Reading/Leeds Festival Launch Party

Platform recently attended the conference and launch party for Reading and Leeds to get the low down on the UK’s favourite festival. When quizzed about the line up, festival organiser Melvin Benn told us: “I think the interesting thing about the line up this year is incredibly accessible. I think last year with a band like Rage Against The Machine and Metallica, they were huge, huge bands but much less accessible than Arctic Monkeys, Kings Of Leon and Radiohead. That’s essentially it. I think it may well be the best ever actually. I think it's a truly awesome line up in all honesty.”

“Good evening everybody and welcome to the cockpit for the launch of the Leeds and Reading Festival: The world's ultimate rock n' roll weekend.”



“A big thankyou to the BBC Introducing stage, which returns to the festival after a very triumphant first year. The precursor to the BBC introducing stage was the BBC unsigned stage, which we started here in Leeds, and brilliantly it became the host to many many up and coming bands and many more shall be appearing this year. BBC Introducing has become so important to young bands. At Reading and Leeds the BBC do it differently to anywhere else. Wherever they take the BBC Introducing stage, the BBC choose the bands themselves; but not only that they continue to work with partners to create the ultimate line up. They continue to work with Raw Talent, they continue to work with Sandman and they continue to work with Future Sounds; we're delighted to have them back and delighted to see them continuing the partnerships we established in Leeds to develop local talent.”

“There will be a Guitar Hero promotional stage this year after it's success at Reading last year. I'm sure that none of you here would do such a thing, but believe me if you haven't been, that the performances are amazing; they're as good as the main stage! It's absolutely fantastic.”

“This year we're pushing for as many people as possible to use public transport and trains. Many of you might not remember, but last year the gridlock in Leeds was just incredible. I have been told by the Council that I have mave to make a new travel plan and I have indeed done that so I hope that the impact on Leeds will be significantly less than last year.”



“Now to the line up, that's all that anyone really cares about. People will sit for hours in traffic to see the best line up in the world and the best line up in the world will be here in Leeds this year, I can guarantee you. Currently in the studio working on their third album The Arctic Monkeys shall be making their first public appearance in the UK since December 2007 and provide another monumental performance as they did in 2005 when they played to what seemed like an entire festival in a tented stage intended for just 500 people. Probably only about 1000 people saw them but there are 70,000 people in Leeds who claimed to have saw them that year. The expectation around them was just incredible. They came back just a year later and played second headliner to Muse, but this year they shall be headliners in their own right.”

“Supporting them on the Friday are a band that in truth I never really thought I'd see at Reading/Leeds again. It was back in 2004 when I attempted the impossible of trying to fit the production rig of two of the most production intense bands that you could possibly attempt to find and still hope that they would be finished by 11 o'clock at night. For those of you who were there you'll remember that the final band to play finished just before 1 o'clock after The Prodigy, who shall be supporting the Arctic Monkeys on the Friday finished around 10.30. I hasten to add that Guns N Roses definitely aren't playing. Prodigy shows are just the ultimate in absolute mayhem. I've seen The Prodigy so many times and they never fail to deliver; it's just an incredible show. If anyone can warm the crowd up for The Arctic Monkeys then believe me The Prodigy will.”



“Also on that day we have Newcastle's finest Maximo Park who have gone from mere contenders to one of the UK's most established acts. Then Manchester's finest, which to be fair is one hell of a contest, but in the eye's of the Old Trafford faithful, Manchester's finest in definitely Ian Brown (the crowd swoon and say whooo in approval); the face and voice of a generation, Ian will be a very special guest on the main stage that night. Also, The Courteeners, Enter Shikari and the incredible Eages Of Death Metal will also play the stage that day.”

“On the NME/Radio 1 stage that day, co-headliners will be the award winning Glasvegas and with the blues voice to die for, Beth Ditto and Gossip. Also on the NME/Radio 1 stage across the course of the weekend will be Jamie T, a Californian four-piece with one of the most loyal fanbases in the business, AFI, the Chiswick trio who have rocketed to the top of everybody's playlist this year White Lies, the Stephenage four-piece who somehow managed to bring a little bit of Rio De Janeiro to Brixton Academy for the NME Awards show this year – the ever emerging Friendly Fires, The Maccabees, Gallows, Gaslight Anthem, and the amazing Florence And The Machine. I saw Florence at the NME Awards when she sung an amazing version of Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds which was an incredible performance. It really blew me away and I have to say it was miles better than the original. I really am as you can guess by my age, an Elvis fan. There are many, many more acts to announce, I can't tell you how many more but across this, The Lock Up Stage and all other stages across the upcoming weeks and months.”



“Back to the main stage, on the Saturday. A band with an awesome live reputation, Brand New who have made a niche for themselves with their hard edged pop sound, Vampire Weekend will also play, their debut album was really a highlight of last year. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are also back (nods of approval from the crowd) and really just incredible live, I can't wait to see them on stage. Preceeding the Saturday night headliners are the band who unquestionably, if you look at the websites, the forums, they could easily be the fan's favourite, they win that award every single year, is Bloc Party ('again?' members of the audience ask). With an incredible reputation for never sitting on their laurels they will engross and entertain the massive crowd that will be gathered for them and for Saturday night's headliners, Radiohead (the audience all join in a chorus of 'ooooooh'). Long, long before the Leeds festival was born, Radiohead played Reading festival in 1994 and year after year we've wandered if they'd wanna come back and neither party had never really overpushed it, and we knew they'd want to play at some point and this year they said they wanted to play and quite frankly it is just a treat beyond belief. There a band that's got credibility at it's core with popularity to go with it and really it would just be amazing to see Radiohead play.”





“Finally onto the Sunday, again this is just a taster of the day on the Mainstage. I will start with one of the UK's biggest and most worldwide acts Funeral For A Friend. Then Deftones; Chino Marino's extreme voice is part of what sets Deftones apart and they will really be a highlight of the weekend. Following them, we have a band who rose to emminance as an Emo band, the incredibly popular Chicago four-piece that are Fallout Boy. In addition, a band with 13 years of performances, 5 studio albums and a host of festival appearances during that time, Placebo have earned their place in rock n' roll history. Energised by a new drummer, a new record deal and a new albu, this is a band that really will exceed the massive reputation that travels with them. The penultimate act on the Sunday are certainly no strangers to the Leeds Festival. Their last performance at Leeds was two years ago on the Festival Republic stage when for the best part of 60 seconds, a new act performing to a very modest crowd in a 500 capacity tent, convinced the crowd that Hooks For Hands were a new band but it didn't take long before the entire crowd at Leeds festival had heard and were leaping over the barriers to see The Kaiser Chiefs. They won't need to leap over the barriers this year. The Chiefs are as good as a fourth headliner here at Leeds, As for the headliners, that stole the show in 2007 around about 8pm at night they just showed up and played, that's what they do, there's no fanfare about them. They stepped a little way up as the Friday night headliner at Glastonbury last year, and then went on to fill arena after arena. Now they take another step to what will undoubtedly lead to world domination. I'm delighted to announce that Kings Of Leon will be closing on the Sunday night at Leeds festival.”




“So then, get your tickets quickly as they will sell out quickly this year, and I will of course see you in August at Branham Park. Thankyou”





We then caught up with organiser Melvin Benn for a quick few more words.

Usually with Leeds/Reading, Festival Republic seem to adopt the formula of having a hard rock act headline on the Friday. Is there a reason you've abandoned that this year or has there never been a formula?

No there's never been a formula, it's just the way it's worked out. There'll be the same amount of rock acts they'll just be spread across more days.

It's the best line up I've seen since 2005, would you agree with that?

I think it may well be the best ever actually. I think it's a truly awesome line up in all honesty.

Better than 1994?

LOL! Crikey, 1994 was good, but I think the interesting thing about the line up this year is incredibly accessible. I think last year with a band like Rage Against The Machine and Metallica, they were huge, huge bands but much less accessible than Arctic Monkeys, Kings Of Leon and Radiohead. That’s essentially it.



On a personal level, how would you describe the legacy of Leeds/Reading and Festival Republic?

We haven’t got a legacy yet because one leaves a legacy when one dies. We’re still alive and kicking and it will be a long time before we need to be judged on a legacy. We’ve got a great history you know, Leeds and Reading festival, Festival Republic we produce great festivals with great bands, that’s what we do.

Andrew Trendell

Interview : Glasvegas

How's The Tour Going So Far?

It's good, its been fun. It seems a lot longer than we've actually been here for, we've only done nine gigs but it feels like we've been here for months.

What's The Atmosphere like?

It's quite relaxed, everybody just wants to have a good time. Everybody has sussed each other out.

You've played Nottingham several times before, from The Social, To Rescue To Rock City, so youve climbed the ladder so to speak, and you've got quite a strong following in the city. What do you make of Nottingham?

Nottingham has always been great to us. There's a couple of citys around that are like that, and Nottingham has always been amazing. One of the first gigs we played there at The Social, before going to America and recording the album, it was all just amazing. I remember staying out for ages and going to Rescue Rooms, we had a lot of people come down and just had a really good night. It's just one of those settings that's always amazing. I remember last time we played here at Nottingham Trent University, I pulled my back whilst playing and had to click it back into place, then I knocked the keyboard over, it was a bit messy.

Did you turn it all into some kind of choreographed move or was it all a bit Spinal Tap?

No, I just locked in this position bending forward so I had to throw myself about to get out of it.

Your music has a touch of the anthemic to it. If you combine this with the support of Alan McGee and the NME, do you see stadiums and arenas in your future?

I see ourselves doing whatever's natural, and if that's what comes next then that's what comes next. I think with the next album we may possibly move in to bigger venues but we won't be doing any more touring of Britain this year. I don't really like big venues, I quite like these sweaty venues.


Bands that tow a similar line to Glasvegas (e.g. Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad) would struggle to match your success. What it is about the essence of Glasvegas that relates to so many people?

Just that we write good songs. The songs that James writes are quite honest and people can relate to them. There are different types of music; there's music people listen to for fun, there's music you go out and dance to and there's music that people want to believe in and relate to and actually get something from. James would probably say something different but thats my opinion. There's a lot of good bands from Glasgow, it's just one of those things. There are just a lot of good times involved.

How does it feel to hear English and international audiences adopting a Scottish accent en masse?

Well they try, Liverpudlians are the funniest actually. We were in Japan and they were all singing back this amazing and hilarious version of Daddy's Gone, “He Gone, he goone, ohhh-ohhh-ohhhh”, and me and Caroling just p*ssed ourselves. Accent is a beautiful thing. James wrote that song in his bedreem when he couldn't afford food, and now there are thousands of Japanese people singing it at us. You just don't expect these things to happen. I never take it for granted, but I wouldn't say its surreal, probably because we've done that many gigs this year.



Headlining the NME tour, as well as being their champions throughout the year, you've found yourselves victims of hyperbole and the hype machine. How have you as a band reacted to hype?

We've just done what we've always done without really listening to what people say, because when you do that it can make you a little crazy. You've got to ignore the good and the bad, because you can't let other people's opinions influence you. We've got to where we are by using our own heads. Saying that, we always appreciate that people like what we're doing, getting nominated for awards and that just lets you know what people think and makes you want to keep going.

I imagine that a new album must be in the pipeline, what kind of progress are you making with that?

We've agreed to do it so that's a lot of progress I suppose. James has written 3 songs, and they're all singles, easily. The plan is we're going to go and do demos in October then go and record it in January and hopefully it will get realeased in April or May next year.

How would say the band have grown in the lead up to the next album?

The sound is a bit bigger if you can imagine that. The songs to me, sound a little bit more American. I don't mean that in a bad way or a cheesy way, it's just something that I heard. We'll maybe experiment with some more beats and stuff like that. There is a definate progression.

What's influenced Glasvegas in the past, and what's influencing them at the moment?

In the past, the biggest influence on each of us has been each other. All the music or films or art or whatever that we all like kind of us influences each other. It's tough to stay influenced and stay upbeat on tour but everyday we surprise each other with some of the things we do and we say, be it in a good way or a bad way. Just now everyone on this tour has a cold, so all of the bands and sounch guys and what not all have the sh*ts. The NME Tour sh*s, it's nasty. So that's there, but yeah, we just always inspire each other. Musically it's always mainly Phil Spector, Oasis and Elvis Presley, and then you got reading Harry Potter and watching Star Wars.

Interview by Andy Trendell
Photos by Lucy Bridger (www.flickr.com/lucybridger)

Deathcab For Cutie - Interview

How do you feel about the general election result?

I couldn’t be happier. It was absolutely, hands down one of the happiest days of my life. I never thought I’d see something like that in my lifetime, even as I was watching the returns come back, even when they announced, “Obama is president!” I was suspicious, I was like “Oh come on, really? The good guy never really wins”. But I’m pretty happy about it, I’m more than pretty happy about it; I’m cautiously happy about it. I’m so thrilled I don’t want to jinx it. Everything seems great. We worked hard to do what we could for the election so we were all keeping our fingers crossed. We worked pretty hard back in 2004 for that election too, but we’ve finally seen some good now!

How do you as a band, and as an individual feel inspired or affected by the result?

Speaking as an individual, the past 8 years have been pretty dreary. We’ve been in a huge decline, we’re in a huge recession right now, we’re in kind of a war or something going on in the world, no one really knows what to call it anymore. Just a lot of bad decisions have been made in the last 8 years and I really feel like in the world’s standing that America has really fallen. Just touring over the last 8 years we’ve seen journalists and citizens sceptical of the fact that we’re from America. It seems so easy for everyone to demonize George Bush. There’s some kind of global political thing gone wrong that everyone finds it so easy to point their finger at America and George Bush. We’ve brought it on ourselves so I feel inspired that someone like Barack Obama can hopefully turn that around. There’s still a lot of work to be done and it’s not going to happen quickly but I think he’s got that kind of charisma and strength to unify a nation that’s splitting apart in a lot of ways. And as a band we’re inspired because we worked a lot to utilize the youth vote and get them to vote. We took part in ‘The Ultimate College Bowl’, which sounds like it might be a little cheesy but turned out to be a really great competition. It was based around the election and voter registration and it basically encouraged every college in America to get as much of their student body to register to vote and whichever college had the highest percentage of registered voters would win a free show from us. Even if ten people were inspired then that would have been a success but it turns out there were about 150,000. This year I really feel that the youth vote was instrumental in electing a president, and I feel that’s historical in itself, so I’m pretty happy about that.



So it’s a case of Deathcab vs apathy?

Yeah sure, as much as we can. It’s a hard thing to not be apathetic and be young. Apathy is a hard thing to fight, it’s true. I find it in myself when you feel so frustrated and powerless when you start thinking about the halls of government and the places that you’ve never been allowed or shown any respect in. You just tend to give up and assume that they’ll never listen to you, so it’s nice to push against that, as much as it is to fight apathy in voters as well as apathy in ourselves. I guess it’s not even apathy its more like pessimism than anything. I can be pretty gloomy when it comes down to a lot of things y’know. Embracing the post-apocalypse and everything. Bring on the zomies man! Let’s just tear it all down! It’s so nice to have some hope again. I feel that way too about Barack Obama. Almost every day after I’ve woken up and thought “you know this really wouldn’t be such a bad place to bring a child into, maybe I could be a dad someday!” There’s a much happier feeling about the future.

So no more complacency?

Well, I hope not. I’m going to work hard to not feel complacent. It’s going to be an interesting four years to say the least.

Lucy: I interviewed Chris and Jason earlier on this year in Birmingham and we were talking about the directions DVD. Do you ever think you’ll do anything like that again or do you think Plans was more of an album that was more suited to that?

I would love to do something like that again. We talked about the value of doing something like that again on this album. The thing that was so great about that was that it was so different at the time and that it was so different for us. I felt like if we did it again then people would think “Oh, there just doing the same thing again”. It’s funny how criticism works that way. At the time there were people saying “this is awesome” or “this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen”. All those people who thought it was great the first time would think it was crappy the second time because we wouldn’t have any fresh ideas and all we’d be doing is repeating ourselves. It’s the spirit of the project that I love; that you can get video and visual artists and pair them together with us and see that result. I like where different kinds of artistic mediums intersect and what happens when they do; so to facilitate that is really exciting for me. We have some really good ideas; we’ve got one in the works right now but I don’t want to tell you about it just yet, but we’re pretty excited to see how the spirit of it will be preserved when we work on something. We’re not sure if its going to happen on this album or not or whatever but we’ll see. It takes time and its something you can’t turn around that quickly.



Do you think it’s important for a band to crossover into a different artistic medium?

I don’t really that its our perogerative to do so, I just think its important to show where they intersect. For instance, I don’t care too much if we’re wildly love amongst film makers, but I do love it when music inspires imagery in people’s eyes. You know, you can close your eyes when you’re sitting in a train or driving in a car or wherever and most people have their own visual thing that happens, whether it’s a movie or a slideshow or something. We’re a generation of music listeners who raised on music videos, whether its MTV or whatever, that’s become part of our experience of music. What I wanted to shake up from ‘Directions’ was that there is more than one definitive visual record of a song, rather than a band just making one video and that’s it. You know, when you think of Karma Police and its Thom Yorke in the back of a car and the fire’s coming and that suddenly becomes everyone’s visual in their mind. I like the idea of taking directions and having different conceptions. I’d love to do something where you have 12 videos for each somg but that’s not economically viable. I do think it’s important nowadays as there’s a certain stranglehold on things where it’s difficult to get your music played on MTV when they don’t even play music videos anymore or on the radio or whatever and having the ability to share your music online is an open playground for new bands and for bands that have been around for ten years like us. You can do whatever you want.

Do you find often that art informs the music or that music informs the art?

I don’t know, I think that depends. I think that’s a really good question. We refer to the way we work as a band as ‘periods of input and periods of output’. You’re out there on tour, travelling around and having adventures and stuff and then you’ve got going to see films, going to see other bands and all of these different ways that you live life is the input stuff, and however you react to that and rearrange it in your mind to make whatever it is you make is the output period. But I don’t know what informs what. I think our music comes from so many different places. There are songs that come from really intimate private moments that you could never ever really share with anyone other than through a song and then there are songs that come through shared collective experiences which everyone has some connection to. Some people could argue whether or not what we make is even considered art, but its an expression of some kind so I don’t know.



Having such a strong following in Britain, would you say that there’s anything intrinsically British about Deathcab?

I wouldn’t say we do have that strong a following in Britain but if you’re saying it then OK! I don’t know if there’s anything intrinsically British. The name of our band clearly is, a lot of our shared influences are. We all grew up as Beatles kids first and foremost, then Britpop kids. I still think that musically there’s always been a lot of exciting things happening with bands in England and we’ve always drawn inspiration from that in some ways. But I don’t know. I mean you say we have a strong following but we’ve always felt like the underdog in England and everywhere outside of the US. For better or for worse we’ve never had the NME come up to us and say “we want to do a big photo shoot with you!”. There are all those bands that kind of have that splash explosion, they have that fashionable kind of quality. Maybe they never last but it remains to be seen whether we will or not. Maybe if it’s a quicker spike up then it’s a quicker fall down. We’ve always found our fans over here to be more on the cult side of things rather than mainstream. Well, at times, obviously, you know there will be a bunch of kids who heard about us through some TV show or whatever, but I’ve never felt like we were the ‘it’ band. Even when we come over and see our friends in bands, a band like Fleet Foxes who are selling a tonne of records and everybody’s talking about Fleet Foxes, but there was never a moment when everyone was talking about Death Cab For Cutie. Never like with Interpol or The Strokes or any of these bands that are contemporaries of ours whom we have a lot of respect for. They always get offered these bog headlining shows at festivals and we always get this little side stage, which we happily accept. I’m not sad about it, I’m very comfortable with where we’re at. I think that people that find us and connect to our music will stick with us for longer than a magazine cover’s length. I don’t think that there’s anything quintessentially English or American about us, I think that the way we are is just as musicians who ingest a lot of different tastes and just express them. If you want to get stereotypical then I think there are definitely more aspects of us that are similar with bands from England than with bands that have stereotypically come out of Seattle. We’re not a grunge band; we sounded more like Oasis than we ever sounded like Nirvana.

We’ve been able to maintain a sense of integrity with what we do and the way we do things, and we get to go on tour with bands that we like. We don’t have to go to lame places and hang around with lame people. We just show up, keep our heads down and play shows and that’s fine. I’d rather play in front of 500 than have to go and play a bunch of political music games. You know people saying “you need to go to this place and hang out with these people and go and have this photoshoot with this person because its super-important. We’d rather just avoid all of that and play for whoever is really interested in our music.

So you’ve never seen yourselves as becoming a stadium band?

No, not at all. The thing is we would always have been happy with becoming an accidental stadium band, but it’s never been a priority to go out and grab that. Being Coldplay doesn’t sound exciting to us. What seems exciting about it is that none of those guys are ever going to have to work another day in their lives and that’s pretty awesome but that’s about it. I mean, there’s so much more pressure out there everyday that a lot of people get to avoid. I’m sure a lot of people say this but I’m completely envious of the career that Radiohead has been able to carve out for themselves. They really seem to be able to do whatever exactly it is that they want to do and people will still follow them, they’ll always have that dedicated hardcore following. And they’re so good at it that it drives me crazy. They’ve made awesome become boring. Everyday there’s a news item about Radiohead doing something new and exciting and you’re just like “Oh! It’s just awesome! God! When are they going to not be awesome?”. Everyday is like a race, you ask yourself “alright what can we do that Radiohead isn’t about to finish?” We need a spy in house over there, it’s just ridiculous. But hats off to them, its not really a race it’s just so inspiring. They’ve got the infrastructure and ability as a band to be able to do that sort of stuff and do it well. It can be argued that they haven’t always had success at it but they keep trying and pushing in really interesting ways. Living as a band in this world which is half technology and half experience, you look to Radiohead as a band who have completely mastered that. Any band would kill for that financial freedom as well as the creative freedom and those two things are often at odds which other.



Having been such a tightly knit group for such a long time, how would you say that the way you interact or work with each other has changed or evolved?

Our communication now is much more subtle than its ever been. I can look at Jason when we’re playing and if I flash him a certain look then he knows exactly what I’m saying. We can have conversations with each other in the blink of an eye; with those sort of tacit looks of whatever we can pick up on stage. That’s certainly rare; that’s something that you get with family members and people that you’ve been in relationships with for a long time. I’m really thankful that we have that strong kind of communication. The other thing is just about giving each other space. There was a time when you knew that if someone was having a bad day then you learn to back off and give each other space. We went through those big bad ego years in the beginning when there were some struggles about the band and all that kind of stuff. Over time we were able to balance all of that out, and thankfully we were able to get through it when nobody was really watching. I feel bad for bands nowadays but that’s just the way that it is. I wonder how bands cope when they start out without even a debut album and then suddenly the entire world is paying attention to them right away. There seems so much more of a magnifying glass on them to figure everything out in front of everyone. A lot of bands go through that sort of shift over time, but I’m just glad that we were able to solidify our working relationship during a time when not a lot of people were really paying attention to us. Then when they finally did we were just like “yeah, we’re good, we’re solid, we’re comfortable, thanks”.

So no Spinal Tap arguments about the size of bread or anything?

Well, you could argue that our drummer issues over the years have been very Spinal Tap. Thankfully, that’s been fine since Jason joined before Transantlanticism, unless he spontaneously combusts.

Interview by Andrew Trendell
Photographs by Lucy Bridger
www.flickr.com/lucybridger

Interview : King Blues

Where did you get your name from?

There are some large rizzla's called King Blues, haha striking preferences

You are a self made group that gained your initial success from self promotion, how does it feel to finally be recognised?

It's cool, I mean for us it has built up very organically, we haven't kind of suddenly become famous; we have done everything in baby steps. We have done it the old school way of just going out and playing all the time and getting people to see us like that! Even when there were only two of us and we were just going round playing squats we wanted to be the biggest band in the world, and we wanted to change the world. I think we show if you genuinely believe you will get there. Every band needs to be two things, you need to be a good band live and a good band on a record, one without the other will definitely hold you back.

What do you think of the current punk scene; do you believe punk culture is still alive?

Yeah without s shadow of a doubt, I mean we grew up in the punk scene long after it was supposedly dead! I mean every city we go to we are just so amazed at how big it still is. I mean we were lucky growing up under the radar of punk as it is so underground, that it went we had time to develop rather than being snapped up straight away by a team of people, we had time to grow and poke our heads out when we were finally ready! Yeah the punk spirit is definitely still alive and kicking, I think British punk has finally found its own voice after mimicking the American scene for so long. Yeah it never went away it may have gone underground for a while but it definitely never went away.

What message do you hope to convey through your music? What are your primary concerns with society?

It's not like one message or anything that can be summed up in a kind of sound bite. We are tapping into the mentality of truths that have lasted since the start of time, eternal truths like love, peace, hope and soul. In a sense it's about unity.

Do you not think that your message of peace and anti-racism is very different from old punk's message of anarchy and against all authority?

Oh no I think the two go very much hand in hand, I mean anarchy is all about equality! I mean breaking down any barriers and against hierarchy in every sense, against all forms of oppression, and believing that we are all equal and that no-one is worth any more than anyone else. At the moment we are in a country, which I believe is being run more like a business. I mean profit comes first over people! For us it is not one issue, I mean yeah we are anti-racist and yeah we are anti-fascist but we are real people and express every single feeling and emotion that we have through our music. We are not a one trick pony there is a lot of give to us!

Do you feel like music has lost much of its message from the days when hip hop and punk were a form of resistance?

I mean mainstream yeah but underground there are still great artists like in hip-hop Immortal Technique yeah that whole UK hip-hop thing has fortunately been very conscious from day one and that is fantastic. I mean at the moment the whole music industry is f****d and no one is buying any records everyone is just downloading songs. I mean so there is kind of no money to be made in it. I mean now no one wants to take any risks on a band that has anything controversial to say as it may not sell.

Do you think that the music industry resembles the film industry where Hollywood dominates and European Cinema has no chance to compete?

Yeah kind of but then again at the same time a band like us that has no right to be in the mainstream whatever we have no place being on radio one, but we are purely because we hustled. That makes us feeling like we are utterly blessed to be in the position that we are in, but if we had first started out to be in the charts we would never have formed this kind of band! We never thought if we added in a hip- hop beat then these kids will like it and if we add in a ska beat these kids will like it, we are those kids you see. We just played what we wanted to hear! So from doing that and being a political band I think it has set us apart from other bands, it has worked to our favour.

Do you believe people today are too un-political?

No, not at all I believe that is a common misconception that young people don't care about politics. Well we have the largest anti-war policies of all time, I think it shows that people do care; it's just its not being represented by the mainstream media. People do care what's going on and I think our band somehow proves that!

Your music is not just straight punk it crosses between hip hop, reggae, ska, rock. In some ways you remind me of Sublime. Are they an influence on you and what are your main influences?

Yes without a shadow of a doubt, I mean musically Sublime are a massive influence. But at the same thing as there are so many of us and we are all into very different things musically, but I mean spiritually the influence of bands such as Rage Against the Machine, The Clash, Asian Dub Foundation, Immortal Technique these kinds of groups really speak to us. People who have just innovated and tried to be themselves rather than trying to be a part of something.

What are your plans for the future?

Well we finished this tour today. We have been on the road for three weeks, and this was our second headline tour and the obviously today opening for Rancid it has been amazing. We have a few shows dotted around London coming up and then we have a short 3 day tour. Then after that just gonna start writing again, we don't want it to be like 2 years again before we release another record!

Interview by Lizze Goodman

Interview : Shammi Pithia

With influences from a range of musical genres while growing up and studying a degree in Music Technology and Innovation, Shammi Pithia is a composer and producer bringing a fresh sound to the British Asian music scene. His E.P ‘Cinema for the Ears’ is composed of five tracks, each individually creating different moods and emotions left to the listeners imagination. Nitin Sawhney most definitely comes to mind with key elements of Indian classical music beautifully blended with contemporary instruments and vocals giving great depth to each track. To find out more and listen to the originality of Shammi Pithia’s creations check out www.myspace.com/shammipithia OR www.shammipithia.com

What influenced you into producing your own music?

I suppose I’ve always been surrounded by music. I grew up with a lot of Bollywood music as well as popular western music. In school I had the chance to have a play on some instruments and it kind of took off from there. When I reached college I heard the brilliant music of people like Nitin Sawhney, this really inspired me to further my musical skills and take it seriously. A bit later on down the line I got really interested in classical Indian music, listening to greats like Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia. From then I really started to focus on my compositional style and started to properly produce the music I do now.

What inspires you when producing?

Anything! Sometimes you find yourself just making a piece of music. I could be jamming on the keyboard and something would naturally develop. But there are also many moments where I actually think about what I want to compose about. There could be a recent event, or a hypothetical incident. I’m really interested in music and emotion, so sometimes I just chose an emotion that looks interesting to me at that time and try and make a piece of music based on it! Inspiration comes from everywhere, my own thoughts, what I’ve seen/heard, the people I’m working with, and the music I’ve listened to.

How would you describe the tracks on your E.P and what can we expect from the upcoming album?

Each track on the E.P tries to explore something different. Tracks like Poem Without Words, Compassion and Interruption of Peace explore emotions. For example, in Poem without Words I’ve tried to evoke the atmosphere of tenderness. Without leaning to either end, I’ve tried to show shades of sadness and romanticism. I tried to compose the track so that the listeners own emotions interact with the mood created to give them their own interpretation of the song. Other songs such as the Dream are based on Hindu philosophy. This song looks at the world, and then looks at the spiritual world. This takes places within the context of a dream.
This E.P was just a taster; it serves as an introduction to me and my music. The album is much bigger and has a lot more depth. It explores specific emotions like the E.P. and also explores events and life moments. There are some amazing new musicians featuring on the album as well as contributions from the great musicians on my E.P. I’m really proud of the album so far, if anybody likes the E.P. Then I’m sure you will like the album! I hope to have it all wrapped up early next year!

The best thing about university in your opinion?

The education of course! I really enjoyed my courses, they really helped me to think creatively and widen my musical knowledge. But the social life and its benefits can’t be underestimated!

Any tips for aspiring artists?

Keep doing it! The music industry has changed from what it was 10 years ago. Before it was all about ‘getting signed’ or getting a record deal, it’s not about that now. New media allows us to be much more self efficient, you can now record all your music yourself at a low cost. You can make the music available for people to hear all over the world and you can promote yourself for free (to a certain extent). I think people need to do things for themselves, don’t rely on others to do things for you. If you want it, take it.

Interview by Sunni Sharma

Interview : Red Light Company

Having seen the recent tour posters for the Red Light Company I was a little apprehensive at the prospect of meeting them, seeing as they look rather scary. But when finally I got the chance to sit down with the lead singer Richard Frenneaux you soon realise that he’s not scary, in fact he’s a rather nice guy!

So Rich your new single (Scheme Eugene) is coming out soon (Nov 3RD), how do you feel the whole process has gone?

It’s interesting because we put two singles out and they were kinda fairly limited…so kinda this is our first proper, proper single that we have put out…so there is a lot of pressure on us [and] we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves.

You have had loads of radio play recently and NME have done loads of stuff on you, did you like working with them [NME]?

Yeah, we did a Jack Daniels session with them which was pretty good fun and actually we met the video director for our Scheme Eugene video on that set so it worked out for us really well.

Well the video looks quality and different, is it important to you guys to be different?

Definitely…in the UK there have been a lot of guitar bands um there was an influx of it for a long time and that was all good but I think it became stale…so I got really sick of it actually. Like everything new things come up and then they are replicated and new things become old hat so we’re just trying to do something new. It’s really important to be proactive.

You're completely different from what I was expecting having seen your tour poster because you look pretty scary. What’s the idea behind that?

It’s my pet thing I like to stare at people. I think it’s born out of trying to get peoples attention. We have done quite a lot of supports so you need something to make you stand out. It does make me come across as a sort of child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but that’s the fun of being in a band you can be whoever you want to be.

Red Light Company’s sound may be an acquired taste and like all change is difficult at first to acclimatise to but if you get the chance, as they are currently touring the country, they are a really impressive live band definitely worth checking out.
www.myspace.com/redlightcompany

Interview By Lee Hall

Interview : Mystery Jets

First of all, welcome back to the North.

Isn’t this technically the midlands?

Yeah but we’re north of many places. Welcome back to the East Midlands. How does it feel to be back? Full of East Midlands soul?

It feels great. Nottingham is always really good fun. We’ve done some of my favourite gigs here actually, at Stealth and the Social back in the day. Nottingham has always been an important date on our tour. I like Liars Club and Rescue. I like Rock City because its so wide and wherever you are you can see.

You’re known as being a band of myriad ever-fluctuating influences. What’s influencing you right now?

At the moment we’re all starting to think about our second album so we’re all dipping our wicks in different areas of music. I think disco is definitely something we’ve all been thinking about, especially after working with Erol (Alkan, electronic super-producer who produced the band’s second album). I don’t think we are going to go down that disco road but I think it’s always quite fun and interesting to borrow production values from an area of music which is quite alien to you. Disco is one of those things that people always joke about and people always associate it with hen nights and YMCA, but there’s also loads of amazing Italo-Disco and some good underground disco some from the eighties which has never really been celebrated very much.

So, having previously lived and worked with Erol Alkan, would you say that you’ve learned anything from him which you’ll carry forward on to the next record?

Yeah, I think so. When we first thought about working with Erol our thoughts were about that we’ve never really been a dance band, we’ve never thought our songs could do that, they were just pop songs with a beat that would compliment the song whereas when we started working with Erol we started thinking a lot more consciously about what would work on a dance floor. I came out of the other side realising that beneath that layer of a dance orientated song there needs to be a melody and something memorable. You can dance to anything if you try as long as its got that solid foundation. So I think establishing that on our next record is going to be at the top of our agenda. Just those songs which at their core are the best songs we’ve ever written, whether or not they fall into a dance category.




There’s a great deal of growth between your first album and your most recent release. How would you say the band is growing towards the next album?

When we started off we were very stuck in our minds on being this pastiche-y prog rock band on the lead up to our first album, then on our first album we found we had all these messages and influences and by the second album we realised that there were probably too many. We realised that sometimes its much better to say one thing really well rather than ten things not so well. You can say them in a sentence which is five words long but it may not really say as much as a sentence which is one word. And we realised that its often harder to work with less words to say the same message. We do wanna puish the boundaries of what can be called a pop song, we do what put ourselves outside of our comfort zones as well. To me the most exciting bands around at the moment are those like MGMT, Foals and Vampire Weekend. It’s definitely pop music but it isn’t pop music which is at the top of that charts, it’s resculpting the idea of pop music. They can still sell loads of records and sell out massive venues but they don’t have to sound like a Kylie record; it can sound like whatever the f*ck they want. Foals and Vampire Weekend are very influenced by African music and I think it’s amazing that they can use that foreign influence. I think its fun to bring back these forgotten influences into pop music. Vampire Weekend for example, I wouldn’t say that what they’re doing is completely new but they have the nerve and the talent to bring that influence back into pop music and lots of people are doing that, like Beirut can whack Eastern folk music into the mix and make an amazing record.

Do you think you’ll ever become satisfied in trying to find that perfect edgy pop song?

I think we’re satisfied in between writing the song, when you think it’s the best thing you’ve ever written, and then you put the record out and you find that you’ll probably never listen to the song again. And then after touring it for a year you’ll find that you’ll probably f*cking hate it. The rating of that song in your mind goes from quite high to really low in the course of a year. I don’t think that means that the song is shit, just imagine if you were an author and you had to read a passage of your back to audiences around the world over and over again, you’d get f*cking sick of it. So I don’t that that speaks for the song I think that speaks for you getting tired of stuff which I think anybody would. Radiohead only started playing ‘Creep’ again after ten years of not playing it. Good questions by the way, good questions. We’ve had a lot of the same old shitty ones recently.




How would you say that always having been such a tight knit unit effects you as a band and the way you write etc?

When we started we wrote as a unit a lot more, like William would come a long with a guitar part and we’d embellish it, whereas now we write a lot more on our own. I don’t think that’s a bad thing I think its good that we’ve all grown into songwriters which we didn’t really known how to do before. We’ve grown separately as songwriters because we’ve become more mature as people and more confident as people. Individually we’ve come a lot closer to what we want to say, when I write a song I want t say something – I wouldn’t feel fulfilled if I was just throwing some keyboard parts over the top of a guitar line. I don’t think I’d be doing justice to what the other guys are doing either because I don’t think that would be me at my best. To be at our best is for us all to sit down and actually do some songwriting, because we’re all songwriters, that’s what makes our albums fun to play, rather than just playing awful songs with a backing band.

So it’s symbiotic?

Yeah, good word.

It’s one of my favourite words. So do you know what each other is thinking when you’re in the studio?

No, we’re actually quite secretive about how we write. Well, me and my dad are quite honest and up front with each other and we write a lot of lyrics together, or he’ll write a complete song and I’ll help him with his lyrics. Generally speaking we are quite secretive but I think that’s quite cool because you don’t want to know what each other is thinking because then there are no surprises when you do get into the studio. I think that creative, not jealousy but, creative competition and curiosity is what drives this band. When I know that whatever he’s working on is quite interesting but I may not hear it for a couple of weeks, I’m always waiting for the moment when he invites me to listen to it and vice versa. It does get very competitive because me, William and Kai have all been friends since we were young so it’s always quite competitive but still cool.



We were talking to Jeremy Warmsley the other week and he was quite quick to dismiss himself as part of any kind of London songwriting scene. How would you describe the scene?

Jeremy is someone who we’ve been friends with for a very long time and I’m surprised he’d say that because we played on one of his songs about three months ago. I don’t think I’d call it a ‘scene’ as such. We used to do parties and invite a bunch of our friends down, and that’s probably the closest we’ve been to being part of a scene. I quite enjoy not feeling part of a scene because when you think back to Britpop you always think of the main Britpop bands, you never think of great bands like Sleeper and Shed 7. In twenty years time people aren’t going to realise that they were this huge bands that sold thousands of records, just because they’re buried and overshadowed by the bigger bands on the scene. Being part of a scene but not as successful as the other bands on the scene is quite detrimental so we’ve always tried to distance ourselves from other bands. My favourite bands are always outsider bands, Late of The Pier for example. They don’t sound like anything else, people will say “Oh this is like, the second wave of new rave”, but new rave is just a fashion term, not of those bands actually sounded alike. Late of The Pier are the modern day Roxy Music, they’re like musical chameleons. Bless them, they’ll probably never have a single in the top 40 but who gives a shit? The Ramones never had a record in the top 100, it doesn’t matter, they’ll still be remembered. So, scenes aren’t really that important, only to those bands who need to ride on other bands’ coattails but we’ve never done that.




Interview and photos by Andy Trendell

Review : Kid British - Stealth - 8/11/08

The sound of Manchester’s Kid British is a combo of funky ska/reggae guitar with simple pop beats, generally lacking in diversity. Vocally, when lead singer James Mayer wasn't doing his rap-like thing, he sang with a conventionally in-your-face accent, à la most modern “indie” pop. So on the contrary, these limited musical combinations form only a small scope of music, and this is what comprised the set: from the boppy beats of “Elizabeth”, to the rapped over cover of Madness’s “Our House” [a band which strikes as a significant influence] to the clangy guitars and catchy harmonies of “She Will Leave”. A tight performance, nonetheless.

But what made this band shrine through was their fun-loving energy and sense of togetherness. Jumping about like lunatics on stage, arms around each other, a warm sense of euphoria rose into the air climaxing with teams of intoxicated students flooding the stage.

Certainly, this isn’t for everyone. However with their identifiable, down to earth lyrics and infectious energy, they are an ideal mainstream-student band. I doubt many who find themselves well into the popular rock scene would be disappointed; however look elsewhere if you enjoy something a bit more out-there and unique. Saying that, I don’t think they’re trying to be either of those things.

Review by Lewis Townsend

Interview: Black Kids

To us the public, it would almost seem as if you came out of nowhere with arguably one of the singles of the year. What was the transition like into the mainstream market?

KEVIN: “Yeah it was very surreal. Reggie, Owen and myself have been playing together for in complete obscurity in our home town of Jacksonville Florida. But yeah, To go from playing to nobody, to all of a sudden being in the main stream audience, it is a mind f**k, but it’s exciting and it’ what we’ve been working hard at for years”

When I first heard ‘I’m Not Gonna’ Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You,’ I couldn’t really liken it to anything past or present. I couldn’t pin point any specific influences. Would you care to enlighten us?

KEVIN: “That song has been very kind to us and it came very quickly and easily. As far as influences go, when we started the band we decided to kind of cherry pick our favourite parts from across different genre’s. On the record there is Motown girl group stuff, disco, funk and a lot of British bands throughout the 80’s and 90’s, like Pulp, stuff like that.

In the U.K in particular, your songs get a lot of exposure and plays in clubs and o dance floors. Is that an intention of yours when you’re writing songs? ‘Lets write a song that’s going to fill a dance floor?’

KEVIN: “Yeah it has been thus far. One of the elements that we’ve always wanted in our songs has been that dance element. We’ve been influenced by music we were listening to when we were out getting trashed on the dance floor. We don’t strictly want to limit it to that, but we want something that you can at least move to.”

I had a friend of mine who had the mentality that if you do something that you love for a living, then it’s not like ‘work,’ obviously a lot of hard work’s gone in to what you guys have done, but do you agree with that ethic?

KEVIN: “I don’t really agree with that, cos’ there’s been a lot of hard work gone into this. I mean we obviously love the nature of the work, but it’s still work. Doing interviews is great, playing shows is great, but there’s other things you just have to do which aren’t so great. It’s one of the aspects being in a full time touring band. There’s been times over this past year when we’ve been exhausted and needed a couple of fays off. But we’re not complaining.”

How are you finding the U.K audience?

KEVIN: “We were back here in July/August. The U.K audience has been one of the best. The U.K was the first to pick up on us, I don’t know if it’s because the music lends itself more to the British ear or what? Stuff considered indie in the U.S is a lot more main stream over here, so we get a lot of exposure in the U.K.”

What’s the plan for 2009? Do you have any idea where you want to take the sound?

KEVIN: “We definitely want to do a new record next year, and we want to do an E.P for January. We’ve been playing around with some new tunes. We don’t want to stray too far from that dance/pop music element.”

From a man who’s effectively found his calling, any advice for the student readers close to entering the big bad world?

KEVIN: “We’re all in our mid to late 20’s, and there were times when we were close to calling it quits. So my advice would be stick with what you really want to do, your dream. We’ve been playing and failing in bands since we were 15, and it was a matter of sticking with it and being dedicated to it.


Interview By Graham Turner

Interview The View

Before performing to a sell-out crowd at The Social, Platform caught up with Scottish indie-terriers Pete Reilly and Steven Morrison of The View to talk second albums, male to female ratios and the current state of our class system. All in days work really…

You’ve made quite a name for yourselves as a festival band; do you enjoy the big stage or think it’s equally important to do smaller venues like The Social?

Pete: I like the intimacy of ones like this, that’s lovely. It’s always good to do that. I’d say we’re half and half, like last night was amazing, you just can’t create an atmosphere like that on the big stage. I probably like the smaller venues better to be honest. It’s because they’re right there, they’re right in your face.
Steven: It’s a different kind of buzz.
P: It’s because they’re just there, and you can see there faces. They can shout out at you, it’s really personal.

You’re just tackling the notoriously tricky second album, how are you feeling about it? Did you go all rock star and escape to a cabin somewhere?

S: No we went to Wales!

That’s not very glamorous…

P: We recorded in this valley where some of the best music ever has been recorded. Queen wrote Bohemian Rhapsody there, Oasis recorded What’s the Story Morning Glory? It’s a bit of a legendary studio but it was a walk in the park really. It wasn’t that tricky, it just came naturally. Some of the tunes we wrote when we were in the studio.
S: You’ve got the best equipment there as well.
P: It just came naturally.

Any tracks that you are especially proud of that we need to look out for?

P: I’d say Shock Horror. It’s a tune; it’s going to be our second single. Your favourite chops and changes though.
S: You need a bit of Shock Horror when you’re out with your mates.

Does the new album have a different kind of vibe or sound?

P: You can still tell it’s us, it’s just a bit more adventurous. If we needed piano or a wee bit of strings or whatever we had the freedom just do that. We weren’t held back. We could do what we wanted to do and that’s the best way to record for me.

What advice would you give to emerging bands? You made it pretty much on your own merit; do you think that’s the best way to go about it?

S: Don’t stop enjoying it.
P: Don’t stop believing.

For you was there a big defining moment where you thought “Yeah this is definitely going to happen for us”?

P: We’re still waiting to wake up from this big dream really.
S: I’d say it was the NME awards, our first red carpet. All these flashes going off and you just think; “Yeah this is pretty cool!” Yeah that was my moment!

The first album had a bit of a Libertines feel to it, how did it feel being signed to the same label as them? That must have been a pretty big moment.

P: It was cool man, it was good. We definitely signed to the right label. Even though they left us in the dark for the second album like! Fuck it; they were too busy looking after the fucking Metros! Don’t look after your band that’s had a fucking number one album, oh no keep going with your middle class South East London wankers!

We did a little feature about things in music that really annoy, any personal pet hates?

P: That’s really annoying! What really annoys me are The Metros!

Pet hates?

P: Fucking middle class shit! Anyway that’s enough Metro bashing.

So are they a shared pet hate?
S: Oh no I love them.

You did the 2007 NME tour here in Nottingham, how do you find our fair city?

P: We’ve pretty much been chasing our tails since then! Now we’re back playing here… We must be on the way down again. It’s the end for The View!

Nottingham is very much a student orientated city; do you get a different response from gigs in student cities?

P: Is it not like 7 women to one man here?

Yes, apparently so.

Support band: It’s only blondes on the guest list!

Is that why I’m on the guest list?

S: Yes.

So that’s the reason you like Nottingham, the women to men ratio?

P: It’s an all female gig tonight isn’t it?

So… are The View still on fire?

P: Smoking hot.

Interview By Lucy Knighton

Interview : Elliot Minor

Which three words would you use to describe your music?

Rock, Pop and Classical Do you find it hard being constantly compared to other bands? We don't really care, people can compare us to anyone they want. It is a compliment really. Make your own mind up really! Usually people don't compare our music; it is normally about our image. If you think about the bands you like it is normally because your friend likes them, or you like the image they portray, but I think if people actually listen to our music they would be surprised.

I read that you were classically trained and went to choir school, what made you decide to make the transition to pop-rock?

We went to music school and were all music students, we were all singing in choirs and playing in orchestra's every day and it just got a bit dull really! Classical is the kinda music we were bought up on and in to originally.

In a previous interview you described your school as sheltered, was it intimidating going from that to a career in the limelight?

It was quite weird yeah. We used to play in shows just to our friends and stuff, but once you play a gig to other people it is totally different. When we were in choirs we had to perform to a large group of people but it was different.

How much has your life changed since the band got big?

Big? Ha ha, we are not really big, we are trying, we only really get recognised at our own shows! Well it has changed in the sense that we don't go to Uni and stuff anymore. I mean talking to our friends now and they have all graduated, and got jobs, now they only get like four days off and Christmas, made us realise how different our lifestyles are. I mean if it ended it would be hard to get used to a normal lifestyle again.

Which band or artist would you most like to perform with?

Kid Rock, Green Day or Hanna Montana.

What are your plans for the future?

Probably gunna be a Plumber or something, ha ha, yeah like when all this dies down.

Where would you most like to play what would be your most desired outcome from the band?

Start touring America really. Yeah to make it big in America.

www.myspace.com/elliotminor

Interview by Lizzee Goodman

Interview : Jeremy Warmsley

HEAD TO BALLS

How would you best describe/define your own music?

I think that in a lot of modern pop music there’s this weird dichotomy between music that is intended for general mass consumption, for like, people to dance to, and enjoy in public like Britney Spears or Kaiser Chiefs, and then there’s music for people to geek out to in their own privacy and enjoy in their own heads; stuff like Tom Waits or Radiohead. It’s very rare for one of those artists to be successful. Someone like David Bowie, one of the most popular artists of all time who simultaneously just made absolute head music. I do enjoy both kinds of music and my goal is to make music that does both. Music that gets you by the balls and the brains. That’s what I’m trying, but failing to do.

The labels ‘folk’ and even ‘folktronica’ get thrown around an awful lot. How do you react to these labels? Do you reject labels in general?

I don’t give a damn, people can call it what they want, as long as they don’t call it to my face. What critics find difficult is that I tend to make music that is different from track to track. Like I’ll have a heavy chorus and a cheesy R n B verse and then a critic will try to put a label on it. Or I’ll just get thrown in with the London scene of singer songwriters like Laura Marling and Noah and The Whale, and I love those bands but musically we’re so different. So that’s why its so hard for critics because I’m always striving to throw different influences into the mix. It’s very easy to just pick one of the things that I’m doing and try to apply that label to me, which I don’t think is correct but I don’t really have a problem with.

When we spoke to Lightspeed Champion he said it wrote this grunge record and in production it went through this sort of pop machine and the end result wasn’t what he expected at all. Do you ever feel the same way about your records?

On this new record I’d say 10 of them are so are essentially the same as the demos except a few technical and production details. Except for ‘Lose My Cool’, that changed completely throughout the whole process. I’m not the kind of person who fannies about with 100 different ideas for a song. If I have the right song then I have a really clear idea of the direction that I want to take it. I don’t ever find that difficult.

So it’s just sort of a practical evolution?

Yeah, this is gunna sound wanky and pretentious but I think one of my philosophies of the way I approach my own creativity is that I’m a real pragmatist. I try and do things based around the effect that they’re going to have on the people who are listening, and often but not always, the best way to do that is just to express that true emotion that you were first gripped by. Sometimes the best way to effect someone is to work backwards from the emotion you were feeling. If you write very direct lyrics like in track like ‘if it breaks your heart’ which is very clear what the songs about, and those kinds of songs draw more from experience than others. Songs like that are very easy to write because it’s just about being in love with a girl who goes off with someone else and its all just about expressing those feelings of pure hatred and abject violence. It’s really easy to get that out because we’ve all been there. It’s just a matter of writing it down. Then there’s a song like ‘How We Became’ which is the exact opposite, it’s about feeling so vague and whispy that trying to explain what it’s about gets me tongue twisted. The only way to understand is to like, take it line by line, like a jigsaw puzzle of an expressionist painting. You have these little bits, none of them make sense on their own but when you put them all together it’s still not their but you’ve got something interesting.

How do you translate the electronic elements from songs into a live environment?

I’ve got through a lot of permutations live. I used to think that my job was to try and challenge the audience when playing live. I used to want to make people think abut what they’ve done and question their values! All of this ridiculous and preposterous stuff that was never going to happen. Now my aim is just to leave people feeling like they’ve had a damn good time. Fuck it man, we all need a good time. We don’t make any effort at all to translate the electronic elements because life is too short, we just play the songs. I think it’s just boring to watch a band playing to a backing track realising that half of what you’re hearing is coming from a little chip. So we just play the songs and have a good time. There’s also no soul of character. A laptop might not understand that you want to play the 2nd verse twice or whatever for whatever reason. If you’re going to do an electronic show then you need to have someone that’s really really good at it as well as taking advantage of all aspects of technology. The set up we have is so wonderfully precise. We can fit everything we’re doing into one Range Rover. All of our guitars and amps and everything. In the current musical climate no one is spending any money; the labels have all locked up their piggy banks and the venues are halving everyone’s’ fees and doing it this way I’m only losing like £10 a gig. I know that’s a very everyday pragmatic thing that shouldn’t effect art, but if I wanted to put on an amazing show with like lights blazing and fireworks going off, that would be amazing, but let’s be realistic that’s not going to happen when I’m playing to about forty people at the Bodega. The important thing is to play the songs as well as you can fucking play them, and leave people with a warm feeling at the root of their spine. Which I could achieve by blowing gently but that’s not very practical and I’m a very practical person.

Would you say being half French is at all intrinsic to your identity as a musician?

No.

What role would you say narrative structure plays in your songs?

I’d say about 30% of my songs are stories with a beginning, a middle and an end, and you know 70% of them aren’t. Stories in songs are great but it would just be boring if all of your songs were stories, well it wouldn’t be boring but I couldn’t do it. I mean, one day I might do an acoustic album where every song is a story but not now. I think it’s a shame that more people don’t write songs where you can actually follow what’s going on. I mean, if you listen to an Oasis song, it’s literally just a bunch of words that rhyme. I admire artists like Joanna Newsom, you’re induced and you dive in and absorb the lyrics and there’s always a story there. There’s always something happening and that’s great. Then there’s a band like Radiohead, who aren’t doing that, they’re just expressing a feeling or intangibles and that’s great too, and I love doing both.

When you do write songs of a narrative nature is it largely instinctual or do you draw much influence from other great narrative song writers like Tom Waits, Nick Cave etc.?

I don’t directly draw inspiration. The way I write those songs is always accidental. I write a song that I’d like to hear in a song, then another, then I realise that say these three lines go together like this, where’s it going to go from here? A story is like a mathematical formula, there’s only one way to connect it and that’s with an equals sign. I write the more emotive songs in the exact same way. A song like ‘Crane Flies’ I knew exactly what I was trying to express and I just happened to have the right words.

What did you learn from playing with Daniel Johnston?

I didn’t learn anything that I can apply to my own music. It was a wonderful experience but it wasn’t in any way a learning experience. The guy’s just a performer you know, he does what he does and he can’t control it. He’s a wonderful human being but a mentor.

Your recent single ‘Boat Song’, is a duet with Emmy The Great, how did you come to work with her? She’s also recorded with Lightspeed Champion among others. Is there some kind of relationship/network of British singer songwriters like Lightspeed Champion, Patrick Wolf, Laura Marling etc?

We’re old friends, we’ve known each other since we were both unsigned. I recorded a single with her back in 2004 and then last year we recorded a Christmas EP over at my house. Then, I think on the new album, I did the string arrangements for a few songs, but I’m not even sure if they made it onto the album. She was all over my first album as well, she did a lot of backing vocals. She’s a great songwriter, a great performer and another wonderful human being. I’d love to work with her again. For the single, I was round at her house and she had a verse and we strung something together and I recorded it for a laugh, thinking it would be a B-side then the label wanted it as a single and that’s how it happened. We’ve got another song we wrote together about sloths but that was kind of a joke.

Emmy and I are great friends, Johnny Flynn and I used to live together, I’ve known Mystery Jets and Noah And The Whale for yonks, Slow Club are good friends. Etc. etc. I know all these guys and I love what they’re doing and I’m proud to be counted among them, but I see that something most of them have in common is that they’re all based around acoustic guitars and all serve a pretty strong folk element, I occasionally do a bit of that but I don’t really see those elements as being integral to my music, it’s just another part of my musical palette. So I don’t really see myself as part of it, although I do love everything that’s going on in that scene at the moment. One of my favourite bands that might be counted among them at the moment is a band called Gossamer Albatross (http://www.myspace.com/gossameralbatross) who are a bunch of eighteen year olds from Hereford.


Any other bands you’d recommend?

There’s a band called Three Trapped Tigers (www.myspace.com/threetrappedtigers)– they make the most fucked up electronica imaginable. You listen to them and you think it’s all synthesizers and drum machines but they actually use piano and live drum kits to make most of their sound. There’s a band called Akira – they’re this really crazy glitch-pop band, really funny, really out there, just great melodies. House of Strange are a great psychedelic-prog band from East London.

Interview by Andy Trendell

Photos by Lucy Bridger(
www.flickr.com/lucybridger)

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/JEREMYWARMSLEY

Interview : Natty

2008’s obviously been a successful year for you as an artist, getting signed to a major label. How did that come about? Wasn’t from it from a club night you were running?

Yeah, ‘Vibes and pressure.’ But not only from the club night but from all the gigs I was doing, I was doing loads and loads of gigs at the time and I found that I was the only artist there that people were really in to. Everyone else was all generic, and I just wanted to create a night where things were less generic. It was all off the live thing where it all happened.

It was Atlantic that got interested wasn’t it?

Yeah Atlantic, they showed a lot of interest, and they were the one’s that I was interested in. At one point there could be about 50 A and R guys there at one time.

What was that transition like? Surreal?

Yeah it was surreal. But you can’t look it as surreal; otherwise you’ll get caught up in the hype. The way I see it, some people like my music and they want to put it out there. Let’s move with it. If they want to’ give me some money, so I can by a house, then you know, that’ll be fine with me.

I read on your myspace page that you’re ‘living the dream.’ I had a friend that used to say if you found something you love, and you can do that for a living, then it’s not like work. Do you agree with that?

Yeah of course. I mean, if I was to take my shades off now, you’d see I have bags under my eyes. I’m real tired. But I’m loving it. The other night I was playing, and I didn’t have to sing cos’ the crowd all were. How you not gonna’ love that sh*t?

When it comes to writing lyrics, is it a case ‘I’ve got this tune, now I need some lyrics, what’s on my mind?’ Or do you approach it with an intended meaning to a song?

Both, it just comes how it comes. Either a whole song or just little bits, there’s no rules to this shit. Anything goes. I could have an entire chord progression with no lyrics, or I could find lyrics I wrote three years ago and use them. It just happens.

The album sounds like a personal account and expression, is it a buzz to know that people can derive their own meaning from what your saying?

It‘s personal to the point where pretty much everybody goes through this shit. Its from my perspective but people can relate. I guess that‘s why I‘m doing well.

What’s the plan for 2009?

I’m going to America, then Europe. Germany, then this festival in Holland, and towards the end of the year, I want to look at recording a new album. I’ve already started writing it.

Any advice for our student readers who are close to entering the big bad world?

Yeah don’t listen to anyone. Listen to your heart. A lot of people go by what there friends are doing, or what their parents say. I’m not saying don’t listen to what they’ve got to say, you’ve jus got to make your own way, walk your own path.

Interview By Graham Turner