AU66: Devo feature

I’ve been meaning to post this up for a while – a feature that appeared in AU during the summer to coincide with Something For Everybody, Devo’s first album since 1990. It’s one of my favourite interviews, first of all because the idea of me speaking to someone of the status of Devo’s Jerry Casale still seems pretty bloody unlikely, but also because it was such a fun conversation.

It was a bit of a saga getting the interview organised – as is so often the case with big major label artists – so that was cause for apprehension in itself. Then there are the natural nerves of speaking to someone not far off ‘hero’ status in my book. And what would be be like? He is a man in his 60s after all – would be be a curmudgeon? Go through the motions? Deem my questions below him? Maybe he would be as completely nutso as his band’s persona. Or such an intellectual that I would struggle to converse on a similar level.

You see where I’m going with this. In fact, he was charming, self-deprecating and extremely affable. Most interesting, though, was the extent to which Devo’s off-the-wall schemes are the product of carefully planned marketing campaigns. I had supposed – naively, perhaps – that their ‘Devo Song Study’ was the band’s idea, perhaps a wry parody of audience-inclusive TV like American Idol and X Factor, where everyone who wants a say gets one. Casale was quite happy to set the record straight on that one…

James Murphy interview (October 2007)

The main reason this blog has been so quiet of late is that I’ve been pretty heavily consumed with work for AU. The new issue of the mag (the second this year) goes to print on Wednesday and it’s been hectic times with an office move and the fact that I didn’t start full-time until last Monday, leaving Jonny and Kim with a lot of slack to pick up on their own.

However, we’ve pretty much got there and it’ll feel great to get the mag out (hopefully at the weekend) and get cracking on the next one – the first I’ll be working on full-time. Yowza.

As a wee preview of the next issue, then (nudge nudge, wink wink), here’s an old interview with James Murphy that I did in the autumn of 2007. I’ve been a massive LCD fan since I heard Losing My Edge and Beat Connection back in about 2002, so it was pretty exciting to get the chance to speak to him, and he didn’t disappoint. Affable and chatty to a fault. Total man-crush material.

AU62: Snow Patrol cover feature

Bit of a delay on this one…

The feature ran as the cover for the last AU of 2009. It was a great chance to speak to Gary Lightbody, especially as the quality of his music seems to be in inverse correlation with the success of his band. Not that I quite told him that. But the most striking thing I took away from the conversation was his resolute belief that the band is on a steadily upward curve. As I hopefully make clear in the piece, I don’t believe that for a second…

AU61: Oppenheimer In The Studio piece

Here’s a curio for you. This article was published in November, a month before Rocky and Shaun announced that they were splitting up . So although the interview is all about their upcoming third album, that record will not now see the light of day. And they sounded so optimistic and all… Oh well. Apparently they are going to release an EP culled from these sessions, so we can look forward to that. And wish them all the best for the future.

IN THE STUDIO

OPPENHEIMER

WHAT: Third album
TITLE: TBC (potential titles, Nightmare On Ice, All In With The Kicks)
PRODUCER: Self-produced
STUDIO: Start Together, Belfast
TRACK TITLES: ‘One Day Your Life Will Flash Before Your Eyes – Make Sure It’s Worth Watching’, ‘Let’s Get The Hell Out Of Texas’
COLLABORATORS: Tim Wheeler, Hornby, Tom McShane, string arranger Van Dyke Parks (TBC)
RELEASE DATE: Spring/Summer 2010
LABEL: TBC

Big changes on planet Oppenheimer. Since the release of 2008’s Take The Whole Mid-Range And Boost It, Rocky O’Reilly’s (and friends) Start Together Studios have gone from strength to strength, while partner in pop Shaun Robinson has got married and decamped to New York. We dropped in on them when Shaun was last in town to get the skinny on album number three.

How’s recording been going so far?
R: We’re both living very far apart at the moment, and we’ve been recording songs by ourselves and sending them to the other person. It’s the first time we’ve been so isolated. It was initially a problem and really weird, but it’s turned into something really cool because we’re developing the ideas in a different way. [Shaun]’s not restricted by me being the engineer and sound-finder – I’m writing lyrics and trying vocals, which is terrifying.
S: One things that’s changed for me is that I’ll play a song for three days until I’ve got it totally live, one take, so it’s a real human being. We play it straight and rely on machines to record it, but rely less on machines to, erm, polish that turd.

What’s this album about, for you?
R: I want this to be about the stuff we’ve been listening to and the bands we’ve been touring with. I want it to be about people, and for that human angle to connect with people. We both got to see The Bronx play in New York this year and that was just life-changing, because there were 800 people tearing down the walls of this building and it was rough as anything, but amazing. We toured with The Presidents of the USA, who believe that if you can’t play it in one take, you shouldn’t be writing it. It’s not quite that extreme because we can’t play anything in one take but, you know, it’s definitely taught me about different ways of writing and recording.

How are the songs sounding?
S: Well, Rocky’s rapping, which I think is a brand new thing.
R: A terrifying new thing.
S: Writing songs, this time round I had a piano in front of me rather than an acoustic guitar. So I’ve written some Pink Floyd-esque monstrosities – there’s one song that’s nearly eight minutes long, which is a complete departure.
R: The way Shaun’s been writing, and the way that I’ve been writing as well, it’s much more structured around the song than about the process or the production.
S: Plus, changing the rules or having a blast at doing things. One album that I’ve been quoting is Midnite Vultures by Beck. [On] over half of the tracks on that album, there comes a point where it just turns into a completely different song, and it never goes back to the way it was before. It just goes… zhoink! It’s something that I’ve thought about. You’ve got to be playful sometimes.

Do you think people will be surprised when they hear it?
R: I think it’s one of those things where they’re still going to hear Oppenheimer in it because it’s still us, but for people who’ve written us off as an electro, synth-pop duo, deliriously happy – those days are gone. We’re not happy any more.

Are you collaborating with anyone on this album?
R: There is going to be, hopefully – budget allowing, a collaboration with a string-arranger who has come forward and wants to work on the album. We just need to find the cash to make it happen. That’s going to take us in a completely different direction, and in a way that we never thought possible.

I take it you’re not naming names?
S: His name’s Van Dyke Parks. He did the instrumentation for Smile by Brian Wilson.
R: The Bear Necessities for The Jungle Book, U2, Silverchair. It’s remarkable. And he just contacted us saying that he really, really liked us and let’s find a way to make this happen. So possibly, at some point, we’re going to be in LA watching an orchestra playing Oppenheimer songs, which is incredible.

AU61: Why? interview

This one’s tinged with sadness, because Why?’s latest album was my single biggest disappointment of 2009 (review here). Maybe in time I will come to embrace it, but after the glorious Alopecia, Eskimo Snow was an almighty let-down. Nevertheless, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to speak to Yoni Wolf myself and ask him about it. Of course, i didn’t tell him how gutted I was about his new album, but it was interesting to get his perspective on how different it is from Alopecia, and why that is. Incidentally, the interview was conducted over two days – he had to break off first time round because he was about to have a big slap-up lunch with his brother’s family. And the next day, he seemed to be eating while talking to me. Sound enough to chat to though, despite that.

COUNTRY SAD BALLAD MAN

YONI WOLF ON THE WHY? RECORD NOBODY SAW COMING

Little more than a year after releasing one of last year’s summer-defining – and best – records in Alopecia, indie-rock wordsmiths Why? are back with a radically different follow-up. Eskimo Snow and its predecessor were written and recorded in the same sessions in early 2007, but sonically they are poles apart. Where Apolecia was a wry, witty concoction of indie-pop and languid hip-hop, Eskimo Snow is as dark and – at times – bleak as its title, an album that sees mainman Yoni Wolf recast as a country troubadour, obsessed with sex and death.

“It is different,” he affirms from his brother (and drummer) Josiah’s house in rural Ohio. “It’s kind of a small, consistent, melancholy type of record. If Alopecia is kind of large in scope and out in the world and erratic, I would say that Eskimo Snow is a bit more consistent and internal.”

That manifests itself in a brief and sombre set of songs – “pretty mortality-based” as Wolf admits. The gorgeous, fragile title track closes the album with a lyric that is typically opaque but full of arresting imagery. According to Yoni, it made sense as the album title – the song that “really represents the album”.

“Eskimos have a million words for snow,” he explains. “They live so close to it, it’s so much a part of their lives that they see it as if through a microscope – very clearly and in all its intricacies. So [the line] “all my words for sadness, like Eskimo snow”. I just feel like that word ‘sad’ is such a vague, basic word. Any of the words for emotion, like happy or sad. I feel like what I do is take those kinds of words and figure out the long answers – the things that can’t be explained in one word.”

The songwriter’s background is in underground hip-hop act cLOUDDEAD and as part of the Anticon. collective, but rather than the dextrous rapping that has marked out so much of his previous work – including Alopecia – Eskimo Snow often sees his voice reduced to a resigned croak, albeit one that has a lot of startingly vivid things to say. But then lyrical ingenuity is nothing new on Why? records. The lack of any remnants of hip-hop is. Not that Wolf wants to engage with that.

“Throughout my career, I’ve run into people always wanting to categorise me,” he says a touch frustratedly, “and I just don’t think in those terms too much. I listen to a lot of quote-unquote rap music, yeah. I say rap more than hip-hop. When I grew up, hip-hop was the culture and rap music is just that someone is rapping. Whatever, I don’t have a problem with all that stuff.”

It’s something that has and will continue to come up a lot when this album gets discussed, because it sounds so very different. Is that something Yoni is conscious of or worried about? “I’m not worried about it,” he says bluntly. “I’m conscious of the fact it doesn’t sound like rap at all. Alopecia sounds like rap music, or half of it, and this doesn’t. Who cares, you know? It’s a record – listen to it for its own sake.”

Remember, though, that this is just one record pulled from those bewilderingly diverse sessions in 2007. Next time round, Yoni hints, things could be very different again. “I’ve been writing some rap-type stuff, I would say – rhythmic and hyper-rhyming, and I imagine the next record will be kind of like that.”

ESKIMO SNOW IS OUT NOW ON TOMLAB

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/WHYANTICON

AU61: Crimea X Incoming piece

Crimea X are an Italian duo who first came to my attention via their Phoros EP, which I reviewed last year. They recently released a follow up, and I was able to do a short email interview and write this piece about the band. Check them out if you have any interest in cosmic disco.

CRIMEA X

MEMBERS: DJ Rocca (programming, keys, flute), Jukka Reverberi (bass, keys, vocals).
FORMATION: Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2009.
FOR FANS OF: Holy Ghost!, Prins Thomas, Lindstrøm.
CHECK OUT: Chorne More EP, out December 6 on Hell Yeah. Phoros EP out now.
WEBSITE: www.myspace.com/crimeax

Disco speaks of nothing so much as hedonism, a genre built for dancefloor escapism and largely unencumbered by intellectualism and politics. Not so with Italian duo Crimea X, two men driven by a fixation on Soviet Russia. “We were raised up in leftist families where it was quite usual to look in the eastern direction, [and] Jukka comes from a village where they still have a Lenin statue in the main square,” explains Luca (aka DJ Rocca), and indeed each song on new EP Chorne More (‘Black Sea’ in Russian) is named after a figure from those eastward-looking childhoods – Jurij Andropov was the head of the KGB in the Seventies and Eighties, while Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova were prominent avant-garde artists in the 1910s and 1920s, before the anti-intellectual Kremlin banned abstract art.

The pair describe their music succinctly as “socialist krautdisco” and, musically as well as politically, there is a lot going on, especially in the pair’s debut EP Phoros, which provided one of the tunes of the summer in the sublime ‘10pm’. Luca and Jukka used the three-tracker (plus remixes) to explore the synthesised textures of Krautrock bands like Tangerine Dream, Neu! and Harmonia, skilfully blending them with the arms-in-the-air, spaced-out euphoria of cosmic disco. “Daniele Baldelli’s lesson is a clear influence,” says Luca of the DJ credited with inventing the genre at the Cosmic club on the shore of Lake Garda. “The way he mixed genres in his old tapes or live sets is truly inspiring. We love also the German cosmic adventure made by the cosmic groups from the Seventies and Eighties. They demonstrate that it is possible to have a national musical scene outside USA and UK.”

Chorne More is significantly different from Phoros, evidence that the fledgling act have much more to offer. It’s poppier and more direct, as the glitterball leftists raise the tempo, brighten the tone and, on lead track ‘Jurij’, incorporate a hooky vocal line from Reverberi. Luca puts the change down to the pair’s divergent backgrounds – he as a prominent DJ and Jukka as a member of post-rockers Giardini di Mirò – and indicates that the band themselves don’t even know what their debut album might sound like. “Balkan folk? Nope. We don’t know. We are working on it. We’ve got tons of material, but a full-length is not only a collection of different songs but it is a journey in a musical world. So we need some more time to work on it and think about it, but we honestly [think it will] be ready in the first half of 2010.”

Meanwhile, look out for live shows – nothing in Ireland as yet, but the two Italians have played in London, and they are keen to stress the musical aspect of what they do. “We are both musicians!” says DJ Rocca. “So along with programming we play live bass, flute and some synthesisers. In the future, we’d like to have a more live experience with our marvellous vintage synth collection and a real drummer to perform with us.” The hammer and sickle, we suppose, are optional.

AU60: Fuck Buttons feature

This was for a double-page feature in the mag. Andrew Hung was pleasant enough to talk to, but not the most garrulous of interviewees. I think it shows to an extent in the piece, but I hope it was successful anyway.

Back for another assault on our ears with a towering second album, erstwhile noise duo Fuck Buttons tell AU about working with Andrew Weatherall, ignoring the hate and the love, and why making music is nothing more than child’s play.

AU60: Strait Laces In The Studio piece

Lovely lads, these. Their debut single ‘Seconds Out’ is out now by the way on Bruised Fruit – check the latest issue of AU (Air on the cover) for my review of that.

IN THE STUDIO

STRAIT LACES

WHAT: TBC, possible EP
TITLE: TBC
ENGINEER: Joe Fields
STUDIO: Roundhouse Studios, London
TRACK TITLES: ‘Away To Escape’, ‘Kissing In The Reichstag’, ‘Where The Wolf Roam’, ‘Your Fearful Admirer’.
RELEASE DATE: Early 2010
LABEL: Bruised Fruit Records

At the start of September, fast-rising indie-rockers Strait Laces took their trusty Citroen Picasso off to England and played a couple of gigs in London. However, that was just the cherry on top – the main reason for the trip was that they won a free day’s recording at Roundhouse Studios in Camden, courtesy of EMI Records and presided over by an engineer who has worked with Paul McCartney, Cat Stevens and Placebo. On their return, David and Jonny from the band called in to the AU office to tell us about their fruitful day.

How did the session come about?

Jonny Creelman (bass) – Our manager, Jen [McCullough] from Bruised Fruit Promotions, entered us in a competition online and kind of forgot about it. One day Dave got a call from her and she explained that we’d won this competition for a day’s recording in Roundhouse Studios in Camden. It was a big surprise – doubly surprising because we didn’t even know we were in the competition!

David Hanna (vocals, guitar) – Demos were sent in and they picked 30 bands, so each band got a day in the studio.

Had you been planning to go into the studio before this opportunity came up?

David – From the start of July, we said that we’d take six weeks off to write and record demos and not play gigs – just to practise as much as we could. And we’d done that – it was only mid-August when we found out about this competition. We didn’t really plan on recording, but we were probably the most ready for recording that we’ve been as a band.

Were you able to do much in a day?

David – We decided to record all the instruments live and do the vocals afterwards. We went in and got four songs done – brand new ones that we didn’t even plan on recording – with vocals as well. We had an hour left at the end so we set up a video camera and recorded an older song live, so we’re going to sync the music to the video. We ran out of new stuff to record!

What are you planning to do with the songs you recorded over there?

David – There’s a few ideas floating around. We’re releasing a single on the second of November. We recorded it a year ago and we’re waiting for the right time to release it. The launch date is the Friday before [October 30] with The Cities We Captured. Then we started looking at releasing an EP in January/February. If we got back into the studio again, we’d have quite a lot of songs done, so it’s deciding whether to call it a four-track EP or put six or seven songs in. We’re not fully sure yet.

How was your time in London overall?

Jonny – We saw Amy Winehouse! She just walked past, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a lookalike. But the studio, it was such a good experience. The sound was amazing. It was so good. I can’t believe the quality we got from a live recording. I said to the engineer, ‘Would there be any advantage in us doing single tracks, because I can’t imagine it sounding better than this?’. It was above and beyond what I expected the day to be – getting five tracks done at that sort of quality, I was well chuffed.

RECORDING IN PROGRESS

They are bona fide rock legends and after spending the last couple of years touring all over the world to great effect, the mighty Devo are still working on a new album, which would be the first since 1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps. Indicating recently that they are interested in working with modern artists like Outkast, LCD Soundystem and Justice, frontman Mark Mothersbaugh told Rolling Stone, “”The new challenges… are interesting to us. With the business turned upside down like it’s been in the last couple years, we’re looking for ways to use new technology that wasn’t around when we did this the first time.” The album, working title Fresh, is expected some time next year.

Phil Selway is set to become the third member of Radiohead to release a solo album, following in the footsteps of Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke. The drummer has yet to confirm a name, release date or release method for the album, but we do know two things – he sings on it, and celebrated guests include Wilco members Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone and solo artist Lisa Germano.

He’s only just released The Blueprint 3 – to huge sales but a lukewarm critical reception – but Jay-Z has already announced that he’s working on his next album, and he vows that it won’t hit the same commercial heights. Which seems unlikely, to be honest. Speaking to MTV.com, the Jigga man said, “My next album, which I’m working on now, is not gonna be a Number One album. That’s where I’m at right now. I wanna make the most experimental album I ever made.” Could go either way, really.

AU59: Heliopause In The Studio piece

The Heliopause lads (and producer Ben McAuley) let me and photographer Rik ‘Panic Dots‘ Crothers in to talk to them while they were working on their debut album, which is due out early next year. They’re easily one of the best bands in Belfast (even though frontman Rich has recently moved to Brighton) so hopefully it will do well for them.

(Pic nicked from sarahluv‘s Flickr account)

IN THE STUDIO

HELIOPAUSE

WHAT: Debut album
TITLE: TBC (tentatively, Don’t Let The Silence Go)
PRODUCER: Ben McAuley
STUDIO: Start Together, Belfast
TRACK TITLES: ‘Little Ashes’, ‘Safe From Me’, ‘City Of Glass’, ‘Dead Ends’, ‘Epilogue’
RELEASE DATE: January 2010
LABEL: Furious Tradesmen Records

Following an acclaimed EP in Dark Matter and the recent single ‘Moment Of Recognition’, Belfast trio Heliopause have become the latest Northern Irish band to record a long-awaited debut album at Start Together Studios. AU went down to have a nosey at what they were up to.

Why did you decide to record the album in Start Together with Ben McAuley?
Richard Davis (vocals, acoustic guitar): We’ve recorded with him twice [before] now and I personally have noticed, the third time round, that why we choose him is because we know him, he knows us, he knows our music and he’s into it, which really helps. He’s like an honorary member for the time we’re with him. He’s really good for making decisions and suggestions, or just telling us that it’s pure bullshit. It’s really good guidance. And not only that, [it’s] the level of comfort that I feel when I come in here

How many new songs will be on the album?
Richard: Most of them will be new songs, I think. ‘Moment Of Recognition’, the single, will be on it – it and [extra single track] ‘Mon Peu Rimbaud’ – and we recorded a third song in that session, ‘The Moon And Sixpence’, and held it back, so it’s going to be on the album. And then we were thinking of re-recording songs from the Dark Matter EP because we’ve got a new guitarist [Chris McCorry] since then. One of the songs we are bringing across is ‘Dead Ends’, but we’re re-recording it with [acoustic duo] Albrecht’s Pencil, so it’s going to be a very lush acoustic version.

The last single was softer and more acoustic than the EP, which had its share of noisy moments. Have you continued in that vein on the album?
Richard: We’ve really branched out so that we’ve got a good handful of low-key songs and also upbeat songs. I think this is going to be a really good balance of both.
Chris McCorry (lead guitar): I think we’ve been a little bit more eager to explore the noisier side of things, without letting it be full-on rock or anything.

You’ve been around for about three years but seem to have built up quite a bit of momentum in the last year or so. Would you credit that to Chris joining last year?
Richard: Yeah, definitely. It was a big change because there was a point when Michael [Kinloch, original guitarist] left where we were a bit lost and we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. So whenever Chris came on board, we just kind of collected ourselves back together and re-found enthusiasm. We were really excited about what we were doing and really enjoying it, and Chris’s guitar parts are really great in the sense that there’s a lot of noise and loudness and experimentation in there, but it melds so much better with the acoustic stuff and ideas that I come up with. It’s created a new dynamic.

Do you have any plans to tour the album?
Richard: Yeah, I’d really like to. We have a gig booked in London for the end of October, so we really need to get ahead with booking dates around that. But then we provisionally have January booked for releasing the album and we’ll coincide that with a proper tour, hopefully.

AU59: Nosaj Thing Incoming piece

Single-page piece based on an email interview with Jason Chung – it was kind of last minute and he wasn’t available for a phoner. His album Drift is one of my favourite electronic records this year.

INCOMING

NOSAJ THING

REAL NAME: Jason Chung
FROM: Los Angeles, California.
FOR FANS OF: Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, J Dilla.
CHECK OUT: Debut album Drift, out now on Alpha Pup.
WEBSITE: www.nosajthing.com

Jason. Nosaj. Nosaj. Jason. See what he’s done there? Pretty clever on the part of young Mr. Chung, we think you’ll agree. At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves since it took several weeks to clock the origin of the stage name. By then, of course, the 24-year-old from LA had reeled us in with his quite exquisite debut album, Drift, a record that’s ensured that his card is marked as one of the best young hip-hop/electronica producers around.

The man himself describes his music as “emotional electronic music with a hip-hop backbone”. Others might use the horrible term ‘wonky’, but in truth it’s enough to let Chung do what he does without getting too bogged down in genre names. Drift belongs to the spectrum of hip-hop and electronica that is touched by dubstep in atmosphere and an emphasis on bass (see also emergent acts like Hudson Mohawke, Mount Kimbie and Rustie) without fully committing to the strict norms of the genre. So Drift sounds expansive, sleek and futuristic, with plenty of gleaming, luxurious synths and wide open spaces, while also boasting some juicy sub-bass and Dilla-esque hip-hop beats. It’s an intoxicating mixture. Chung says that he “got into dubstep late” and denies that it’s a significant influence, though he does single out Martyn and Burial as the producers that he’s “feeling” the most. More significant in his development, however, were “mainstream hip-hop, Nineties music, and bands like Radiohead and Cornelius” as well as family and friends.

The latter comment perhaps gives away the most, because Chung doesn’t just have any old friends. Chief among them is the current golden boy of avant-garde hip-hop, fellow LA native and Warp Records artist Flying Lotus, to who Nosaj Thing is often – justifiably – compared, even though his sound is much less busy and claustrophobic than that of his more illustrious counterpart. “He’s a friend of mine and [has] also been a inspiration,” says Chung, and with the success FlyLo enjoyed off the back of his Los Angeles record last year, that’s no surprise. And according to Chung, there’s more to come from the city, as he namechecks Free The Robots, Gaslamp Killer, My Hollow Drum Crew, Brainfeeder Crew, and Dibiase as acts to check out. Although it might seem facile to bring his hometown into it too much, Chung insists that it was the making of him.

“I believe so,” he says. “My parents enrolled me in an after-school program when I was in fourth grade and the bus driver that picked us up from school always had on one of LA’s local hip-hop radio stations. This was when the Beat Junkies were the resident DJs. I used to record their mixes at home and listen to them all the time. Lots of West Coast hip-hop.”

In his own stylish way, then, Nosaj Thing is continuing that tradition.