Holy Ghost!

A revolution is taking place (always, somewhere), and DFA is one of those labels that is making its own aesthetic mark. For almost ten years the label has consequently altered and given us a feel of how they imagine the NY underground scene should sound. With danceable mixtures of punk, disco, and house at its core. Most of it done the organic way, i.e. no laptops, but actual synths and drums and a real bass and all that jazz. Watch LCD Soundsystem perform with their full band, or The Juan MacLean, or any of the other bands for that matter; it is all people playing instruments.

And DFA is not resting on their laurels  either, their quest being in full throttle this year with a new LCD album, a DJ Kicks by John MacLean, and on the slate are new albums by The Rapture, Shit Robot, Hercules and Love Affair, and Holy Ghost!, a rap band turned disco duo consisting of Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel. Under the wings of James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy they have been working in their niche of the DFA fabric to finish their soon to be released EP Static on the Wire.

I went to a LCD gig not too long ago, and except for you guys I think I literally saw every DFA member who has ever lived. Is DFA a family or is it mostly music you guys share?

NICK:  It is a family for sure. We are all friends first, label-mates, bandmates, artists, label managers second.

ALEX: Absolutely a family. Don’t make me get emotional.

I read an interview with John MacLean, who said that Alex once called him up while you two were DJing, John heard you guys playing ‘Happy House’ in the background, and Alex was “yelling at me about quantizing the hi-hats”. Does this anecdote accurately describe how you guys are when it comes to music?

NICK:  Pretty much. He called me once when he was DJing to tell me that kick on our Cut Copy remix wasn’t “tough enough”. He was right.

ALEX: Hahaha, that’s amazing. Yes, that describes it. Also the words NERDY + PARTICULAR +  OUTDATED.

Can we do a word association game? Which five words do you associate with:

Alex/Nick (aka, the other Holy Ghost! member)

NICK: “Oh, daddy. Why do you make cry….”

ALEX: That’s six Nick, read better.  

Jacques Renault (DJ mate + friend)

NICK: Siren

ALEX:  “I love you  my bro”

James Murphy (Label owner plus LCD Soundsystem frontman)

NICK: Jigga!

ALEX: jigga! Marlow and sons. Good.

Nancy Whang (The Juan MacLean/LCD Soundsystem)

NICK: Kiddo!

ALEX: Nando. Miss nancy whang. Hot.

Juan MacLean (The Juan MacLean)

NICK: King Cone.

ALEX: Baby gets what baby wants.

In three (or six) degrees of separation, what is the most unlikely person you could get to?

NICK: These are good questions! Hmmm, let me think. Abe Lincoln is a distant cousin of mine on my mother’s side. Fact!

ALEX: Michael McDonald. I refuse to give my mom his info though. Stalker status.

As probably already has become obvious from the John MacLean anecdote, everything is being looked at with an expert eye. Most guys at DFA know their gear, they dislike their software (or in any case want as little to do with a laptop in terms of music), and when you know, you also can find out what stuff can get out what sound the best. It seems like the DFA guys are that way concerning life as well, humanity before mechanization. Well…

You guys met Murphy and Goldsworthy ages ago, you all became friends, and years later you’ve got your EP released by them and you’re opening for LCD; do nice guys get further in life?

NICK: Apparently not. I’ve heard reports that we’re actually huge assholes.

ALEX: Nice guys finish first? Shit, better start a new band.

You heard reports, seriously? Already starting band feuds, or was that a typical internet thingy where people are just talking shit on message boards?

NICK: No, I haven’t seen anything on the blogs, but please forward me anything you’ve stumbled across. I’ve heard it from promoters and other DJs. Like, “man people say you guys are assholes but you’re actually really nice.”

Surfing Discogs for hours from your comfy chair and coming up with some rare goodies or browsing a musky cellar and come away with 10 LPs for 15 dollars? And why does the one appeal more?

NICK: Musky cellar, though I haven’t been record shopping in ages. I like touching records, holding them in my hands, reading credits, etc. I also don’t like computers much. That’s why we don’t DJ with them or use them on stage.

ALEX: Musky? Mmm, you’ve got me excited.

About the DJing, you guys do it “old-fashioned”, what do you guys think of people like Richie Hawtin, using Traktor and linking it to LastFM or Twitter and stuff? I can imagine him thinking that embracing technology opens many possibilities.

NICK: we have no beef with technology, but at the same time neither one of us particularly enjoys spending time at the computer. For me, the computer is a tool for work. I have no interest in scrolling through a bunch of tiny texts on an LCD screen when I’m DJing. I spend far too much of my time doing that as it is.

What is the latest bit of gear you bought and were over the moon about?

NICK: We are very, very close to buying a Yamaha CS80 which is something we’ve been looking at for years. It is truly the most beautiful sounding polyphonic synthesiser ever built. It truly makes everything else sound like a toy. I might actually cry if we get it, but that’s largely because of how much it’s going to cost.

ALEX: Tears of joy, tears of joy.

(One month later)

NICK: We lost the auction ;(.

I don’t assume you can drag that one across Europe though. What does your road set-up look like?

Nick: The live rig is kind of a stripped down version of our studio remade with as much modern, stable gear as possible played live by 4 dudes. No laptop anywhere near the stage.

According to you, what is the most underrated piece of equipment, and what is the appeal to you personally?

Nick: Most underrated: Orban 111B Spring Reverb, Ashly SC-44 parametric EQ and the Ashly SC series compressors. All very cheap. All very, very good. James gave me an Ashly SC66 when we started working on Holy Ghost! stuff and it was the only compressor I had for years. It’s the only compressor used on ‘Hold On’.

ALEX: A piano.

In your DJ sets a love for vintage disco comes shining through, is that just the music or also the Disco aesthetic, and what makes up that aesthetic for you personally?

NICK:  A good disco record is hard to beat on many levels. It’s just an amalgam of so many great things – great songwriting, optimism, complete lack of irony, amazing production, amazing engineering, amazing musicianship and tough as shit drumming.

They have been playing together for some years now as they grew up living two blocks from each other. First they played in a now defunct rap band called Automato, and now they have formed Holy Ghost! and have been creating music under that moniker for some time now. In the past few years they have been releasing killer remixes, like the ones for Moby’s ‘I Love to Move in Here’, Curses!’ ‘The Deep End’, and more recently they did cuts for LCD Soundsystem, Friendly Fires, and Monarchy. Slowly singles have been coming out as well. Very slowly, that is, but the guys are not rushing. On the 23rd of August they will be releasing their first EP called Static on the Wire, and later this year or early 2011 their first full length will appear. To support the EP they’ve opened for LCD Soundsystem in the US, did a small European tour, and are now returning to the US for a lengthy road trip with Chromeo.

Could you tell us about the new EP you guys are releasing?

ALEX: It’s called Static on the Wire. It just came out in the US of A and will be out in Europe in August, it’s got four songs on it. It’s kind of a handshake to strangers, saying “hi, this is what we do, would you like to be friends and later enjoy moments of over emotional joy, sadness, and rage?” It’s an HG! starter kit. It was recorded over two years, during the same sessions as our album.

I’ve read that the album will be coming out late 2010/early 2011. If the EP is a handshake, what will the album be saying?

NICK: If the EP is a handshake then the album is the kiss at the end of the night. Or maybe it’s a slap in the face.  That will have to be your call!

Can you tell me something about the art work for the EP? Are you guys hands on with that or do you let other people at DFA decide?

NICK: The basic concepts for the artwork are our own but we pass our crude ideas on to people like Drew Hefron and Michael Vadino with actual talent to do the actual hard work.

You guys will be heavily supporting the EP with the LCD, Chromeo, and a festival Europe tour. Is that a crowded agenda or are you guys relishing the prospect?

ALEX: Relishment and punishment are not far a part. We definitely are biting off more than we can chew, but hey, what you can’t chew you swallow, right? That sounds gross. No, I’m being stupid, we’re ridiculously thrilled to be able to support these bands. Honestly, I’m elated

Summer Camp

After coming across the superbly excellent Summer Camp (Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley) back in December last year with an ‘introducing Summer Camp‘ feature – back when we didn’t even know their identities – and giving them a glowing live review supporting The Drums, the time has now finally come for a one-on-one with the band. It’s taken a long time!

When you first started, everything was quite secretive – how long did you think or hope that was going to last?

Jeremy Walmsley: We wanted to stop it being a secret much sooner than it eventually emerged. We were just doing the project for fun, and we were doing it anonymously as we didn’t want our friends to know it was us. And then it turned into this big “oh, they’re anonymous” thing.

Someone at Platform (where Elizabeth is Editor) reviewed your first song didn’t they?

Elizabeth Sankey: Yes, but they had no idea it was me though.

JW: It was really funny. Elizabeth came home from work that day and told me that one of Platform’s writers had said they were doing a piece on Summer Camp.

You should have done it yourselves! Like last year, when Stewart Lee reviewed his own BBC show for Time Out. It was a really scathing review, where he described himself as “just a man going on and on about nothing”…

ES: That’s’ brilliant! I did get asked to do a Radar piece for NME on Summer Camp, though – they didn’t know it was us but I just couldn’t do that.

Did anyone actually think that you were seven school kids from Sweden?

ES: People did. Even now there are some left still saying we are keeping our identities hidden.

There was a piece in The Independent only the other week saying just as much. Just after the night I saw you play, taking note of the fact that you weren’t wearing masks.

ES: There does seem to be a spate of bands doing the whole anonymous thing, and it’s a really good idea but just not something we set out to do intentionally.

JW: It’s true, even though in a way it worked out really well for us. The whole anonymous “idea” simply wasn’t an idea. We just wanted to make some music.

ES: We weren’t sure how we would do the whole reveal thing – we thought we’d end up probably just playing live, with people seeing it was us and writing about it. Luckily, we were outed by The Stool Pigeon and we just had to deal with it.

Did you ever even consider playing live with masks?

ES: By the time we were playing, a lot of people knew who we were anyway. We didn’t want to hold on to it, so we kind of just let go.

JW: I think it’s blown up into a bigger deal than it ever was meant to be. No-one sent us an e-mail saying “Hey, who are you?” I’m not sure anyone actually cared about it at the time. Now it’s just an interesting thing for journalists to talk about. I wish we had a better answer to the question.

ES: Yeah, I wish we’d planned it because we would have enjoyed it a lot more rather than being stressed out by it.

JW: But then again, Max Clifford is my father.

ES: No he isn’t!

The first thing you did was a cover of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ as made famous by The Flamingos. How did you come about that?

ES: I made Jeremy a mixtape with it on there. We decided then to do a cover of it one afternoon.

JW: I’d never heard Elizabeth sing.

ES: I hadn’t really sung before!

It’s odd because another band that are playing here this weekend, North Atlantic Oscillation [Ed - at The Great Escape], covered it too last year. A recent-ish one I really like though is Mercury Rev’s cover, which was a b-side to one of the single releases of ‘Goddess on a Hi-Way’, and also in a John Peel session.

JW: They were doing some Neil Young covers around that period too, acoustic ones.

Yes, ‘Vampire Blues’ is on that single as well. Their ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ has a load of saxophones on it. It’s on their Peel Sessions boxset.

JW: Some of my favourite versions of that are the really cheesy, big-band jazz versions before the Flamingos did it, which was a massive reinvention of the song – they really re-wrote it.

The original is from the early/mid ’30s, isn’t it. Flamingos late Fifties but I guess a lot of people found it through its use in GoodFellas. I know I did…

JW: And American Graffiti.

A lot of people talk about Summer Camp in the same terms as glo-fi bands like Washed Out, Memory Tapes and so on. Do you feel an affinity with that, and them? Or a UK reaction to it?

JW: I can see why people compare us. We are similar, but it’s not like we ever sat down and said “Let’s be a glo-fi band!”

ES: I think it’s natural to have comparisons to them and it’s especially nice, as they are doing great stuff. Likewise most bands in that position will say they’re not set in a scene. We like that stuff but we never really sat down and self-consciously went for that. We can see why the comparison is made but obviously we personally think that what we do is different.

I think it’s interesting as the Wikipedia page for Chillwave…

Both: There’s a Wikipedia page on it!

Yep, and you aren’t on it actually.

JW: Well there you go, that’s the proof. If we aren’t on the Wikipedia entry we can’t be chillwave!

It does mention acts mistakenly labelled by iTunes as chillwave, like The XX, jj and Best Coast.

ES: Really? What I really like is that chillwave was invented by Carles at Hipster Runoff, as a joke. It’s amazing that it’s now a genre, with a Wikipedia page based on how he labelled those bands.

I think that does become a self-perpetuating thing; a lot of these bands self-release stuff on tapes instead of digitally or on CD.

ES: They are into the whole lo-fi aesthetic.

Yes, that seemed to be a happy coincidence at first, but now people are running with it and it’s a key characteristic.

JW: A few years ago it was the likes of Times New Viking doing their releases like that, and a few years ago you had Fennesz’s Endless Summer, which if it came out this year…

It would be included as chillwave, yeah, definitely.

JW: Really though, if somebody wants so label something as being ‘X’, it doesn’t have any effect on the way we think about our music when we’re doing it – but maybe it does when we listen to it.

ES: I think it’s really good to be compared to other bands in such a way as to make you not want to be seen as being as poppy as them say – it gives you an opportunity to move in a different direction.

I think that’s an interesting quirk of what you might want to call ‘The Digital Age’; unlike say Merseybeat, punk, shoegaze or even Britpop, you won’t have met any of these bands. You aren’t working out of one small record label or a club in London, LA or Paris.

ES: That is quite sad though in a way. Now with blogs you can be a Drowned in Sound band or Muso’s Guide or Pitchfork or whatever.

Those are your tribes more than any individual band.

ES: Yeah, that’s how you get classified which in a way is better because we did a remix for  James Yuill, who we only met yesterday -  it was amazing to work with him.

I think it’s really good that there’ve been bands forming from forums in the same way that bands used to from NME adverts.

JW:Yep, Kasier Chiefs found their drummer that way.

It’s good that people can respond to things in that way. It’s like the call-and-response thing between The Beatles and The Beach Boys or punk on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s on a micro-level but it’s more frequent.

JW: Like when ‘No Scrubs’ came out and that other group did ‘No Pigeons’.

While now, a pastiche like that would be on YouTube within days.

ES: The only problem with the era is longevity… everything moves at a much faster pace.

These things have to be place in context, Sporty Thievz’s ‘No Pigeons’ makes no sense if you haven’t heard ‘No Scrubs’

ES: When you are a band and you’ve been playing for years and years at the Hacienda and you finally get there with the internet, there’s a very short time to make an impact.

JW: When I look at it, most of the music I listen to know, it’s music I hear about and buy through the internet.

Oh totally. When I was 16-17, I used to read NME, Mojo, Q, Uncut, Select and Melody Maker, look at the reviews and say “that sounds good, I might buy that.” Now, when I read the ones that are still with us I may have heard a lot of the records already and I’m thinking “I don’t agree with that” or “Yeah, that’s what I thought”.

ES: In a way that’s good and brings everyone to a level – you can tell when someone gives a bad review to say “Ahh! not everyone agrees.”

With the video for ‘Ghost Train’ and the package of the group, the artwork, the MySpace and so on, was there a real aim to have a motif running through in a way that a band like The Smiths did?

ES: I think we’ve just been lucky enough to find a visual image that matches what we do.

JW: The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian are great examples of that.

With their artwork, you could take the name away and tell it was one of their sleeves.

JW: I think for us with the artwork and the blog, which Elizabeth adds to most days, it’s quite easy to look at a photo and say whether it’s a Summer Camp photo or not. The music that we’ve made does seem to have a strong kind of visual sense – or I like to imagine so anyway. It’s not why we’ve done it but I hope that aesthetic is distinct enough for people to know it’s Summer Camp in the same way as you mention with The Smiths.

ES: I haven’t really thought about it like that again, as it’s a happy accident more than anything. I really like having something where the image fits in with the story of the song, and it reflects on each other. To be honest I just really love all those photos and I may have done a blog on them anyway!

JW: I’m sure it’s the same with The Smiths; those were just images that Morrissey liked and connected to something in the music.

In some cases literally, with the lines from Billy Liar and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning being incorporated into the songs and images used on the sleeve.

ES: I think it’s an idea that offsets the music and adds to it. Maybe your own sense of what the songs are about. Not something as literal as “here’s a song that’s about smack and here’s the sleeve of someone doing smack”, though…

Is Summer Camp now the primary focus for both of you or is it an off and on project?

JW: It’s been our primary focus for four months now and I imagine that it’s going to be that for the indefinite future.

ES: We both do other stuff as well, but this is what we are committed to and passionate about. It would be great to do it for as long as possible.

Is this a good way to break up the normal cycle of touring and recording?

JW: Oh yeah, already I mean going back to the chillwave comparisons, the songs that we wrote in our first few months of existence are  nothing like the songs we’ve written since then. They are more all over the place vocally; if you had heard the three most recent songs we have recorded, I don’t think anyone would say we’re a chillwave band.

ES: Then again, to us they sound so different but to anyone else, who knows?

Are you finding your way around in terms of getting the sounds you make in the studio live? Is it a difficult thing, the mix between playing, singing, loops and samples?

ES: It’s tricky. We don’t want to have too much that isn’t live but we have some amazing people that help us out – we are really lucky to have them. It has been difficult though, and each time we play we are getting better and better.

JW: The most important thing is choosing which songs to play, as we’ve got nearly thirty to choose from now.

So has it affected your writing over the past few months, knowing you’ve got to perform the songs live?

ES: A little. We have been having conversations in the middle of writing about how hard it might be to recreate. But we don’t let it put us off.

When you take the famous example of The Beatles just before they stopped touring, there are shows from Japan in 1966 where between the screams and the small PA systems, they can’t get quite get across songs like ‘Nowhere Man’. Aside from all of the other issues they had with touring, they reached a point where they must’ve just thought themselves, “fuck it”.

JW: I dunno. I’ve seen some versions of ‘Nowhere Man’ which are still awesome. We do really enjoying playing live.

ES: It’s just a bit of a challenge that needs to be overcome every now and again.

I’m sure The Beatles would have liked some loops or a laptop to help them out, not that either are some kind of panacea.

JW: I do think that some people see a laptop, and think everything is coming from it. For us, it’s usually only one keyboard sound coming from the laptop; we don’t have any backing track, and all the vocal samples are being triggered by Elizabeth.

ES: We want it to be real; we don’t want it to be seen as fake.

JW: I saw a band who had an orchestra on a laptop. Can you imagine!

ES: Urrggh!

JW: A lot of people probably aren’t that bothered anyway, if it makes the show better, whatever. For us, we just want to be excited about our show.

ES: For us, it’s because we are really anal about controlling all the music coming from the stage.

JW: There are ways of including it that are really good. I’ve done gigs like that before and I don’t think it’s as much fun for the musicians. We want it to be a good show, and we want to be able to get into it.

ES: Plus it kind of restricts you. I’ve only been singing for a little while so it’s good to know that if something went wrong, the band would still be there behind me.

How have you found singing live in general?

ES: Yeah, it’s been amazing. Before we started doing it I said to the band, “I don’t know what I’m going to do! What if I go mad?” It was really odd not knowing what was going to happen, and I was really stressed out. Then as soon as I did the first gig, it was just fine. I wouldn’t say by any stretch I’m a seasoned pro, though. I still have a long way to go as a performer but when you get up there and you start, the adrenaline flows – it keeps you going. Hopefully with more shows we’ll get better and better and better.

After Jeremy mentioned Fennesz, my brain started thinking… even though the vocal samples are twenty years further down the line and not from nature documentaries, your earlier stuff really reminds me of Boards of Canada. And they’re another group who retained an air of mystery for years, until it was revealed that they were brothers. I would almost go as far as describing them as they are prog-chillwave™ (no Google hits for this so I’m claiming it). Thoughts?

ES: I don’t think either of us have ever actually listened to much Boards of Canada, so that wasn’t an influence or reference point for us.  ’90s hip hop like Wu-Tang, Organized Konfusion and Pharcyde were where I first experienced bands using sampling, so I’d state bands like that as more of an influence.

JW: Yeah, I’ve never really listened to much Boards of Canada I’m afraid, but I do see where you’re coming from. I would point to Eno/Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts as a pretty essential bit of sample tomfoolery.

Also back to our conversation about the nature of reviews and the changing shit that the internet has had on closing that three-month gap between a record going to reviewers and the public. A 15-year-old can download every Rolling Stones album in a little over an hour, and become an ‘expert’ in no time at all.

Do you think that reviewers no longer act as gatekeepers? Do you think that this has made the music press more insular not less, due to a conformation bias between internet music fans, bloggers and the publications? The more democratic nature of the internet has seen a centalisation of taste, with people listening to more music, but end-of-year lists still seem to coalesce around the same 100 or so albums each year. I often find that come December, the more interesting lists come from places like Scandinavia or Poland.

JW: I don’t think there’s such a thing about being an expert when it comes to music. That same teenager could just read up about the band on Wikipedia and be able to win a pub quiz on the Stones without ever having heard a note of their music. I think the idea of a reviewer being a “gatekeeper” to music is a bit unfair on listeners, too. Everyone has the right to get into anything – there’s no rule saying “you can’t listen to our band unless you understand our influences”. That would be very weird. So in that respect I think the internet opening up new avenues of discovering music is a good thing. I think.

ES: I love the idea of music journalists being gatekeepers.  I think it did used to be that one of the main roles of the reviewer was to explain how the music sounded, since they’d heard it and the reader hadn’t.  And now, the readers probably have heard it, and already made up their minds.  I quite like the new way, and I think the growth of small blogs are fantastic.  It means big music publications have to up their game and change how they discuss music, which is great.  And it can also mean there’s sometimes a fixation on finding new bands, as everyone wants to be the first to write about something.  That means older and more established bands sometimes get pushed to one side when they release their second or third album, because everyone’s excited about some new act.  But, as you pointed out yourself, it also means people are digging around to find stuff where they wouldn’t normally look, rather than just taking those lists you mentioned as the be all and end all.

How has it been putting out records with Moshi Moshi, and touring with some of their roster like The Drums and Slow Club? There doesn’t seem to be a definitive Moshi Moshi sound even after four years of the singles club. How did you come about joining their gang?

ES:  Moshi Moshi are amazing.  As a band who never expected to be a band, our priority has always been to work with people who we trust and who value the same things we do.  We were both fans of the label already, and felt really lucky to be invited into their gang.  And working with them, we’ve found that they’re lovely, wise, and hilarious people who tell it like it is.  Touring with Slow Club was brilliant.  We were all mates already, so it was great to tour with them and see how they do it.  Their fanbase is insanely dedicated, and you can totally see why – they’re a band who’ve grown gradually in an old-school way, they’ve done it ‘right’ (whatever that means).  It was amazing to see them at Koko, having a huge crowd singing along.  It was the culmination of all the hard-work and talent those two have put in.  Plus their bassist kicked ass [Ed - that was Jeremy].

Thank you, Summer Camp!

Primary 1

Clubbers always know first, don’t they? Because getting out means discovering and learning from people you encounter. So they probably already knew some of the club friendly stuff done by Joe Flory before I ever heard of him. Flory makes music under the name of Primary 1, and his teaming up with gifted producer Riton resulted in some tracks for the dance floor. He came on my radar after I heard the track ‘The Blues’ featuring Nina Persson (she of the Cardigans), and after that one promptly media attention started to swell. With the release of single ‘Princess’ in June and a host of live gigs forthcoming we at Muso’s Guide thought it time to have a chat with film student-turned-musician Joe Flory.

Primary 1 is steadily becoming more of a name. As mentioned earlier, last year he did quite a bit with London producer Riton. Despite that, it doesn’t seem like a full fledged collaboration between the two is going to happen anytime soon: “Well we wrote loads of stuff together last summer and I think we’re gonna end up dividing it up into each of our own records, depending on what suits what best. So…Henry gets all the bangers, I get all the deep emo.” At the moment it seems Flory is more focussed on his solo stuff and his debut album.

Collaborations seem to be in his blood though, and he is learning from the experiences: “Mainly I’ve finally learned to relax and get out of my own ego and it’s a massive relief.” Flory hasn’t only worked with Riton, but he also did a song with Nina Persson from The Cardigans. So, how does one do that? Did he just pick up a phone book and call her up? “Yes that’s pretty much what happened. Only my Swedish collaborator Joakim made the call, she liked the song and, hey, presto! I wonder if I’ll ever meet her though…Internet Duet.” Oh well, the internet highway no? Everything gets done via internet, for better or worse. Even this interview, though if we would be doing this face-to-face apparently I would be closer to Miss Persson than I am now, as we would be in “Stockholm baby! in the scando sunshine!”.

Whether in Scandinavia or not, being around people is always a good thing because you learn so much, whether you want to or not: “My friend Matt recently revealed to me that name ‘Moog’ (as in synth) is in fact pronounced ‘Mouge’. As in, it rhymes with ‘Rogue’.  I’m quite disappointed really.” And other people always help you to broaden your mind: “My mates’s mum just gave me The Wasp Factory to read, because its ‘weird and dark’.” Apparently, the latter bit defines the kind of stuff Flory likes, which is also apparent from his choice of comics: “American Splendor is always amazing and my fave at the mo is Eddie Campbell’s Alec collection- “The Years Have Pants”. Its basically 30 years of his life drawing comics, I love him.” Campbell also illustrated the From Hell series, which was made into a Johnny Depp film, and in the cinema version of American Splendor Paul Giamatti turned in a good lead.

Running away with the Cinema link of the previous paragraph, former Film Studies student Flory especially likes “Chinatown by Roman Polanski and Cleo from 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda”. Good thing the people at Cannes are busy with a Polanski petition then. Agnes Varda is one of the exponents of the booming Fifties/Sixties arts movement in Paris, which led to one fantastic thing after another, something previous Muso’s Guide interviewee Jeremy Jay would probably concur with. In that interview he mentioned his love for French New Wave cinema. Flory said of his preferences: “I think I’m generally attracted to stuff that’s a bit on its own… Like attempts at making a ‘hit’ movie that end up somewhere completely different and weird… mongrel things that have their own world.”

So there is an expectation (they expected a “hit movie”) and it turned out a bit “mongrel”, that’s live isn’t it? Not necessarily in that order, but expectations might not turn out to become reality. Sometimes one thing quite quickly turns into something else entirely, take Flory himself: “[As a child] I was really angry and upset all the time, then I started playing drums and everything was fine.” Sometimes it’s only drums you need! Oh good. And to assure everyone the angriness is entirely a thing of the past , Flory says that “everyone should” come to Primary 1’s shows “because we’re like Abba, but more fun.” If you hear stampeding, that might just be the gay scene having read this interview (just kidding people, diversity in minorities trumps everything).

Oh yeah, based on the article by Guardian writer Paul Lester (who was on this guy way back in 2008, so kudos to him!) I expected on the basis of the line that Flory was a “computer kid” that Flory would know his way around computers: “I don’t. I can use Cubase. That’s it.” Still more than me though, he lost me at Cubase.

Ah yes yes yes, back to music. So Primary 1 is going to drop a new album “soon”, and we can expect, according to Flory: “Lots of different stuff and styles that I like squeezed into my style/voice/brain.” And we can expect the new single ‘Princess’ to drop in June as well. The vid hit the web not too long ago, which was “made by the directors of the Yeasayer videos for ‘Ambling Alp’ and ‘O.N.E’. That was a real honor and I think it’ll be a fun one!”. Furthermore he hopes to be an active player the coming months: “Hopefully [there will be] lots of shows and singles”. Oh, and if he’s DJing, don’t be surprised to hear ‘Carte Blanche’ by Gare du Nord: “Its ridiculous and great”. Which, incidentally (oh the strenuous link) also applies to his track ‘The Blues’ (which you should definitely be checking out), and hopefully the upcoming album will be deserving of such praise as well. Until that release you can watch him play live at multiple festivals  or at one of his solo gigs he will be doing in the upcoming months. Or you can go and watch him throw a DJ set, although I’m sure the clubbers already have their agenda sorted out.

Stornoway

Paul Wilson recently caught up with Stornoway’s drummer extraordinaire, Rob Steadman, for a chat about their new album Beachcomber’s Windowsill and their ongoing rise as folk-pop stars…

Your new album, Beachcomber’s Windowsill, is out on May 24th, how does it feel to have your album finally released to the public?

It’s definitely exciting, we’re a bit nervous about the reaction. We’ve had some really good comments from people who’ve  heard an advanced copy, people are saying they think it’s really great so we’re looking forward to its release but anxious at the same time. We’re hosting three launch parties at a small venue in Oxford, with about one hundred people each night. We’re doing it for our local fanbase that we started with.

The album is being released on 4AD Records, now we imagine there was a lot of interest from labels in having Stornoway on their books, what was it that convinced you 4AD were the right label for the band?

Well we were wondering firstly if we needed a label at all or if so, what label to choose. That process went on for about six months. We’d always taken the DIY process before then and it did well for us. We discussed the deal with 4AD and decided we could still be independent whilst having the backing of the label at the same time. It’s very good and we feel at home. They have a strong reputation for alternative bands and it feels like a good fit.

Popular support for Stornoway has been slowly building for quite some time now, do you feel it has snowballed of late?

Definitely although we’ve had our own momentum from the start. From being a DIY independent thing, we’ve kept pushing for gigs and building the songs up. At each stage we’ve had people want to come in and help us grow, be it the appearances at Glastonbury, Radio 1’s Big Weekend or the label. It helps us grow, so over the past four years having people want to push us on has been great. We need to see what this year’s momentum does for us and hopefully we’ll have proved to have made the step up.

You’re about to embark on a brief tour in support of the album in the UK before launching a full summer festival schedule – what would you say is the stand-out difference between these types of gigs and which do you prefer?

They vary a lot. We work well in both situations in terms of how we come across. In a small venue its very intimate and we enjoy that, Brian’s persona as a frontman works when people are really listening. We also love the festivals though with the carnival atmospheres that they have. Glastonbury last year would be the perfect example. It was our first time there and every gig was really busy but also nice and relaxed. So that’s probably our favourite setting, to be able to play to so many people at once.

The album is missing the earlier single ‘Unfaithful’, was that a conscious decision to sway towards an album of fresh music?

Definitely. It’s inevitable to have songs like ‘Zorbing’ on there because it is most people’s favourite song. There was a conscious effort to push songs that people haven’t heard and the new ones we’ve written most recently. We’ve got about 8 songs that aren’t on there at all that we don’t play live either. They’ve just faded away but we’ll be bringing them back eventually after this album has had its run. This album’s main focus is on the new songs and a mix between the singles.

How much debate was there within the band over the tracklisting?

Brian and Jon took the lead roles in choosing the tracklisting. It always works that way. Brian and Jon would spend the most time on the band’s ideas and songs because Ollie was at Uni and I’d only just come out of school. Although we do all sit down near the end of the process and have our individual input.

What would you attribute the band’s rise to? I think there’s a dream-like quality to most of your songs and a sense that even though the lyrics can be downbeat at times, there is still always a sense of them being ultimately uplifting all at the same time. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think so. Each song has a story and there is a connection between the songs. The idea of album is that a few of the songs are connected. There’s a complete difference between playing live and the record. I think live we are totally different to what people think after hearing the tracks. I think we have an element of uniqueness that just comes naturally from our desire to play music in our own way.

What do you find is the best thing about touring? What is the worst?

The best thing for me is the bonding that goes on whilst on tour. I’m a decade younger than Brian and Jon, so we wouldn’t normally mix, there’s always been an age divide – so getting to connect with them more is the best part of being together and spending time with one another. The worst thing is probably if a gig doesn’t go so well then some people might get down about it and on tour you can’t really get away from people, but it very rarely happens. It’s normally a very relaxing and enjoyable experience.

Do the band have any goals set for the future?

We’re riding the wave but we’ve always had goals but we’ve never set ourselves expectations that are too high. We know that if you aim too high you’ll end up disappointed most of the time. We really want to see how Glastonbury goes for us this year, being on a bigger stage with more people knowing of us. At the end of the year we will sit down and look at the album sales. Our goal is to sell a lot of records and to do well internationally. I think we’re going to New York in July and that’ll be our first time there which will be a great feeling.

You’ve recently played a gig in your namesake town, what was that like as an experience and did any locals comment on you using the name?

We didn’t know what to expect. A lot of people that came to that gig were there to see if we are worthy of the name. For about a year beforehand, we had people asking when we were going to do a gig there. It was a great experience – arriving there and knowing nothing about the place. We took some friends, family and press along with us so it was like one big party. The gig itself was fantastic and people really liked it. We gave everyone in the audience some whisky before the encore so I think we won them over.

Finally, if you were presenting a showcase of the band and could only pick three songs that defined your sound and style, which 3 would you pick and why?

Personally I’d pick ‘I Saw You Blink’, ‘End Of The Movie’ and ‘Watching Birds’. ‘I Saw You Blink’ has an African soul touch to its rhythm section, which I love. I’ve recently started singing harmonies when playing live so it’s nice to combine that with the drumming. ‘End Of The Movie’ is brilliant because that’s where Brian’s lyrics and song-writing really come through and that defines us as a band lyrically also. ‘Watching Birds’ is a much louder and faster one that shows a diversity within us, it’s good to be able to go from calm and acoustic to a really rocky tune. It’s my favourite to play live as it gets the crowd going, I think they enjoy the loudness and change of pace.

Stornoway’s debut album, ‘Beachcomber’s Windowsill’, is out on Monday 24th May on 4AD Records.

Young Rebel Set

Muso’s Guide’s Paul Wilson went along to Manchester’s Ruby Lounge to meet hotly-tipped Teesside newcomers Young Rebel Set, and get the lowdown on their creative ethos, tour antics and other such. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Matt Chipchase, Patrick Jordan and Andy Parmley of Young Rebel Set…

Your new digital EP, ‘Won’t Get Up Again’, is coming out on 2nd May on your own label, Our Broadcast, as have your last few releases – do you think the DIY approach has been beneficial to the progression of Young Rebel Set?

Matt Chipchase: I think it’s the right approach to take, for the moment, with all the major labels having some difficulty. It’s pointless to get signed to a major label when you’re not safe in your predicament – you get signed up and then six months later you’re dropped again. When we find a label we’re happy with, we want to be there for a long time and to be happy with it. We’ve found within the industry, that the whole rigmarole of getting in there and sorting everything out takes a massive part out of the creative side of everything so the less of that we can do the better.

Andy: DIY is what it is at the end of the day. We release what we want to release, with limited input from management and things like that.

So would that be a major factor if you were deciding between labels – the extent of the creative control they would allow you to have over your music?

Patrick Jordan: It would have to be!

Matt: The ethos behind our music is one of longevity. There’s no fashion statements. The music is there to stay so we need to be in a happy home for quite a while.

You’re from Teesside and yourselves alongside the likes of The Chapman Family are viewed as the leading lights of the region musically, what would be your assessment of the Teesside music scene in general?

Andy: I wouldn’t say there was a scene up there.

Matt: It’s not like in London where everybody follows a niche – whether it be glowsticks and you follow the hype behind one band. There’s definitely a love of live music in Teesside but there’s no scene. I don’t think it needs one because everyone there just loves a good drink and a party. You don’t need a technicolour t-shirt up there to say you love a certain band up there. There isn’t any cult followings, you’ll see a good mixture of everybody from forty year olds to daft kids – some with glowsticks – all sitting happily within a venue and just enjoying the music. If London could do that then every venue would be packed out. Down there you get looked down on if you haven’t got the right look or whatever.

Visitors to your MySpace page can receive a free download of ‘Borders’ once they’ve signed up to your mailing list. Where do YRS stand on the current filesharing debate?

Matt: I couldn’t give a shit if somebody illegally downloaded our music, to be honest. As long as someone then comes along and buys a ticket to see us then I’m happy.

Patrick: It’s definitely an issue that needs addressing, though.

Andy: The real fans will always end up paying for the music that they like and they’ll always turn out to watch you, so I think it all works out in the end.

Patrick: If you could get a fanbase of about a thousand people to buy your album and come to your gigs, you could make a living out of it and there are loads of bands that are doing that. I think record labels need to address the argument better themselves. There’s still loads of independent labels doing very well for themselves – Rough Trade are doing well and so are Fierce Panda.

Andy: We’d rather have people listen to our music than be put off by having to pay ten quid. That’s not to say they shouldn’t pay for it by any means! We are from Teesside you know!

Matt: If we catch you, we won’t be happy about it! Stealing is wrong – just don’t get caught.

You’ve done a couple of headline tours now -  is there anywhere you find that the band gets a better reception than others?

Andy: Germany!

Matt: Europe is amazing. Just the hospitality and the venues. We played nine sell out shows and two Dutch shows. To do all of that unheard of was great. We just rolled up there, expecting nothing and every venue was rammed with people singing our songs. I think the English can definitely take a leaf out of the Germans book there. They’re more inclined than the English to listen to new music just on a whim. Of course, our hometown gigs are always our favourites because that’s where our mates are and we do it for them first and foremost. We’re still unheard of in many places in this country so the first crowd you play to are just listening as they haven’t heard that many of your songs, everyone is listening so when you’re in the band you feel a bit disappointed if they don’t know you but you have to recognise that it’s their first time hearing you whereas we know the songs back to front.

In an ideal world, where do YRS want to be in a year’s time?

Matt: Just to make enough to live off, really. The industry is such a hard place to be at the moment. We struggle to keep jobs. Everybody in the band wants to do it one hundred percent but you’ve got to juggle everything else and it’s hard. Everyone is doing it to the best of their ability and major sacrifices have to be made. It’d be nice if that bit of pressure came off it. I could be happy just playing music and live comfortably like that for the rest of my life.

Patrick: We want to get an album out as well.

What are the plans for the album?

Patrick: There are plans in the pipeline. There are dates, no solid dates but some of them are October/November time.

Is that being released through Our Broadcast as well?

Matt: It’s going to be on either a major label, an independent label or…something!

Patrick: We have the capability to do it ourselves so if it comes to that then that’s what we’ll do. A lot of people are wondering where it is, as we’ve had 3 releases now with no album. We are working hard on it and it has to be right, that is the main thing.

Matt: If we can get it out before the Christmas rush, then we will.

Andy: We don’t want to be battling it out with Simon Cowell.

Matt: Whenever it is, it won’t be coming out until it is right.

There are also some solo side-projects within the band. Andy performs as Leno and Matt performs as Billy The Kid – how do these solo projects work within the band dynamic and do the help the overall YRS cause?

Matt: For me, most of the stuff I do as Billy The Kid I end up doing with Young Rebel Set anyway. Some of it I will keep for myself if it doesn’t fit for the band but Billy The Kid are our songs at the basic level as they are first conceived by me. A lot of the emotion and empathy you can lose when you bring seven instruments so it’s good to go back to the songs at their original level as they were originally intended.

Patrick: It’s just good to try things out as a solo without trying to bring seven people’s perspectives on it in, we make a lot more progress like that.

Andrew: My songs are all just ideas to and we get out there and do some solo gigs to road-test them for the full band, get them out there and rework them where necessary.

Patrick: It’s one of our great strengths I think. If it’s right for the band, you bring to the rest of us. I write as well so there’s a few of us who can get it to fit the full band sound. It’s one of the reasons we have so many songs written and waiting to be recorded because we have people in the band who can bring these things to the table. It just depends which minds they are!

You’ve said you’ve toured Europe. Now seven lads on tour for that length of time must produce some stories. Are there any you can tell us?

[All laugh]

Andy: Oh God, a moderate one? I can’t even think of one! Well, our driver drove all the way from Belgium to Stockton and picked us up – drove all the way back to Belgium for the first gig in his hometown.

Matt: He was a big fan of vampire porn.

Andy: Yeah, a big vampire porn fan. Anyway, he was the most experienced yet inexperienced driver I’ve ever, ever known.

Matt: Luke nearly got arrested when he was running around the hotel with a gold leopard-print thong on. He was getting chased by the police and everything.

Matt: Seymour, our photographer, who drinks our entire rider and is extremely lazy – he managed to fall over whilst trying to shut a door whilst also trying to turn the light off on his way out. I still can’t get my head around it.

Last question, what can YRS offer that is different and unique to the current mainstream favourites such as your Florence & The Machines and your Ellie Gouldings?

Andy: Classic songwriting.

Matt: The thing you need to understand about Young Rebel Set is that we are not pretentious. We are not trying to be part of a scene. We don’t dictate who can come to our shows and who can’t. We’re just writing traditional, classic songs which will stand the test of time hopefully. That’s what we’re aiming for, to write something timeless and classic. Fashion has dictated music for so long that it’s just taken the longevity right out of it. You don’t get legends anymore. I think Laura Marling will be classed as a legend of our time, only time will tell. You don’t have to be right in the media limelight to be making good music and put on a great show, that’s what we’re about.

Patrick: The thing I love about being in the band is the whole melting pot of creativity that we have. We don’t say songs have to sound a certain way. We just say we have this great basic track let’s see what we want to add, we don’t restrict ourselves to shying away from certain things.

Matt: We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves to any kind of genre. We want to appeal to the biggest audience we can and build on that.

Here’s more on that:

THRICE AS NICE

Recap: We’re promoting a UK Garage night at new Dalston hotspot (the cool kids at VICE love it) The Alibi on May 1. It’s a bank holiday weekend, AND the night is free entry. It kicks off at 8pm and runs ’til late. Mad, right?

Now, back to the main game – to call someone ‘legendary’ is to endow them with not only a sense of greatness at the time of their peak, but the honour of influencing a generation after them. Sure, this is subjective, but it’s blinding to see Oxide and Neutrino’s influence on the scene. From producing the super-hit ‘21 Seconds’, which stormed the airwaves at the turn of the decade, to their mega-smash hit ‘Bound 4 Da Reload’ and 250,000-selling album Execute, which was blanked-featured by the magazines (magazines!) in 2002 as one of the highlights of the year.

Inevitably, Oxide and Neutrino make the imposters look just that -  their radical revamp of the UK garage sound involved raw and rumbling basslines, pop samples (Casualty) and weary use of electronic tones. Oxide stands central as one of the most original dance producers, taking chances and innovating with disjointed rhythms, squelchy synthesised sounds, and dramatic industrial noise.

What is Oxide listening to these days then? “I listen to a wide range of music,” he says, “UK garage, D&B, minimal, dubstep, house – the list goes on…”. He also recommends Delight FM, which is indeed a hub for musical innovation.

It’s an honour to have Oxide, alongside his MC partner Neutrino, at the launch-night of our new Dalston party Thrice As Nice. And according to the man himself, we can expect to hear “some UK garage bangers and some Oxide and Neutrino hits” on the night.

Be there. Dalston’s The Alibi (91 Kingsland High Street), Saturday May 1 from 8pm ’til 3am. Free entry!

Here’s a quick reminder of their game-changing nous:

See you there!

Ikonika

Embracing new technology is a pre-requisite these days for producers of electronic music and its many variants – indeed, most current button-pushers do so with vigour and eagerness. The increasing popularity of Serato and Ableton in live sets pays testament to that forward thinking experimentalism, with only handful of admirably obstinate DJs spinning the black wax of vinyl.

25-year-old Sara Abdel-Hamid, aka Ikonika, heads the charge of fresh, youthful producers who are experimenting with the boundaries of the mid range, and most importantly, synths. Her debut single “Please/Simulacrum” marked a watershed for Hyperdub – the dark, cavernous bass music of Burial, The Bug and Kode9 himself quickly extrapolated to vivid, melodious music. Releases by Zomby, Darkstar and Samiyam followed, and Abdel-Hamid points to the presence of old school Nintendo and Sega sounds as possible reasons for this sudden influx.

Abdel-Hamid traces her technological lineage back to her childhood days spent playing video games: “My older sisters would be out raving and I’d be on my Megadrive. Obviously it will have something in you, pressing these buttons is like making a beat at the same time. Just being brought up around computers is like seeing a change and I think seeing the internet grow has something to do with it.”

But her musical journey began in distinctly different surroundings, with the music room at her school in Hounslow serving as the hangout for her and guitarist friends to indulge in their passion for post-hardcore music.

An introduction to a Skream mix in 2005 soon shifted her focus to the emerging sounds of dubstep: “I fell in love with it, and I remember saying I can do this, and it sort of went from there.”

Regular trips to FWD cemented her newfound passion, and a “shitty Toshiba laptop” served as the port for all her early work, with ‘Please’ and ‘Millie’ created with only a copy of Fruity Loops and a “simple bleep sample”.

Abdel-Hamid’s work soon caught the attention of Kode9, and following some correspondence over message boards, she joined the Hyperdub roster: “Being a big fan of Burial and Kode9, it just seemed a bit unreal in a way, cause when I was making these tracks I was thinking, ‘Yeah I’m gonna get signed by the end of this year but I don’t know who with.

“I didn’t really initially see myself on Hyperdub. But after I started thinking about it I was like yeah ok, this could work, we have the same kind of values, and I think that’s really important.”

Ikonika’s debut LP Contact, Love, Want, Have looms, and Abdel-Hamid cites it as a “continuation of what I’m doing, but its more of an introduction to people that don’t know me”. Lead single ‘The Idiot’ displays a more percussive side to her music, and reins in on the atonal, sometimes dissonant nature of her sound: “It’s me not being boring anymore! I’m just moving on, filling the gaps, but having enough space at the same time.”

Performance

Here at Muso’s Guide, we particularly enjoy introducing you to new bands. And today, we bring you another of our favourites, Performance – think of us as your ever-convivial host, as the lead singer Joe Stretch tells you a little bit more…

I’ve taken a crap in every toilet venue from The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen to The Joiners in Southampton. I sat on the seat or, if there was no seat or the seat was broken or had piss on it, then I hovered above the bowl. I did this at The Castle in Oldham, The Cluny in Newcastle, Fibbers in York. I did this all over England.

My name is Joe Stretch and I am the lead singer in a band called Performance, a three-piece, hailing from Manchester in the north-west of England. We formed around 2003 and signed a record deal with Polydor in December 2004. We were, in no particular order, a gambling addict, an anorexic, a drug addict and a depressive. We made pop music. I dropped out of university and signed the record contract with a Ladbrokes betting pen. Like everyone else, I regret nothing.

I am pleased to say we are no longer signed to Polydor. After our first album I went into hiding. I started writing novels. I’ve published a couple. I’m thinking about a third. The other two formed another band while I was away. Kiss in Cities, they’re called. I’m told they’re more poppy than Performance. In 2009 I broke up with my girlfriend and I ended up hanging round with those two a lot more.  We wondered what it would be like if we made another Performance record. So we did. And then we got a deal. So here we are. Back.

Our album is a mix of uplifting pop songs and down-trodden tales. It was recorded over the past year and is finally approaching something that we can be proud of. The other Joe in our band likens it to “….an upbeat melody here, a lyric about someone tearing your heart out here, and other things.” I’m inclined to agree, to a certain extend. There’s certainly more upbeat melodies.

And so we begin our pursuit, our trivial pursuit? Perhaps? But we begin nonetheless, with ‘The Living’, our first single from our second album Red Brick Heart. I hope you enjoy.

Life Without Buildings

Life Without Buildings leapt out of an art school corner of Glasgow at the turn of the millennium, and have since – passively – courted listeners who deem their debut (and only) LP Any Other City among the most precious in their collection. It’s not the sort of album to be absorbed immemorably, instead sticking like a giant earworm. The inner rumblings of singer Sue Tompkins are set against a spiky, coarse backing from the other three members of the band (Chris Evans, Will Bradley and Robert Johnston) and appeared, then, in short and mostly unnoticed bursts that may or may not have been happed upon via the release of three double A-sides and a fourth, distributed only in Australia. The internet wasn’t what it is now, so a quick blink and LwB were gone.

Why did the band break up? Did you consider doing one-off shows after the break-up?

RJ: We broke up because Sue didn’t want to do it anymore. She wanted to focus on visual art, and had never really bargained on being the singer in a band.

To put that in perspective, when the band began of course none of us really thought anyone would be interested, so there wasn’t anything at stake. As things went on, it started to feel a bit more pressurised, so we did some daft things like taking support gigs with larger bands because it would be ‘good for us’ and generally treating it more like a job than like fun (I take a large part of the responsibility for this!). If we had been a bit smarter about it we could probably have carried on a bit longer and tried to plough our own path rather than do things the way we thought they were ‘meant’ to be done. For Sue i think it turned from a laugh into being a commitment she’d never signed up for.

Having said all that, I’ve got no regrets about us splitting up. I think in a lot of ways it was the right time.

WB: I was happy with the new songs we had, and sad that we didn’t get them onto tape. But the band was never meant to last. We did everything we set out to do, and I think Sue’d already held on longer than she wanted to. On the last song we wrote, she was singing ‘Take me away from here’ over and over again. Still, it sounded great.

Would you ever consider reforming?

RJ: We haven’t considered reforming, really, or doing one-off gigs. For me that’s mainly because of the amount of work it takes to get good enough to play live — it seems a bit silly to spend months rehearsing only to do one gig! I guess never say never, but I don’t think the idea is foremost in anyone’s mind.

WB: I agree. Don’t look back. If the band worked at all it was because of what happened at a time and in a situation that has passed. Even if we reformed, which we won’t, we’d have to start again and figure out how to process everything that has happened in the meantime before we could make any useful noise, else we’d just end up as our own unwanted tribute act. So, no. Go and see something new.

What it was like playing with The Strokes at the Camden Monarch (now the Barfly) in Feb ‘01 at their first London headline gig, being bumped down (reports suggested this had been the case)?

RJ: I don’t think we were bumped down, we were always going to be support, and by that point The Strokes were starting to really blow up, so it would have been silly to get uppity about it. All I really remember is breaking a string and the drummer out of The Strokes was nice (you may draw your own inferences about that last bit).

WB: We didn’t play with The Strokes in any meaningful way. It was a booking accident. Our record label were trying to reinvent themselves with an eye on the indie big-time. I remember watching them for a few minutes, then I remember leaving. Sometimes we really connected with brilliant bands we met on tour, like Ninety-Nine from Melbourne, or the Desert Hearts from Belfast, and a night became much more than the sum of its parts. But the Monarch gig was a category error. Whatever The Strokes were, in my mind at least we were a fundamentally different kind of thing to it. If we were where they were, then we were clearly in the wrong place.

Would you have played it any differently if you released Any Other City in 2009?

RJ:That’s really hard to say. Things have changed so much in terms of how music gets heard now — I suppose we really wouldn’t have needed a record company or any of that infrastructure. Certainly if there was anything I would do differently it would be to generally keep things closer to home, try to avoid the traditional music industry completely, not just do whatever gigs we got offered …

WB: I was always the one pushing the DIY ethic, reading the contracts with a magnifying glass and cursing the industry. Still, I was happy that we found a corner of the music business that gave us just enough support to record and tour, and the label fronted the cash that plugged our first record onto the radio and got it a couple of bad reviews in the music press. Without that backing – that hype, tiny as it was – I don’t think anybody outside of Glasgow would’ve known or cared, and though we had no ambition for world domination, of course we didn’t want our music to disappear without trace. So, whether we like it or not, we owe something to that system. Of course, I wish that whole system would die, that the music would win out through other channels and that artists didn’t have to sell themselves to labels, publishers and management. But, even in 2009, we’re not there yet.

Did you have any idea how well Live at Annandale would be received?

RJ: Well, we all really liked the record, so I suppose we had hopes that other folk would too. It got a nice response, but it hasn’t sold a lot! I’m pleased people didn’t think it was just a throwaway or a cash-in, because we spent a fair bit of time getting it ready and we all thought it represented something about the band that wasn’t on the album.

WB: We never planned to make a live album, and we had no idea that the Annandale gig was being recorded. But I’m glad that somebody did it.

What are you all up to now?

RJ: I’m a graphic designer, and I play a bit of music. Chris and Sue are visual artists. Sue still lives in Glasgow, same as me, and Chris is in Brussels.

WB: I’m a writer, and I also work with art. I played with a great pop-punk band called Correcto in Glasgow for a while, but I left to go and work, and play music, in San Francisco for a couple of years. And now I live in Oslo.

Is there any unreleased stuff hanging around that’s not been put out?

RJ: A bit. But things are generally unreleased because they’re not very good! I don’t think there’s anything else we would put out.

WB: There’s a BBC session, produced to make us sound like Hawkwind, and an Australian radio session where we’re jetlagged to the point of coma. A few C90s of rehearsal experiments recorded on a Walkman, and some very early demos we recorded ourselves. Nothing anybody needs to hear.

What were you listening to around the time of making AOC?

RJ: I was listening to a lot of American kind of post-rocky stuff and earlier post-punk stuff — things like Don Caballero, Mission of Burma. But we all had very wide tastes and a pretty keen ear for pop. Sue listened to TLC and lots of kind of RnB stuff. We used to put Fleetwood Mac on in the car when Will wasn’t around to tell us off. In terms of what fed into the band, it was quite a grab-bag, with a lot more classic rock’n'roll than you might think (we were quite often thinking of things like the Stones or the Who), bits of The Smiths, Fall, Krautrocky stuff, Velvets, Modern Lovers, Television. We wanted the music to have a rock’n'roll spirit, I think.

WB: Before Sue joined the band, we’d been into was happening in the techno scene – WARP, the new German records, Underground Resistance. So for a short time we even tried working with digital tools, three of us sat round a keyboard, but we soon found out that playing live instruments, and learning to play the way we wanted, was a shorter route to the feeling we were looking for. Neu!, Television, The Smiths, The Fall and the Stones were always there, but always disrupted by things like Missy Elliot and Autechre. We also got a lot from the post-rock and post-hardcore sounds of the Glasgow scene at the time, and from Sue’s fantastic refusal to be interested in anything other than the most mainstream music and the most esoteric literature. In the end, the sound of the band was shaped more by the dynamic, and the arguments, between the three of us in the rehearsal room, than by anything else. And then Sue had the final word. If she didn’t feel something when we played it, then it was out.

How did you feel about the mixed reception to the record at the time?

RJ: There was one I think by the NME’s John Mulvey which was quite personally nasty about Sue. Then there was a kind of baffling one, for a single I think, which seemed like all sense had been edited out of it. At the time we got quite a lot of “the music’s OK but the what’s with the godawful singing?” kind of reviews, which I think we were expecting to some extent, but it was still quite disappointing — that people who supposedly knew something about music could be so resistant to something a tiny bit unconventional. And we thought it was particularly lazy that a lot of the initial comparisons were to female singers with high voices by whom we were clearly not remotely influenced. Then again, I think we all thought the NME was a dishrag anyway, so we didn’t care all that much.

WB: I remember one that said only mad people could like us. I was happy with that. Not long afterwards, we seemed to get a lot of guys coming to our gigs with fresh head wounds, like unstitched lobotomy scars.

Just how stream-of-consciousness was the lyric-writing?

RJ: I think only Sue could answer that properly, but it’s probably safe to say that the writing wasn’t really stream-of-consciousness at all. It was quite careful and quite refined. A lot of it had been done without ever thinking of the words as ‘lyrics’ — Sue had been writing for years and years before the band and continues to do so.

WB: She’s a genius, but beyond that she has killer timing. She was never in the wrong place, never on the wrong beat. So much preparation and then also so many freestyle calculations. Nobody but Sue could explain how she does what she does. She wrote, or typed, with stutters and repetitions and mistakes and weird lapses already included. And then, when she started working with the music she would remake the text all over again while she was singing, not just reading but jumping and cutting and changing until at some point she’d find the right shape, the right rhythm, and then it’s a song. Often she was quoting and collaging things, but then suddenly she seemed to be saying or singing certain words for the first time. The first time we really heard it in action, recording her voice for the demo that became the leanover, it was like watching a tightrope artist performing and willing them not to fall.

Were the songs written around Sue’s lyrics?

RJ: Well, see above, but no. We usually started with music, although things could change a bit when Sue came in.

WB: Rob, Chris and me would jam out more or less finished tracks, then Sue’d come down and listen. If she was feeling it, a song could come together very quickly, with maybe a few easy changes. If she wasn’t, the only option was to ditch the whole thing and start again.

What do you think about the growing fan base since you split?

RJ: It’s great. It’s really nice to feel like people get it. For me it’s amazing to feel like I can consider what we did as something within and contributing to the musical culture that I’ve been an obsessive fan of since I was a kid.

WB: It’s great that the record hasn’t entirely disappeared without trace, but I don’t see anything you could call a fan base, and I’m happy about that.

Mike Doughty

February 2nd 2010

“I want to be on you”.  Ron Burgundy’s “immortal words” are those chosen by Mike Doughty to sell himself to the British public.

Doughty, formerly of alt-rock band Soul Coughing, is pretty popular in the States, but relatively unknown here.  My question referred to selling himself to us in the style of a dating ad.  His witty answer, I come to realise, is standard.

The American singer-songwriter is a fairly open book, regularly tweeting (find him @mikedoughtyyeah) and blogging on his website, where he comments honestly on his day to day activities and thoughts on the happenings in the world; two recent tweets include “Lousy night. Crowd couldn’t have cared less” and “Salinger gone – perhaps we’ll at last hear his Rock Opera”.  Is it important for him to keep in touch with fans? “I think it ends up being important, but the reason I do it is just my general obsession with killing time online” he says. “I think my crowd feels pretty close to me because of the access I give to myself, but I don’t think it’s necessarily vital to being a musician these days”.

This openness has extended to a book about his previous life as a drug addict, which he’s in the process of writing.  Mike claims “writing prose is a lot more time consuming than song writing” and that “linear thinking”  is not his strength.  He’s currently struggling to write about his time with Soul Coughing, describing it as “pretty shitty”.
Another way his fans get to know about him is through the Question Jar, something passed round at his gigs where people can put questions in for him to answer.  He told me he’d not had it on this tour because his German wasn’t good enough to answer the questions – he’d been touring Germany and Switzerland for two weeks before playing London – and that he wished he’d brought it along for his gig at the Relentless Garage, but as it happened he ended up inviting the audience to shout out questions to him anyway.   There were a large amount of Americans in the crowd, many of them obviously long-time fans, as lots of the questions were, by Doughty’s admission, in-jokes regarding Dave Matthews (of the Dave Matthews Band; Doughty supported him in Soul Coughing, and is now signed to his record label) and various song lyrics. He claims the best questions he’s had to date are “Would you rather punch a kitten in the face or play Twister with Dick Cheney?” and “Have you ever considered a life as a Ghostbuster?” – unfortunately he didn’t tell me the answers to either.

Mike’s here to promote his new album Sad Man Happy Man, which is a lot more stripped down compared to his previous work – mainly in response to his fans.  He said the last album, Golden Delicious, “was received as kind of a betrayal – they thought it was too fluffy. I’d been doing gigs with just my cello player, Scrap Livingston -pretty bare bones, so it was pretty natural just doing a record that was stripped down like that”.  This time, the response was a lot more positive, demonstrated at the sold-out gig by rapturous applause after every track and numerous encores.

Doughty was the embodiment of stripped down, wearing a plain black t-shirt and jeans, with only his guitar for company,  and he managed to engage and entertain the crowd for an hour and half.  The set was a chance to showcase the new tracks with old favourites like ‘27 Jennifers’, ‘Nectarine’, and the two songs probably most well known by his British fans – ‘Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well’ and ‘I Hear The Bells’ – both of which have been featured on various US TV shows, most notably Grey’s Anatomy.  Asked how he felt about TV syncs, he replied, “I watch too much TV to really complain about it as a sellout. I don’t think I’d give my music to booze or cigarette commercials, but other than that, I’m not bummed out by the association.”

Mike’s humour entertained the crowd just as much as his music, regularly ad-libbing funny lyrics – much to the audience’s amusement – and giving good banter between the songs.  Toward the end of the show, he stopped and said he was about to play the “fake last song”, instructed us to cheer loudly afterwards while he turned around and pretended to be surprised, before going into the ‘encore’.  But in actual fact, he ended up doing two real encores, in addition to the fake one – and the crowd still demanded more.

Mike Doughty hadn’t played in the UK for 10 years before this gig, but I suspect he’ll be back a lot sooner next time.  To paraphrase a certain Mr. Burgundy – I love Mike. Mikey, Mike, Mike…