bestival), the band have a London residency of sorts lined up. While glossy chart-botherers like Duffy might prefer the Piccadilly gloss of the Pigalle for such things, Rosie and The Goldbug have gone for the 12 Bar Club in Soho – it’s a “unique” venue, that’s for sure…
Rosie laughs at the description. Music Towers strongest memories of the 12 Bar involve cheering along a fight in the alleyway behind the venue after a misguided whiskey-drinking competition that ran into the wee hours. “The 12 Bar has really inspired us – because it is really smelly and rancid in there. We were changing in the toilets for a gig there once and we were thinking ‘for fuck’s sake; it can’t get any worse than this’ as it basically stank of shit.
The promo video for ‘Feeling’:
“We thought it was a perfect concept for our album – this is what we’ve experienced for the last year - an absolute weird experience of going from revolting venues to being in flash record company offices.
“As the 12 Bar is important to us, and we thought it would be a good place to do a residency and show what we’ve got. Not many people know us yet, and we’re willing to start wherever to get people to know who we are. The 12 Bar represents everything – it’s such a cranky little venue with such a tiny stage and I love performing in strange spaces. There’s lots of beams to climb over. It’s very unique.”
That sounds a lot like fightin’ talk. Rosie & The Goldbug don’t have anything to prove, but Vanier sure sounds like she’s got gusto. “I don’t like that Marmite thing. The whole ‘you either hate it or you don’t’ thing confuses me because maybe sometimes you like it a little bit, and then sometimes not. It’s not as simple as black and white.”
‘War Of The Roses (Because You Said So)’ by Rosie And The Goldbug is out now on Lover Records. The band is midway through their residency at the 12 Bar Club – click here for more details.
Interview: Simian Mobile Disco - a duo in demand
Written by: Hugh Platt
“I saw a few reviews of the records that were all ‘after all the hype …blah blah blah’ – what?” James Ford splurts incredulously. “The press created the fucking hype themselves!”
Ford is talking about The Age of the Understatement, debut record from The Last Shadow Puppets, which he both produced and played drums for. Ford is very much the indie producer of the moment, having taken production duties on Klaxons’ Mercury-winning Myths of the Near Future and Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare among others. Now he sounds like he is having trouble in not spitting his lunch out when I ask him about his reaction to the press hysteria over The Last Shadow Puppets record, which he both produced and played drums on.
“I suppose I was a bit naïve, because I supposed anything Alex [Turner, of Arctic Monkeys] touches would cause people to talk about it, but really when we recorded it, it was just like a two-week holiday where we were trying to record an EP,” he recollects. “The original intention was for it just to come out quietly. But I don’t think Domino pushed it too hard – off the back of the Arctics, it was never going to be a quiet affair”.
‘Quiet’ isn’t really one of the things one associates with Ford, or his cohort Jas Shaw with whom he forms electro-devil duo, Simian Mobile Disco. Come August, the pair are set to become the latest act to put out a mix for London über-club, Fabric (it exists somewhere far in excess of what used to be called superclubs) as part of the Fabriclive series.
The promo video for ‘Hustler’:
“We wanted it to be a set that we’d play at Fabric. It’s pretty techno and pretty mean in places”, says Ford. “But we also wanted to try to put stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear at Fabric in there. There’s Raymond Scott and Moon Dog and things like that. But hopefully we’ve put it together in a way that wouldn’t break someone’s stride on the dancefloor, but people will be exposed to a few tracks they wouldn’t normally hear in that context.”
So they weren’t tempted to push something controversial then? There was more than a bit of controversy with Justice’s allegedly ‘rejected’ Fabriclive mix. Ford seems pragmatic on the issue unmoved: “If we were doing a Late Night Tales or something to listen to at home, that’s one thing, but we wanted to do a good reproduction of our DJ set at this point in time”
In addition to the Fabriclive release, Simian Mobile Disco have a packed summer of DJ slots and live performances on the European festival circuit. The pair are hard-picked to come to a decision over which they prefer.
“ Well, our DJ set is really easy,” Jas states matter-of-factly. “You just pick up a big bag of records and just head to the club! With the live show, it’s a lot more involved.” He goes on to describe SMD’s setup: “We’ve designed this system – a fair chunk out of our studio, a mixer and lots of old analogue gear and loads of vintage output and guitar pedals and lots of kind of stuff all plugged in together. It allows us to play the tracks but jump around in terms of the structure and improvise. We can make new stuff up on the spot and there are quite a few bits of the set where we have no idea what’s going to happen.”
For many musicians, that sounds like the idea of a hell. Or Jazz. “The whole idea is to make it fun for us,” explains Jas. “But it’s quite a pain in the arse. We’ve got loads of fragile kit that always takes too long to set up, but it’s worth it in the end.”
The promo video for ‘I Believe’:
“We have sections in the set where there’s planned chaos,” adds Ford. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Basically we can tell pretty quickly if it’s ‘happening’ or if it’s not, and we can skip over it or extend it on the go.”
“ Because we put so into the live show, it’s more rewarding when we do a really good show,” says Ford, weighing up the pros and con’s of live show vs DJ set. “But I wouldn’t want to give up DJ’ing as it’s a lot of fun – you can just go to a lot more far-reach places, you get treated really nice and you can get hammered! Which is more fun in a traditional sense…”
James and Jack’s Essential Records
We asked the duo what records they couldn’t do without when DJ’ing. Their choices were:
- ‘Erotic Discourse’ - Paul Woolford presents Bobby Peru
- Spastik’ - Plastikman
- ‘Huncut Hacuka’ - Fine Cut Bodies
- The Don’ - Sisters of Transistors
- Sleep Deprivation (Simon Baker Remix)’ - Simian Mobile Disco
All of which are on their shiny new Fabriclive mix. Which is handy.
‘FABRICLIVE 41: Simian Mobile Disco’ is out on Fabric Records in August. The pair are playing festivals all over Europe this Summer – check here to see if they’re playing at one you’re going to.
Interview: The Parlotones - rock’n'roll South African-style
Written by: Hugh Platt
Khan Morbee – it’s the kinda name that makes me think of men in animal furs and war paint, swinging fake weapons about and hollering ‘BATTLE METAL!” at each other. Calm down though – Khan Morbee is actually the frontman of South African indie-rock-types, The Parlotones. There’s not a Lordi-esque jockstrap in sight, just rousingly accomplished indie rock’n’roll.
“Myself and [Neil Pauw, drummer] were introduced by a mutual friend who knew we liked similar bands, we got together and ‘jammed’ a few times soon realising we needed additional musicians.” It’s an age old story, only instead of coming together in a grotty bedsit in Camden, the embryonic form of The Parlotones developed in South Africa. “[Neil] had played in a band previously with [Paul Hodgson, guitarist], and our bassist [Glenn Hodgeson] (who at that stage was really a pianist), happened to be the brother of the guitarist and he took over the reigns of the only instrument left to complete the package.”
“We are fans of The Beatles, Queen, Radiohead and more recently Coldplay (although we never knew of them when we named ourselves) and noticed a connection with Parlophone records, so we slightly morphed the name in an attempt to tempt fate.”
Of course, when a band is fairly established in one territory and trying to break into others, it can cause bizarre release schedules, even in this day and age when it is possible to download a band’s album before they’re even aware they’ve finished it. Which is why the band is only getting round to promoting their ‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ album here, while the follow-up is already out in South Africa.
“[Radiocontrolledrobot’] was our first proper recording in which we did 18 songs in 2 weeks. We have obviously been promoting that album since [2005] and now we are sort of multiple-personalities, having to promote different albums in the different territories. I’d like to think that as musicians we’ve obviously improved, so playing them here seems almost effortless. The songs have been given a breath of fresh air playing them to brand new audiences and winning them over one by one. It’s an exciting challenge…”
“The idea is to release [‘A World Next Door To Yours’] abroad next year and then do a simultaneous release with the third album, so that we’re not having to do this disjointed promotional thing. We’re recording an unplugged session back home in May, we’re very excited about it. It will also give us a chance to delay releasing another album in SA so that we can correlate the third release.”
“I think with ‘A World Next Door…’ we’ve settled on a Parlotones sound that is distinctly ours. Both albums, and albums going forward will always reflect our energetic side as well as our gentler side. I think this is largely due to the fact that influences range from Simon and Garfunkel to System of a Down – we’ll never go to those extremes but will try sit somewhere comfortably in between”
And The Parlotones aren’t afraid to make their influences as clear as an invisible window pane, with recent single ‘Louder Than Bombs’ being “unashamedly a direct reference to [The Smiths] greatest hits album” of the same name. “We are all big fans and we used to throw indie parties back home where we would have friends playing all the indie classics, we would play and the parties were called Louder then Bombs, we even had flyers made with Louder than Bombs big on the front.
“We wrote a song called ‘Louder than Bombs’ as a sort of ode to that moment in our lives. Lyrically, it expresses our desire to ‘make it’ with the refrain ‘Finally it’s happening…’ Weirdly, it was written when things were starting to ‘happen’ (well, what we thought was happening) for us back home and it’s getting a bit of mileage over here – needless to say we’re holding thumbs” That means ‘crossing their fingers’, for those not au fait with SA slang.
The video for ‘Louder than bombs’:
[”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/L9JGTFlEKRg&hl=en”,”wmode”:”transparent”]
The band is back in South Africa at the moment, gearing up to record a show on May 8 for their first DVD release. It’s a startling comparison to their relatively small profile in the UK “We have experienced this anonymous existence when we were starting out back home so we don’t feel that out of place…it really makes the sweet moments that much sweeter and we appreciate every step of the journey.”
The band’s popularity back home led them to be one of the bands playing the much derided Live Earth at its South African-leg. Looking back, does Morbee think the whole worldwide event now smacks somewhat of environmental tokenism?
“I really don’t know – the world loves to panic about ‘something’, whether its war, crime, terrorism, bird flu etc. I don’t really know how much of its fact or how much of its fiction, or how much of it is designed by authority to induce a sense of their purpose and existence as the big brother who steps in to fix it.
“Our level of panic is all relative, people in London say crime is a problem, which I find laughable coming from Johannesburg…but then again, I’m sure someone coming from Lagos would find crime in Johannesburg laughable. I don’t really know the real answers but will try to assist whenever there is a perception that something needs to be fixed, i.e. our big stance back home in assisting with HIV/Aids charities and our involvement in Live Earth.
“My only concern is that a loud noise is made initially and it soon peters off into returning to old ‘more comfortable’ habits whilst the hob knobs deliberate on end how to fix the problem so as to not impact the profit machine to intensely – who’s actually running the show? The intentions were good and we were honoured to be a part of that process. I just hope the noise continues and results in real action, not just a couple of windmills peppered across the continent for decoration”
So why is it that while hundreds of identikit indie-twerps in tight jeans (aka the XFM daytime playlist…) somehow prosper, while bands from South Africa are virtually unknown over here? Geographical distances are increasingly irrelevant now thanks to this invention called ‘the internet’.
“In the past, we didn’t have the technology to compete on quality, sanctions were in place for many years, and unfortunately politics stifled arts and culture into a sideline hobby, not to be taken too seriously - and heaven forbid, be considered a career.
“Our currency is also weak making the necessity of touring difficult. There’s also a inferiority complex that seems entrenched whereby we tend to think everything from overseas is bigger and better evident even today where ‘BIG’ international bands who sell way less than local artists [domestically in South Africa] are placed higher on a bill. The verdict is still out on whether it can be done and we’re going to give it our best shot”
“ If all else fails we’ve enjoyed the journey thus far and that’s worth its weight in gold.”
The video for ‘Dragonflies & Astronauts’:
[”wmode”:”transparent”,”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYO5MnrRlu8&hl=en”]
‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ is ether set for imminent release, or has already come out, depending where you happen to live in the world. It’s easier if you just go check the website, yeah?
Let us steer you in the direction of What Would Jesus Drive
Written by: admin
Okay, has everybody calmed down now? Have we all finished reading those nauseating and embarrassing “new music for 2008!” columns that ever rag, website and TV show has been hoofing at us since mid-December. Good, because Music Towers wants to get back to the business of telling you about new music that is exciting us, here, not the new music that the big fetid beast that is the lazy journalistic zeitgeist has decided to over-hype this time around.
We first featured What Would Jesus Drive back in May 2006. We’d kept half an eye on them for some time before that, having first caught them when they performed as a four-piece as The Barbs. The on and only time we caught The Barbs live was supporting the sadly-ceased <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Mika Bomb </B>at the soon-to-re-open <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Highbury Garage</B>, where<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B>they were making razor-tongued evil surf-rock, with enough hooks so catchy they could snag Jaws like an Ebola harpoon.</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Despite putting out a great little album on <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Mother Tongue, The Barbs </B>eventually<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B>split, but for vocalist/guitarists<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> Tim Box </B>and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy Box</B> it wasn’t over: the pair went on to form <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>What Would Jesus Drive</B>. So what prompted the end of<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> The Barbs?
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“I think it had run its course,” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Amy</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>reflects. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We were all really proud of what we achieved as <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs</B> but it was time to move on.”</SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“Amy and I met when she joined <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs</B> so when we became a couple it made sense to start something of our own,” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Tim</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>adds. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”></SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>When<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> WWJD </B>started out they played as a three-piece, and very much sounded like a progression from<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> The Barbs </B>– all jerky guitars and sharp-tongued lyrics<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>. </B>Then one day we were idly checking out their <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>MySpace</B> page and they were down to just the two of them. </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>It wasn’t initially our decision.” </SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Tim</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>remarks of the slimming down of the band <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“Our drummer quit 4 days before a gig, and we stubbornly refused to be put out by it. It’s much more fun live, less fucking about. Press go and start playing.”</SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“It was just luck that we actually preferred being a 2-piece,”</SPAN><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>Amy</SPAN></B> <SPAN lang=EN-GB>adds</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“It was the aforementioned resignation of the drummer that led to the line up change, but it certainly enabled us a lot more freedom over what we could achieve.” </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB>This new found freedom has seen the band’s sound has moved away from the rock’d out surf-riffs of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs </B>to an electronically-augmented cousin of artrock, who happens to have the dangerous habit of sticking his fingers in plug sockets just to see what happens. </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We have always wanted to have more flexibility. The electro elements have been waiting to happen for some time, even prior to the end of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The Barbs</B>.”
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Still, after settling down into the form <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>What Would Jesus Drive </B>maintain to this day. It has seemed like an aeon before they’ve gotten round to releasing anything. But finally, in the next dew weeks, we will be able to order their ‘We Made This’ EP from <CITY><PLACE><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Split</B></PLACE></CITY><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> Records.
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“<I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”>Boomtown Twats</I> was always going to be our first release. It was the first song we wrote that sounded like me and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy</B> and as such is the obvious starting point to introduce us.”
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>‘Boomtown Twats’:
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“You’re The One That I Want</SPAN></I> <SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>was initially attempted as a joke but has since become our obligatory ironic cover version. We have thus far resisted the urge to recreate the video.”</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“The other track <I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”>I Think We Rushed Into This</I> is more about us as a couple. I tend to say this a lot when <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Tim</B> pisses me off.”</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Oh yeah – they’re married. Yet another factor that sets <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>WWJD </B>apart from the dozens and dozens of other bands you should be ignoring in favour of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Tim </B>and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy’s </B>outfit. In relation to their cotemporaries, it’s just another way that <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Tim </B>and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy </B>stand out: <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“</SPAN></B> <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>I struggle to see how we fit in anywhere at the moment. I don’t see or hear anyone else around like us. Not many married, Anglo-Australian, electro-punk 2 pieces spring to mind.”</SPAN></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“That’s probably a good thing.”</SPAN> <SPAN lang=EN-GB></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>When it comes to male/female two-pieces, there is always a unique song-writing dynamic – be it the brother-sister setup of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Angus & Julia Stone</B>, the they’re-actually-divorced-ness of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>The White Stripes</B>, and the only-slightly-comparable-in-this-instance marriage of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Sonny Bono </B>and <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Cher</B>. It’s the same with <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>WWLD</B>: <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“There are plenty of ideas for songs flying around. You have to remember that the entire band is talking to each other all day every day so creatively things happen quite quickly.”</SPAN> </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We have, if anything too much material right now. We need to get the first couple of albums released.”</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>I addition to the tracks already mentioned, a lot of the early demos that have appeared on the aforementioned MySpace page are about small-town grief – <I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”>‘Awful Kids’</I> is a lament about small-town laziness, with the currently-unavailable <I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”>‘You Can’t Be Too Careful’</I> and <I style=”mso-bidi-font-style: normal”>‘Black & Blue’</I> about fear-of-tramps and lairy pub violence respectively. Post-punk has always been pre-occupied with suburban life, but is Medway really that shit?</SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“The place itself can be quite beautiful in a decayed sort of way and is important from an historical standpoint, but the people these days are by and large pretty rank.”</SPAN> <SPAN lang=EN-GB><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Tim </B>says of the area of <COUNTRY-REGION><PLACE>Kent</PLACE></COUNTRY-REGION> that <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>WWJD </B>call home. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“I do find it a bit upsetting that the vast majority of the local populous are gradually making me hate my hometown, a place I still want to love.”</SPAN> </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>Of course, it’s not just the eye of <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Music Towers </B>that’s been caught by <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>WWJD</B>. See those foolishly good photos we’ve used for this article? They were taken from a session the band had with legendary rock-snapper,<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> Ross Halfin </B>(and if you don’t know who he is, go and gawp in wonder the gallery on his <A href=”http://www.rosshalfin.co.uk/home/intro.php”>website</A>) the kind of photographer who’s skills are sadly not replicated by the legions of Photoshop-monkeys masquerading as photographers these days. </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=”COLOR: #339966″>“In fact it was one of the only photo shoots for ages where there has been no<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B>attempt to style us.” </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-GB>The shoot in question almost makes the pair look like suburban rock’n’roll rednecks (in a good way, of course) – but it wasn’t a calculated move. <SPAN style=”COLOR: #339966″>“He was happy just to photograph us just the way we showed up. We were introduced by a mutual friend and I think he just understood who we were pretty quickly.”
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>As we’re running out of time and space, we fall back on time-honoured interview tradition and ask <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Tim</B> what <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>WWD </B>have in store for 2008:<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”> </B><SPAN style=”COLOR: #3366ff”>“We should be touring through mid-February to mid-April (on and off), and then the second EP is planned for a couple of months later. I suppose that means more touring and hopefully the album will be out towards the later part of the year.”</SPAN> </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>We leave the last word for <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Amy</B>: <SPAN style=”COLOR: #339966″>“We really haven’t toured at all as <STRONG>WWJD</STRONG> so we are looking forward to getting out there – without the hassle of packing the drums up at the end of the night.” </SPAN>They’re not alone in looking forward to a tour - <B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>Music Towers</B> can’t wait to catch them live again – and if you’ve got any kind of sense you should be giddy with anticipation too.<B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”>
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<P class=MsoNormal style=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”><B style=”mso-bidi-font-weight: normal”><SPAN lang=EN-GB>What Would Jesus Drive release the ‘We Made This’ EP, on 28 April through Split Records. They will be touring in support of it as well – <A href=”http://www.myspace.com/whatwouldjesusdrive”>check here</A> for details.
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