Unless you’ve been living under a rather hefty rock for the past year and a half, you’ll need no introduction to Virginia’s latest high quality metallic export.
A cocktail of beer bongs, boogie boards, and some of the most enjoyable thrash-punk anthems since D.R.I. broke the speed barrier have gained the foursome a reputation as one of the most fun and enjoyable live acts on the planet.
From one Ryan to another, Ryan Bird gets the low down from guitarist Ryan Waste regarding the party animals’ recent tour with heavy metal masters The Haunted.
You’ve just wrapped up the UK leg of your European tour alongside The Haunted. Are you happy with how it went?
It was fucking incredible, man! The crowds were really rowdy. Lots of circle pits, stage dives and generally kick ass old-school thrash shit.
With Wolf being a straight forward metal band, The Haunted a Scandinavian thrash band and yourselves a thrash-punk outfit, it was an eclectic line-up to say the least. Did you ever feel out of place?
Musically we’re all very different but as people we got along great. We all seemed to have a lot in common and got on really well personally, so the musical side almost became secondary. I really dig Wolf’s music as well. Those guys were just killer every night.
I saw that in both London and Oxford you managed to get Wolf beer bonging during your set. Have you managed to get The Haunted involved yet?
We’re still waiting on them! As you saw we’ve been showing Wolf how it’s done quite a lot, but The Haunted have promised us that before the tour is out they’re going to get up and do a beer bong onstage.
How did the beer bongs and boogie boards work their way into your routine?
To be honest it’s not something that we actually did ourselves. Fans would bring the boogie boards to the shows themselves and stage dive into the crowd on them. We never really wanted to have gimmicks or anything, but I guess this is one we’re probably stuck with. It’s cool though, it’s all about having a good time.
Something must have gone tits up at some point?
Well, I’ve definitely seen a few things go wrong! Nothing overly serious, just people landing on the barricade rather than the crowd or people not being caught and wiping out, that sort of shit. Beer bong wise the worst I’ve seen is people not being able to finish it. You shouldn’t waste beer!
You come from a very healthy scene back in Richmond. What makes it thrive so much?
I don’t know if anything in particular makes it “thrive” so to speak, but there’s definitely a really good sense of community within a lot of the local bands. Everyone’s very much about helping each other out and getting each other’s backs. It’s a really small city, everybody knows everybody else.
Are there any bands in particular that people should look out for?
There’s a new band that has the drummer from Alabama Thunderpussy in it that are awesome. I can’t remember their name for some reason, but they’re kind of like a really dirty sounding Metallica. There’s also a pop-punk band called Pink Razors who are really good.
Your new album ‘The Art of Partying‘ is out next month. I’m guessing you didn’t have to spend much time thinking up such a title!
Yeah, it wasn’t too difficult. We’ve actually been sitting on that title for a long time, and a lot of the song names as well. We’ve got a load more for the future as well.
What would you say people will find most different compared to your last record ‘Hazardous Mutation‘?
It’s better! As a band we definitely feel like more of a solid unit than we perhaps did when we recorded ‘Hazardous‘. We’ve had a couple of line-up changes since then and things definitely feel better and more positive now than ever before. It’s almost like a completely new band.
Did you approach anything differently in the writing and recording process this time?
We actually demoed the entire album ourselves on an eight-track recorder. We just hammered it out, got everything laid down and used it for pre-production.
It worked really well because it meant that as soon as we got into the studio we knew exactly what we had to do. We got 3 weeks to record the whole thing and did it in 2, so I’d say it worked pretty well for us.
What does the rest of 2007 hold for the Waste?
Um, I think we’re hitting Japan for the first time at some point this year. We’ve been to Australia before which was amazing, but we’ve always wanted to go to Japan. I think we’re also going to do a tour across North America right after the new record is out, and then we should be back in the UK and Europe around the end of summer.
Municipal Waste’s new album ‘The Art of Partying‘ is released on June 11 through Earache Records.
Originally formed from the ashes of At The Drive-In, Sparta have just released ‘Threes‘ – their third album, and their most enthralling and ambitious record to date. The band recently returned to the UK to play the Give It A Name festival, and Alex Gosman caught up with new guitarist Keeley Davis shortly before they played at the London show.
So how are you guys doing? Are these shows part of European tour, or are you just over here for Give It A Name?
We’re doing good thanks! We’re doing a few other European dates too – we played Give It A Name in Birmingham on Friday, then flew over to Belgium yesterday to play the Groezrock festival, then back to the UK today. It’s all been going well so far.
Give It A Name has a rather emo-friendly line up, but you’ve never struck me as part of that crowd. How do you feel about playing an event like this?
Well, it’s strange, because at home in the US, some people do categorise us as an emo band – but I think that just shows how vague a term ’emo’ has become these days. But it’s always good to be able to play events like these, because you get to play to people who might not have heard of you before – and judging by the responses we’ve had so far, I think we’ve made a few new friends this weekend.
If you look around the crowd at one of our own shows, it’s never one particular type of person – it’s a good mix of older and younger people, with fans of everything from indie to metal, and I think that’s due to the fact that we’ve never felt the need to limit ourselves to particular genres when we’re writing songs.
The new album is called ‘Threes‘ and is your third – did you choose the name because you wanted it to be seen as the last part of a trilogy, or does it go deeper than that?
Yeah, it does go deeper than that…it was Jim [Ward, Sparta singer/guitarist] who came up with the name, because all these things keep happening to him in threes. For example, as well as this being our third record, Anti are the third record label that we’ve signed with, and me joining the band was their third line-up change…so we’ve come to feel that the number three is symbolic for us in that sense!
‘Threes‘ sounds more expansive and more confident than ‘Wiretap Scars‘ [their 2002 debut album] did – would you agree with that?
Yes; and a big difference this time around was that there were no time pressures during the recording process. The first two albums were written in their entirety before being recorded, as that was the pre-determined plan, but this time around we didn’t even have a record deal when we were recording ‘Threes’. So were able to just take our time, and experiment with ideas and sounds that we’d never tried before – and I think that’s reflected in the record’s sound.”
When ‘Wiretap Scars‘ came out, it received a lot of critical comparisons to At The Drive-In’s work: does that still happen, and if so, does it annoy you?
“Not really; because we’re not the kind of band to deny our history, and At The Drive-In were very well-known by the time they split. So Jim and Matt didn’t mind that, for a while, they were “the band with those guys who were in At The Drive In.” What was kind of annoying, was when people would take it to the extent of scrutinizing the music and lyrics of a song to look for similarities to At The Drive-In songs – effectively, looking for things that just weren’t there. It’s hard to enjoy music if you’re always picking it apart like that, you know?
So how did you come to join Sparta? [Keeley joined the band in early 2006 after the departure of original guitarist Paul Hinojos]
“I’d known the other guys for a long time; my old band, Engine Down, actually toured with them in their early days, so that was how we first got to know each other. As well as playing guitar, I’m also a graphic designer, and I designed their website for the ‘Porcelain‘ record [Sparta’s second album]. So when Paul left, a friend told me that they were looking to recruit a new guitarist, and it all went from there.”
What are your plans for the near future?
“Just a hell of a lot of touring! We’re going back to the States tomorrow, where we’ll have a short break before doing a month-long tour with Straylight Run and Lovedrug. We’re hoping to get over to Japan and Australia later this year, and we’ll also be returning to Europe in the summer to play some festivals.”
[‘Threes‘ is out now on Anti Records, and the band have just been confirmed for the Reading/Leeds festivals in late August. Check www.spartamusic.com for more info]
Bonde Do Role are the hottest new act to come out of Brazil. Whilst everyone is swooning over the girls in CSS, Bonde are more concerned with just bringing the party to your town.
Having been eyed up by super-producer/DJ Diplo and recently being signed up by Domino Records, Bonde are about to take the dancing to the mainstream. Abjekt recently caught up with Gorky from the band to talk about their roots, how they got signed and their new album.
So, let’s start at the beginning, the story goes that Gorky and Pedro sent Marina a CD but she only liked “the stupid stuff at the end”. Is this true?
Exactly! And that stupid stuff became Bonde Do Role [laughs]
Also, if she liked the “stupid stuff”, what was the rest of the CD like? Completely different to the stuff that you do now?
It was pretentious electro-rock… the kind of stuff you’d forget about after 2 months! If you wanna hear it, lemme know and I’ll send you some tracks!
How did your music come about as a trio? Were you fans of Baile Funk before you started making music and then decide you wanted to bring that into the stuff you were doing?
We were all fans of Baile Funk, but I was raised in Rio and always thought that rhythm was at the same time fascinating and really really stupid, so that’s why it came part of the band!
And for those of us who don’t speak Portugese, “Baile” means dance party is that right?
Yeah, more like a ‘ball’ – you know, like the ones you see in American movies, with all the teenage dramas.
Would you say it was a good word to describe your music then, considering how your shows are just basically wild parties on stage!
Well, it’d be a nice way to consider it!
Moving onto you getting signed… Apparently you’d only done a few shows before you got signed up, is this true?
Yes! We were more of a songs-thing than an actual live band – this is so true. We never ever even rehearsed for a show!
It must have been pretty nerve-wracking to get a record deal if you’d only done a few shows. Was it then that you started taking the music or shows more seriously? Or did nothing change once you’d signed?
No changes at all! We only had more responsibilities, like replying to interviews! [Lots of laughs!]
And how did the relationship with Diplo come about? He’s obviously a big fan of the Brazilian music scene, doing his Favela Strikes Back album and songs like Diplo Rhythm… did he come down and see you play? Or just hear your songs and decide he wanted to sign you?
He actually heard just one track (the one with the Alice In Chains sample), he heard our story that we were complete outsiders and just trying to make something different out of Baile Funk and signed us!
And how did the signing to Domino come about?
It was an exciting thing – on our 1st US tour, Laurence (Domino’s owner) came to see us play and he was thrilled about it, then more and more people from Domino went to see us and voila, we had a deal on paper!
With your lyrics being in Portugese, do you feel that you need a good vibe at your shows to get the crowd going in the UK as they might not know the words or understand what’s being said?
People get the good vibes from the shows, even not knowing what we’re singing about. and we always have fun during every gig, ‘cos something funny always happens when we’re playing.
Your new single which is out on Domino, is called Office Boy. Is it about how boring it is to work in an office? That’s something that happens the all across the world? Give us a few details on the new single so we can understand the video which ends in someone writhing around in his pants!
Actually no. Office boy is like teenagers’ first work placement – it’s like a courier-does-it-all thing like going to the bank, doing coffee, getting papers from one side to the other. And the funny thing about it is that they all have this dressing code, heavy metal t-shirt, long hair, worn out jeans and they kinda all looks the same. And yes, Pedro’s been an office boy in the past!
What other subjects do you touch on in the album?
A lot of things – from cheesy-camp love on Quero Te Amar to sex and more and more sex and partying… and sex!
I saw you play with Diplo at the Old Blue Last pub last year, which was an absolutely awesome show. The venue was small and really tightly packed and everyone seemed to dig your set – Do you like playing nice small venues so you can interact with the crowd more like when Marina crowd surfed and got dropped on her head!
[Lots of laughing again!] Small shows are always the best ones! Although we did some shows at big places and it was good as well, but nothing beats the small places!
You used to sample stuff on your songs, like The Darkness and Faith No More… is that something you enjoy doing still or do you prefer to work on your own stuff?
We do sample things nowadays, but more for the fun of it, ‘cos you know, to clear samples are really expensive…
Radioclit recently remixed Gasolina, what did you think of that remix? Is it fun to hear other people mix your songs up and put their own spin on it? Is remixing something you guys like to do also?
Definitely! and also because the Radioclit guys are friends of ours! And yes, we love to remix people as well, some of the stuff we’re doing is gonna be out soon, but we do have some remixes out, like the CSS one and the great legend Tony Allen.
Finally, what words of wisdom do you have for everyone? How should we deal with the inevitable Bonde Do Role world domination?
Don’t fight it, just accept us in your heart and on your feet!
Bonde Do Role’s new single Office Boy is out on May 21st on Domino Records and is taken from their upcoming debut …With Lasers, out later this year. If you want to hear more Bonde, hit their myspace up at www.myspace.com/bondedorole
Brighton-based quintet The Ghost Of A Thousand have recently unleashed a stunner of a debut album in ‘This Is Where The Fight Begins’; a volatile mix of hardcore, rock n’ roll and unbridled punk rock fury that will hit you like a sledgehammer to the senses.
The band recently toured the UK as support to Poison The Well, and Alex Gosman caught up with vocalist Tom Lacey and guitarist Andy Blyth before a show at London’s Islington Academy.
How are you guys, and how’s the tour going?
Andy: It’s been really good, actually, there’s been plenty of kids at the shows – and the other bands are really great guys too. And it’s brilliant being able to watch them night after night!
Are PTW fans enjoying it?
Tom: Yeah, they seem to be giving us a chance, it’s been really cool. I think most kids that are into Poison The Well are fairly open minded anyway; because they’re not a straight up metal, or punk, or hardcore band – they throw a lot of different stuff into the mix, which is what we’re doing too, so it’s been awesome.
Can you give us a brief history of The Ghost Of A Thousand?
Andy: Well, Memby [drums] and Jag [guitar] are brothers, and they’ve been in bands together for ages…I first met Memby when I went to music college in Brighton, and he played me a demo of some recent stuff that they’d written, which I thought was cool. Then Jag moved down to Brighton to join us…
Tom: I was working in a bar with Memby, who was in another band at the time…
Andy: Yeah, and Gez is actually our third bass player! He was a friend of mine from college, and it just kind of went from there – it seems to be working out alright so far!
So have you toured a lot since you formed?
Tom: Yeah, we’ve been out on the road almost permanently since about a year ago, when we started getting a lot of shows…we’ve done a few headline gigs here and there, and toured a bit with bands like The Abominable Iron Sloth, Aiden, Silverstein, Boys Night Out, McQueen and various other bands who are friends of ours. But this tour is the biggest and longest that we’ve done so far, and it’s all been amazing. I’d have gone to see Poison The Well anyway, because I’m a big fan, but to actually be supporting them on tour is awesome.
Your album is called ‘This Is Where The Fight Begins’ – was there any particular inspiration for that title? Having read your lyrics [check the Myspace link below], you seem to be a pretty dissatisfied bunch…
Andy: [laughs] I think it’s just that we’re bored of all this apathy, all these bands who seem to lack passion…because going to see bands seems to have become just another trend for a lot of people, and you can’t help but wonder if some of the kids are really there for the right reasons. So yeah, the title kind of represents us striking out against all that, and having something to say for once, instead of the usual crap.
Do you feel that there aren’t many bands out there that share your outlook, in that respect?
Tom: Yeah, that could well be the case…although we do have some ‘allies’ in Gallows and a band called Attack! Vipers!, who are both great bands. I think Gallows – and the buzz around them – is helping to open doors for a lot of bands like us. But I don’t think there are that many great rock n’ roll bands in this country – at least, not many that actually have much to say for themselves. You ask some of those bands what they’re all about and they just come out with the usual ‘girls, drinking, rocking out’ clichés…
Andy: And zombies!
[mass laughter]
Tom: Yeah, I mean it’s fair enough with Send More Paramedics, because they’re completely into it…but I think there are too many bands who are scared to write about anything meaningful and just go for angsty, faux-horror crap instead.
Maybe some of them don’t know any better…they hear a band singing about cutting up girls, and figure that they should do that too, and it just becomes another trend. It’s just getting really old…we can’t sing about that stuff, we’ve all got mums!
Andy: [laughs] How can I sing about hating women, when my mum’s one?
So what was it like working with Kurt Ballou [Converge guitarist, who produced ‘This Is Where The Fight Begins’]?
Andy: It was amazing – we sent him a demo of some tracks that were gonna be on the album, and he got back to us and said that he’d like to work on it with us…it was great to get a seal of approval from one of the most respected bands in hardcore today.
Tony: Yeah, it was amazing – and I think he really liked our stuff, because he gets a lot of demos from typical metalcore bands and bands that are basically trying to sound like Converge. So I think he enjoyed the fact that we have a few hooks and melodic parts, and that we wanted it to be mixed like a rock n’ roll record, as opposed to a metal record.
Andy: We wanted to try and capture a bit of our live aspect on the record – to sound aggressive, but in a loose, raw kind of way…and in that respect, he did a great job.
Where did the hardcore scene that was built on punk rock in the late 80’s go?
Andy: Well, it kind of dissolved into post-hardcore, I guess…
Tom: The thing is, music’s always gonna change, and whenever you look back on the glory days of any genre, it’s always through rose-tinted spectacles. The only bands anyone remembers from those late 80s hardcore days are the good ones, because there were loads of shit bands around at that time!
Andy: I think a lot of the passion and anger present in that hardcore scene got fused with metallic guitar riffs and evolved into something different…
Tom: Yeah, there are a lot of so-called hardcore bands around today that are really metal bands, but because they don’t look like Lamb Of God, they aren’t labelled as metal. It’s a weird one really…take Killswitch Engage, for example; they’re really a straight up metal band, but they were labelled as metalcore because they came from a hardcore-dominated scene. There’s still plenty of traditional hardcore stuff around, but I think it’s largely still underground.
So what are your plans for the near future, after this tour ends?
Andy: Pretty much to carry on doing what we’re doing…we want to try to build a loyal fanbase, just get our name out there, get more gigs and recognition…and mainly to just get better as a band. We’ll probably get some stuff done for the second album, but we won’t be going back into the studio anytime soon – it’s gonna be mostly touring for the rest of this year. I’d rather just stay on the road for now, to be honest!
If there’s one name on everyone’s lips at the moment, it’s that of super producer Mark Ronson. The British born New York dweller is the man behind the current airplay favourite Stop Me, which is taken from his highly anticipated new album Version.
Despite his hectic schedule, Mark came into Crossfire HQ to give Zac Slack and Abjekt his thoughts on what it was like to DJ with Biggie and Jay Z in the audience, how he went about transforming a Smiths’ song and who his tips for 2007 are.
Hello Mark, welcome to Crossfire, where did it all begin, were you always surrounded by music at a young age?
Yeah I was definitely lucky to come from a family that encouraged music. My dad, someone growing up in London who was really into all the old 60s funk and soul had amazing records that I eventually ended up raiding when I started DJing.
And then when my mother re-married, my step-father was a musician as well in a popular rock band at the time called Foreigner, music was definitely all around. I started playing drums when I was 5, came to New York when I was 9 or 10 and started playing guitar, saxophone, lots of instruments so I was definitely lucky in that way.
When I started really getting into hip hop when I was about 15, my step-dad had this dusty old sampler lying around, because he never used it, an old Akai drum machine and I just started using that and making hip hop beats with a few kids from my school that rapped. So I found myself in a position that a lot of kids in my situation wouldn’t have been, that there were drum machines lying around the house. I was definitely lucky for that.
You have been quoted to say that moving to New York when you were 9 was a factor, do you think you were opened up to new music at that age even?
Hip Hop is the soundtrack of New York, it was born in that city and its something you feel all the time, you can just picture it in the streets when you walk down there. Not that everyone in New York listens to Hip Hop but its definitely inbred in the streets, you can’t avoid it. I think that was the amazing thing, I came from England, and my dad listened to Hip Hop. I remember my dad giving me De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising and I remember dancing on the bed with my sisters listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 when we were 6 singing along to New York New York!
I think living in New York put everything in a different light. It’s a fast paced city, it’s a hustle, you feel that high energy. I remember going to LA for a few months to work on this Nikka Costa album and just being miserable there. So I love the hustle and bustle of New York but I also love London.
I think being from London and growing up with a really wide appreciation for a lot of different music was good. Over here you’d hear Uptown Top Ranking on the radio next to a Stone Roses song next to a Soul II Soul record next to a Blur record, that’s kind of a privilege to have growing up as your musical education. And then New York gave me that gritty Hip Hop shit…
But was there any one particular band back then that inspired you from the funky hip hop side of things?
I mean, obviously I knew Rapper’s Delight and things that you just hear around that were fun, but the first stuff that really made me a super fan of hip hop was the classic Def Jam era of 90-91 I think… I don’t even know what era it was because it was beyond that but there was definitely LL’s Mama Said Knock You Out, Public Enemy Fear Of A Black Planet, Third Base The Cactus Album and the first two Beastie Boys albums, they were the ones that really turned me onto hip hop.
And then as you become more of a fan you realise that 12inches and remixes come into play and you start getting into bands that just have singles like early Wu Tang. I completely became fanatical about it, buying all the 12inches and that’s what led me to DJing.
…and DJing is the next step where you got to meet these guys right?
Yeah it was amazing to DJ in New York coming up because we were DJing these little hole in the wall clubs in the lower east side and all of a sudden you’d be DJing at a club and you’d see Guru or Premier or Sadat X from Brand Nubian come in, it was kind of amazing.
These were the heroes that made you want to DJ in the first place and then from there, Biggie and Jay Z started coming down and you were thinking “how the fuck do they know about our little hole in the wall hip hop club?“. It was amazing to play records for the people that inspired you to play records.
When urban music started to get more popular with the jet-setters, you got to play in Milan and Paris for fashion houses, what was that like in comparison?
Well when I started DJing, I was playing mostly in these lower east side grimey clubs, with skateboard kids, hooligans, some pretty girls that liked to slum it and some hip hop celebs, that was the thing. Then I started DJing the more trendy clubs, it was unusual at the time because they were only playing more European music, like house and at first they’d be like “what is this?!” and the club promoters would say “Mark Ronson and his brand of hip hop are ruining the clientele of our VIP room!“. But really everyone was having an amazing time, so when I was doing those parties, that was when the fashionista started to notice me and I was flown out to do parties in Milan and all this shit.
It was fun, at first I was nervous thinking “I’m playing for these fashion people, I’d better play fashiony music” and go into a record shop and spend $200 on house 12″s before I went out but that was like, when you’re starting out, you’re insecure of what you do. But if they’d wanted someone to play that, they would’ve got someone else, so I’d always go out there, play that kind of stuff for the first half an hour, realise that no-one was dancing, people were looking at me funny and then I’d start smashing the hip hop and all of a sudden the dance floor would be packed with these people that aren’t used to hearing it.
I think that’s what’s good about being a DJ, people can tell when you’re playing the what you love to play. You can hear it in the way someone plays records. If I’m playing house records, its going to end up sounding a bit like a fish out of water, if that’s not what I play or I’ve never played before. Whereas even if they don’t like hip hop, they’re going to love the way I play it.
Let’s move onto your first record, Here Comes The Fuzz. Was it a big challenge to go from DJing to producing? Or was it a natural progression.
A lot of DJs have gone on to become good producers, you know, Dre, Chad from the Neptunes was a producer at one point, Jelly Bean that did Madonna’s early records. There are advantages and disadvantages – the advantage being that you know what sounds good in a club, the disadvantage being that its hard to separate yourself from a club.
When I’m doing something for my records, I may want the drums way up front, smashing it, whereas if I’m doing something for Amy Winehouse’s record, obviously its going to have a different sentiment. But you become a bit club obsessed, but I think I’ve learnt a little more how to separate it in the same way as I’ve learnt how to DJ a bit less just to not cloud my mind too much.
But it was a natural progression, I was always into producing beats the whole time I was DJing. I used to play in bands from the time I was 14, it was only when I got my turntables when I was 18 that I stopped concentrating on my guitar, and being into creating music. And then after DJing for 5 years and being completely wrapped up in it, I went back to producing. So I’ve always been doing them both at the same time. All DJs make their mixtape albums as such and my first album was a bit of a mix tape album, it was definitely wasn’t surprising the crap out of anyone.
You’ve got some major names on that record. And the single did really well from it, Ooh Wee had Ghostface, Nate Dogg and Trife on it and that seemed to get well recognised in the UK. Was that as well received everywhere else as it was here?
No, I’d definitely say for Ooh Wee, England was the territory for it, the territory, that’s how label people speak. And it was funny coming over here for the first time because I made that record in America, for an American label, Elektra, and not really thinking how it would do in England. And even though it was where I was born and came over once or twice a year to visit my dad, coming back for the first time when Ooh Wee was released and started doing really well and having people saying “Man, I really love your song”, it started to click in my head – of course they like it here because I’m from here, born here, this country shaped my musical sensibility and it just seemed quite obvious at the time.
And it was nice, it wasn’t for the ego of just being in a place where people sweat your shit and are like “oh you’re a God here”, but it was an eye opening thing for me and that’s when I realised England was a much more important part of my musical heritage than I realised and I started working a lot more with English artists. And that’s why for this new record I signed directly to Columbia in the UK.
Don’t get me wrong, the record was a hit in other places, but England was the biggest place, y’know top of the pops, blah blah blah.
So what about Elektra Records? That label died soon after your record came out. Did you concentrate on other people’s records or were you trying to get yourself a new deal at the time?
After my record came out, about a week later, Elektra Records folded so it put me in a difficult position, I didn’t really have much support for what I was doing. I’m not the kind of person who will spend a lot of time sitting at a piano writing songs, and I was working with a lot of other people at the time. And for the 2 years after that, I was mainly focussed on the artists on my label, Rhymefest and Daniel Merriweather, getting the label set up. I think looking back on it, it wasn’t the smartest move because I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man!
I guess if you’re going to look at the kind of person in the industry I’d like to be, its more of a Rick Rubin than a Russell Simmons. So I was trying to run around like a label guy for 2 years and it was good and I got my artists in some great positions but I sort of neglected music. Whereas in the past year I decided it made me happier to create music and that’s probably what I was more talented at. Obviously the records I’ve worked on in the past year have made me much happier than the stuff I was trying to do. And besides, I have a partner Rich who runs the label and does a great job.
So I realised that my job is to make sure that my artists are making great music and that direction is steered forward but I don’t need to sit every record company marketing meeting.
So how do you set about getting people to work on your records? Do you have a set list of people you want to work with, or do people come to you?
On my first record it was very much about like “oh I’ve got this beat I’d love to get MOP on” and I’d call their manager and get them to come in. The great thing about being a DJ is being in that position to always be around artists, meeting people like Puffy, Mos Def and D’Angelo all the time in clubs I was DJing at put me in a great position and these people would love to come to my parties. At least I could get my foot in the door.
On this new record, Version, which is just covers of some of my favourite songs, its much more of a family vibe. I had people coming down, working late night, and I’d be like “Hey man I need a guitar part, I’m not sure if I’ve got an idea for it, why don’t you come down?“, so my friend Mike would come down. And then I’d say “why don’t you sing this thing on top because that’d be cool”, so it’d be like that, a rotating cast of people.
And whoever I was working with at the time on their album, even if it was back at the beginning of the year with Lily or further down with Amy or Robbie or whoever else, people were cool. It’s a fun record, it’s like pick a song you love and we’ll do a cover of it. It’s been very low-key and organised which is a nice thing. To be in a position at the end of the day to look at people like Lily and Amy, who when we started working at the beginning of the year weren’t in the position they’re in now… to a label person it looks like “oh he’s got all these big sellers on his album”, but that’s how I roll!
What about the tracks themselves? How did you choose the tracks that you were going to use on the record?
It was quite simple choosing which tracks were going to go on the record, it was my favourite songs really. It was taking songs, mostly from the indie guitar world, because I didn’t want to take songs that already had beats or that were “funky” because I guess the whole point is that’s what I’m doing to the songs – I’m making them really beat heavy at the end of the day. Beat. Heavy.
The songs are all amazing songs, stuff that I’ve listened from The Smiths’ Stop Me is a song I’ve listened to probably about 10,000 times in my life, to a song like the Kaiser’s Oh My God which is a modern classic.
And then Britney’s Toxic just to show we’re not all fucking guitar snobs and whatnot. Just really honestly they’re songs that I love that I thought would work well in that vein. Doing the Just record was the first thing were I realised you’d take the horns and substitute the heavy guitar. And I realised the horns doing the guitar bits sounded kinda cool so on the Kaiser’s cover you’ve got the horns doing the guitar line, it’s cool.
Then there’s songs like Stop Me where all you’re really saving from the original is the emotion and the chord progression as opposed to replacing different things from the arrangement, although we did listen a lot to Johnny Marr’s guitars. It’s obvious you listen to the things you love in the original songs, there’s a painstaking detail to the arrangement, even if its transferring those lines to other instruments back and forth.
Yeah its definitely a process that’s going to take some time. Hearing a cover of a Britney song next to a cover of a Smiths song shows what a varied range of tracks you’ve picked. Was it important to get that range, or did it just come about that way?
Yeah, like I said, the only thing about the range that was important was that they were songs that I loved and I love all kinds of music. And the Britney song shows there are great pop songs and Toxic, even though my arrangement is completely different, is still a great song at the end of the day.
Oh absolutely, I think it came out very well. Talking of the cover versions, when did you come up with the idea of an album of cover versions rather than a collection of your own original songs? Did the popularity of your version of Radiohead’s Just make you want to do a whole album or were you already underway with it by then?
Basically when I did the Radiohead cover, I had such a good time doing it and it was so much fun to strip a record that is such an amazing song and do something different to it. So once I had done that even before it came out I started working on other covers because it was just fun. I would sit down with a guitar or a keyboard or a clav, a clavinet is the famous sound from Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, that kind of wah-keyboard, so I’d bring a drum beat up and learn the chords from a different song and see which sound good? Do the chords from the Kaiser’s Oh My God work well on a clav? Or how would I play Britney on a guitar?
That’s how they all came about and by the time Just blew up I was sitting on about 7 of these so I was in a position and come over and meet with a few of the major labels and have a song on the radio and have 7 more that were kind of in a similar vein, it was a good position to be in and things just lined up.
Cool. So other than doing this record, you own and run a record label, Allido Records, which houses Rhymefest and Daniel Merriweather. How’s it running a label?
Well like I said earlier, I really like running a label, I just realised that because I’m a micro-managing perfectionist Virgo, it’s quite hard for me to let go of the reigns, but I realised that without doing that, I wasn’t going to get any music done. That’s the balancing I’ve been doing, like I said my partner Rich is amazing, he runs the label stuff and I just stay on the creative side.
What about signing stuff to the label? Do you try and focus to a particular type of artist? With Rhymefest doing well at Scribble Jam not that long ago and then going onto to pen stuff for Kanye and winning a grammy, you must be pretty pleased with how things are going for the label!
Yeah, I’m pretty much in charge of the talent, I play it to Rich and if he believes in it… We’ve got Rhymefest, Daniel Merriweather and this band called Domino, this amazing band with a female lead singer based in New York. I’m producing their EP right now, you can go to their myspace right now – www.myspace.com/dominoband – Shameless plugging so necessary.
The only thing I look for is that there’s nobody out there that does anything like they do and that they’re the best at it. Rhymefest, as far as being a colourful character that can tell a story with such a varied degree of emotion, be funny and poignant and hard all at the same time, I love Fest, I know that there’s no-one out there who does what he does and he’s fucking brilliant at what he does.
Daniel Merriweather who sings on The Smiths’ Stop Me is another kid. He’s from half way across the world in Melbourne, Australia and I heard his voice and he’s amazing. There’s no-one who gives me the same emotional feeling when I listen to him singing and Domino are the same thing, they write these really quirky clever poppy songs and the band sounds great, Domino’s voice sounds great and she has these wondeful harmonies. I’d never sign anything that sounded like something else that was popular at the time.
So what else is coming up on the label? I heard a rumour about a soundtrack to a film called Half Nelson, is this true?
Yeah Half Nelson is this great film with Ryan Gosling that’s up for all sorts of awards, its this tiny indie film. It’s a beautiful film about a school teacher, it doesn’t specify which city its in, it could be Chicago or Detroit or Atlanta and he’s a very human character who has a problem with drugs, coke, and his whole life is a sort of a big hangover yet he starts to teach 12 year old kids in school and it just feels really real, the mood is really sombre, there’s nothing elaborate or extra Hollywood about it. And they had all Broken Social Scene and all these sorts of songs in the film ready and we thought it was something we could do to help them fill in a few extra blanks with some songs and let it work.
Other than that we’ve got Domino coming up, Rhymefest’s next album, Daniel Merriweather and we did a series of compilations for the Hard Rock Hotel because they wanted to put together a compilation that put them in a new light.
So, rather than how you would expect to be in the Hard Rock and hearing AC/DC and these kinds of things, hooking them up with good new bands like Wolfmother, Queens Of The Stone Age, Weezer – not necessarily underground bands, just stuff that a lot of the people who go to the Hard Rock Hotel or Restaurant wouldn’t know.
Yeah but how do you manage to get all of this fitted into your busy schedule? You still do East Village Radio right?
I love the East Village Radio show, I used to do a show on Kiss in the UK that was really fun, but somehow doing a show on a really, really popular radio station on Saturday night from 11 to 1 just made me feel too nervous because my tastes go across the board and I don’t want to feel like I have to play high energy party stuff and I’m sure if I was a bit more ego-driven I’d be like “fuck it, I don’t care this is on a commercial station I’ll play whatever I like”, there’s part of me that still wants to make people happy.
So on the East Village Radio show which is so the opposite of that, it’s basically a tiny closet in East Village that looks out onto the street on the ground floor, turntables in the window and you just play music and we leave the door open so its like being in a tiny shop in the front, people walking by here, and we’re next to a restaurant so people are waiting in line for tables and I just play whatever I want and that was the allure of it, just not having any pressure.
Now it’s got the point where I think we get around 40,000 podcasts a show and it’s a great thing. And also the other thing is whoever is in town, I mean one time when Lily was around and I had to go out of town, she did the radio show by herself. I think its an amazing show, you should get it if there’s any way to get a copy of it because she literally doesn’t know how to use the mic and everything is backfiring, its before she was famous and just sounds like someone learning how to use a computer for the first time but she still plays some good tunes.
Any other guests that we might know turning up?
Amy Winehouse was just in town the other day so she came in with an acoustic guitar and played a few songs. Whoever I’m working with, I always play their demos their demos first. So if you were listening to East Village Radio back in May, you would have heard the demo of Rehab, and that’s kind of the fun of it.
Here’s an obvious question for you, is there anyone you’ve not worked with before that you’d like to work with in the future?
No, it’s pretty good right now. I wish there was more time to work. Now I find myself in a position that I would have envied last year, having more things that you want to work on than you have time to do. But I guess you just have to juggle and make the right decisions.
So what new records are coming up with Mark Ronson production on them? What can we be expecting to hear in the future?
I did one song for this singer Candi Payne on Columbia, its brilliant. Her voice, to me, is a mixture of 60s Dusty Springfield and Mika and she’s done this amazing record with this guy Simon, they did this whole album together and I’ve just done one song on it, because I love the song and I asked if I could produce it. It’s called One More Chance. Her record is coming up.
Jack Penate, another upcoming talented kid, I’m really trying to work on his record. Actually sometimes interns that work in the office and my friends send me new music on Friday so I can get it together for my East Village Radio show and one of the times it was this Jack Penate song and I just loved it and played it on the show and got an email on the Monday from Nick at XL saying “hey we heard you played a Jack song, would you like to work on his record?”.
That to me is the pinnacle of the internet, the best thing that it can do for you, just the fact it makes the world that small. You play a song by someone you like but know nothing about on Friday and on Monday you’re asked to work on his album.
Other than that we’re working on Daniel Merriweather’s new album right now, I’m actually in the studio working on it right this second and then my album of course!
But is there a wish list of people you want to work with, people you idolise?
Not really, I think the people I work with are good enough. I mean, I worship Stevie Wonder but its not like that means I think it would be great to go in and work with him. The really cool thing is I got an email the other day from somebody who manages Elton John who asked me if I’d be interested in working with Elton on his new album. That’s kind of amazing, that’s one of those things where someone you love is seeking you out.
But the fact is, just to work on something for the sake of working on it, or just because you want to meet your idols is not always the best thing. Sometimes its best not to meet your heroes because you can be seriously disappointed.
What about the UK scene? Looking at the tracklisting on your record, there’s a hell of a lot of Brits on there, you’ve obviously got some love for the UK.
Yeah I like UK artists, obviously I like working with Lily, Amy, Robbie those people, over this past year. Other than Ghostface and Christina, I think most the artists I work with are English.
I like the hip hop scene over there, I think its really healthy, the fact that’s great is that the successful kids don’t try and sound like the US artists. I like Klashnekoff, obviously Dizzee, Ty, I like anybody that’s doing something different. Sway is someone I’ve been talking about trying to find a way for us to get together on his upcoming album.
That sounds good, I look forward to hearing that, he’s a UK hip hop prospect without a doubt. So thanks for coming in Mark, its been a pleasure talking to you and finding out what you’re up to. Good luck with the album Version.
My last question to you would be, do you have any tips for 2007? Who should people look out for, who are we going to be listening to?
Drive Thru Records probably lost more than they’ll care to admit when Senses Fail are concerned. Upstreamed and then ditched, the New Jersey (now) quintet have since signed to Vagrant Records; where, and let’s be totally honest now, they fit like a glove.
Their previous works, the six-track EP “From The Depths of Dreams” and their stunning debut “Let It Unfold You” are prize possessions for those who were consumed by the “screamo” scene when it was at it’s peak, so the new album was always going to be interesting. “Still Searching” surprisingly was deemed by many as better than the previous material. Mature, and a real progression.
Gary Lancaster caught up with relative New-comer to the band Heath Saraceno (yes… the guy from Midtown) to discuss getting kicked in the balls, kebabs, and even the new album…..
Who are you and what do you do?
Well Hi, my name is Heath and I play the guitar in the band Senses Fail!
So for those unfamiliar with the band, please tell us a little about yourselves
We are a five piece band from Bergen County, New Jersey, and our latest record called “Still Searching” just came out. We’ve been over here (The UK) twice to support it so far and we’re going to be back again for the Give It A Name festival!
I was going to ask how you all came together as a band, but I know for a fact that you are the new guy as of this last record, so tell us, how did you come to be part of Senses Fail?
Well, the band were of course already established and touring. Actually they’d had a bunch of tours and for whatever reasons had come to the agreement that the old guitar player should not be in the band anymore… they gave me a call and asked me to learn 3 songs. I learnt 3 songs, then I learnt ALL the songs… went into practise with them, ‘cos I didn’t know if they were offering anyone else an audition or anything, so I learnt all the songs, practised with them and it really just fit like a glove. I’ve been with them since!
So if we have never heard your music before, what should we expect when we hit play on the CD player (specifically with your new record)?
Dan Trapp had a great quote from the DVD which is available free with the new record “It’s gonna kick you square in the balls”. Your balls are going to get kicked, pretty hard. If you don’t have balls…
Get some?
Ha yeah get some, and THEN get kicked in it.
Ok so I’d like to talk a little about this tour now, how is it going for you guys?
This tour is going REALLY well. We’ve played a bunch of smaller clubs which we’ve not done here before; we just wanted to come back over because we thought we’d laid some great groundwork and foundations playing Taste Of Chaos. We wanted to come back and play small shows after the huge shows of that tour this is the last show now… ironically when we go back we’re playing on the Taste Of Chaos North American tour! This has been really great though.
You guys are not new to the UK, this is your umpteenth tour, how do you find the fact that kids half way across the world love your music?
It’s really awesome. When you start a band and you are playing in like your parents basement, that’s the dream. You know, that one day you’ll be able to go to England, or Japan, or even like Washington. The next big town! To do it on such a great scale is really gratifying.
Has anything surprised you this time round?
Kids are really into it. They know all the words! They are very excited to see us play the new songs live and personally I’m very excited about the locations of all these venues. They’ve been very close to Kebab shops so I’ve been able to load up on crappy food that no one should eat…
Seemingly us Brits are good at crappy food.
Yes… but! It’s flavourful crappy food! It’s good. Like the other day I had fries with cheese and beans and everyone on the bus wanted to throw up. I thought it was amazing.
You’ve got to melt the cheese.
Of course! Great combination!
Apart from dodgy food then, there must be some tour stories?
Well naw we don’t really do too many pranks!
That’s not a declaration of being too old now is it?
Ha! Well kind of. We don’t really mess around. We just tend to hang out. Back of the bus, throw a party you know. A lot of the times when Sean our guitar tech is around we’ll end up listening to like four alkaline trio records, or if it’s myself and Damon our TM we’ll listen to Nada Surf. We just pretty much hang out, drink and fall asleep!
So what can we expect from you tonight then, as the last show?
Well you might be anticipating a couple of high leg kicks, maybe… I might trip on something. I’m pretty clumsy. I might need a drink to steady myself. We’re gonna play a good mix of stuff. Two tracks from the EP, six from “Let It Unfold You” and seven songs from “Still Searching“!
As a new member do you find playing the older stuff slightly strange as you weren’t a member when it was conceived?
Well no ‘cos at first all the stuff was older stuff to me, so it kind of felt like I was in a cover band for a little while which was fun because I really like playing other peoples songs. Doing that you learn a lot about a guitar players techniques and it gives you a couple more tricks in the bag, but I don’t really feel like that anymore, I’ve added stuff to the old songs live I think.
Customisation?
Yeah exactly! Garret and I have expanded a lot of the guitar parts!
Ok, so now let’s talk little more about “Still Searching“. Now the dust has settled slightly, what are your thoughts about it all?
I’m really happy that people like it. We put a lot of work into it and I’m just glad that there are people who appreciate it.
Compared to “From The Depths Of Dreams” and “Let It Unfold You” it seems very refined. Do you think this is a conscious effort from the band to almost, up the ante?
Well if you look at “From The Depths Of Dreams” to this, there is a four or five year gap. Some of them were in high school. They were like sixteen or seventeen years old when they wrote that. Imagine stuff you wrote at sixteen compared to stuff you write now. There’s a definite growth and maturity. BUT, that word has become so… well, it’s turned into such a bad word. So many bands when asked ‘Whats the new CD like’ say ‘It’s gonna be more mature.’
You know the heavy parts will be heavier and the cleaner parts will be cleaner. At the end of the day it’s either going to sound like your band or not. For this record, we tried to do everything that was in our minds, but we also had to make sure that we didn’t go too far.
We wrote probably 25-30 songs. A couple of them sounded like Boston, a couple sounded like straight up metal. They were fun to play but we had to realise that they weren’t Senses Fail songs. We had to draw the line.
I watched the DVD the other night; the recording session seemed all fun and games, was it that simple?
Well… I wouldn’t say it’s simple, but we knew what we were doing. We had already recorded it a couple of times ourselves. Every time we write a song we would demo it and then listen back to it, make changes and go record it again. We knew pretty much everything we were doing on every track. We had plenty of leeway really. We had time to mess around, go play with the dog etc. The first week… pre production, is usually reserved for arranging everything that you come in with, and we went in with 14 songs with very little re-arranging to do. We spent 2 days re-arranging and 3 days writing songs. It was fun, just jamming and stuff.
Did any of those songs make the final cut for the album?
None of them actually but two are available as B-sides. One of them I think honestly should have been on the record.
Which track was that?
It’s called “Stretch Your Legs To Coffin Length“, it’s on the B-Side to “Calling All Cars”.
How do you think your introduction to the band has changed it?
Well I think everyone gets along really well now. I do a lot of back up vocals too and Garret and I like to throw a lot of harmonised leads in here and there just for fun. That didn’t really happen before. I think that everything… well, I’m not just saying this because it’s my effect, but I think everyone has grown individually as both musicians and individuals lately.
So if there was one message you wished to portray throughout the album, what do you think it would be?
Lyrically… I’ve heard Buddy (vocals) talk about, well… I know for a fact that when we were writing this that a lot of his issues came out in the lyrics. Like, dealing with anxiety and depression, and the struggle to figure out what kind of faith you should have and what should you believe in, not just in religion but in every aspect of life.
If you could go back and kind of, alter anything with it, would you?
No not really, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m really happy with it!
Can you pick a personal highlight of the album?
I think the song “Still Searching” is a good climax to the record. It kind of goes in every single direction and we were really proud of the way it turned out. So, if there’s one track you check out, make sure it’s that.
Ok, thanks for taking the time out to speak to us!
Scottish metal quintet Mendeed have recently unleashed a monster of a record in their second album ‘The Dead Live By Love‘ – an intoxicating blast of thunderous riffs, machine-gun drumming and powerful vocals that should find favour with any self-respecting metal fan.
Alex Gosman recently spoke to drummer Kevin Matthews, shortly before the record’s release.
How are you guys doing, and what have you been up to since you finished recording the new album?
Everything’s going great right now! We wrote some of the album at home, but most of it was done at a residential studio on a farm in Cornwall. We then recorded it at Rising Studios, and after it was mixed, we went straight out on a UK headline tour, which went really well.
We then went on a two-month European tour with Napalm Death, and got a much better response than we were expecting – considering we’re not as heavy as a grindcore band! It was great for the audience, because the other band on the tour were Born From Pain – a hardcore band – so it was a good, varied bill. So it’s all been relentless, with a lot of touring, but it’s been a great experience.
How long did ‘The Dead Live By Love‘ take to write and record?
The recording took roughly a month; but we’d been writing songs for it long before we went into the studio…we did a bit of writing between tours, then we’d come back and scrap songs that we weren’t happy with; but most of the ones we kept were the ones we did just before we started the recording, because we were really happy with them.
The album sounds to me like a mix of all the best elements of metal through the years; were there any particular bands that influenced you while you were writing it?
Well, everyone was listening to different stuff, so it wasn’t like we were all influenced by one particular band. I was listening to The Black Dahlia Murder and Miasma, and learning a lot of blast-beat techniques from those guys. We were all listening to a lot of power metal too – especially me and our guitarist Steven – and more traditional melodic metal, and we were trying to move away from the more metalcore sound of our last record, ‘This War Will Last Forever‘. Although that said, I’m not sure what ‘metalcore’ really is these days, because a lot of different-sounding bands seem to have been labelled that way!
So what would you say has been the high point of your career so far?
There’s a couple of high points that really stick out for me – first, receiving a gold record for our Metallica cover at the Kerrang! Awards [they covered ‘The Thing That Should Not Be‘ for the magazine’s ‘Master Of Puppets‘ tribute album]; and also playing Download festival, because we played to our biggest crowd yet, with a massive moshpit!
We’ve also really enjoyed the tours we’ve done supporting other bands – Trivium, Avenged Sevenfold, Cradle Of Filth – we had a great time and made several new friends on those tours.
And any particular low points?
No, not really…obviously it’s hard being away from home a lot; especially if stuff goes wrong at home whilst you’re out on the road, because there’s nothing you can do about it. But, you know, we enjoy touring; being out on the road with good friends, good music and getting drunk loads – then waking up the next morning and doing it all again!
You currently have nearly 13,000 friends on your Myspace page – has that been a big help to you?
Oh, definitely – Myspace seems to get slagged off a lot, but for us it’s a very easy and handy way of getting our music out there, If someone just has to type in a web address to be able to stream or download your songs, then that’s great, you know?
Especially as we’ve been able to put a couple of our new tracks online before the album’s released. So I think it’s great in that respect, and also because it’s useful for keeping in touch with fans and other bands we’ve toured with. Plus it’s free to use!
So what are your plans for the near future, after the album is released?
Well, we’re getting some more European dates sorted out – they should be finalised soon – and we’ll also be playing the Wacken [Germany] and Bloodstock [UK] festivals. We’re also doing shows in London and Stamford in late March, and we’ll probably do a full UK tour in tha autumn, to give the fans a bit of time to get into the new album!
Matthew Davies, (singer of Funeral for a Friend) caused quite a stir last year by introducing his new side project, The Secret Show.
Alongside a few of his musical buddies from South Wales, Matt formed an alternative country group with various folk influences ranging from The Byrds, Johnny Cash and Ryan Adams.
One thing’s for certain, The Secret Show are joined together for one reason, their genuine passion for writing and playing music that makes them feel good.
Debut album, Impressionist Road Map Of The West was released at the dawn of this month, and Joe Moynihan, after a hectic journey through time and space (Central London!), caught up with the man himself to get a wee insight into the group.
So, if we start from the beginning then, how did The Secret Show Form?
The Secret Show formed when I was home for Christmas the year before last. I had these songs that I had written and spent some more time with, and my friend offered to record them for me, make a few demos, just so I could actually hear how they sound on playback. I was playing them all the time for months, some of them I had for about seven or eight years anyway, so you can see it took me a while to get them down on some format!
Then my friend, Lianne Francis came down to put some vocal parts down, and I played the songs to my wife, and she really loved them so I thought I’d send them to Funeral’s management to see what they think about it. They thought it was cool, and asked me if I thought I could make a record with it, so I thought, well I’ll give it a shot! So I got some friends together from some local indie bands together, and The Secret Show was born!
Nice one! A lot of the members of The Secret Show have got side projects as you mentioned, did this create any trouble getting everyone together to write and record?
Not really, I was quite fortunate. I did most of the recording of the album in the nights while Funeral were writing for the new record, so I kind of pulled a double time thing. It was good to know that Mark and Andrew could play bass and drums, and they run a rehearsal space in Cardiff in which they have a little studio section. They let me use that, which they were really cool with. Rhod could play pedal steels, he was really up for it and everyone found the time to come down and record their parts, all pretty easily.
That’s cool. What about Rhod, he’s got a lot of bands going with him in, did this cause him any stress?
I think he takes it all in his stride, he just really loves making music, which is great, it’s the really cool thing about working with all the people in The Secret Show, it’s all for the music. The fact that we love performing together and stuff like that. Rhod’s got some fantastic bands, Broken Leaf being one of his main things. It’s great to have him onboard, playing guitar, sing a little bit and play some pedal steels on the record is brilliant. Awesome musician and an outstanding feller.
Will Broken Leaf be supporting again on future tours?
I don’t know, I think we have some supports lined up, I don’t know who we’ve got, which is a shame, as I’m the last person to know anything! (Matt laughs) Well he’s playing some other shows himself; he’s playing with a band called Silver Spurs, who are a really good, sort of old school folk, country/Americana group. So he’ll be around, you might have to catch up with him after a show or something, get him to sing you one of his songs! (Laughs)
(Laughs) Awesome. On the last Funeral tour you mentioned about not touring for a while because of the new Funeral album, at the time were you thinking, “Oh it’s actually two albums…”?
At the time no! I think I realised, as it was, after the Funeral tour, that I was going to have to find some time to do something as I’d told the record label that I was going to make the record. I just had to find the time to do it really. As Funeral got off tour, we were writing on weekdays, we had the weekends to ourselves and whatnot. So what I did, and as with any person with something they love to do, after writing 10am-6pm with Funeral, I’d pack my stuff up, go home and make music there, put stuff down and starting tracking. I did that for two weeks and it drove me nuts.
Bit busy then eh?
It was fucking busy! It was nuts! I was unbearable to be around! (Matt laughs) I was the grumpiest out of all of us. We did vocals on the last two days in the studio, and I was miserable, I was almost fucking falling asleep! I couldn’t concentrate. I was so involved with the whole process that I couldn’t differentiate where I was beginning or ending. It came to the point where Lianne was doing her vocal parts and I couldn’t really feel good or bad! I was like “yeah, yeah they’re great, we’ll do something with them, great.” Thankfully, she nailed everything on the first go where as me on the other hand.
(Matt pauses followed by laughter). I was so paranoid that what I was doing was fucking shit, I did it over and over again, until about two or three takes on a song and then I was comfortable with it. I realised that country music isn’t all about perfection, it’s about the passion you put into it, and it didn’t matter if there were any slightly dodgy notes. It was a very rushed album to make, but I think that’s what the charm of making the album was. It was a very rewarding and fun experience making that record.
It’s certainly paid off, the album is sounding great!
Why thank you very much. It’s nice to know that something you’ve put a lot of effort into, I think I’m actually more critical of The Secret Show album than any Funeral album because it was all off my own back. Financially and everything like that. It was cool that we could do everything by ourselves, and have that sort of encouragement from people when they hear our stuff. It’s nice.
When did you think it was ready to release The Secret Show out to the masses?
I didn’t really have a time, no better time than now I guess! (Laughs) I think if I held on to it any longer, I probably would have talked myself out of doing it. The Funeral thing is so intense, that I didn’t want it to come up and then be forgotten. But I thought if it’s out there, then it’s out there and people can come up to it, find it and stuff. It’s the start of something, you know what I mean? It was the start of another whole musical aspect of what I am. So it was definitely a case of sooner rather than later.
The style of The Secret Show is incredibly different to Funeral For A Friend; did this affect, or open any new windows for your vocals at all?
It was very cool actually. I learnt to play on an acoustic guitar when I was 11, I used to sing along to The Eagles and stuff all the time so that way of singing was kind of almost engrained in me anyway, y’know? So I don’t know it’s just, I think it’s really refreshing to do things and just not have to push yourself too much. It was a nice change, a more relaxed vibe and atmosphere to sing in. And to sing with Lianne as well was a really cool thing, as we’ve been friends since school. We’ve been through band projects and stuff before and they never went anywhere, so it’s nice to have something, and have it go that little bit more than the things in the past. Which is kinda cool.
Does Lianne have any influence on your voice at all? Her voice is really beautiful.
Her voice is really pure, and that’s something I’ve always admired about her. She’s really not affected by anything and doesn’t really try to sing in a particular way, or try to imitate and emulate people. For me it was very nice to sing with somebody like that. I suppose it did kind of make me learn from that, and realise that it’s better to have your own voice than to be somebody else.
Definitely.
I think I’ve found my own voice now. I’ve been very fortunate to have a voice where people like the sound of it when I sing, so I can’t really complain! (Matt laughs)
Your voice has become quite distinctive now.
It’s the same with anything I guess, y’know I’m older, and I never really set out to be a singer, I only began singing when Funeral started. It took me a while to find my feet, and I feel my voice has developed now and found it’s own kind of footing. I’ve found where it works and I know now where my vocal ranges lie, and I’m quite comfortable with that now. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand it and do different things in the future and stuff.
Cool. So the album has just been released on vinyl and limited to various Indie shops like Spillers in Cardiff, did anything provoke that decision to make a limited edition?
Well, I used to own an independent record store in my hometown. I think that the independent sector is something I feel very strongly about, they’ve got the whole Mama and Papa sort of record stores and stuff like that. I feel that chain stores are taking over and destroying local industries in local towns. I’ve always been a big fan of Spillers and other independent shops so I just thought it was a cool idea to a limited edition vinyl with Atlantic, which in fact is going to be the last vinyl album that Atlantic will ever make, so I did manage to have my own cheeky way with that. I was pretty stoked! (Matt laughs)
What made ‘Lovers‘ the best choice for a first single?
I think it was the consensus of everybody really, if we would have picked any of the songs off the album I would have been happy y’know? I suppose it represents the record in its best capacity. It’s the most rock song on the album. I love bands like Son Volt and Wilco and those sorts of things, so I suppose from a fanboy aspect, to have that kind of song out there, the ballsy, Americana rock song is kind of nice. I would have put any song out really, it just so happened it was the first song on the album! Everyone agreed that it was a good song to release and I’d say it was an easy step into The Secret Show.
On the last tour, the venues were no doubt a wee bit smaller than what you were used to when playing with Funeral. Do you prefer those more intimate venues?
I think that’s where I feel really comfortable playing. You get to connect to the audience and feel the vibe a lot easier when playing those sorts of venues rather than playing to 1000+ capacity halls where you can barely see the front row. Those shows have their quality about them, they’re cool. But I think my heart will always be, and especially when it comes to The Secret Show, in venues where the crowd can see the whites of your eyes. That’s where you can feel the connection and that’s what’s important I think.
That’s what makes folk music very important at the end of the day, it catches on y’know? It’s porous; it seeps through everybody’s collective consciousness and becomes a part of you. And that’s what folk music is, whether we’d like to admit it or not. Folk music is a huge part of our cultures, we’ve grown up listening to folk stories, old wives tales and what not, and that’s it. It’s just put to music.
Definitely. I think fans on the last tour were a bit bemused by the change maybe? Do you think that next time round maybe they’ll feel the vibe themselves and get their bodies moving a bit more?
(Matt laughs) I hope so! In all fairness, for us it was a new experience as well. It was a bit weird, I was used to people interacting a bit more, and I was kinda nervous. Even though I’d played guitar for god knows how many years now, it was still bizarre standing up on stage with a guitar singing, and trying to think of things to say between songs!
It’ll probably be a lot easier this time around, people will know what to expect, the songs will be on the myspace a lot longer and the album would have been out for a good couple of weeks or so. Hopefully people will come down and treat it like I’d like it to be treated, just come down and have a bit of fun. It’s not one of those ‘scene’ kind of things y’know? It is what it is and you can only treat it like that really.
Lianne’s profession as a schoolteacher caused this tour to have fewer dates it didn’t it?
It did, the one problem is we can’t really treat The Secret Show as to what Funeral is to me. It’s not a full time thing that people can live off, so everyone’s day job had to be taken into consideration. So we had to operate through the half terms, and that was the only opportunity we had to tour. It did mean that we couldn’t play everywhere we wanted to go, I just want people to know that it wasn’t our decision not to omit those places. Places like Scotland and stuff, I love the Scottish crowd.
They’re really lively up there…
Oh they’re fantastic. I just want them to know that we couldn’t play there because of circumstances beyond our control; we couldn’t just force people out of their jobs for extra tour dates. I suppose the shorter tour makes it kind of fun at the same time, it means that we have to put the best into that limited amount of time and it makes for a cool reward in that aspect.
I noticed on the Myspace a few of her pupils were commenting, do I spy a little word of mouth promotion going on?
I don’t know, I doubt she told everyone in a sort of “ooh look at me, look at me” sort of way. When Funeral used to go to Birmingham, Lianne used to teach up there and she would come down and hang out with us. Her pupils would come to the Funeral show and see her there, then realising that we had a connection and that she knew me, and she was like ‘the cool teacher’ then. And then when The Secret Show came about, Lianne, blatantly had a connection with it, and her pupils were definitely very proud of their teacher. So I guess it’s pretty cool for them having a teacher that’s in a pretty big band and stuff.
Totally. Do you hope that through your connection with Funeral that some existing Funeral fans’ music taste will be expanded through The Secret Show?
I think that will be an unexpected gift if that happened. If they would come to the band because of me and then leave with a more expansive knowledge of where they could go musically then that would be amazing. I don’t listen to hardcore or whatever every fucking day, I don’t really listen to much ’emo’ at all, what I do listen to emo-wise isn’t emo apparently so I dunno!
(Matt laughs) I listen to a lot of old school music these days. In don’t think I’ve listened to anything new in the last three years really, purely because I don’t really think any of it is that great… But if The Secret Show does open people’s minds to a selection of music that’s very passionate, and thought provoking in its own way, then I’ll be a very happy man! That’s all that you can ever hope for really, that people learn from what you bring to the table.
Excellent! Well I’m just about out of time so I’ll just sneak in one more question. Are we going to expect more from The Secret Show in the future?
Yes. This is the start of stuff with The Secret Show. It will evolve and create and do new things. It’s a cool thing, as it gives me something to do on downtime from Funeral, which beats having nothing to go to. I’ve always loved writing music, and I’m always writing, and it’s nice to be able to do some stuff which is the complete opposite to Funeral. It’ll exist, it’ll carry on, it will release more records, it’ll tour, the whole shebang. So yes, expect to see more!
Sweet… Well, thanks a lot for the interview mate, it’s been a pleasure!
Ok Go first came to our attention in 2002 with their self titled debut album, and their ballsy, power pop single ‘Get Over It‘.
Fast forward almost five years and the Chicago four piece are in their second year of touring their follow up album ‘Oh No‘, produced by Tore Johannson, and recorded over four months in Malmö, Sweden.
There are few bands out there that can boast using treadmills in their videos, but OK Go will forever be known for ‘Here It Goes Again‘ and their choreographed dance routines.
Bassist Tim Nordwind took from time out from his lunch to have a chat with Dee Massey about the new record, Fabreeze and how he keeps sane on the road, before heading off to soundcheck for their sold out Koko show.
So Tim – welcome to the UK! How long have you guys been over here?
We just got in yesterday!
And you’re looking forward to the show tonight?
Yes, definitely – it’s all sold out and we’re playing with a band called Quit Your Day Job from Sweden who we took on tour in the states, they’re fantastic, so I’m looking forward to watching them.
Talking of Sweden..you guys chose to record your album ‘Oh No‘ in Malmö, Sweden, with Tore Johannson. What was behind your decision to go with Tore, we know him from his work with The Cardigans and Franz Ferdinand – what made you choose him to produce?
Those are actually two big reasons why we decided to go with him. We’re big fans of the way those records sound, and we like the fact that both those records actually sound like those bands. In America a lot of producers have their formula and they run you right through the machine, and it doesn’t matter what you sound like, you just end up sounding like you got produced by that certain person.
Do you think that the use of protools and over use of auto tuning is a bad thing in the studio then?
It really depends on how you use it I guess. It’s becomes such an industry standard as far as I’m concerned, we use it like tape now, and it’s obviously a lot cheaper than tape. And we have used protools, when we used it early on I think it actually did not help because we were so obsessed with fixing everything, and one good thing about Tore was that he really encouraged us to make good mistakes and keep those mistakes on the recording.
If the song sped up a little bit he told us that was ok, when there are a lot of people who make you play to click and if you’re off even a little bit they make you do it again. Tore basically just threw us in a room and said get on with it.
Do you think that recording away from America gave you more artistic control then? Being away from the label and everything?
Definitely – we wanted to get away from all meddling hands [laughs] because unfortunately on our first album there were a lot of people coming in and giving their two cents and I think it kind of hurt the record in the end, so it was important to us to go somewhere where it was just us and people that we trusted, and I think we made a considerably better record second time round.
Who were your main influences when you recorded the album, what bands were you listening to?
Mainly The Pixies, T Rex, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Cure [laughs].
And now you’re touring for the album – which was actually released over a year ago. How does it feel to have an album that’s suddenly kicked off a year after it’s initial release?
It’s feels crazy! We’ve been touring on this record for almost two years now, we started touring on it seven months before it came out in the states, and it came out over a year ago over there, and it really has only just picked up steam in the last four or five months – mostly due to the success of the videos.
Which leads me nicely onto that subject! Sorry – you’ll have been asked about the infamous videos so many times now- but who was the brains behind ‘A Million Ways‘ and ‘Here It Goes Again‘?
No no, it’s fine! ‘A Million Ways‘ was a collaborative effort between the band and Damien’s sister Trish, and the treadmill video idea was actually Trish’s, she’s got a pretty brilliant mind.
You recreated ‘Here It Goes Again‘ for the VMA’s – you must’ve been so nervous!
It was pretty scarey! [laughs] It was scarey and exciting all at the same time obviously. We had a week’s worth of rehearsals and basically we did militaristic type training. Once we remembered the moves we could do them, it became more about things that could possibly distract us.
So come on…just how many times did you fall off the treadmills?
Oh man…too many times to count![laughs]
And how come you’re always the one lip synching along? Everyone thinks you’re Damien!
I guess I have that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ when it comes to lip synching [laughs]
Multi-talented!
For sure!
Now you guys have got a long tour coming up, are you happy to be back on the road again, or would you like to be in the studio?
Right now I’d prefer to be in the studio. I think it’s a little bit of the grass is always greener syndrome. But also we’ve been touring for so long on one record …….I love performing, we love performing and all that but it’s really making things that makes me happiest and we haven’t’ really been able to make too much lately. Although we did just make a new video for ‘Do What You Want.’.
I’ll look forward to checking that out . So since you’re out on the road so much, how do you keep yourself sane on the tour bus?
[laughs]Listen to a lot of music, try to write music when we can although it’s very hard for us to write on the road, our cells phones – talking to friends, trying to feel connected to some sort of life.[laughs]
What three things would you never leave for tour without?
I would never leave my ipod, I would never leave my cell phone, I would never leave my Febreeze! It gets pretty rank [on the bus] pretty quick.
So as well as smelling good, you guys always dress very smartly on stage now – what’s the idea behind that?
It’s a bit more theatrical and showman like I think? On top of it all, it’s just more fun to dress like that rather that jeans and a t shirt.
If you could tour with any bands, which band would it be?
The Pixies.
What’s been your most memorable experience with the band so far?
That’s a good question…not this past New Year’s Eve, but the one before that, we performed on top of a building in Time Square, New York, for about a million and a half people. Our heads were on these huge screens and stuff. Pretty crazy..you know when your head spans 45 storeys of one building, then you know you’ve arrived! [laughs]
And apart from being able to lip synch and perform on a treadmill at the same time, what’s your most unusual talent?
I can sleep through almost anything.
You’re very lucky.
Yeah, it’s a talent!
What’s your best hangover cure?
Oooh man…a hamburger. Something greasy!
What’s your most random item that you request on your rider?
Socks. We have socks.
Very hygienic!
Yeah, like I said…it really does get pretty rank pretty quick [laughs]
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An actor. I guess I came close to that [being in the band]
And if you weren’t on tour right now, what would you be doing back in Chicago?
Maybe going for a hike?
Do you miss home much when you’re on tour?
Yes, I miss it terribly [laughs]
So after the tour you’ll get home, and then when are you back in the studio?
Hard to say, I think we’ll hopefully be back in there by the fall.
What can we expect for the next album?
I think it’ll be a little bit more soulful, possibly more minimalist and a bit groovier! [laughs]
And finally, any last words of wisdom for our Crossfire readers or aspiring musicians?
Remember not to suck!
I’ll get you get back to your sandwich now – thanks Tim!
Thanks Dee, take care.
For further information on the wonder that is OK Go – check out www.okgo.net
Hip hop superproducer-cum-multi-instrumentalist song writer, RJD2 is a name that many people are familiar with. Whether its from his amazing work on his solo albums Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke or as the beat maker in Soul Position or perhaps even from his music being played on skate videos and TV adverts, everyone can appreciate just how good at his trade he is.
With his new album, he took a different approach and when he came to London, Abjekt was on hand to speak to one of his heroes and find out more.
Ok, so I guess we could start with your earlyish career, in Columbus, with MHz?
RJ: Yeah. I was kinda DJing around and doing my own thing and then and I sorta fell in with those dudes.
And how was it as an entry to hip hop? Like you were saying you were DJing before, but was it good to get into a crew like that so you could work off each other?
RJ: In hindsight, it was one of the most valuable things. At the time, this is gonna sound funny, but at the time I was DJing and they were this group that hadn’t really put out a record, but because of the way that the scene was, they kinda had some notoriety. But I had won this DJ battle, it was this real small fry thing, Columbus is obviously super small fry, not a big deal type of thing, so within that little thing, you don’t have to do a whole lot to get yourself to a point where people know who you are.
So by then I had done a couple of mixtapes and was in the battle scene so, I don’t wanna say it was a step down to get with those guys but it wasn’t like “Oh shit, I hit the big time”. I’d hesitate to say it was a side project but it was like this is something cool that’s out of my element, because I was so just in the record nerd world and they were a rap group. They were kind of at the opposite end, culturally speaking. There’s like, I don’t want to say differences but they’re on the opposite end of the spectrum, something I didn’t have a lot of experience with.
And the reason it was so beneficial in hindsight was that there are perspectives to hip hop and making rap music that you are just not going to have until you are in the studio with a rapper. And that’s just the bottom line. My concept was an outsider’s perspective, “this is what a rap record should sound like, this is what you guys should have been doing, this is what you’re doing wrong, this is what you’re doing right”, that kinda thing. And when you get in there and you start taking it apart and get into the nuts and bolts, so much other shit that you just don’t realise, is there, stuff that you just don’t know about until you do it, so that was a really beneficial learning experience.
And so, as it wasn’t your major thing, going off to do your solo stuff again was easy right?
RJ: Yeah, by then I had sunk a lot of time into the MegaHertz thing so in this kind of ass-backwards way from say 98 to 2000 or 2001, those few years, I was more focussed on rap music, that was what I rang with – the MHz stuff and the Copywrite single on Rawkus so by the time it came to do a solo record, my foray into making public music and releasing things to the public, was rap music. So then doing this instrumental shit was like another turn of events if you will. A change of format.
And you said it was quite small, but was the scene for hip hop good in Columbus? Because Ohio as a state has Scribble Jam, which I went to last year and its dope to see a big event like that, and obviously there’s people like Blueprint, Greenhouse Effect, people like that, so is it a cool scene to be in?
RJ: Yeah it’s a great scene, Ohio has a lot of great elements. One of the good things to me was that it was behind where New York was, as far as progression goes. Experiencing the hip hop scene in Ohio in 96-2000 was probably akin to experiencing New York’s rap scene from 92-96 almost. You know? So yeah it was really good and being in that culture and climate where there was still a critical eye. I mean, speaking frankly, it was a black scene. And at the same time, it was also a very critical where there was a very, very realistic possibility of you getting booed off the stage, getting heckled, of people clowning you and throwing shit at you. Because making records hadn’t really taken off yet, it was still all centred around battling and that live element.
Do you have good memories of that release? Was that the first major thing that you can look back on and be super happy about?
RJ: Definitely, I think that’s an accurate assessment. It was the first record that I did that, like the quote on the record, it’s the first time I had a chance to do just what I wanted, not have to listen to anyone else, just do whatever the hell I want. Yeah, I definitely look back on that record fondly.
And you got some people from beforehand to appear on it as well
RJ: Yeah, Blueprint, Copywrite, Jakki.
And what was it like being on that label at the time with Aesop Rock, El-P, Can Ox were all putting out major albums in the underground, Def Jux was the pinnacle at the time I think.
RJ: It was an exciting thing because we all felt like we were not coming at things the exact same way. I hesitate to say this but I think its very possible that I got more of an acceptance out of that than anyone else because I felt like what I was doing was innately a little more leftfield.
I mean, it was all very cutting edge and the bottom line was we all felt like we respected each other and it was cool being part of that thing. You know, Lif’s records didn’t sound like Can Ox’s records and my records didn’t sound like Can Ox. We had this mutual respect of what we were doing and acknowledging that it was different and it was a great time. It really felt like we could all just keep expanding.
And again on Def Jux came Since We Last Spoke and it moved slightly away from, I don’t want to put you in a bracket, but the more definitive hip hop sound and in the reviews I read of it, a lot of people were talking about the song writing rather than it being hip hop, or the beats. It was “this is an album that showcases your ability to song write”. Did you do that consciously, or was that just how things came out?
RJ: Yeah it just kinda came out really. It was an approach that I tried to take with Deadringer, but with that first record it was all done via instrumentation. I feel like the attention to song structure and detail and keeping things moving and changes and all that arrangement work, a lot of work was put into that in the first record. I feel with the second record, I think I took it a little bit farther, started using live instruments and with the singing, I feel like it really draws people’s attention.
Being from a musician’s standpoint, its something that’s hard to understand, but I recognise now that just having vocals on something makes people’s ears hear it a lot more in that songwriter vein.
And last year you were still doing hip hop production for other people; you had Magnificent City with Aceyalone, the new Soul Position and you’ve got a beat on the new Pigeon John album as well. Do you enjoy making beats for rappers, separately from your own solo stuff?
RJ: Yeah I do. They’re different disciplines and the kind of thing that I when I’m in the mood for it, and when I’m motivated to do it, it’s really, really fun. And I go through cycles. This is the reason I do my solo thing and then go off. There’s a certain level of boxing in that it involves that after being all footloose and fancy free, that’s refreshing. But after I do it for too long, it starts to feel kinda claustrophobic.
And that’s not anything against those guys. That’s just something in my experience that is something to do with my personal experience of when I’m making rap records. So with that said, I like it but now with this record, its like lowering your expectations in a way, and I don’t want to do that, I like having higher expectations of myself. So yeah, I like making rap music but doing the solo thing, there’s a whole different level of satisfaction and demand involved in it.
And I read, I don’t know if this is true, that the beat you did for Pigeon John with J-Live on the song, was done over the internet, is that true?
RJ: Well, through the mail.
How was that?
RJ: It’s common. I’m not going to lie to you, that’s the way people do music now. It’s rare for people to get in the studio. Like me and Al [Shepard aka Blueprint] when we did the Soul Position record, he came out to Philly and we sat down and we recorded. And that’s where songs like I Need My Minutes came from was just us physically being in a room, putting on a beat and just dancing around acting stupid and being an idiot, and a joke that came about in the studio ended up becoming a song. But that’s not common. A lot of rap records that I’ve done in the past have been done through the mail.
So, moving onto the new record then, The Third Hand, you said for Since We Last Spoke you brought in more live instrumentation, did you do a hell of a lot more for this one?
RJ: This one’s all live instrumentation, the only thing that’s done using samples is the drums.
Why did you decide on that? Was it just something you enjoyed listening to, or wanted to make purposefully?
RJ: In my experience, there are times in life when all arrows are pointing in a particular direction and if you ignore those things, you’re either really stubborn or determined and sometimes foolish. That’s what happened basically, all arrows were pointing to “you need to get away from using samples”. It got to the point where using a sample was so much more labour intensive and when you get to dissecting samples smaller and smaller and smaller, the downside is that you start to lose what to me was the appeal of the sample in the first place which is the natural ambience of the recording.
Everything that went into the engineering of the original record and you start taking those things apart and piecing them out, you can still do it but it gets harder and harder. That’s why loops sound so great! That’s why Ghostface records sound so great because its just a loop and when you take a loop, you get all of that ambience and energy and whatever went into that original recording.
So from that point of view it didn’t make sense and from a legal standpoint, it was just a pain in the ass, and I wanted to get to a point where I’d look for things on records, like I’d say “I need a clavinet sound, I need 5 staves of clavinet, and then I need one or two or three nice sustained chords that are at least two bars”.
Well, does it really make sense for me to go out for a weekend at the flea market and buy 50 records and come home and spend 15 hours sifting through records so I can find this one thing that I already know exactly what I want or should I spend a grand and go out and buy a clavinet? Then start buying amps and mics and get to a point where that initial set up takes so much longer but then once you’re set up, if you want those staves, you set up a mic and you play it and boom.
Did you teach yourself any new instruments, or were you always quite musically adept?
RJ: I went to a music school so I always understood music theory, I haven’t always used it, but the chops thing was something I had to work on. I could understand what I wanted to do but, especially with the piano, I was never a good piano player, and so that was the big thing I had to spend a lot of time on. This meant playing every day and trying to get the chops down and sometimes I would have to punch in, and sometimes do two bars and then come back. But the more you do it, the better you get.
And I guess its more rewarding where you get yourself up to the point where you’ve had to do it for song long.
RJ: Completely! And now being able to sit down and play a song front to back on a piano, is something I couldn’t do three or four years ago. I physically could not do. So that’s cool.
And, along a similar line, the singing on the album. Did you always want to be able to sing on your own records?
RJ: Yeah, I worked more on the singing. I spent more time in terms of wood shedding and getting better at something, I spent more time on the singing than anything else in the last four to six years.
Was it scary? I mean, at first did you sing and then realise you sounded crap and think “Damn I’ve got to really work at this”?
RJ: Oh yeah! I still listen to stuff I’ve recorded and think I sounded crap. It’s a daily struggle for me. To this day I’m not where I want to be. Although now I’ll get to a point where I have performances I’m happy with. And the more you do it, the less work it is to get to those points. But it was also a necessity thing. I had an idea of what I wanted but it wasn’t specific enough that I could have told someone and say “hey, do this, this is the melody, sing this melody”.
I had to go through that process to figure out how I wanted the melodies to be phrased and voiced. And its just hard nowadays to find collaborators that you like, that can work on a record, that you can afford. Without a label, I’m just doing this shit myself, its just me. So that was another thing that came out of necessity.
And to me, I see vocals as just another instrument or tool or part of the record. The music isn’t all culminating with the vocal performance, its all just as important as the next part.
I read, on the internet as always…
[RJ laughs]
…that you listen to a lot of different types of music, like Daft Punk, the Zombies, when you listen to those, do you sit and take inspiration from them or do you just like to listen to them?
RJ: I think its natural, I don’t think anybody can listen to music they really love and not get inspired by it. Especially as a musician, or producer. A lot of times, the first thing that you fall in love with is the synth tones or this particular bass line or the way the drums sound or the way the drummer played. And when you look at things in nuts and bolts, that’s just natural. I don’t think I have the capacity to not be influenced by music that I really love.
And are you planning on touring this new album?
RJ: Yes! I’ve got a band together
I was going to say, you’re not going to be a one man band with cymbals on your knees and a big harmonica round your neck?
[RJ laughs]
RJ: …No, I’ve got a band.
I’ve seen a lot of hip hop acts are coming in to getting live bands to tour with them now, like Atmosphere and a couple of UK acts I saw with a live band and it really gives something more, rather than you just playing from a couple of decks and just playing out records. Is this another thing you really wanted, to have this big sound on stage with live instruments?
RJ: With the show, I feel like having this band is in a way a culmination of this little perverse desire that I’ve had in the back of my head. Because from the beginning of doing production, part of what I wanted to accomplish when using a sampler was to trick people into thinking it wasn’t a sampler. I’m not saying I’ve accomplished that, but that was a little side note to what I’ve been doing from day one with my solo records.
We will be using electronics at points and I going to do a part of the show just with turntables by myself, but having the band and not playing to a sequence track and not using a drum machine, its going to be strictly 100% analogue music, acoustic and electric instruments. I’m so thrilled, I can’t wait!
What instrument are you going to be playing?
RJ: I’ll be playing keys, bass and guitar and singing. And we’re all going to be trading. It’s a four piece band and, aside from the drummer, are, like myself, multi-instrumentalists, though they’re a lot more talented than me. They’re very good players, and they sing. So we’re all going to work it out like whatever needs to be done, needs to be done.
It must be exciting then to be able to do this!
RJ: We haven’t had our first rehearsal yet, I’ve taken all the parts and sent them to people, sort of “here are the songs, learn these songs”. But the week that I get home to this trip, I go and have my first rehearsal.
And it’ll be the first time that you’ve worked with any of the band.
RJ: Yeah, it’ll be the first time I’ve played music like that in over ten years! I think maybe thirteen or fourteen years since I last got into a room and made music with people like that.
Well I’m sure its going to be interesting.
RJ: I think it’s gonna be good.
Are you going to come over to the UK with it, do you know?
RJ: I’m hoping so. We have a tour that we’re putting together right now, and knock on wood, assuming that I can make the finances work, then definitely. If I come over here without the band, I’m not even going to be playing the new songs, because there’s no point. And at this point, I think that I’d rather not make a fucking dime on the tour and just break even, and come with the band than to come over here by myself just to make money off of the tour.
And it’d be a bit of an anti-climax as well after you’ve played with the band.
RJ: Yeah, what’s the point? So yeah, I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m 90% sure right now that this year I’ll be over at some point.
Unless you’ve been living under a rather hefty rock for the past year and a half, you’ll need no introduction to Virginia’s latest high quality metallic export.
I saw that in both London and Oxford you managed to get Wolf beer bonging during your set. Have you managed to get The Haunted involved yet?
Are there any bands in particular that people should look out for?
It worked really well because it meant that as soon as we got into the studio we knew exactly what we had to do. We got 3 weeks to record the whole thing and did it in 2, so I’d say it worked pretty well for us.
Originally formed from the ashes of At The Drive-In, 
When ‘Wiretap Scars‘ came out, it received a lot of critical comparisons to At The Drive-In’s work: does that still happen, and if so, does it annoy you?
Bonde Do Role are the hottest new act to come out of Brazil. Whilst everyone is swooning over the girls in CSS, Bonde are more concerned with just bringing the party to your town.
No changes at all! We only had more responsibilities, like replying to interviews! [Lots of laughs!]
Radioclit recently remixed Gasolina, what did you think of that remix? Is it fun to hear other people mix your songs up and put their own spin on it? Is remixing something you guys like to do also?
Brighton-based quintet The Ghost Of A Thousand have recently unleashed a stunner of a debut album in ‘This Is Where The Fight Begins’; a volatile mix of hardcore, rock n’ roll and unbridled punk rock fury that will hit you like a sledgehammer to the senses.
So have you toured a lot since you formed?
Andy: And zombies!
Where did the hardcore scene that was built on punk rock in the late 80’s go?
If there’s one name on everyone’s lips at the moment, it’s that of super producer 
…and DJing is the next step where you got to meet these guys right?
Let’s move onto your first record, Here Comes The Fuzz. Was it a big challenge to go from DJing to producing? Or was it a natural progression.
So what about Elektra Records? That label died soon after your record came out. Did you concentrate on other people’s records or were you trying to get yourself a new deal at the time?
The songs are all amazing songs, stuff that I’ve listened from The Smiths’ Stop Me is a song I’ve listened to probably about 10,000 times in my life, to a song like the Kaiser’s Oh My God which is a modern classic.
Cool. So other than doing this record, you own and run a record label, 
Other than that we’ve got 
So what new records are coming up with Mark Ronson production on them? What can we be expecting to hear in the future?
That sounds good, I look forward to hearing that, he’s a UK hip hop prospect without a doubt. So thanks for coming in Mark, its been a pleasure talking to you and finding out what you’re up to. Good luck with the album Version.
Drive Thru Records probably lost more than they’ll care to admit when 
Has anything surprised you this time round?
You know the heavy parts will be heavier and the cleaner parts will be cleaner. At the end of the day it’s either going to sound like your band or not. For this record, we tried to do everything that was in our minds, but we also had to make sure that we didn’t go too far.
Scottish metal quintet Mendeed have recently unleashed a monster of a record in their second album ‘The Dead Live By Love‘ – an intoxicating blast of thunderous riffs, machine-gun drumming and powerful vocals that should find favour with any self-respecting metal fan.
You currently have nearly 13,000 friends on your Myspace page – has that been a big help to you?
Matthew Davies, (singer of Funeral for a Friend) caused quite a stir last year by introducing his new side project, The Secret Show.
It’s certainly paid off, the album is sounding great!
Definitely. I think fans on the last tour were a bit bemused by the change maybe? Do you think that next time round maybe they’ll feel the vibe themselves and get their bodies moving a bit more?
Ok Go first came to our attention in 2002 with their self titled debut album, and their ballsy, power pop single ‘Get Over It‘.
Who were your main influences when you recorded the album, what bands were you listening to?
What’s been your most memorable experience with the band so far?
What can we expect for the next album?
Hip hop superproducer-cum-multi-instrumentalist song writer, RJD2 is a name that many people are familiar with. Whether its from his amazing work on his solo albums Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke or as the beat maker in Soul Position or perhaps even from his music being played on skate videos and TV adverts, everyone can appreciate just how good at his trade he is.
And what was it like being on that label at the time with Aesop Rock, El-P, Can Ox were all putting out major albums in the underground, Def Jux was the pinnacle at the time I think.
What instrument are you going to be playing?