Muso’s Guide Introduces… We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists
We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists
Allow us to introduce to you Swedish favourites We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists. They’re situated in Gothenburg but have come there via Manchester – and you can certainly hear the fuzzy grey skies in their music. Here they are…
Muso’s Guide: How are you being received in Gothenburg? Do you find yourselves sticking out like a sore thumb in their love for indiepop/Balearic beats?
WDNNWT: When we first came out 2 years ago people were buzzing, which is an achievement considering there is a lot of competition here. Everyone commented on how cocky the music was -I was worried that the British sound was going to get us run out of town but the press really picked up on what we are trying to do and respect it. There is clearly a need for a band like us in Sweden. Yeah we do stick out though, there are a lot of very professional unsigned bands here (much more so than the UK) but no one does what we do. I think people just assume we are hooligans! The only other band here we have much in common with musically is The Oholics, which is why I asked their singer Krille to come in and do backing vocals on the CD. Things are going very well for them now too which is encouraging.
MG: Would you like The Supremes to hear ‘Wrong Eyes’?
WDNNWT: Haha! Great question! Well I suppose legal issues aside – yes and no, I love Diana Ross but I have to be honest we slaughtered her song. I mean the idea is that it is more ’street’ punk -like doing a sample in a mix, so I don’t think the Supremes would really get that context. The girls (Christina Wehage from Be the Bear, and Sanna Gulle) did a great job on that though, can’t be easy fitting Supremes onto ska guitars, New Order basslines and Oasis vocals! You can hear on the outtakes we made that they had a laugh though, probably a bit of a shock for them too.
MG: What are all of your tastes – is there overlap or do you have lots of clashes?
WDNNWT: Jacques really understands the Manchester bass sound very well but he translates it to US terms like BRMC sometimes, which is fine. He gets all the references though, despite being a yank he actually grew up in London so if I say ‘Pulp’ he knows what I mean. For the most part though I write the music and so there are no clashes apart from the ones I make. Some songs you write don’t work. Jacques has been very critical with me and that has helped us develop. As with ‘Wrong Eyes’ though, most of my tracks are like doing sampling in my head, I write songs with my record collection in mind. I like making references in the lyrics, riffs and melodies. I suppose it has worked out well too, since people have namedropped so many artists when talking about us. That it is just mad- I love it, but it’s just got so mad. On the other hand we have never been called a rip-off or derivative, which means we are doing something right I reckon. I think we are the only band mixing so many bits of other genres or bands. I love the fact that people get it, that’s success that.
MG: How long have you been gigging?
WDNNWT: We haven’t really, we did some gigs back when the CD came out but we just haven’t focussed on live shows since. We have had a few line-up changes over the last year that have slowed things down but it was a stage we needed to go through. It went from a solo project to a more solid collective. In the beginning I had only really seen the band as a studio project, since I was moving around a lot between UK, Sweden and Spain, but I feel that gigging is really on the menu now. It’s exciting to have that nut to crack especially because we are a ‘rock band’. It will be a rush. For them as well as us.
MG: What inspired the band name?
WDNNWT: Politics. At the time I was writing the songs without any plan. there was a lot of talk about terrorism, it just seemed to be getting out of hand and all over the place. What was really in my mind was that the governments were quite rightly being accused of terrorism themselves especially with Michael Moore’s allegations that the US had orchestrated 9/11. My songs were more about me asserting my emotions though, I had a lot of people around me telling me that I should really sort my life out, and on the other hand I had people telling me I was a troublemaker. So I felt that I was surrounded by people holding me to ransom and yet they were calling me basically ‘a terrorist’. It was all relevant to politics I suppose, so the name just evolved out of joking it off. At the end of the day though, the music is about relationships not the TV. I had one young woman and her daughter come up to me and say, ‘we were scared that you were some kind of right wing christian group and then we heard you sing’ …Oh how we laughed…
MG: How did you find each other?
WDNNWT: Down the pub.
MG: What do you want for the band in an ideal world where you could have it all?
WDNNWT: I have modest tastes you know, I would just like to release records and do gigs- I have no ambitions to be U2. I am quite happy to stay unsigned as well, of course not making money from the music means you have to survive another way to support your ‘hobby’ and that just makes it a nightmare to be an active musician. Which is why most bands are on the dole.
MG: How do you feel about the music industry now compared with 10 years ago?
WDNNWT: That’s a big question. I am really disappointed at the way the big labels have still managed to keep control. There was a dream once that CD.s and the internet would bring about some golden age of underground music, but the opposite has happened I think. Of course there are still attempts to get around their monopoly on distribution and media, stuff like these music download programs, but they are always short-lived and get sued, until the next one comes along. Things aren’t that much different from bands messing about with cassettes in the old days. I think venues are also becoming a lot thinner on the ground. In Sweden it is much more noticeable, you can’t get away with some seedy bar in the back end of an alley anymore. Don’t know why that is really. Progress? EU? People stay at home more?
MG: Of course a foreword on the band would be excellent too…
WDNNWT: I think the most relevant thing with the music is that I grew up in Salford in the early 90s, I think you can hear that, and it was a pretty conscious thing too. I got tired of being told that if you like Oasis you need to do Indie, if you like New Order you have to do synth music. When you are in a band that just does say, The Smiths, the band, the fans, the gigs- the whole mentality is so narrow-minded and you can never come up with anything new. When I started the Terrorists it was just natural that I used all the tools at hand. I like to think the music is part of an open-minded generation. Of course Terrorists are part of an established style, but for me there is no excuse for being repetitive or predictable. Besides which I like to provoke people, I think we all need it, we all deserve it.
Listen here: We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists – The Boy With The Wrong Eyes
