Interviews
As regular listeners to Trash Radio will know, we like to interview the various guest DJs and bands that play at Trash. As regular listeners may also know, we have tendency to forget batteries, lose mini discs and the ability to operate machinery. For this reason we present this page of interviews (each limited to twelve wonderful questions) conducted by our very own Fred with past and future guests. Enjoy.
1. hello brakes, how are you?
Fine, thank you!
2. you just played a, frankly, superb set for us, had you ever been to trash before?
Cheers! Yeah, i came about four years ago to see what i belive was the yeah yeah yeah's first UK show, and damn fine it was, too.
3. you all play or have played with various other bands (electric soft parade, british sea power, tenderfoot) - how did you all coalesce into brakes?
Me and my brother, Alex had got to know Eamon through his old band, Brighter Lunch, and after they split he started playing acoustic 'round Brighton. Maybe the third time we saw him play, we approached him afterwards and suggested we try fleshing the songs out a bit with a full band. He was into the idea, so we got Marc who also plays with the Tenderfoot in on bass, and the rest, as they say....is history.
4. being members of other established bands, did it take long to gel as a unit and get your own sound, distinct from your other projects?
Yeah, it was certainly something that we didn't want to be in anyway comparable to our other musical interests, which is why i think it works.
5. there is a wealth of writing talent in the band, who does what in a songwriting sense?
Eamon comes up with vocal melody, lyrics and a basic arrangement on acoustic guitar, then the rest of the band jam that 'til it all starts to sound like Brakes!
6. your new album 'the beatific visions' (out nov 6th) was recorded in nashville, how did the history and atmosphere of the city affect the record you made?
Not particularly. We obviously had a great time, met some amazing folk and generally had a bit of a party, but to have let the place dictate too much may have ruined the record. i think it's a pretty good balance.
7. what would you say are the main differences between your first album and 'the beatific visions'?
The new one's more refined, sounds better, we sound tighter, the sleeve's better, it was all round a more relaxed experience, better lyrics, more of a concept.....shall i go on??!!
8. although there's a grand streak of fun running through your records, some of your songs deal with political issues, or have a certain social
consciousness. do you find it surprising that in a time when these things are on many peoples minds and lips, very few bands actually stick their necks out and write openly about such things, preferring to attach themselves to various causes in interviews etc whilst not actually broaching the issues in their music?
Yeah, this keeps on coming up, but i think if you dig deeper, there are in fact plenty of bands addressing these issues and rightly so. You also have to remember that just as bands are afraid of bringing up these topics, there are a bunch of papers that would shy away from covering a band who dealt with them.
9. both your albums are quite short (both clocking in at around half an hour), did you make a conscious decision to go for that kind of economy, or did it turn out that way naturally?
Both records are simply all of the songs we have at that moment in time.
10. which other bands around at the moment are you into?
I'm a massive Mission Of Burma fan, Robert Wyatt aswell, Marc likes his Yo La Tengo, Alex likes a lot of hip-hop stuff, mostly people like Mr. Lif, Edan and Jay-Z and Eamon's into a bit of Lee Hazlewood at the moment.
11. 'all night disco party' is a big hit on our dancefloor, what sordid tales of 24hr debauchery are you prepared to admit to?
The usual.
12. and finally, brakes, what would you consider to be the crowning glory of modern civilization?
The electric guitar, of course!
1. hello archie bronson outfit, how are you?
dandy doo
2. you recently played an incredible set for us, did you have fun?
yes we did, it was hot & sweaty the way we like it to be..
3. had any of you ever been to trash before?
a couple of times. we came down to see our pals the Duke Spirit play. Also Sam & I (Arp) saw the Blood Arm play.
4. who exactly is / was archie bronson?
Archie Bronson is a cowboy character from a story within a 1940's (or thereabouts) Buffalo Bill Annual. He has an outfit of herders/badass muthafuckers.
5. your current album 'derdang derdang' is finding favour amongst people with ears - how did the experience of making it compare to the making of your first album 'fur' ?
Derdang Derdang was written in a much more intensive way than FUR. We literally lived & breathed Derdang. We were still living together last year and Dor's bedroom became our writing/practicing room for months. We'd write & make recorded notes of jams all day, get drunk and discuss/argue about what was good & bad all night and wake up and get on and play again. We had wall charts of songs, ones that were in favour that week, ones that needed working on, one's that were worth coming back to but weren't our favourites etc.. Although we firmly believe in the instant when it comes to recording i.e. a good raw live take is what we strive for, as opposed to a layered neat recording, paradoxically we were quite anal about writing.
The actual recording stage was quite different too as I think we'd grown in confidence by the time we came to be recording Derdang. Maybe because of the slightly claustraphic writing process we created for ourselves, the release of travelling to Nashville in the summertime, making lots of new pals and having fun amongst the (intensive) recording, made for an overall more relaxed time & experience than with FUR - which we recorded in the middle of nowhere in the French coountryside, and in itself was quite claustaphobic. so I guess we switched the claustraphobia around, FUR written more freely and recorded claustraphobiaclly; Derdang Derdang written claustraphobically, recorded more freely....
6. who are your main influences?
Harry Crews
7. and which bands around at the moment are you into?
Little Wings, Part Chimp, Clinic, Comanechi,
8. would you say you prefer live shows to the recording process or vice versa?
They are totally different. I do not prefer either, I really love both. In some ways I think we're more natural in the live setting, as we can conjure a particular Bronson energy, i.e. play loudly and wildly, which when you try to record can just sound shit if you're not careful... it takes a certain skill (which we're still learning) to both reign in the wild a little, yet keep a live recording sounding alive too..
9. you all sport excellent beards of a quality usually unseen outside of bear wrestling circles, what grooming tips can you give to the aspiring hairy gentleman?
drink milkshakes and dispose of your shaving equipment.
10. if push came to shove, what would be the one record you'd save from a burning virgin megastore?
I/we are all incredibly indecisive so I'd probably burn as I worked it out.. Also I don't really have massive favourite albums, I tend to shift my listening habits quite regularly. Recently I've been listening to various 'world' albums so I'd probably be in that section, in which case I'd grab a Sooliman Rogie disc.
11. you have a heavy, heavy sound - approximately how much do you reckon it weighs?
It is impossible to weigh.
12. and finally, archie bronson outfit, look at these nice chaps. they are all called archie, and one of them is a ship. which is your favourite?
Archibald James Campbel
Born in Fitzroy, Victoria, on 18 February 1853, died at Box Hill, Victoria, on 11 September 1929.
The ornithologist Archibald James Campbell was the eldest son of Archibald Campbell and Catherine n饠Pinkerton. He was educated at a private school in Melbourne and entered the Victorian Civil Service in 1869. He retired from the Federal Customs Department in 1914.
the steel ship. to sail the good name Archie
1. hello Good Shoes, how are you?
very well
2. you recently played a storming show for us, did you enjoy yourselves?
yeah a lot, people seemed really into it and we got escorted round the back and down some stairs onto the stage, felt very rock and roll!
3. how did you first hear of trash?
no idea, probably through friends, a band i like called phoenix played there so maybe it was from wanting to see them, or from friends at art school!
4. and how did you first hear of each other? what brought good shoes together?
we've been friends for a long time, tom and i are brohters and steve was in my class at school, and joel was a friend from school
5. 'we are not the same' has been a big hit with us for a while now, what would you say are the biggest differences between each good shoe in the band?
umm i'd say im more focussed, and drink less, steve's probably the moodiest, but apart from that were all the same i'd say
6. during the gig, there was a vociferous contingent of fans from your stomping ground, morden, (which for those who don't know is a sunny spot in south london) who sent up many a cheer. What is the best thing about morden?
ahh, those guys are tom and my friends, think they'd just finihsed uni so was a sort of first night out back in london for them! umm morden has some nice parks, it very surburban, but i dont know if thats good or bad, raynes park has a cool beatles themed pub, morden isnt the most interessting of places, im stuck on what to say! dont go to the beverly pub, its shit
7. which other bands around at the moment are you into?
young knives, pippetts, bridge gang, mystery jets, les incompetents, xerox teens, be your own pet, jamie t, regina specktor,
8. What were the first records you all bought with your own real money?
umm for me it was some shit record that had the line, boom, boom boom, let me hear you say wayo, wayo! but then after that, blur, i guess thats allright. dont know about thhe others, probably ueen for steve and joel
9. you have a song called 'all in my head'. what is the strangest thought to have occurred to you in the past 24 hours?
umm, cant remember any thoughts but i've done some cool stuff! i got ear plugs made today so having a putty like mould injected into my ear,
10. what are your plans for future releases, is there an album on the way, or owt like that?
album out in febuary i'd say, with all in my head then another two singles or one signle before, just deciding on a producer at the moment,
11. ok, well i held off for nearly the whole interview, but here's the rub - do any of you own any really good shoes? like we're talking anything from pink brothel creepers to ridiculous 12 grand milano blahniks?
i know nohting about shoes, this has been the bane of our band! but i have some good brouges and nike high tops but there all falling apart! need to get some more!
12. and finally, good shoes, would you rather be james bond or indiana jones?
indiana jones as we share the same surname
1. hello, klaxons, how are you?
Hello Trash. We're formidable thank you.
2. have any of you ever been to trash before?
Do you mean you haven't witnessed our perfected tissue waving down the front ?
3. 'gravitys rainbow' has us under it's spell, but what the hell is it about?
Why thanks we thought no one would ever ask. . . It's about the trajectory of ejaculation/our future loves. Come with us.. . .
4. you hail from the same neck of the woods as bloc party, ladyfuzz et al, which bands of the moment are you into?
Piece out to Crystal castles / Clipped beaks / Yeberobo / Lost Penguin
5. is that klaxons jnr. in your arms in the video to 'gravitys rainbow'? have you been breeding your replacements already?
The babies belonged to Russian Mothers who set eyes on us for half an hour and dissapeared into the night so we trust they're not ours.
6. a shared love of what bands brought you together?
Play any combination of Baby D and Joseph K and we'll go wild.
7. 'atlantis to interzone' will be your next release, which location do you favour for the lost city - antarctica or the mid atlantic?
We were thinking of somewhere in the misdst of buried Tangian deserts.
8. what's the longest period of time you've stayed awake for and are you sure you were awake?
The gravity's shoot to 72 hours. We were more like the living dead than awake.
9. what are you reading at the moment and is it any good?
Ballards - Myths of the near future - is having a stronger influence over our entire existance than we bargained for. That's not to say it's a "good" thing.
10. which would you rather be abducted and probed by: a u.fo, l.f.o or the s.fo, that is to say - aliens, a classic rave act or the police?
This is going to make you freak but there is a police enquiry into our previous drummers abduction.
11. what's your favourite piece of rave paraphenalia aside from the klaxon?
Right now we'd give our left horns for four pairs of spliffy jeans , a Fantazia bomber jacket and a take me to your dealer bedroom poster.
12. and finally, klaxons, if you are going to take it back to the old skool do you reckon you should keep the receipt?
Bin them : There'll be no misled convoys.
1. hello, whirlwind heat, how are you?
We are doing really well. We are busy at the moment, making music videos, and recording b-sides, and getting ready to tour a lot.
2. you played a show for us a couple of years back, and are returning for another imminently, how has your music changed in the interim?
Our vision is more focused on what we want to accomplish. The last time we were over was really crazy for us. The first time we had done something like that. Now we are in training and are preparing ourselves for all the crazy as trash people! In a awesome way of course.
3. which bands are you currently impressed by?
Down at SXSW ( a music festival in Texas) we saw Be your own Pet and we were really excited by them. They seemed to have a blast on stage and did it with a lot of passion and energy. You can tell they are doing it for the right reasons.
4. 'reagan' is one of Jonjo's sets staples at the moment, is it about your forgetful former president?
Most Excellent! Unfortuently it isn't about the former president. We were going to name all the songs after former presidents but voted against it. Reagan is the simple heartbreak broke up torn song.
5. what sparked the idea for your previous album, which had ten songs in ten minutes?
Steve Aoki, CEO of Dim Mak Records, asked us to do a 10 minute noise jam. We decided we would do 10 one minute songs. What had happened was we showed up at Brendan Bensons studio with no songs written. 5 hours later we had all 10 songs written and recorded.
6. what's your favourite type of wood then?
Oak is really nice. But so is Cherry. Maple is alright, and pine is so so.
7. if you could join any band past or present who would it be?
None. we have all known each other since we were 10 years old. I couldn't see being in another band musically or releationship.
8. outside of music who are your influences?
Family, friends, citizens. Everything. Photographers- Terry Richardson, movies, actors- Matthew Gray Gubler, Directors, sneakers, fashion, fashion models, basketball, electronics, everything. we want to progress to the future.
9. your former producer, a certain jack white, has described you as 'the closest thing we'll get to devo this generation', do you feel like you're part of any sort of musical lineage?
We would say a mix between Grunge and Hip Hop. Grunge Hop.
10. given the choice would you rather be able to fly or breathe underwater?
Fly. I have dreams of flying all the time. I'd be colstrofobic underwater.
11. do you have any interesting tales of the road?
A hippie lesbian house party in Portland, Oregan. A lot of body hair, pure human odor, and a man shitting his bands, wiping it with his hand, smelling it, and then laughing and keeps on dancing.
12. and finally, whirwind heat, guilty or not guilty?
Guilty for people getting horny. Not guilty for being boring.
1. hello, lee, how are you? i am.
2. we've seen you at trash a few times before, and you just came down on halloween to kick off the night with a suitably scary recital of your 'pan-kinetic-o' poem, did you have fun? it was certainly interesting seeing the expressions on peoples faces! i'm not sure if they were quite expecting it! shit loads more where that came from..
3. i understand that this was your last performance as moonus, and you have been artistcally reincarnated as Lee Aison, a bit like dr who. What sparked this transformation, and why halloween? like a snake shedding a skin - you just have to shit it sometimes. halloween is symbolically interesting, it's a time of death and renewal. bang on midnight at trash it was interesting to see a full cycle had turned since i first started going to gigs, the vibe now is very much the vibe of 19 years ago.
4. as well as being a poet, you're a musician with a long history of quality underground releases under many guises, most recently having had a track from your band groop on the sonic mook hot shit
compilation, and played on the last two lone swordsmen record - what are you up to at the moment, musically? i've been writing and recording an album's worth of new material. i'm on the lookout for a bassist and drummer, going to do some new releases and get a band together. it could go anywhere.
5. i hear you recently played with the legendary sky saxon, formerly of 60's garage pioneers the seeds, what was that like? that was a great honour to play alongside someone who is so removed from
normal everyday, mundane reality that he actually has to be some kind of demi god. the musicians were quite good too.
6. what inspires you to write? the force of inspiration and of course genius!
7. you're also involved in a few other creative fields so who are your main non-musical inspirations? jodorowski - film director, robert anton wilson - author, renaissance shit, and stuff..
8. during your time with groop, you toured with the fall, what stories of chaos and confusion can you tell us there? it must have been an eye opener.... it certainly was one of the guys who was in the crew was a most seasoned rock n roller and even by his standards he thought it was the most hardcore thing he'd ever seen and done! mark e smith was a real education, i'll never forget speaking with his sister at the t shirt stand who belted on about 'no matter what people say about mark he carries on despite everything' - to me that was a piece of real hardcore working class sentiment still alive.
9. you have an impressive collection of some of the oddest records in existence, take us through some of the weirdest and most wonderful, what would be your recommendations in the strange stakes? eventually, strange becomes normal, in terms of the fact that some of the strange things i've got have become really normal over time. but if you're talking really strange - any records on sonar cairo, erkin koray's electric turk, h p lovecraft, bobby pickett and the crypt kickers' 'monster mash' lp, the churchills ('israeli band' from 1968 is a great lp) and a really good collection of music for fucked up strange stuff is the cramps 'purple knif show', which is a radio show of all lux interiors favourite records.
10. which bands do you rate at the moment, who's doing it for you? of recent times the most impressive for me have been campag velocet, lcd soundsystem who are a great live band, and the closest thing i've heard that gives an approximation of a post punk vibe is the kaiser chief's 'i predict a riot', but on the whole not much grabs me.
11. and who was the first group or artist that you fell head over heels for? the first proper band that i got into had to have been bauhaus. for many years people have regarded them as just a goth band but if you listen to all their 3 albums they were more like a psychedilc reggae prog rock band with thrashy punk tendencies.
12. and finally, lee, have you ever found yourself in dire need of a cauliflower? having lived the life of a true artist the answer need not be spoken...
1. hello numbers, how are you? dave: We're great, excited about life but especially excited about coming over to the UK for the THIRD TIME! We are so lucky to get to travel so much. It's dreamy as hell. eric: excited to go back to the UK. also cold and broke.
2. did you enjoy yourselves the last time you played trash? dave: Duh! Yeah, that show was ridiculous! They told us that was the first Trash where people were crowd-surfing. If true, that's quite an honor! People were going pretty ballistic... Totally fun. It was also extra crazy for us as we had four performances that day in London-- we did a morning XFM session (very strange-- we were sponsored by Miller Beer! What the fuck??), then we did a Peel session (a huge honor, I was super nervous), then we went to sound check for our Trash show, then we ate and went and did an early show at Buffalo Bar on borrowed gear, then immediately to Trash where we were rushed through the crowd by big scary bouncers and triumphantly took to the stage! We were totally pretending to be rock stars that day, it was great.
3. you came clean and admitted that 'we're animals' in september 2005. what kind of animals are you exactly? dave: I think Indra probably has a more developed idea of this, but a lot of the themes on the new record are about nature and maybe trying not to distance ourselves from nature as much as most people allow themselves to be-- admitting we're animals, as you put it. Cosmic shit, you know. I think Indra wants to be a wolf. She had some kind of vision-dream about running with wolves. For myself, I think a human is a pretty good animal to be, mostly because we have hands. But cats look better than humans, so maybe I'd be a mountain lion or something. eric: i like the survival of the fittest aspect.
4. you've released split singles with former trash live guests adult and errase errata, who are the bands that you're into at the moment? dave: Here's a long list in no particular order: Growing, FuckWolf, T.I.T.S., the Gossip, Shoplifting, Caro, Burmese, Flying Luttenbachers, XBXRX, Idea of a Joke, Boredoms, Black Sabbath, Sweet, Blue Cheer, Black Flag, Nilsson, Burning Star Core, SPK, Sunn((O)), Genders, White Magic, Deerhoof, Paradise Island(Weedwolf), Death Sentence: Panda, Triing Traang(Trin Tran), Sleep, Monitor Batz, OCS, Child Abuse, Oneida, Limited Express (Has Gone?), Ni Hao!, Velocity Ut, Iron Maiden, the Creation, the Who, Total Shutdown, Hawnay Troof, Whysp, Les Georges Leningrad, Mae Shi, No Doctors, Cat Bees, it goes on and on, but these are what I'm mostly listening to/seeing lately.
5. and you've been remixed by former trash guests kid 606, gold chains and zeigenbock kopf for your 'numbers death' remix album, which has been out a while - would you or have you remixed anyone as numbers? dave: We have been asked by a couple of friends, but we're kinda handicapped by our equipment. None of us are exactly laptop music geniuses, we typically record on an old fashioned eight-track tape machine. It's not impossible to do something with this, but it does make it so time consuming a prospect that in the past we've just said no. After we all become independently wealthy and we have nothing but time to tweak tracks and smoke mad weed all day we'll be glad to remix just about anyone.
6. what brought numbers together in the first place? dave: Boredom, nothing else. We moved to San Francisco several years ago when Eric and I were still in another band called Xerobot, a sort of weird super-spazzy hardcore band. Indra moved out too, and she had been in another punk band called Tractorman (we moved from Wisconsin, if that means anything to you...). Anyhow, the previous bands broke up, the three of us were super bored with the SF music scene at the time, and we just started playing together for fun, with no real idea of it ever getting outside our practice space. I, in particular, was against us ever playing shows, as I thought nobody in boring San Francisco would be into our weird band. Five or six years later, here we are. That's how it works, I guess!
7. and now (in probably not a very original move) i would like to ask you, numbers, about numbers. first, 69, the naughty number. do you feel it deserves it's reputation as a dirty digit? dave: I don't see what's so dirty about it. You must be repressed. We're animals!
8. 2000 was a number that got a lot of people going a bit nuts a few years ago. did any of you experience problems with technology at the turn of the millenium, or see scarlet women with swords riding dragons through the sky as the world crumbled about you and jesus shouted 'i told you so' from on top of a hill?? dave: Wow, that would have been cool! Nah, no problems, but I did really enjoy the massive spectacle of anxiety played out on TV as all the experts predicted doom. What a great time to be alive!
9. 3 is commonly held to be the 'magic' number. there are three of you in the group, but what advantages, if any, has this given you over other, differently configured bands?? dave: Well, I don't want to sound arrogant, but because we are three we can never be destroyed. Simple as that.
10. 5318008 is the classic 'funny' number - tap it into a calculator, turn it upside down and - oops! you've spelled boobies! if you were turned upside down what would you spell? dave: Pity boobies is already taken, as that would be my fav. How about poopies?
11. Pi is a great number, it goes on and on and on and no-one knows when it will stop. some people devote their entire lives to trying to find out when it stops - like prog rock for mathematicians, it has been baking noodles ever since mankind had noodles to bake. if you were an irrational fraction how would this influence your sound? dave: I'm sorry to break this to you, but I hate math. Just reading that question is giving me the start of a headache. In third grade my teacher made me sit at the "concentration desk" in math class. That meant I sucked at math. It's been hard to get over. It's probably why I'm in a band instead of a corporate lawyer. Ironic that my band is called Numbers then, hey? Thanks a lot, Mrs. Hayden! (bitch...) eric: i think a lot about the underlying structures of music, especially the standard verse-chorus form we use. i was reading the other day how this form became popular in the mid 1800s. its weird that its still so popular. so numbers music structures are definitely based on rational whole numbers but i guess if we were influenced by an irrational fraction we'd definitely be more prog-style. but for me, if a musical piece keeps changing and never repeats it gets boring, i don't know why. seems like repetition by definition should be boring but in music its not for some reason... why is that? but if a fraction keeps changing and never repeats it would be interesting to follow these changes.
12. and finally, numbers, look at this:
it's maths, right, but what the hell does it mean, and why are there so many more letters than numbers in it??* dave: Um, yeah.... I just see a blank space there, so I think I got off lucky on this one. I guess the only commect on this I have is that in the States we don't say "maths", we just say "math". Maybe the readers will be interested in that little speck of difference between US english and proper english. I know all kinds of americans think it's cool to use words like "lift", "lorry", "tele", and "twat" instead of the words they learned as kids for these things. Are Brits into using US phrases? God, I hope not... eric: i can't see anything either.
*we should state that the image didnt forward along with the questions, hence them not being able to solve this maths challange, although neither could i if asked - as dave was forced to sit at the 'concentration desk', so was i dumped in the 'noddy set' for maths at school. equations reprinted for comedy purposes only; trash accepts no liability for confusion caused by viewing equations; not suitable for children under 5.
Pete Voss (Ex-Campag Velocet / The Count)
1. hello pete, how are you? i'm fine thanks
2. you played trash with campag velocet in 2004, and have dj'ed for us at both the annexe and the end. how did you first hear of the club? i heard of the club through erol, who came down to the astoria when campag played the nme brats tour in 1999. i met him there and he asked me to dj at the annexe, thats how i found about trash.
3. for many of us 'it's beyond our control' was one of the best albums of the last couple of years, and tunes like 'bon chic bon genre' and 'instinct tension' have played havoc with our ears and feet at the club. what's your favourite campag track? 'pike in my life' - it's the most surreal track on 'bon chic bon genre', it's got a space of it's own, i've never heard another track that puts you in that particular space.
4. sadly, campag are no more, but i know you've been working on something else musical. care to give us the lowdown on your current project? i'm working on a new band called the count. it's a two piece, me and a guy called speve burgan. we've got quite a few songs together and are hoping to play live in the not too distant future, there'll be info up on our myspace soon. (myspace.com/thecountmusic)
5. what groups inspired you to start making music? the new york dolls, royal trux and guided by voices. at the moment, for the count, it would be ween and loads of old gear...
6. more on it or moronic - which were campag? i think we were well on it. at the time there were loads of bands around that were just saps, really whimsical. clinic were a good band around at the same time as us, i like them, but that's all i can think of. most bands at the time didn't mean it - we meant it and that was the difference.
7. a lot of bands come through and get noticed very quickly nowadays. having been the frontman of a band who got a lot of attention early on, what would be your advice to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation? just keep writing, make any manouveurs you think are fit, and hang on to your ego - remember who you are, try to keep hold of it.
8. you seem to have a clear set of lyrical themes that run throughout the work you did with campag - insanity, memories, emotion, sex and er, cycling. there's a surreal edge to it all, how much of your writing is stream of consciousness and how much is planned? basically all the lyrics are stream of consciousness from begining to end, or else short bits of stream of consciousness writing pooled together, that may come one line at a time. the themes might be very different and end up spread over several different songs.
9. your music has always been an eclectic brew. do you find you gravitate towards certain genres or just go where the music takes you? the influences are so broad, i don't close myself to any influence - except i won't refer to anyone contemporary, i wouldn't even listen to anyone who's supposed to be in the same area as us because you don't want anything in common with the bands around you, you want to stand apart. i never listened to johnny cash til he was dead. if there's a band that sound like us but they're from a long time ago, not really doing anything now, that's ok.
10. what is the first record you can remember? the first record i can remember would be the sabre dance, and flight of the bumble bee - classical stuff my mum would play. i used to have it round the living room to them when i was a kid, they're very lively.
11. do you have any good rock'n'roll anecdotes? nothing i'd want to share, no.....
12. and finally, pete, if a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush what does this say about the investment potential of avian finance? er, what? can you just continually repeat that to me, please?
1. hello Akiko, how are you? Really well thank you. it's getting cold but i hate wearing sox.
2. have you ever been to trash before? No, we haven't, we're not cool enough!
3. you've played shows with former trash guests and renowned maniacs Les Georges Leningrad and Coachwhips, what's the craziest gig you've ever played? I love les georges leningrad and coachwhips! we were so honored playing with them. Anyway,... the craziest gig... there are actually quite few.... we once played four gigs in 24 hours and it descended into total chaos. Another one was at a "Worn Out Wash Monkey" Art show in Stoke Newington, we were repeatedly charged a possessed baby, Straight after playing the lights shut down and somebody in a massive pigeon suit mercilessly brutalised us.
4. you recorded your most recent single with Lenny Franchi, who's previously made records with Bjork, Tricky, Mogwai and MBV amongst others, what was it like working with him? He was amazing, he quickly understood how we wanted the record to sound like.... very professional and very nice person too.
5. which bands around at the moment are you into? Shimmy rivers and And canal, PRE, VMW, Trencher, Wolf Eyes, Holy Molar, Lightning Bolt, The Gossip, Electric Wizard, Die Munch Machines .... etc etc..
6. and which bands inspired you to form comanechi? White Stripes, No! I'm only joking!
7. so 'naked' is about a man who went to meetings in the buff, right? did you know this guy? No. but he really existed, he's a man who co-ordinated the resistance in Burma insisted that he hold the meeting stark naked whilst washing himself with a toothbrush.
8. and how 'rude' is the rudest thing comanechi have got up to recently? I went to see Melt Banana last weekend i was in a mosh pit and this guy behind me started to rub his crotch and wank on me!!!!! that was really rude of him!
9. have you any plans to release anything new soon? Yes, "Live at Purr" CD/DVDs album comes out on the 5th December. we have 2 tracks "upside down' &" lucky cane" and live footage of "rude" amongst other bands who played at Purr club in Bath. It's available to buy online through the Purr website http://www.purr.org.uk
10. out of interest, what are your favourite shoes and how often do you wear them? There are many. my red cowboy boots, my florescent orange converse, my florescent pink and orange stripy vans, white pointy brogue type shoes, and i just bought this hot pink boots in brick lane!
11. you will be our first guests of 2006, what resolutions do you intend to make for the new year ahead? Yes, we'd love to release some more new tunes, Doing good gigs with good bands more. More people to listen and enjoy what we do. we'd like to get involved in art and fashion too!
12. and finally, Akiko,, what would you do if someone accused you of being mellow? I'll just agree with him/her....
1. Hello Hot Chip how are you? HOT CHIP IS EAGER TO UNDERSTAND> HOT CHIP IS LEARNING.
2. you will be playing a live show for us at our christmas party, have you ever been to Trash before? NO. ONE OF OUR FRIENDS WAS REFUSED ADMISSION IN THE PAST.
3. 'Over and Over' is a big hit at the club right now - the monkey has his minature cymbal to bang, but what is your favourite repetitive activity? HITTING GANG OF FOUR FANS IN THE HEAD WITH SPANNERS OR WRENCHES
4. you've recently signed to EMI, having previously recorded for kitsune and moshi moshi, what have been the benefits and pitfalls of swapping indies for majors? BENEFIT: NO DAY JOB. PITFALL: LOSS OF CREATIVE CONTROL
5. you have supported, amongst others, our friend and previous trash guest Mylo, can you tell us any tales of wild r'n'r abandon from your time on the road with this latter day bachanalian monster?
NO. HOT CHIP LEFT TO GO TO SLEEP IMMEDIATELY AFTER EACH PERFORMANCE.
6. the second track on your new release 'Barbarian EP' bears the incredible title 'My Shit's On Fire', what have you been eating and will you be reporting the restauranteur to the relevant authorities? EATING MOSTLY SUSHI. CHEF UNKNOWN.
7. a shared love for which records brought you together? WE DO NOT AGREE ON ANY RECORDS EXCEPT KRAFTWERK, BRIAN ENO, CAN, ROBERT WYATT, JUSTUS KOHNCKE. WE OFTEN FIGHT UNTIL BLOOD EMERGES.
8. who are you listening to at the moment, what bands are doing it for you? AUDION, DELIA AND GAVIN, SEBASTIEN TELLIER, ABSOLUTELY NO BRITISH BANDS EXCEPT GROVESNOR AND UM
9. ok, look, apart from your Barbarian EP i haven't really heard anything else from you, so i'm just going to ask you questions about chips for the rest of this. i hope you're cool with that. First up, what kind of chip, if any, do you have on your shoulder? HOT CHIP IS NOT 'COOL WITH THAT'. THIS IS OUR 'CHIP ON THE SHOULDER'.
10. sometimes when i go to the chippy they don't give me no hot chip, man, i get cold chip, and that's no good - i go there a lot and i don't want palming off with the crusty bits from the bottom of the tray when there are perfectly good fresh chips in a tray next to it. do you have any advice as to how i should deal with these tepid french fry merchants? EAT BETTER FOOD, DO NOT DEMEAN YOURSELF, YOU ARE CAPABLE OF MORE.
11. silicone chip vs potato chip - in the long run which will benefit society more? THIS IS AN INFANTILE QUESTION- THE SILICONE CHIP ENABLED THIS INTERVIEW,
THIS INTERNET COULD NOT RUN THROUGH POTATOES.
12. And finally, Hot Chip, for your information, CHIP is the acronym for laws dealing with suppliers of hazardous chemicals. CHIP requires
the supplier of a dangerous chemical to:
* identify the hazards (dangers) of the chemical. This is known as classification;
* give information about the hazards to their customers. Suppliers usually provide this information on the package itself (eg a label) and, if supplied for use at work, in a safety data sheet (SDS);
* package the chemical safely. pretty sensible i reckon. can you take this information and use it to craft an amusing question for yourselves to end this interview? HOT CHIP: IF YOU WERE A DANGEROUS CHEMICAL IN A POTATO-BASED PRODUCT (say Mc Chinese Spare Rib flavour) HOW WOULD YOU LABEL YOURSELVES TO AVOID CONSUMPTION BY TRASH CUSTOMERS WHOSE FLOPPY FRINGES GENERALLY OBSCURE
NUTRITIONAL ADVICE?
1. Hello Juan Maclean, how are you? I am in my glory. Completely wrecked but having the time of my life, a sort of paradoxical existence of on the one hand I have flushed my personal life down the toilet, on the other, well, we play shows every night for crazed kids dancing on tables and the like. So I’m doing great.
2. You just played a fantastic last-minute surprise gig for us, and the consensus is that it was one of the best trash has seen. did you enjoy playing for us as much as we enjoyed listening to you? Look, I began touring in a band, Six Finger Satellite, in 1990, and I toured in that band relentlessly, like 9 months out of the year. So this is not new to me. S o when I say that playing at Trash the other night was as good as it gets for me, it means something. I had a fucking amazing time. Playing on a makeshift stage on which we can barely fit to a room packed with people off their heads dancing is pretty much the point of the entire band. To me, there is nothing more fun or gratifying than that. We are not some douche bags blessing you with our presence. We are there to dance, to have a good time, to play some fucking head ripping music. I don’t give a flying fuck about much else in the music industry. Things like Trash, it’s not a stopping off point on the way to the top. It IS the point.
3. You're friends with the lovely James and Tim from DFA, who you have worked closely with for a long time. What first brought you all together? I’ve known James since the late 80’s, although we are a little hazy lately about the exact circumstances. We both owned recording studios over the years – James in New York, me in Providence, Rhode Island, and at one point, maybe 1994 or so, James became the live sound engineer for Six Finger Satellite. Which meant that me and James were riding around in a van together listening to and talking about music for years. I quit Six Finger Satellite in 1997, on the eve of the release of our last record, and I bowed out of music completely. I wanted to have nothing to do with indie rock whatsoever, it was over and done with, had ceased to be interesting for years. So I moved out to the country, got my degree in English, and started teaching English in a juvenile detention facility, youthful offenders and all that. Tim had moved to NY, and I was hanging out with James and Tim, but purely in a friendship capacity. Eventually, with a lot of help from Tim training me in the ways of programming and sampling and all that business, I started making tracks again, putting together a home studio, and now here we are. By the way, Tim actually played Theremin in The Juan MacLean for a while, he took it to a real psychedelic level. He is the great unheralded mastermind behind DFA in many ways, both in his music production and the way he deals with people, with artists on the label and whatnot. It’s a pretty strange collection of people, the DFA family, there are wizards and witches, dudes with their heads in the pot clouds, poncey types with trainer collections, all sorts of strange characters, and I think uniformly the consensus is that Tim is the dude that holds a lot of it together in an understated sort of way.
4. You're a man with 'serious robot credentials' - where does your fascination with mechanical men stem from? Since the Six Finger Satellite early days I’ve had this obsession with mechanical people, outer space, the phuture, all that business. Maybe it was from taking too many drugs and reading a lot of Philip K. Dick. P.K. Dick is most definitely one of my favourite authors, and has probably influenced me more so than any musical artist. Philosophically, the whole notion of implanted consciousness, of memories inserted into man made robots or humanoids that don’t know they aren’t human, that stuff has always been an obsession of mine. The philosophical and ethical questions of, for example, a scenario in which you are married, but you ‘own’ an android chick that looks and by all appearances acts like a real person. Is it cheating on the wife to have sex with ‘it?’ When I was a kid I used to have real paranoid thoughts, like what if I was just born today and am part of some experiment and my parents are in on it, and I’ve been given a memory and history that I believe is mine but really it was all fashioned before breakfast this morning. I still think like that much of the time, unfortunately. I think that’s a big appeal of music, it takes me out my head, much like drugs used to.
5. your album 'Less Than Human' came out on the 4th of July, which is Independence Day, which starred Will Smith, who went on to tackle pesky out of control robots in I Robot, which is also the title of one of your songs - any desire to have the Fresh Prince come and wax lyrical on a Juan Maclean record, Big Willy style? I was fucking horrified when that music came out. My track I, Robot I had done years ago, it was literally one of the first tracks I ever did. I had deleted it from my hard drive by mistake, that and the song on the other side of that 10,” I forget what it’s called, and only had rough mixes on real crap early-days-of-mp3-encoding mp3’s. So we just decided to release them on a 10,” but then that movie was scheduled to come out, and Will Smith is an ass, and I felt like a douche bag cuz it seemed like I was being oppurtunistic or something. I really don’t know anything about the dude, though. He seems good looking enough. Does he sound like The Juan MacLean at all?
6. From your diverse pallet of influences, who are the bands you go back to again and again for inspiration, what's always fresh to your ears?What’s always fresh to my ears is the sound of girls whispering in my ear after we play, “juan, I haven’t danced that much in ages!” or “juan, fancy a shag?” (coming from america, I wasn’t sure what that meant when she said that the other night, but it seems like some nasty business I didn’t want to have anything to do with, like black pudding or some head-wrecking drug, so I of course said ‘no.’) Musically, though, I feel like I am always dipping into the same pile as I have been since 1990 – DAF, Moroder, Kraftwerk, Cerrone, Frankie Knuckles, Liquid Liquid, Hawkwind, Nitzer Ebb, Human League, Birthday Party, Chrome, Daft Punk, Basic Channel, Larry Levan, Lou Reed, the Normal, Gil Scot Heron. The Sonics.
7. You make some of the most danceable records that come out of the DFA stable, which is no mean feat! Which tunes are guaranteed to get you cutting a rug? Sometimes it feels cheap (but then I think, IT’S MY FUCKING SONG YOU MONKEY, FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT), but when the opening synth pad type thing of Give Me Every Little Thing comes on, people scream or yell or whatever. That’s a real burner. Wait, do you mean a track that gets ME dancing or one of my tracks that gets the room moving? I already answered the latter. In terms of the former, surprisingly I like it a bit house-y, a tad gay, like lots of Chicago. Your Love by Frankie Knuckles, it brings tears to my eyes, or it would if I were capable of crying, but that’s the sort of niceness that I enjoy on the dancefloor, as opposed to a more slamming banger or rock-type stuff.
8. Of the many robots pop culture has to offer, which ones would you most like to spend an evening swapping code and shooting the binary breeze with? You know that chick in Blade Runner, I forget her name, the one that works at the robot corporation, with the bob haircut and the luscious lips? I would give my left cowbell for a go with her. I have been in love with her for years. And she should still look the same after all this time cuz she wouldn’t age properly, would she?
9. Which other bands around at the moment are you into? Errr, you are asking the wrong person, cuz I don’t know much about bands. The Black Dice, Gavin and Delia, of course. Hot Chimp, they are from London or thereabouts. Seeing them live totally changed my perspective on them, wicked live band. That group called something like Clap Your Hands Go Yeah, it’s the sort of thing by all accounts I was prepared not to like, but when I heard the record I was quite taken in, that’ s good stuff. Motorhead are always good. We toured with this one band that featured this dude that called himself ‘the fat guy in a t-shirt,’ they were really good.
10. You've remixed Air and Chromeo amongst others, how does reworking someone elses track compare to making your own? Immensely more difficult. My perspective on remixing has changed over the years. Now, I’ve come to a point where I’m thinking much more in terms of what would be good to play in the club, pure dj stuff. Like the Daft Punk and VHS or Beta mixes I just did. Me and Eric, Theremin player for The Juan MacLean, who is also an engineer at DFA, did that Daft Punk one, and I am particularly proud of that. In the end, though, I always feel a fair amount of responsibility to the original artist and the track, something that does not come into play with my own tracks, where I am free to be as distasteful as I’d like.
11. What are your plans for the near future, will you be touring the UK much? Touring the UK a lot, I hope, much in the way LCD did over the past few years. We are on the same plan in that respect, just behind them a bit. The live show seems to have overtaken the album in a lot of ways, which I am quite happy with, honestly. We will be recording a live album on a tour of the US in February, maybe a live DVD release as well, but that’s just conjecture at this point, the video part.
12. And finally, Juan Maclean, 01000100 01101111 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 01101101 01100001 01101011 01100101 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110011 01100101 01110100 01101111 01111001 01101111 01110101? Actually, my New York area code is 10011. But yeah, I see what you are saying. Tell her to give me a ring next time I’m in town and we’ll ‘get together.’
1. hello, phil cazal, how are you? Not bad, a bit knackered.
2. you played the club earlier this year, and dan cazal and yourself have long been friends of ours. what's your earliest trash memory? My earliest Trash memory is being 17, and being taken there by some older friends. After necking copious amounts of drinks around the corner of the club, I seemed to have lost the use of both my legs and eyes! I have a distinct memory of bouncing off the walls and watching my friend on crutches (he had a football injury) dancing on one leg. Soon after I was in the toilets being sick when my other friend brought me a constant volley of Scandinavian women for me to meet, soon after that I was back in the club. I remember back in Trash - Plastic People Oxford Street the sweat used to collect on the ceiling and drip on our clothes, those were the days!
3. 'poor innocent boys' is something of a modern trash classic, what's it like hearing your stuff really loud and watching people go bonkers to it? I couldn't believe it the first time I heard it through the big speakers, I feel very honoured, it still freaks me out now thinking about it.
4. i know you've been really busy touring this year, when can we expect a new cazals record? At the beginning of February, we're in the studio right now working on the new tracks I'm not quite sure which song it will be yet. In the meantime to keep everyone happy our website is being updated where you will be able to listen to two new demos as well as watching our videos.
5. a while back now you had your instruments nicked, and launched 'cazalaide' in the east end to raise money for their replacements, where various london luminaries gathered en masse to support your worthy cause and fight for truth and justice etc. were you a bit miffed when, only months later, saint bob geldof stole your idea and all your charity thunder with his so-called 'biggest gig ever' live8? Well all I can say is, we had Bloc Party and The Rakes, I would have asked Pink Floyd but unfortunately we don't know them. Doherty did show his face at both mind and ours was first, unfortunately we didn't quite hit their predicted target, and due to our bad organisation our dvd won't be out in time for Christmas.
6. saint bob's catch phrase is 'give us your fucking money!'. what's yours? Alright we're Cazals.
7. have you ever considered a line in soft drinks - 'cazalade' ? if so what would the flavour be? Sag Aloo, Beer Flavour, Kick Arse and Patented Gentlemen's Moustache thickening tonic.
8. you've made it quite clear that there is no definite article prefixing your name. what is the standard punishment for people who insist on calling you 'the' cazals? Public ridicule usually does the trick to instil it into their minds, otherwise threatening phone calls late at night.
9. you've played with both babyshambles and razorlight, two sides of a messy indie ruckus, has any band ever tried to have a pop at cazals, or are you impervious to such things? It did happen once but we soon closed that one down, suffice to say the band spilt soon afterwards. We are a very friendly band, generally all bands stick together, we're all in the same boat unfortunately there will always be a few exceptions to the rule, people who are just trying to get themselves noticed.
10. what bonds you together as a group? Old friends, new friends and beer.
11. who are your main musical heroes / influences? Too many influences to mention but one person I couldn't forget is Erol. He mixed music scenes when they weren't cross pollinating.
12. and finally, phil, as a wearer of a natty moustache, what grooming tips can you offer for any man about town wishing to emulate your style? Be prepared for ridicule and a sense of superiority, as long as you like it who gives a toss?
1. hello Joseph, how are you? i am keeping just fine, thank you for asking.
2. have you ever heard of or been to trash before? I have heard of it before, but never been...as crap as that is...it's a sheltered life i live, i went to 'car wash' once for a stag night, that was in London...i hope trash isn't as shit and expensive as that fiasco was, no offence to the groom...or genuine good honest car washers and washes...or trash, i've heard nothing but good things.
3. we've been playing 'i could easily have you' for a few weeks now, are there any plans to release a single from your 'pip paine..' album? i'm very glad that's it's getting played and partly as a result of that fact 'you could easily have me' will be the lead track of a forthcoming e.p due out in mid/late november.
4. it's a very broad sounding record, what was your approach to making it? The breadth of it probably comes from my lack of any kind of approach, i've just got musical things lying around that i can't play very well and a bunch of records that i wish i had made. The record in my mind is a collection of homages, although luckily my ability (or lack of it) stops it from being a very obvious bunch of homages.
5. there are a lot more live instruments on this record than on most crafted on computers these days, did you play them all yourself? i did indeed. I began making alot of quite sample orientated music but then went off the idea, not that i'm any kind of purist or anything, i just thought it would be a more honest way of making a record.
6. how did you meet up with your backing band 'the food group'? Well, i'm not sure if they're called the food group anymore, but that's by the by. Gabriel Stebbing (the bass player) is a very dear old friend of mine from my devonshire days. Oscar Cash (the other one) is one of my favourite cousins who i've known all my life.
7. who are your favourite groups / records to listen to at the moment? Well, my tastes change very quickly and i tend to get more into just one or two songs by particular bands at a time. At the moment two records are getting very heavy rotation in my room, one is 'Vanilla' by the english folk band 'Blowzabella' and the other is 'Voices' by the mighty 'Hall and Oates'. I'm also very excited about hearing the new Kate Bush record, everyone is saying that...but for good reason i believe.
8 . you hail from the west country originally, but are now operating from a brighton base - what about the two places appeals to you? To be quite honest, nothing really appeals to me about either of them anymore apart from the sea. The countryside in Devon is beautiful but the people are all fools, the same can be said for Brighton, but the countryside isn't a nice. I don't want to sound like a knob, i'm just at that age when nowhere feels like home anymore.
9. what or who would you say are the biggest influences on the 'pip paine...' album? (having said the above) Devon played a big part in it as did Brighton, but they were both strange influences. In Devon all the music around me was so narrow minded that i just did something that sounded good to me, in Brighton i started trying to sound like other people up to the point where i was just making very derivative music. So the album came to be when i went back to just doing what i enjoyed. At the time the album was made i was listening to a lot of The Ramones, DEVO, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Blowzabella, N.E.R.D, The Pixies, Timbaland and Magoo...the list could go on.
10. and is pip paine a real person and do they owe you five grand? if so have they coughed up since being named and shamed in your
album title? Pip Paine is a man from Totnes (the town in Devon where i'm from), he owes a car wrecker who's name escapes me £5000, i do not know if he has paid the car wrecker. However, recently the said car wrecker got rid of my old fiat, he then dumped it in a near by field which resulted in the Police tracking me down. I should think a lot of people owe him money because he is obviously incapable of doing his job correctly.
11. what are your plans for the near future, do you have any tours on the horizon? A tour will hopefully happen early next year to support the re-release of Pip Paine on a national scale. Aside from that i am doing many a remix and trying to get down to writing a new album. i suppose it'd be worth checking the website for the details.
12. and finally, joseph, can you make a nice casserole? No i can't.
1. hello henry aka riton, how are you? very good, i'm just taking a break from whatching 'dirty dancing' ive seen it a billion times already
2. you played live for us in the autumn last year, and came back to DJ our charidee gala at xmas time, and have since been seen dancing and smiling in the corners of the club on many occaisions. what do you like most about trash? its run by geeks for geeks but all the trendy folk love it. which i thinks brilliant. i get loads of inspiration from all the djs there too i always want to learn more and hear more and dance so i can combine all three when i'm there. efficency.
3. you first came to our attention as a remixer, and over the past few years you've retooled everyone from kylie to mylo, scissor sisters to run dmc, kings of convenience to new order. what are your criteria when deciding to do a mix? its nice to reach a different audience with my music, but quite often i'll pester people to try and get the chance to do a track i really love. i did that with 'drop the pressure', It makes it really difficult to do the mix cos you want it to be as good as the original, which was clearly a massive challenge with mylo's cos it was the biggest track of last year, i obvoiusly didn't quite pull it off or we'd all be listening to it one radio one now. damn you miami sound machine!
4. you are also, along with ben fat trucker part of the gucci soundsystem, and were responsible shoreditch shindig 'druzzis baltimore rave club'. any plans for future club ventures? were doing a pary back in the land of bleeps, sheffield (ben's home town) at the end of the month, then druzzi's and bugged out are doing a nye party on new years eve
5. you started out in newcastle, moved to manchester and are now firmly ensconced in london, what have you picked up from each city that's influenced your sound? three cities with three different vibes musically andall at different times, back in newcastle i hung out at shindig and flying records studying under geordie legends scott and scooby mainly listening to really good quality house and techno, then moving to manchester i worked in fat city selling hip hop and classic breaks all day. i learn loads there about soul and disco and consiquently moved to london with a sweet disco collection. party wise there was only one club at the time worth going to and that was the electric chair, down in london l was in the wilderness for a year or so finding my feet so to speak, but finding trash was a god send musically and although the record shops arn't as good in london as they were in manchester i can get everything i need from phonica and rough trade. was that dull? if you managed to read all that well done.
6. you do make music that conjures up the concrete, but like the best synth stuff, it's got a droll sense of humour too. tell us a joke about buildings........ buildings, buildings... let me see.mmm i just made this up now, did you hear the one about the the house that used to be a block of flats? its a tall story, get it? tall? flats are massive compared to houses
7. what records or bands first inspired you to throw caution to the wind and say 'mum, dad - i want to be a musician'? it wasn't any bands at all, it was the whole rave thing, that i only caught the end of in all honesty, but i loved it and never will stop loving going out dancing. i'm just lucky i get paid to do it now
8. you had a version of the cure's 'killing an arab' on your last LP, any plans for more covers? i've just done a version of 'Young Girl' by Gary Pucket and the Union Gap, its more of a 'rap' that i've done with a sex offender effect on my voice, its coming out on french label Battle with a Lindstomm remix.
9. being mainly a studio and booth guy, did you enjoy getting riton together as a live act? what did you learn from the experience? doing the live shows was really cool, at the start i'd never shit myself so much as i did before i had to go on stage and i've been djing for 12 years now and never felt like that.
10. so, square eyes, what are your guilty goggle box pleasures at the moment? i'm more of a movie man myself, although erol's got me into x-factor recently the auditions at the start are the most amazingly painfull thing ever.
11. and who would you rate as your number one homie, and your number one homo? Notorious BIG and Simon Ashcroft
12. and finally, henry, you wake up in a hedge with the sun in your crud caked eyes and an empty can of corned beef poking you in the ribs, a friendly yet strange dog is licking your left big toe and it says 'i like living in the future' in green biro on your forehead. you are in:
a) st johns wood
b) a shell suit
c) denial
seven
1. hello noisettes, how are you? We are all very warm
2. have you ever been to trash before? We have all been many times
1. hello, panico, how are you? Really cool.
2. have any of you heard of or been to trash before? Yeah we’ve heard from the club since two years ago or so ; heard about the wild parties you’re having over there but never been there yet so we’re very excited about this show.
3. you are very well known in your native chile and other parts of south america, tell us a bit about the music scene over there - what kind of bands and music are popular? People are always surprised in europe when they discover that there’s a huge music scene in south america. The point is that only very few bands have distribution outside their country. That’s the reason why we decided to move to europe ; it makes things easier.
You will find the same kind of music you would find in europe, many clubs and record shops. People are always searching for new underground beats & bands.
4. you're last album subliminal kill was produced by christian vogel, of super_collider fame. did you enjoy working with him? Yes he’s very talented. Part of his family is actually from chile and he is very well known over there. i used to work in an underground record shop in santiago and would sell his techno records he put out thru tresor. Then we flashed out with the supercollider project. So working with him happened to be a very important experience for us. And he did really freaky and weird stuff on our music wich was what we wanted from him.
5. you've got a strong punk and post punk influence, which bands provided the inspiration for this side of your sound? It’s basicly our main influence. We really got strongly influenced by the cold wave and new wave scene ; from the uk i would hear a lot of bauhaus, joy division, early cure and siouxsie, stranglers and all the others. Then i heard psychocandy from jamc and i really got crazy about this sound. From the us, a lot of bands like the feelies, half japanese, suicide, early sonic youth, early violent femmes and the ramones of course !!
6. and who in the hip hop and latin area are you into ? i would say that de la soul, and a tribe called quest were the first bands we heard and then the wutang, and specially rza’s projects. We’d actually love working with him. From the late nineties we like a lot the digable planets, antipop consortium etc... For the latin area, there are many great people. Our favorites are the early perez prado and tito puente’s destroy and wild mambo, the mexican and colombian cumbia wich sounds very much like instrumental reggae, also the early eighties argentinian new wave band sumo. And yma sumac of course. A sort of peruvian poison ivy from the 50’s. wild !
7. how did panico form originally, what brought you together? We just needed to make music. It was in 1994. We didn’t know much about playing instruments and started like all bands rehersing in a garage.
8. which bands of the moment are you listening to? Colder’s new record ‘heat’ is driving me mad
9. the kind of dance / punk sound you have has come to the fore recently through a lot of New York acts like the rapture, !!! and radio 4 - but you've been around since the 90's, do you feel an affinity with the newer bands who share your sound? Yeah sure, i mean we probably listen to the same bands. Thats kind of cool.
10. what are your plans for the near future, are you in europe for a while? Our plan is to stay in europe so get ready for panicomania!!!
11. do you have any secrets to tell us? mmmm…
12. and finally, panico, do you generally prefer the sensation of turning left to the sensation of turning right or are you happiest when you can just keep going straight on, open to the possibility of heading up or down, all the while safe in the knowledge that backwards is always an option ? we’re more like going straight on. It’s just our attitude.
1. hello vincent vincent and the villains, how are you? Very well thanks
2. have you ever been to trash before? Once in 2002 I came to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play
3. how did the band get started originally, what inspired you to get off your arses and make music? I was in a skiffle band, where the instruments were made out of cardboard, string and tin cans. We played two gigs and destroyed all our equipment after each one. I had so much fun that afterwards I realised I had to put a real band together.
4. you've already gained a reputation for being a great live band, what's been your best gig to date and why? Best gig to date would have to be upstairs at KOKO with my new Villains...people were wondering whether we would be able to maintain the high standard we'd set ourselves as a live band, and as we'd only had a week to rehearse for it I was concerned too! But after the first song started we were on fire and the crowd loved it. There was more energy in that little room than any other gig I'd done in big venues like the Mean Fiddler.
5. your music is all cast in the 50's rock 'n' roll / doo wop mould, what about this style and era do you find so appealing? I love early rock and roll because it's all about going crazy and having fun, experimenting with ideas and not being too precious about stuff. I love the vocal harmonies of Dion & The Belmonts and no band does that sort of thing these days.
6. you've got the hair and the togs to go with it, too - have you ever bothered worrying that people might dismiss you as retro and gimmicky before they've heard the tunes (which are brilliantly honest and fun)? No
7. what were the records that had the most effect in shaping your direction? Too many to mention: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Dion & The Belmonts, Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Ian Dury, The Jive Bombers, The Cramps, Charlie Feathers, Little Walter, The Coasters....I could go on.
8. your songwriting is very strong, a great balance between rythmn and melody, and there isn't really anyone else using harmonies like you do, do you feel a connection with any other bands or scenes at the moment? Not really no. I like seeing other bands around now when I'm playing with them but I'm not concerned whether what I'm doing has any relation to any other band, I revel in the fact that it doesn't.
9. you've had a couple of single 7"s out so far, the excellent 'blue boy' is going down a storm on the dancefloor, what are your plans for future releases - can we expect an album soon? We are still skint and unsigned, so single releases tend to be quite far apart, but we are looking to put another single of pop genius out before November..with regard to an album, I refuse to release one until everyone is listening.
10. who, dead or alive, would you like to play with if you could?Eddie Cochran
11. what is the most villainous situation the villains have found themselves in? The plot to assassinate David Gray.
12. and finally, vincent vincent and the villains, if you were marty mcfly
in 'back to the future', would you have bothered fixing the time machine? Bollocks.
1. Hello Justice, how are you? Superfine, we're working on a new song called "phone games", fighting to make good voices takes.
2. You're coming to DJ for us soon, how did you first hear of Trash? We saw Erol in 2002, in paris for "la villette numerique", a french electronic festival. The party was really huge, and after googling this guy out, we knew a lot of things about Erol, including his residence at Trash.
3. You've remixed a diverse selection of tracks, from DFA 1979 to N.E.R.D, but you're a production team with a definite sound of your own. Have you ever found it hard to gel your sound with the track you're mixing? As we play all instrumental parts of remixes and because of a very limited hardware set-up, the material that finally comes out is always printed by the seal of justice. People who knows the whole material would have noticed that we use always the same drumkits and bass sounds since the beginning.
4. Your remix of Simian's 'Never Be Alone' is still bloody huge on dancefloors everywhere, are you surprised at the longevity and popularity of that mix? Of course ! anyway it's always hard to believe that tracks you're making in your bedroom could please anybody else and particularly people you worship for a long time. We think the anthemic lyrics take a major part in the success of this track, which is just an universal love & friendship message !
5. We've been jumping around to your NY Excuse mix for a few weeks, who's next to get the Justice treatment? We did a remix for the next fatboy slim's single, which seems to be released simultaneously with "ny excuse". Then we decided to stop remixing tracks for a while, to have time to produce the next michael jackson's album by the net, if his cell is wired.
6. And have you got any plans to release your own original music? When can we expect it? We gonna release our new EP on the mothership Ed Banger records on september 2005, the first promos should be given away during this summer.
7. You've got a real knack for disco beats and basslines. Who are the main influences on your sound? The duet Bernard Edwards / Nile Rodgers from Chic, matches like it was just one person with one brain making bass and guitars sounding like one instrument. They do it like nobody else. Prince for his minimalistic period, and also a lot of white guys trying to sound like black bands, because of their clumsiness, they have an own vision of groove, that pleases us.
8. France is renowned for producing insanely fun(ky) dancefloor acts - is there something in your water supply over there, or do you all secretly study Prince at school or what? As we are bad dancers, we try to make people dance by all means. It seems that there's nothing better than funkiness to make your sister's body twist.
9. Who are your favourite DJs / producers at the moment? Jackson, Mr Oizo, Feadz, Zongamin, Like a Tim, are our favorites right now.
10. What do you think has been the best club / party that you've played so far and why? One of the best was a party we dj'd for Colette in paris. It was a costumed party, and all the Ed Banger crew was disguised in M&M's. It was very sweaty under our costumes, but the party was mental, people were totally freed hidden behind their costumes, so it was perfect conditions to turn the party insane. We kept also a really good 'souvenir' of the gigolove parade 2004 in Berlin Watergate. It was one of our first gig, and above all the first time we saw people slamming, and stagediving in front of us, on disco tracks.
11. And what are your earliest musical memories? Erik Satie for Gaspard, and 90's awful alternative french rock bands for Xavier (under influence of his older brother).
12. And finally, Justice, what do you want to be when you grow up? Maybe Policemen or Cosmonauts.
1. Hello Battant, how are you? Tim: We are quite well actually, just getting ready to go to Barcelona to play at Haywire at Moog on Sunday night during Sonar, so we are quite exited if not a little apprehensive about if we can hold it together and actually be fit to play by sunday... Mole: Well Excited, Barcelona A-Hoy.
2. How did you first hear of Trash? Tim: I first heard about it when I moved to london a few years ago, & often grace its dancefloor. I have seen some fierce live sets there over the years and am pleased that we are having a go ourselves. Chloe: I don't get out much but my friends tell me it's fun. Mole: My first experiance of trash was when i was working for Adult. and the only thing i remember was how hot it was, phew what a scorcher!
3. Mavs has been playing the 'Jump Up' demo for a while, and you've just finished some recording so when can we get our hands on a Battant record? Tim: The demo copy Mav's has been playing was done in 4 hours in home studio in North London & has a rough charm, but we have re-recorded it in the Contino Rooms with Tim Holms for a 12" release on 'Firewire' which should be in the shops on 2nd July. As well as 'Jump up' there is another three tracks on there by us and some remixes. People who have only heard 'Jump up' may be surprised at how varied the tracks on the 12" are, though they are all pretty rocking.
4. At a recent party Mavs also threw a large glass of red wine all over your jacket and face, Tim, but luckily my kitchen got in the way of most of it, so you got off lightly compared to the walls, floor and door. If you could throw a large glass of something over Mavs in revenge, what would it be? Tim: Haha! I should think of something meaner, but really I wanna throw my dry cleaning bill at him. Actually, I think I'd just throw a large glass of soapy water, as last time I saw him his shower was broken & he hadnt washed in days & was starting to get a bit 'ripe'.
5. If it is not too much trouble, could you please describe your sound in words of one syllable? Chloe: Dark cracked booms.
6. I hear there's going to be a Two Lone Swordsmen mix of one of your tunes surfacing soon. How did that come about? Mole: Having friends in high places and a few brandys. Chloe: We kidnapped Morton (Keith's dog) and demanded the remix as ransom. Tim: I have bothered Andrew & Kieth regually over the years asking them what track it is they are playing, so its awsome to have them do a remix.
7. What was the first record you heard that made you go 'Wow!' ? Chloe: 'Amsterdam' by Jacques Brel. Mole: New Order 'Blue Monday'. Tim: In the early to mid eighties they used to play Kraftwerk between schools programs on television, I can remember watching it at school and loving it, it was only years later I actually found out what it was. This is prob. the only positive thing I actually experienced at school which had any lasting effect on me.
8. What or who brought you together, and what does 'Battant ' mean? Chloe: Battant means to beat. There's a box with a small tin wind-up panda inside - it says Panda Battant Tambour. Miss Betty brought two of us together and then 'cause of this girl Adell, it became three. Tim: Its French innit.
9. Are there any new bands out there that you would recommend? Tim: Hmmm, does Whitey count as a band? I like his album. Also on the Merk front, I think Lady Sovereign is the business. Mole: Motormark.
10. Do you have any strange yet burning ambitions as a band, for example playing in space or making a record from samples of whale song? Chloe: Playing CDUK. Tim: While wearing an Underground Resistance t-shirt.
11. What would you do if Battant were set upon by a Bat - Ant? The worlds only flying mammal crossed with a giant insect would be a formidable opponent, no? Mole: Not much as we are Invinsible.
Chloe: Pah! No flying mammal crossed insect would stand a chance against us. 'Sides, if things got tricky we'd call on our giant battering tin Panda for back-up. The Bat-Ant would be squished in no time.
12. And finally, Battant, riddle me this: as i was going to St Ives i met a man with seven wives, the seventh wife had seven sons and the seventh son had seven eyes. How much is a packet of ready salted crisps in Tesco? Tim: Battant couldn't possibly answer this question as only cheese flavor crisps are allowed to be consumed by any band member due to their
superior nature. Chloe: I like carrots.
Dan (Cut Copy)
1. Hello Cut Copy, how are you? Good thanks.
2. How did you first hear of Trash? I actually heard about it a couple of years back when I was in London after doing some mixing in Paris. Richard X was DJing in the small room and I came along to check it out. I managed to stay til close and ended up struggling back to a friend's house with the sun just rising up.
3. Your 'Bright Like Neon Love' album has been getiing a lot of praise. How are you taking to the attention? It slowly going to all our heads I'm sure... but seriously it's pretty cool. We've had a release in Australia for a little while now so it's reassuring that reviewers and the press in general have given us a good response for the UK release.
4. How has the band changed over the years? I understand it started as a solo venture for Dan... Yeah, I started out writing stuff when I was at art school. I used to DJ and perform live with a sampler when it first started. At one of the shows the sampler blew up up during the set so when I got home I decided to put together a garage rock version of Cut Copy with various of my friends (none of whom really knew how to play) and performed some songs with only live instruments. In the end we actually sounded kind of cool, so when the sampler was fixed we kept the setup and added it to the sampler and synth stuff I'd already been writing.
5. Your brand of eclectic disco-rock has drawn comparisons to Soulwax and their ilk, and you've toured with Mylo - who do you feel are your kindred spirits, musically speaking? In a way. Obviously we're from a totally different part of the world, but everyone's aware of their stuff In Melbourne. It's flattering that those guys know and like our stuff too. I think it's one of those things that bands will pop up more and more now that remix and do dance tracks as well as pop/rock stuff - it really seems like there's no distinction between the two anymore.
6. What are your plans for the near future, are you going on tour again or is it back to the studio? It's a combination of both I think. We'll be touring, doing festivals and hopefully our own tour(s) until the end of the year at least. In the meantime we're trying to spend some time working on new stuff, remixing etc but probably nothing too serious til early next year.
7. We've previously played host to the Bumblebeez and James from the Avalanches, are there any new Australian acts coming up we should know about? Sure, there are plenty I guess. Our label mates the presets are awesome - we've toured with them a lot back home. And Wolf And Cub are an amazing band to see live. No doubt they'll get over the the UK sometime soon.
8. What was the first tune you remember going 'Wow!' to? It's kind of weird to think of it now, but I really remember 'beautiful world' by Devo from when I was a kid. It really stuck with me.
9.In this imperfect world, what would you most like to cut, and what would you most like to copy? People would probably say I'd most like to copy new order and daft punk... I dont know about cutting. I dont do so much of that anymore. Cut loose maybe....?
10. 'Critical Acclaim' usually brings with it a famous fan or two. Have you had any back pattings from people you never expected to have heard of you? Yeah - we've had a few things like this happen. In australia Mark, the bassist from Jet had told us he wants to go on tour with us. In fact at one of our shows he snuck on stage and started playing bass. We all turned around going 'what the fuck? who the hell is that?'
I never though anyone from Jet would know who we were, let alone take the stage together... He's a cool dude though. Who knows maybe one day he will tour with us...
11. What was it like working with Phillipe Zdar, of Cassius as producer? Philippe was awesome, we got on really well. I've got a lot of respect for all the stuff he's done and his crew over there in paris. On our record he worked more on the mixing side of things because he really liked the way it sounded and was put together on the demos I sent him. It was funny because he ended up getting more into the rock tracks than the dance ones. As it turned out he was a roadie for french punk and speed metal bands in the early eighties.
12. And finally, Cut Copy, can you kick it? I'll try anything once. sure.
1. Hello Young Knives, how are you? Henry – Tired but excited. I have bags under my eyes. House of Lords – I have broken my foot a bit from jumping off the stage. Oliver – I have a large purple bruise on my inner thigh from my unique drumming style.
2. Have you ever been to Trash before? Henry – No but I don’t live in London, normally I am at home in rural Oxfordshire tending to my Chickens. House – I like to play dominos and drink real ales but we have also been known to disco dance
3. Are you looking forward to playing the club? Henry – I reckon we will probably smash it up but Lady Fuzz might get there first. I have heard it’s a pretty rocking night so we will probably all get sweaty and make out with loads of people. House - Yes. We’ve seen photos in trendy magazines. Everyone dresses up like witches and skeletons. It looks fun. Henry once went to the royal wedding celebrations in our village as the incredible hulk. We love all that. Plus we’re dead mad keen on popular youth culture and music.
4. Tell us a bit about how you got together, what is the story of the Young Knives? House - Henry and I are brothers and Oliver and Henry met at school doing Technology and Control GCSE. We started playing in a band when we were at school and did lots of really indie songs and dressed up in rubbish clothes. We got third place in Loughborough battle of the bands and then we split. We started playing again about 5 years later and that’s how we got here.
5. What kind of music are you into at the moment, who are your favourite bands? Henry – I have been listening to The Mint Chicks “Fuck the Golden Youth” in my car. It’s a really good experimental punk album with some very fast drumming. I also heartily recommend The Rumble Strips. I have only really seen them live but they are just a really interesting and talented group of musicians.
Oliver – Yes Rumble Strips, they sound a bit like Dexy’s or early Adam and the Ants. Although these are just lazy comparisons so you should check them out as soon as you can. House - My favourite bands at the moment are Hot Snakes & Mint Chicks. Hot snakes are sort of fast and heavy and Mint Chicks are really fast and really heavy. If you like squealing and fast heavy rock either one of these bands are good.
6. We've been cutting a rug to the ace 'Hot Summer' every week since Mavs started ramming it down our lugholes, any chance we can pick it up in shops soon? Henry – It’s out now! You can buy it from Rough trade or Pure Groove and other cool record shops or you can download it and there is a link on our site (www.theyoungknives.com). I am glad you like it, I have seen people dancing along at gigs but it would be really cool to see a room full of people getting down to the record.
7. Excellently, one of your number is called the House Of Lords - how did he acquire this nom - de - rock? Henry - The House of Lords got his name from me and Oliver. Basically he has the last say in everything. We can come up with ideas for lyrics or something and think that they are really good and then House just says “it’s a bit shit” and the whole thing is scrapped. It also aptly describes his build.
8. You've worked with Andy Gill from Gang Of Four, how did that come about and was it fun? Henry – It came about purely based on the fact that he liked our demos. That’s something we are really chuffed about. There was nothing contrived about us getting to work with Andy, It wasn’t a case of someone chucking a load of money at it and Andy just doing it to pay the bills, we sent him the demos and he phoned back saying that he liked them. That’s a pretty good start. It was really good fun too, I mean its going to be isn’t it. You get to be in a recording studio doing your own songs with someone you really respect who also likes beer and crass humour. Best couple of weeks I’ve had in a long time.
9. You're on tour at the moment, I think, how's that going? Do you enjoy life on the road? Henry – Just finished but it was really good fun. It was the longest one we have done so it was a real test of our stamina. It’s quite a challenge to drink that much every day. It was a proper sleeping-in-the-back-of-a-Transit-Van-and-staying-in-Travel-Lodges type tour, but I like that. It’s a good job we sort of like each other. Oliver - The bits of touring I enjoy are: Playing, dancing and riders with flump sweets. The bits I hate are: sound checks, venues that smell like vinegar and sicking up flump sweets. House - Yes it’s really great. If your feeling really knackered and you turn up somewhere and play a good show and get a good response it makes you realise why you wanted to be in a band in the first place. It gives you energy to keep going for as long as you can.
10. Apart from a hot summer, what else do you consider to be a bummer? Henry – Any sustained period of the same weather is quite depressing. Especially if its extremely hot or extremely cold. I also think that cars are a bummer, they just are. House - Agency fees. Oliver and me just got a new flat and the Agency are evil money suckers. Crisps that have been crushed in the bag before you open them. Ska-metal cross over bands or bands that have spiky hair and tattoos and call themselves punk. We played with Sham 69 a few years ago and their fans were proper Punks. They would beat the living shit out of Greenday. War. Total bummer.
11. If you could Quantum Leap into another bands bodies, who's would they be? Henry – I would like to be in Steely Dan, perhaps as Jeff “The Skunk” Baxter playing some bad ass wig out Jazz rock guitar solo to a crowd of sun drenched crowd somewhere like Tampa bay. Oliver - Definitely have to be Karen O’s body.
12. And finally, Young Knives, do you know the way to San Jose? Oliver - Go North from LA on the 5, or take the Pacific Coast Highway and let your hair billow in the wind as you drive.
Ladyfuzz
1. Hello Ladyfuzz, how are you? good, enjoying a sunny bethnal green day..and the gas tanks are down...
2. Have any of you ever been to Trash before? of course! what a question!?! last time was to watch the lovely Tom Vek.
3. How did Ladyfuzz come into being? We clicked our heels 13 times and WHOOSH we had a band, the rest is mundane!
4. According to your web-site you like to watch the ducks fuck in your local rape park. What other pleasant pass-times can you recommend to while away a sleepy sunday afternoon? well, not only have we a rape park, there is also a murder park which offers swan sex, pigeon porn and ice cream. the perfect aftershow show for us though is tucked up together in bed watching the sound of music...run the von trapp family..run!!!
5. 'Oh Marie' is a big hit on the dancefloor, when can we expect another Ladyfuzz gem? 27th of june to be exact! "Hold Up" is the name of the single. Should be good for danceability.
6. Do you write as a group? no. we hire the lovely tom vek! when he is not available then, yes, we write together and what a lovely time we have with our pens.
7. You've played on bills with the excellent Mystery Jets, Bloc Party, Futureheads and Ash amongst others - who else are you into at the moment? Liz is unable to overcome her Regina Spektor obsession, Matt listens to Otis Redding on a constant loop and Ben.... we dont know about Ben...
8. I hear your Berlin Tempelhof Airport studio / bunker is haunted. Are they friendly ghosts? Our guess is there was some bad prog metal accident there because we started rocking out all the time. but it was a spooky place, long dark corridors...at times we did feel that "someone" was there...
9. Who or what are the main influences on your sound? We spent all that time in the Berlin Bunker trying real hard to get our own sound but i guess comparisons are inevitable, influence.... er.. next question please
10. All of you were born on the 13th day of the month, and your Ladyfesto says there should be 13 of everything. Have you ever tried finding instances of the number 13 on a U.S one dollar note? I ask because it's full of them, and you might be interested in that sort of thing.... thats a good tip, but we dont have to go looking for the number 13...it comes to us. Everytime we order a cab 13£, everytime we go for dinner 13£ is the bill, it's starting to get stupid...but we are learning how to deal with it...
11. What has been the most eyebrow raising incident of your life as a band so far? when people came up to us and told us what a success "oh marie" was on the dancefloor, since we dont really go out much and havent realised at that point...also the fact that it's still being played and asked for 6 months after release...apart from that we like to keep some things private!?!...
12. And finally, Ladyfuzz, dare you answer this question? no......oh come on only 12 questions?!?...you should know better than that. ask us something else .....hello...u there? oh i think they have gone...typical...ladyfuzz loves you - hugs and kisses x x
1. Hello Les Georges Leningrad, how are you? Fine, fine, fine, we are doin’ fine, fine, fine. We are eatin’ cherries. In Barcelona, we cooked the finest Baba-o-rhum on stage and we met a nigerian millionaire on the beach. In Marseille, we collaborated with the enemy. Bastards ! We just got a new friend, a smiling tooth with a cavity on top. But, that happened in Strasbourg. Everything is fine to the spine.
2. You played Trash last autumn to a rapturous response, are you looking forward to your second show for us? BOBO :Not really, but I know that the soundsystem of the squid is devastated. That was the first time in our existence that we were doing a show with the very unique feeling of being in the crowd, with the trend, dancin’ to our own petrochemical shit. We all started to be doubled. This is a Very Unique feeling. Your body is down there, touchin’ and beatin’ up the notes and the rythm and your mind is able to walk like a Londonian.
3. How did you firwerest hear of the club? MINGO : I’d never heard of it before we played there for the first time. We walked all over London to find the place. I twas a hard time for us to travel the city with all of our gear. We were crying and we stopped in the middle of the street, lost and tired. But this Night, we broke a leg.
4. As anyone who's seen you live can testify, your show is pretty bonkers. Do you have some kind of dadaist cabaret manifesto or is it purely designed to baffle? PONEY : We are the Manifesto of Creatures. We are designed to release the bats. A heavy rash. A disease for Normality. We like to beat the beats. It is a good sign, because some people started to come to the shows with costumes, pies, stuff to throw at us. They chose to be part of the madness. I can relate Les Georges to a wrestling show or a corrida or one of these steamy nights at the Stadium when Jules Cesar was turning his finger down.
5. There's something quite primal about you. Do you find performing to be a cathartic experience? BOBO : Totally. Our goal is to throw, to to die and grow. Shake your flea bag ! How can we get out of this place ?
6. How much of your own personalities are in your onstage characters - are they exaggerations of yourselves? MINGO : All of our personalities are part of the band ; the sounds, the visuals… We can’t be different We are the rigatonis and Les georges are the meat sauce. It can’t be other ways. Nous sommes une entité biblique.
7. Your sound has been variously described as 'unique' , 'horrid' , 'absurd' , 'painful' , 'funny' and 'repellent' - which of these, in your opinion, is closest to the truth? PONEY : I would say « Unique ». Because we are Po-Boys. We come from nothing. We didn’t know how to play music at first. We never cared about the instruments ; we played with what appeared between our hands. We made costumes out of cardboard, we putted dirt into our faces. We come from a coincidence. We are No-Bullshit. We are Pure. But we stink, we make no sense and we are super-design, like a skunk.
8. Have you got any releases coming up in the near future? BOBO ; Of course. The secret is well kept in a little box of teeth soap.
9. You've played on the same bill as bands like Le Tigre, Sonic Youth, Stereo Total and The Unicorns - What music / bands are you listening to at the moment? PONEY ; We all have different tastes in music. Eclectic is our second band name. Bobo is into hardcore and noise. Poney is into Yma Sumac, divas and Messian : things with birds and « candeur ». Mingo is into bizarre electronics and concrete music. But the three of us all believe that Xenakis should share a turntable with The Locust.
10. I am curious - How did you get your name? PONEY : We found it into a cereal box. It sounds like the name for a baby was tried to be aborted. There was at first two boys : Georges. Then, one night, little Poney appeared under a table singing her shyness. There was also this Lady Peacock with long legs. The girls brought the city name. We have a ugly name, but it is the name of the situation we’re stuck in. We called ourselves too Les Linda Hiroshima. A name and a city.
11. The cover artwork for ‘Sur les traces de Black Eskimo’ appears to feature a picture of Cringer, also knowned as Battle Cat from He-Man. Who did the artwork, and who is the he-Man fan? MINGO : Poney and Bobo are the « Versace » of Les Georges. They used to design clothes for Madonna and Right Said Fred. We are the children of He-Man. We grow up with those illusions. Kids are Super Serious.
12. And finally, can Les Georges Leningrad, can Blue Men sing the Whites? MINGO : Why not? There is no limits. A heavy cry. No shoes. No blue suede shoes. Kill the party and drink until you die.
Clor
1. Hello Clor, how are you? Very well thankyou.
2. You'll be coming down to play for us soon, have you ever been to Trash before? Yes, many times – seen lots of excellent bands and Djs – always hear interesting music down there.
3. You've got a pretty cohesive sound, who writes the songs, is it a group effort? We write together – everyone plays a part and the songs kind of develop
4. Everybody's into 'Love and Pain', it makes us jump a lot. What are the most loving and painful things about Clor? Luke likes to think he’s the most loving – carrying Max’s enormous (bass) speaker cabs on stage is the most painful - we need a roadie.
5. There's lots going on in your records - who would you say are the main influences on your sound? Everything from Beenie Man to Bonnie Prince Billy
6. Which other new groups are you into at the moment, do you have any kindred spirits in band land? Envelopes, Shitdisco, The Chap, Hands on Heads lots of stuff on labels like Perlon i.e Morane, Richard Villalobossa, and of course MIA, Ms Thing
7. You also have a lot of artwork surrounding the band, your website is full of pictures. Who is the artist in your midst and what inspires them? Barry (vox) does the drawings – he will not tell us where they come from and we are not sure we want to know.
8. The album's out in late July, how close is it to being finished and have you had fun making it? It’s finished and it has been a very intense and rewarding experience. We’ve met lots of fascinating people along the way – it’s been a journey of self discovery....
9. It's a self produced effort , I understand, where did you cut your teeth recording wise? Our bedroom studio in Borough, I feel very sorry for our neighbours they are incredibly tolerant – none of us is particularly experienced at recording etc so we are largely self taught.
10. Do you prefer the studio to the stage or vice versa? Studio tends to be about stamina and concentration whereas stage is all about the rush of performing it’s a bit more intense and throws up all kinds of musical anomalies i.e when things go wrong somehow everyone has to drag it back as a unit and that’s kind of exciting.
11. The video for 'Love and Pain' has a funky dance routine embedded within it, does it have a name and will this craze be sweeping the nations dancefloors? I think it’s called the Crabladder as that’s it’s main constituent – you can do anything you like as long as you display some pubes.
12. And finally, Clor, how much is that doggy in the window? More than a million pounds I reckons.
Dj Zilla
1. Hello Zilla, how are you? Good thanks.
2. How did you hear about Trash? Damn, was about 5 or so years ago now. I used to work in Beggars Banquet (a record store in Kingston) , at that time i was fucking around making music with a friend, you know, i was carrying my crapped out Numark mixer round his and recording 10 minutes of god awful scratching and he was just randomly sticking it over beats. One of the better things we did was a bootleg of The Breeders 'Cannonball' looped up with some Beastie Boys acapella stuck over it. At the time i knew a bunch of guys who were in the shady white label game & I was telling my mate we should do it through these guys, you know, get it on white label sell it at the shop make some easy money. For some reason he was well against it. About a month later we get some overly trendy looking indie kids come into the store asking for this Breeders & Skeelo mash-up they heard Soulwax play at this club 'Trash'. So i got straight up on the phone and shouted very loudly for a very longtime at my mate!
3. Tell us a little about your DJ ethic - what can we expect from a Zilla set, is there a gameplan? it just comes down to playing what i like, i just make an extra effort to try and not segregate all the different styles of music up in my brain and play a rock set or a techno set, but to just play a 'set'. I'll probably know 80% of the music i'm playing before i leave the house though - i gots to have my blends all worked out.
4. You've got connections to Wheels Instead Of Hooves and Warp, who are the contemporaries you admire at the moment? There are very few people that i don't admire, there's different stuff you can learn from everybody. The biggest draw for me is an act that has there own sound, people thats music you can hear in your head when you say their name. Up there for me has to be Autechre, people like Mr Dibbs, The Neptunes, Lil Jon. At the moment for me its all about Modeselektor. I totally wanna rip them off!I have to say my man Buddy Peace too, he's really top of my favourite dejays.... i know it sounds wack because he's a friend and all but, yeah....... he knows who to rock shit and make it his own.There are people who i could say i admire technically, like they have a good technique a good sound, good production skills, but i think you can get to caught up in all that. If you're stuff is original they're will be a place for it.
5. With the commercial stuff being so omnipresent and largely cliched is it hard to operate in Hip Hop at the moment, artistically? No, i don't think so. Andy Warhol managed to turn Campbell cans into art, i just try to do it with Lil Jon records! I'm sure things would be different though if was was a proper 'act' you know, with an emcee and such, but really, i try not to think of myself as a hiphop dejay. I would be limiting myself as an artist , whatever the state of hip hop to think to myself "I'm a HipHop artist" if i try to create something i go where it takes me, to whatever conclusion it reaches.
6. Who were the acts that first got you hooked on music? Well, it was probably my dad more then anything. He's a guitar player and would always be either playing records or playing his guitar, so i was always around music when i was a kid (i mean i was even named after Bob Dylan) . I couldn't name any paricular act, i think i just got more and more hook into music the more i listen and the more varied it become. Key albums though would have been things like 'Apetite for Destruction', 'Off The Wall', 'Zero One' by Paul Hardcastle and 'The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mothers Milk'. I don't why these albums in particular, there just the ones i wore the print on the cassette out.
7. And what led you to become a DJ? A friend of mine (owner of the worst dejay monkier of all time 'Lil Dave Hatter - The Ninth Earl of Sutton) had some turntables and it was though him i realised that you know,it was feasable that even someone like me could mix records and call myself a dejay. At that point i'd been i a few punk bands (I don't know that we meant to be punk, its just that we sounded shit!) and i was getting bored of having arguements about things. I just wanted to have complete control over what i was doing, not having to get into fights half way though a song on stage because the bass play was playing the worng riff. So i saved up money from my first full time job i had and bought a pair of technics.
8. Any particular fondness for vinyl over CD's, or do you like to take advantage of CDJ's and Kaos pads etc to get your sound as well? i used to be 100% vinyl but i recently had to buy a Pioneer cdj for the WarpVision tour and now i try to use both if possible. You can do stuff with cd players thats impossible to do on turntables and anything that gives you a greater ability to manipulate sound has got to be good. Plus you can make a track in an afternoon then burn it up and go play it out that night. I've got a Pioneer Fx unit too that i used to take everywhere when i play, but i rarely get to a venue where i can plug it in, so i've stopped taking it out.
9. You put a lot of effort into the presentation and design of your mix CDs, what are you inspired by visually? i just try to keep any design in keeping with the vibe of the music on the disk itself. I'm fairly constricted as to what i can do by hand and in the space of my garage & living room floor. I bought i Lomo camera a while back and take it our with me whenever i'm away and take one random picture at each place i go. Sometimes i'm influenced by the images and colours in what few of the pictures make it back from the developers. I'm get more excited about textures and colours then solid images, like the way in which the paint has been applied on a Cezanne painting or a David Lynch movie.
10. Do you have any as yet unfulfilled musical ambitions? Oh snap, plenty. For one i need to get signed! I used to set myself little ambitions every few years. I always achieved them, so maybe its time i set myself some more.
11. What plans have you got for the near future? Are there any releases on the cards? I've got an E.P coming out on a new label called ViVa Last. it's called 'Both sides of the brain', I was going to release it myself but i blew my credit cards out on records and orders from Turntablelab.comThere's 3 tracks from me in all different styles under different names (i'm style trying to settle into a solid identity on production side of things) and 1 track from Buddy Peace.Theres also a new mix 'Grinted Teeth on BrawlsVille' which is pretty screwed up edit heavy dirty south & techno remixes, which has taken me about 6 months to do and caused me untold stress and fret. I'm still deciding on which outlet to put it through as its only half an hour long. I'm sure it'll end up on cd sometime during the summer though. Plus myself & Buddy still have to put our Redux'd tour version of the 'Watch And Repleat Play' Mix (all re-editted, alternative tracks, stuff that couldn't be cleared and extra layer of acapellas and bits) to lay on cd too, but i'm not sure where thats going to end up either.
12. And finally, Zilla, what do you think is the most exciting thing you could make out of mud? I dunno, why is that how i'm being paid again?
1. Hello Long Blondes, how are you? Variously grooming ourselves in computer screen reflections.
2. 'Giddy Stratospheres', 'Autonomy Boy' and 'New Idols' are bona fide Trash sing-along dancefloor classics already, are you looking forward to playing the club? Definitely. We're sharpening our heels for the dancefloor and shaving our legs for applause.
3. You've played a few shows in London already - have you ever been to Trash, or will this be your first time? This will be our first time but we're so ripe it hurts.
4. You hail from Sheffield , which has a long and noble history of musical innovation. Do you feel connected to the city as musicians? We have all worked, slept, practised, fought, strutted, fallen and danced and danced in Sheffield's re-enforced concrete arms for a long while now and the city has become like an eccentric auntie to us. Her make up may have smudged but to us her face is still beautiful.
5. Quite a few of your songs have pretty unique structures and arrangements, and they're all insanely catchy. Do you painstakingly craft these pop gems, or do the songs simply fall from your fingers, so to speak? Of course we painstakingly craft pop gems, each one is usually cut, spat on and polished before being released into the wild.
6. Of your own material, which is your favourite song and why? Giddy Stratospheres because it's a perfect pop song.
7. You 'Don't like the sounds that the radio brings', so are any other current bands doing it for you at the moment? We remain largely unimpressed by the status quo. And indeed, Status Quo.
8. 'Polly' is very 50's sounding, a little bit doo -wop. Who would you say are the main influences or points of reference for the Long Blondes? The only thing we can agree on are the people we do not wish to reference. Whenever we try to compile a list of influences, petty squabbles and occasional fistfights are soon to follow.
9. Your lyrics are the kind which I imagine could easily be written in tip-ex on the covers of school exercise books and ringbinders. Did any of you ever write favourite lyrical excerpts on your school books, and if so what were they? Kate: 'Far away we'll go far away, down to Worthing and work there.' in my Latin rough book. Next to this was drawn a blue and white motorway exit sign pointing to Worthing and away from Caecilius. Do any motorways actually go to Worthing ?
10. From 'Darts' I get the impression that you like playing Darts. Are any of you any good, or do people leave your local with unwanted piercings? We prefer to play 'round the clock' because the maths is easier. We find darts to be more of a spectator sport.
11.What are you up to in the near future? Please say the album's coming out soon...... We're releasing our next single 'Appropriation (by any other name)' on 6th June
12. And finally, Long Blondes, if half of two is one, how come one and one is eleven? Mathematics is a cruel mistress. Toy with her at your peril.
1. Hello Tiga, how are you? I'm good.....actually great. I'm in Hamburg, tail end of a tour.
2. All your records have been huge Trash hits and favourites ever since 'Sunglasses At Night' came our way. To what do you attribute your phenomenal dancefloor nous? To erol's kind patronage.
3. You've DJ'd the club twice already to grand reception, and you're coming back again soon. What are the best memories of your previous visits? Hmmmm.......well, there are some records that I was able to play at Trash that I don't usually get out of my system, like Homosapaian by Pete Shelley, or even GIANT by The The..... That I was able to play at Trash.I think the overall feeling is something I enjoy, like you are playing at a friends house, which I guess you are.
4. You're reknowned for making quite original electronic tunes, steeped in the best of 'then', but also very 'now', and each single has a definite individuality . How do you keep it fresh each time? Thanks. I try not to think about it too much, that's my secret. I just try NOT to question or second-guess myself......i figure if I like it, then somebody else will as well.
5. So who would you say are your biggest influences at the moment? I guess the people that I am spending the most time with end up being big influences.....which right now are the Dewaele brothers and Jesper Dahlback. I am learning a lot from working with them: very different styles, different processes. All the DFA stuff amazes me as well. And as far as old stuff goes.....i am always in awe of the disco greats: bobby o, patrick cowley, etc....To be honest, I have been so involved in finishing my own LP, that I am a bit spaced out with regards to new stuff.
6. And can we expect any new releases soon? I have some remixes that should be rearing their heads soon: for Tomas Andersson on Bpitch, for Mylo, for Zdar on Turbo, and a mix I did for Depeche Mode's classic Shake The Disease. As far as my own original stuff.......first official single should come in the early summer and then the LP end of summer.
7. If you could pick any guest vocalist, past or present, to sing on one of your tunes, who would it be and why would you choose them? Prince. Because it would mean something, and it would fit, and it would be the ultimate. I also love Sean Paul. I suppose Elvis would be good for financial reasons. Maybe Tiga Presents: Elvis VS Prince.
8. We've had a lot of Canadian guests at Trash over the years - Peaches, Gonzales, DFA 1979, Les George Leningrad and your good self - is there anyone else making music in your neck of the woods that you would recommend to us Londoners? Celine Dion would be cool, if pricey. Lots of Montreal bands now like The Arcade Fire, Yin-Yang...... How about having Rufus Wainwright? Or maybe Avril Lavigne? Did you know Gino Soccio did all his albums in Montreal.
9. Have you ever been in a band, or have you always worked as a solo artist? I always wanted to be in a band, but it never quite happened, not that I tried very hard. I bought a guitar once, a black Samick for like 100CDN.....i was hopeless. I guess I am a solo artist, although I work with friends on everything, so I can not take all the credit.
10. Do you have any plans to take your tunes into the live arena? That's a big question in my world lately. I have plans in my head, in my fantasy world.....whether they ever see the real world is still up in the air. I think it will depend on if I feel the album DEMANDS the songs be performed.
11. I've noticed you like a good baseball cap. Do you own many, or is your head reserved for a special 'lucky hat'? Never thought of them as lucky. I own many, too many. I have been wearing caps since I was 5, religiously......but I think a cap-less age is dawning.
12. And finally, Tiga, what time is love? 3am, eternal.
1. Hello Paul, how are you? I'm pretty good today thanks...pretty tired as you would expect at the end of an album and trying to bust a remix/ re-edit out before I dj later.
2. We spoke to you after you played a great set at the Trash charity gala night last December, but the minidisc went haywire and we lost the interview. Did you enjoy yourself? That was a superb night... it was so busy and such a good atmosphere. I thought my set was sinking fast (i'd only played records out twice before that) until i played White Rose Movement... I remember the crowd going nuts and looking round to see Erol with his eyes on stalks going "WHO-THE-FUCK-IS-THIS?????"
3. How did you first hear about Trash? I'd heard friends talking about it / bands talking about playing there... it was and still is the place to hear great music played loud.
4. You're famed for producing Bloc Party and Futureheads. What do you look for in the bands you work with?Great hair, good looks, tight trousers and a love of the Beatles.......shit....sorry.....fruedian slip...... er...... fresh ideas, energy, honesty, focus and a strong work ethic. It does help if you like the music too.
5. Who are you working with next as producer? Got anything on the cards? I've just finished the Rakes album, in process with the White Rose Movement album, i might be leaving guitars for a while to do pop and grime. I like a lot of music and too much of one thing makes you sick of it... ok... i'm waiting on a call from Celine Dion.
6. You've also remixed a wide variety of acts under the 'Phones' moniker, and seem to like giving things a disco edge. What's your favourite club tune at the moment? Club tune.... er.... probably the MSTRKRFT remix of Panthers "Thank Me With Your Hands". It's so simple it's almost crap..... in SXSW we turned a club dancefloor into a moshpit over this.
7. When you're in the studio do you like to experiment with the sound of a band, or do you prefer to bring out the best of what's latent in their style? My modus operandi is this: each band sounds different- enhance it.... the studio is intimidating-put them at ease..... find out what scares them - use it to push them to parts of themselves that surprise them... find the dynamic, personally and musically - make it more extreme..... and yes i do experiment..... if you dont you might as well give up because you dont learn anything personally or professionally. I did a track on the bloc party album with a guitar amp in my mouth and played a tom with a hi-hat wedged onto the skin.....
8. Have you ever played in any bands yourself? I'll only answer this if Erol tells us who he played with...haha....nah.... I played with Lomax. We made a decent album of proto-bloc party type stuff and did shows with Franz and the Futureheads. If you track down the modern life single you'll find the first ever phones mix on the flip.
9. What's the most insane party you've DJ'd? Probably that trash charity bash..... it was so much fun.... or maybe a friends house party with 300 people there and i hadn't slept the night before.. I've been to plenty worse but not got round to playing records...
10. Is there such a thing as bad music, or only bad taste? The old debate.... I think there is bad music, but its down to when the music suffers as a result of the egos involved. Like Oasis or Towers of London. Or Sting. When a band are getting all tied up about a part being perfect I'm like "Are we making a fucking Sting record or what???"
11. Do you have any tips for aspiring producers / remixers? Er.... watch, listen, evaluate, question, read, make notes, remember your ideas, don't follow trends, don't believe the hype, fuck the old school, use their knowledge and work harder and faster then anyone else. Then it's 50-50 you'll get a look in and the rest is down to having guts. Go for it.
12. Finally, Paul, how much wood would a Woodchuck chuck if a Woodchuck could chuck wood? Considering the rodent's size and build I would generally put it into the same sort of area as a Rodent Geoff Capes so.... I reckon a whole log 40 feet and maybe fire-sized chunks a damn sight further......um....yeah.
1. Hello Tom, how are you? Fine thanks just having my breakfast by the docks in Bristol, we played the Louisiana last night.
2. Did you enjoy playing your Trash gig as much as we did listening to it? Yeah, very much, really exciting as id heard a certain DJ had been playing the singles to your good people.
3. Had you been down to Trash before? Well I went to art college down the road for 3 years so yeah I had been known to occasionally stumble by, with more authority than my current post college status, so I'm not such a regular visitor now but I enjoyed it very much. First heard losing me edge on the dancefloor at trash which is something ill remember for a while.
4. It must have been a hectic day for you, what with the album being released and everything, are things getting a bit crazy for you at the moment? The day itself was ok, kinda pleased almost that there was no pressure to play virgin megastore or something, although there's the major label support for the record I was eager to get it out ASAP cos itd been done for a while and it is still yknow the record that was made with an independent, so the idea of a big fanfare and big deal about the specific release date didn't really concern me cos I like the idea of the record just sitting there and slowly having people discover it. Although yeah I'm fucking busy.
5. You made 'We Have Sound ' at home, by yourself, which is quite a different process to writing with a band. How did you approach turning the album into a live show? What sort of difficulties did you encounter? The recordings for the album were mainly from my garage set up, but I worked with a producer to tie the record together, great guy called Tom Rixton, nothing fancy as the label had no money and we were using spare time in mates studios all over the place, I worked in the same way I would on my own just with tom there to facilitate things that I couldn't do myself. I'd had a bad habit of recording everything in the red and I think Tim, head of Tummy Touch just wanted to make sure we had some recordings that were usable.The songs had to be deconstructed and put back together with 4 guys on stage, some more successfully than others but I'm sort of embracing how some songs have a different side to them live. It was obviously a but strange saying to the guys, this is how you play it, but that's what I had to do for it to be a live version of the song, the guys knew this from the kickoff, before any of the shit happened last year too! Before we actually started being supported by doing this. So instead of the writing and the perfecting its actually about getting used and sinking into playing it in my style and ultimately "how it is on the record" which I've been known to say a few times.
6. Has playing the record as a band changed the way you look at your music? Are you likely to incorporate other musicians into your next recordings as well, or do you want to keep the two sides (live / studio) separate? What Tom Vek is is me on my own, it took recording some songs we wrote as a band to realise it, but its true and it would be stupid to change it now. There will be side projects and I do love playing and writing in a band but its not Tom Vek.
7. 'If You Want' and 'I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes' are both dancefloor favourites at the club, what do you think is the best tune on your album and why? The opening track called "C-C (You Set The Fire In Me) I like the melody made by having 2 basses and the way it ends, lots of things. But there's not a note on the record I'm not happy with.
8. The record is very rythm led in a lot of ways, but also damn catchy on the melody front. Who were the main influences on your sound? A lot of the mid/ late nineties alternative stuff coming out of America, the white boy geek street poetry of bands like Soul Coughing were eye opening in the sense that a song didn't have to have two guitars a bass and drums and would still be songs that got stuck in your head, so they had that hook and melody sensibility.
9. Is there any particular artist or band active at the moment that you would recommend people give a listen to? I'd hugely point people in the direction of The Chap (thechap.org) I can't describe it but they have an album coming out this year that is absolutely stunning.
10. Is there any particular artist, band or album in the history of music you feel has been unfairly ignored / maligned or remains criminally unknown / under-rated? I'd have to say Soul Coughing, all those things, they got pigeon holed with Beck at the time but they were the most innovative and exciting band I think there'll ever be, the album to get is "irresistible bliss". Also Cable's "when animals attack" is the most perfect chunk of angular brilliantly simple guitars and rock melodies I've ever heard.
11. What have been the best and worst moments of your life so far?My life? Er, getting an album released through the official routes is something I'm very proud of. I was happy to die when I had an ear infection, when I was 18.
12. And finally, Tom, have you ever been tempted to give a 'hilarious' answer to the question 'do you have anything to declare?' at customs? Sort of I was asked If I had anything sharp on me once and so I said "what, apart from my wit?" which I thought was clever on 2 counts.
