Al Horner

Interview - James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:15:00 +0100

James Murphy throws a miniature invisible basketball, and feigns a bratty fit of frustration when it bundles off the board and out of touch. “See? I’ll never be a basketball player. I just don’t have the presence of mind for it,” he says, shaking his head, a mischievous grin lurking out from beyond his beard. Murphy is many things to many people: frontman to now defunct electro icons LCD Soundsystem, label boss to the influential DFA Records, producer, DJ, coffee entrepreneur, watch manufacturer, comedian, budding novelist and now with the release of Shut Up and Play The Hits, a two hour document of his band’s final show at Madison Square Garden, a film star. I’ve asked him, with so many strings already to his bow, is there anything he can’t do?

“The thing about basketball is that I can’t shoot or dribble. Two pretty critical skills in that sport. Oh and I’m not a great dancer, either,” he continues. “I’m not purposefully or consciously prolific or anything. I just like creating things.” His latest creation, the brilliant, twisting Shut Up is a mere hour away from its British premiere at the Hackney Picturehouse. It’s here we meet, while the crowds begin to drift in. There’s every bit the colour and vibrancy you’d expect of a film premiere, the air heavy with chatter and the crunch of flashbulbs as celebrities ghost by on the red carpet, but it feels a little like a wake, like the fans filing into the cinema auditorium are here to pay their last respects to an act whose kind don’t come around too often.

LCD Soundsystem began in 2001 in Murphy’s native New York, where their upbeat party anthems in a way became synonymous with the city’s defiance in the years that followed September 11. The wide spread of sounds on their 2005 self-titled debut (“recorded by me on my own, then made into a live thing,” remembers Murphy) meant there was something for everyone – its bouncing rhythms propped up by a brash, punk undercurrent, with Murphy musing eloquently in the most inviting of pop bellows at its epicentre. It was the beginning of a band with a rare ability to move both on the dancefloor and somewhere more profound. That Shut Up’s crowd scenes are punctuated by glimpses of fans in floods of tears is telling of the emotional punch of Murphy’s songs, and the distress felt that he’s leaving them all behind.

“It was tough but felt like the right thing to do,” he says of the decision to break up the band. Having kept busy with various collaborations and projects since, before launching back into his LCD guise to promote this film, has the enormity of that decision still to hit him? “You know, at the moment it comes over me in waves. You forget about it and then it comes back around. It’s like death. You get on with your life then one day, it’s Christmas or whatever, a birthday and it comes back. Things hit you at different times for different reasons.” There’s a pause before he laughs. “I’m sorry, this is very morbid all of a sudden. It’s the Irish in me. What I mean to say is, this movie felt an interesting way to celebrate the end of that chapter.”

Interesting is an understatement. In an inspired spin on the traditional concert movie, Shut Up melds footage of that final show at Madison Square Garden in April with reality-bending scenes of Murphy as he prepares for the show and life without the commitment that has dictated his every move for the past decade, loosely scripted in a manner befitting his semi-improvised stage manner (“I just made [the lyrics] up every time and had notes to help me go down the right path,” he recently told a reporter. “Each performance was different. The words caught on record just happened to be the words I sang that day.”) It’s a film that reaches beyond music to something more human, both celebrating and agonizing over the prospect of renewal with brilliant lyricism – in one scene, Murphy speaks to Klosterman about life after LCD as a camera captures him shaving his beard.

“We originally wanted to make an entirely fictional film with some real things. We were going to play a concert and there was going to be the interview with Chuck Klosterman, which would be a real interview, but there was also going to be dream sequences and all sorts of weird shit and we weren’t even going to show the band play,” explains Murphy. “We had the same ideas about wanting it to not be a stupid concert movie with big cranes. It seemed like this great opportunity.”

Much like his music, the 42-year-old is easy to love but near impossible to pin down. “I’d say my mantra is to not be the sort of guy whose worldview can be boiled down to a single mantra,” he says, flashing me another grin. “I’m not a good boiler-downer. I’m a bigger-upper, an expander, not a contractor. Have you heard me ramble on?” I notice he has come dressed tonight in the same attire he wears onscreen – dishevelled suit, loosened tie, white trainers – and begin to wonder if there’s a character Murphy feels tied into playing as the LCD Soundsystem’s talisman, one he’s tired of assuming.

Perhaps the most memorable flashpoint from Shut Up comes early on, as Klosterman posits Murphy with a theory: People, the journalist suggests, are remembered for a series of successes but defined by their single biggest failure. What is Murphy’s defining failure? The singer answers sombrely that it could well be breaking up LCD Soundsystem. Is that a genuine concern or was he playing up to the cameras? “It’s not a concern, it’s just a fact,” he tells me. “I’m not worried about, else I wouldn’t have done it but sometimes, you never know… I regret it in little ways. Not regret it, actually, but I miss it. No regrets. None.”

You hear stories. The astronaut who returns to Earth overawed with what he saw, distant and resenting. The Olympic gold medal athlete who, as the cheers of the crowd fade, falls into depression. Shut Up and Play The Hits so easily could have basked in a band at their pinnacle, but instead asks the more searching question: when the house lights go up and the euphoria ends, where now? How do you start again? Such is James Murphy’s warmth and spirit – on record and in person – that it’s easy to be troubled by the uncertainty and darkness that simmers under his documentary. But as we part, he beams me a parting smile that tells me he’ll survive in a world without LCD Soundsystem. The question is – will we?

Originally published in Drowned In Sound

http://www.shutupandplaythehits.com

Interview - J Mascis, Dinosaur Jr.

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 10:09:00 +0100

J Mascis darts me a stare as I flutter through the doors of the West London hotel we’re to meet in. He’s playing with a bottle of Perrier water and as I grin back, I notice a rumbling of nerves in the pit of my stomach – not because he’s the man responsible for fuzz rock pioneers Dinosaur Jr. (though I do fanboyishly confide I know the guitar solo in Start Choppin’ better than I know some of my closest friends and family as our conversation begins) but because his interviews are notoriously… well, difficult.

Case in point? What initially drew him to the loud abrasive guitars sounds that have become his trademark, wondered Spin reporter Erik Davis in 1989. “It’s basically because I don’t like to play,” he replied. “The guitar’s such a wimpy instrument and it’s the only way to make it halfway bearable.” “So you don’t like to play guitar?” countered Davis. “No.” “Why do it then?” “I dunno,” Mascis deadpanned. The prickly silences that dominated this encounter with the guitarist and indeed Davis’s follow-up interview a few years later (“Interviews are stupid. Most of the time they want to talk about the album. I have nothing to say about it. It’s an album, just listen to it”) have been a fixture of his every interview since – as much a Mascis trademark as the screaming guitars and shredded solos that have propped up each of Dinosaur Jr.’s ten studio albums to date.

The trio formed in Massachusetts in 1984 out of the wreckage of hardcore experimentalists Deep Wound, whose distorted textures survived the transition to a more melodic approach in Dinosaur Jr., inspired by acts like The Replacements. They soon became swept up in the grunge upsurge of the late Eighties, their tender-but-fanged sound (described by Mascis as “ear-bleeding country”) earning them a place in the record collections and affections of fans alongside the likes of Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and latterly, Nirvana. By the time Mascis and fellow Deep Wound alumnus Lou Barlow fell out, leading to the latter’s departure from Dinosaur Jr. and the group’s eventual end in 1997, they had cemented their status as one of the most influential acts of a generation. Their work was done.

Except, it wasn’t. I Bet On Sky is the trio’s third since reuniting with Barlow in 2005, and in keeping with the preceding two, it’s a stormer. With Mascis sat opposite me, still drawing invisible circles in the table top with his Perrier bottle, I ask what keeps them coming back. With their names already written in the history books, what’s left to achieve for Dinosaur Jr.? “I don’t know,” he eventually replies. He’s as laconic as promised, but I find him warmer than the myth lets on, friendly even, and am happily intrigued by the way he so totally contrasts the urgent, combustive nature of his music. “I don’t know quite where we’re going. I just… like to play shows,” he mutters gently. “And it’s like, well, we’ve played everywhere with one record, better write a new one so we can go play those places again.”

But if having new material to play live was the driving force behind the new album, it certainly didn’t stop the band experimenting with layers of sound to create what he describes as their most dense collection of songs yet. “Some records you just try not to worry about that sort of thing and suit about what best suits the song, even if it’s impossible to play live.” That explains the keyboards that simmer under the crunchy rush of guitars on tracks like Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know and Watch The Corners then – quite a departure for Dinosaur Jr. and indeed Mascis, who even on solo outings (2000’s More Light, 2002’s Free So Free and, to a lesser extent, 2011’s Several Shades Of Why) has mostly favoured guitars cranked to eardrum-splitting volumes.

Most returning heritage acts play a few big-money shows and roll out maybe one last album before running off into the sunset clutching their paycheques, I mention to the guitarist. But not Dinosaur Jr. - was it always the plan to get the band together properly, to be in it for the long haul once more, to dive right into making albums and touring again? “Not really. We just take it day by day,“ he sighs. “Yeah, it just kept going. I’ve seen a lot of things come and go. A lot of bands come and go. It all depends on whether it’s any good or not, I guess.” He brings up his disappointment that Black Sabbath, a favourite of his since his teenage years, couldn’t get their recent planned reunion past the legal wrangles and health issues that caused the reformation to falter. “I would have liked to have seen them. But…” He lets a wistful shrug finish off his sentence.

Conversation drifts slowly to the topic of his long term bandmate, Lou Barlow. How are things now? “Alright. Better. Not perfect. “ The words are punctuated by long pauses, pregnant with the uneasiness of a long story better left untold. “We still don’t communicate that great, but it’s better.” The sort of history they have, I suggest, doesn’t come around often – thirty years of collaboration, so many long nights on tour, so many celebrated albums. Does that sort of musical bond take precedence over any personal friction they might have? “Well, you know, we have a certain energy together,” he sighs. “I don’t get that same energy playing with other people.”

The pair’s origins in the thriving Massachusetts hardcore scene of the early Eighties still has a huge part to play in their collaborations, Mascis confirms – if not musically, then in their attitudes, their ethos. “It’s just ingrained in me,” he says. “Growing up listening to hardcore and playing hardcore, that was my most important part of my life, in some ways. That age, you’re at your most impressionable, when I was most into music. It was just like, seeing something that was happening then and there that just… that just spoke to me.”

Mascis takes a full minute to answer my parting question, pushing his signature diving goggle-type glasses from the bridge of his nose as he thinks. With the ten album milestone reached, how long can Dinosaur Jr. continue for? “It’s, uh, hard to plan for the future.” You say that as though you’re wary your relationship with Lou could change at any section, I say. Another long pause. “I’m not worried. You just… never know what’s going to happen, right?” But would he like to? “Sure. We do have some history,” the frontman concedes. “In the early days we used to have sound men throwing bottles of beer at us when we were playing for being so loud. It wasn’t, like, easy listening music, it was always loud. If you’re really loud and have no fans, and we didn’t really have fans till after You’re Living All Over Me, well, that’s a bad combination.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things come and go.” He wasn’t kidding.

Originally published in Drowned In Sound

http://www.dinosaurjr.com

Radio Dredd - behind DROKK, Geoff Barrow's pulsating Mega-City wonder

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:10:00 +0100

The world of Judge Dredd, the fictional cop whose palpably violent 2000 AD series has been entertaining comic fans one blood-drenched panel at a time since 1977, is famously bleak - a murky metropolis scorched by nuclear war, its streets patrolled by lawmen more unforgiving than the morning after a six day tequila bender. But for a man whose lifelong obsession with this world has brought him to the point of writing an album from the perspective of inside the character’s iconic helmet, Geoff Barrow, best known as the beatmaker behind Portishead, is surprisingly cheery.

“I’ve always been a Dredd head, me,” he rumbles, a large grin detectable down the telephone line from his Bristol home. “My Gran used to work in a newsagent. She’d buy me Topper, which was like a budget Beano, until one day I asked for something a bit more adult. I don’t think she realised how violent 2000 AD was.” Diagnosed at an early age with Dyslexia, the series’ strong visuals, minimal text and bold ideas struck a dark, penetrating chord that has resonated in him since. ”The characters, the concepts, the images, Dredd is ingrained in me.”

DROKK, named after a canonical swear word, is Barrow’s tribute to Dredd and the bleak dystopia he polices, written in collaboration with Emmy-nominated film composer Ben Salisbury. A grinding thrum of analogue keyboards and clanking rhythms, it’s as sprawling and pulsating as Mega-City One itself. ”That was the challenge, tapping into the city’s character. This is our interpretation of it.” The pair looked for inspiration not only in Dredd’s backpages but in old post-apocalyptic films, borrowing from soundtracks to The Terminator and John Carpenter flicks. ”There’s a lot of those kind of low-budget VHS, Betamax-sounding synth lines,” he explains.

Why now, I wonder aloud. Despite mainstream success in the 1980s, since a dreary Sylvester Stallone-starring Hollywood adaptation in 1995 the series has simmered quietly off the radar, a distant speck in the cultural constellation. Does the character still matter beyond its cult comic readership? “More now than ever,” Barrow volleys back. “When I was getting into Dredd there was Thatcher, race riots and the lot. He was an idea of a future that didn’t seem that far away.” As the British economy tumbles further and the Conservative Party’s grip on power continues to tighten, it’s a future that’s coming back round again, he suggests.

Sharing his theory is Marc Bessant, Barrow’s long-term visual collaborator, who was tasked with translating DROKK’s minimalist sonics to its record sleeve. “Mega-City One is gritty, utilitarian, un-decorative. Some places in Britain are already a bit like that, where there’s a constant bombardment of lines and signs and unnatural forms,” he chimes. “The idea of an awful authoritarian environment resonates with a lot of people right now. There’s something anarchic, a bit punk about Dredd that flies in the face of that.”

Whatever the future of Britain, Barrow is happy for now enjoying creative freedom to pick and choose from projects until Portishead reconvene to work on a long-anticipated follow-up to 2008’s Third. “I’m really blessed to be able to make music and survive, doing what I want,” he grins again, pausing. “Yeah, I guess that’s reason to be cheery.”

Baltimore's dream pop re-up: how Beach House, Lower Dens and Animal Collective are rewiring David Simon's Wire legacy

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:35:00 +0100

Ashen streets, grim estates, slums choked with drug dealers and destitutes… thanks to HBO’s The Wire, this is the Baltimore, USA that exists in the imaginations of many. However, since Jimmy McNulty’s screen exit in 2008, Maryland’s biggest city has heralded a different kind of cultural export, one that’s somewhat incongruous to the legacy left by David Simon’s show: atmospheric indie, tagged “dream pop” by some, made famous by the likes of Animal Collective, Lower Dens and Beach House.

Delve deeper into the city’s music scene and there’s even more where that came from: Dead Mellotron, Wye Oak, Celebration and Future Islands, who each posses a mix of ghostly vocals, reverberating drums and shoegazing influences, are all natives. Whereas in the 1990s Baltimore was dominated by hip-hop and house - the likes of Dru Hill, Ultra Nate, Rod Lee and K-Swift were all residents - it now is a city whose primary music exports recall the tenebrous moods of My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins. Baltimore’s music scene has undergone, to use Barksdale slang, a dream pop re-up.

“It’s a pretty unique place to be right now,” admits Lower Dens singer Jana Hunter, who relocated to the city from Houston in 2008. “At first it was kind of fascinating and fun but after I moved there I began to really believe in it as a different, more inspiring way of life than I’d experienced before.”

Part of it, according to Hunter, is down to simple economics. “Baltimore has a lot to offer young creative people right now. It’s such a friendly town for artists because it’s very cheap. It’s possible to live there scraping together $50 a week, renting a cheap room, when it isn’t elsewhere. That makes art possible, you know?”

It’s an analysis shared by former Baltimore Sun music reporter Erik Maza. “In 2004, a bunch of art school grads moved to Baltimore, drawn by cheap rents and available warehouses,” he recalls. “They carved out this niche for a hyper-kinetic, anarchic, shamelessly dorky scene.” Those graduates drew the attention of Rolling Stone, who in 2010 named the city the best scene in the US - not that those musicians there cared. “My sense is that artists here don’t care and don’t seek out that level of mainstream recognition,” Maza observes.

“As a city, it’s full of people doing a lot of art, theatre and so on who are very much devoted to what they were doing and doing it the way they want to do it. They - we, I suppose - don’t really want the approval of the outside world,” agrees Hunter. “Maybe there’s some concern to meet the standard of their friends and peers in Baltimore, but that’s a different thing. It’s kind of like, How much of yourself can you pour into it? That’s the litmus test here, not mainstream recognition.”

Baltimore, it seems, hasn’t changed that much from the way it was portrayed on screen. The city’s crime rate remains high - the eighth highest in the US in fact, with a projected total of 6960 violent crimes for this year alone - and Hunter acknowledges it continues to be an “extremely impoverished” place to be, battling huge unemployment figures.

“Baltimore is still struggling with major class, development, crime and a whole range of other social issues that have contributed to that image portrayed in The Wire,” says Maza. “That might seem contradictory to some of the music that’s also coming out of the city. On the one hand, these two cultures exist side by side, but very much separated by gentrification and class and racial differences; the world of [local artistic collective] Wham City and the art school is, if we’re generalizing, privileged and white.”

But these artist do not live in a vacuum. “On the other hand Baltimore musicians and artists are also really engaged with some of these social issues, and while less so on the music side, a lot of them make work, or do activism, that specifically addresses some of those social issues,” explains Maza adds, noting some of the bands involvement in the Occupy movement.

The Wire might have been lauded as Dickensian in its storytelling, but when it comes to its growing musical renaissance, Baltimore really is a tale of two cities.

Article originally published in Q Magazine

http://www.lowerdens.com

Interview - Volker Bertellman, Hauschka

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:09:55 +0100

On last year’s Salons Des Amateurs, German prepared piano experimentalist Volker Bertelmann – better known as Hauschka – took modern classical music by the scruff of the neck, dragging it out of fusty macchiato-sipping territory and onto the dancefloor. A searing snapshot of his current fascination with club culture, Salons’ scattershot energy, agitated rhythms, Day-Glo melodies and gutter-punching melancholy – imagine John Cage, Thomas Brinkmann and Battles’ Ian Williams jostling over the DJ booth in a murky Berlin sweatbox at 3am and you’re pretty much there – cemented his position as one of the most confounding and compelling classical talents operating today.

So, when offered the chance to catch up with the man himself over a crackly phone line as he gears up for a return to British soil at London’s Barbican Hall this coming Friday (18 May), I naturally obliged. What followed was a revealing insight into the processes and politics of his craft as well as a glimpse at his future plans – plus a few choice words for Peter Gabriel…

Your show at London’s Barbican is fast approaching. What’s in store?

Well, the first time I played the venue was wonderful, so I’m very much looking forward to it. As a venue, it’s one of my favourites in the world. To be playing there with two label mates who are also very good friends, well, this is a very good thing. I have fun in London every time. For me, it’s a city that has a very high speed, definitely in comparison to Dusseldorf. In comparison to other metropoles, it sticks out. It’s a city that feels like it needs money to feel confident. But that’s just an impression I have. Every time I go there I have a great time.

You’re sharing the stage with Johan Johannson and Dustin O’Halloran, fellow artists on Fat Cat’s 170301 imprint. Between 130701 and Erased Tapes, there seems to be a real sense of family and community to the modern classical genre at the moment.

Yeah, there is. There’s definitely overlapping. I know Nils Frahm, I know Peter Broderick, we invite each other to our concerts and of course there’s a high respect for each other. The family aspect, in terms of us supporting each other and hanging out with one another, is great but in general I like the idea of having my own musical shape, being on my own. I would rather leave the family than not feel myself within it. The danger in a musical family is it doesn’t matter who appears, they are either that guy or that guy but in the end it’s all the same – just part of a bigger whole. I’m really happy to be associated with Dustin and Johann though, they have a high sense of their own art. I like the way they challenge themselves.

Many of those artists began in rock music before turning to softer, more classical forms of music – Dustin was in an indie-rock band, whilst Erased Tapes’ Olafur Arnalds was in a hardcore band. Do you have a similar history or have you always been focused on classical and avant-garde music?

No, not at all. I had my first rock band at the age of 12. I was singing and writing the songs and we were covering the Stones, stuff like that, but also 80s German wave sort of songs. There were all these bands coming from West Berlin, which was divided at the time, making German rock music kind of a bold movement. Kraftwerk also blended into this time, they fitted nicely into the abstract kind of rock music around at the that time, so they were another influence. Then I was rapping in a hip-hop band called God’s Favourite Dog. That might surprise people, huh? I was at this time very much influenced by Stereo MCs. I liked their energy. Also bands like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, stuff like that. At that time, I was into a lot of music from Seattle like Nirvana. So we were making music that was kind of crossing over between rap and rock. We had long hair and were stage diving. It was very… physical.

It’s interesting you mention Kraftwerk – there’s something quite mechanized about Salons that made me think of The Man Machine.

Well, you know, in Dusseldorf we have a lot of galleries and museums. There’s a lot of art – on a very high level. I don’t know about now, but there used to be a list of the best artists in Germany and the top 5 were all from Dusseldorf. As a city, we’re traditionally very creative and with that, very successful. So not only Kraftwerk but also Mouse On Mars kind of soaked up that abstractness and artistic emphasis. Maybe that’s blending into the music, making it a little different from the mainstream. Maybe the same thing is in my music, I don’t know. But yes, Kraftwerk are a group I very much respect.

The last time I saw you play, you were utilizing everything from vibrating sex toys to ping pong balls. Are these just every day items plucked from around the Bertelmann household or do you think when composing, hey, a dildo would make an interesting effect here?

The vibrators are just something I have lying around the household. I have ten and, you know, I don’t use them all in my act… [laughs] I actually found them, for example, in a slot machine at the airport. A lot of the things I use in my act are by accident like that. Sometimes I go into a shop to buy something and think, wow, I want to know how that sounds. In a way, there’s a randomness to it. But there’s also something very calculated, a plan to how I set my piano up – the things I choose to use. When I pack my suitcase I pack the things I need for a tour, but I often leave things at home on purpose, just because I’m tired of using them and like to challenge myself to work around it and invent new sounds. I see potential sounds wherever I go. For example, now I am sitting in a room with a sewing machine and I keep thinking of the needles, how the coils would sound. Sometimes I will work for weeks with one material, trying to find a new sound, new acoustic processes. Then there are periods where I just want to leave the piano as it is, because it sounds beautiful as it is.

It seems crazy that for a process as meticulous and intricate as prepared piano, you’re so fiercely prolific. Salons was your, what, eighth album is seven years?

Yeah, number eight. I think a lot of the time it’s actually the materials that take forever; the rest comes not easily, but with a certain flow to it, I’m quite lucky like that. For now, anyway. Maybe one day we’ll speak again and I’ll have ran out of ideas and you’ll say, What happened, man? When I write something, I’m inspired by all sorts of things. These days nearly every chord progression has been used: you play G, F, E, and then you think oh God, I know this song, I can’t use it anymore. But by altering the acoustic nature of the piano itself, it sounds interesting. You haven’t heard it before. It’s a new angle. That helps me keep productive, stay busy writing. I’ve actually just recorded 45, maybe 50 different pieces of music in Africa.

For an upcoming release?

Yes, hopefully in early 2013. The purpose of this project is to help people in other countries to connect with German culture and share some of theirs, like an exchange. So I spent time with musicians from Nairobi and Kenya. There was a choir of 70-year-old women then a couple of kids doing electronic music who just played South By Southwest. So yeah, it was a real discovery.

How’s it sounding?

Well, if you make a record in Brazil, you don’t want it to sound like Buena Vista Social Club, do you know what I mean? I didn’t want to exploit or pervert their native sounds and instruments. I wanted to do something exciting and real.

I have a feeling you’re about to mention Graceland.

You got me. That’s definitely not the idea. Paul Simon’s Graceland is not the worst example. I think a lot of people in Africa, they hear that music a lot and it somehow incorporates their tastes. It’s not Peter Gabriel, which is worse in taking African music as this exotic thing, recording it over the top of your thing to make you feel better, more inventive, when it’s actually exploitation.

There’s something I find weirdly hilarious about how you create these big, profound compositions out of these banal, everyday kind of items like Tic Tac boxes. Are you a funny guy?

You tell me! Sure, I’m funny. I like irony and melancholy, a mixture of those things. I’m sort of a responsible person – I have a family, I have things to take care of, you know? – but yeah, I like to laugh and part of that seeps through into my music, I suppose. Life is a gift and you have a certain amount of time to make the best of it. You might as well have fun, huh?

Your last record took a style of music that’s predominantly associated with very highbrow art circles – prepared piano experiments – and repositioned it within electronic dance, which exists, traditionally, on the opposite end of the cultural scale – it’s more a music ‘of the people’ so to speak. Was that a political statement?

To be quite honest, I wasn’t trying to reposition ideas about that kind of music and the people associated with it – it was more that I wanted to re-position myself. If you do something more than once, people make a monument of you. You start to feel like you have iron shoes, concrete on your feet. I am aware of what you mean, how what I did with Salons can seem political, but I wasn’t trying to make a statement about class or popularize art or anything when I was making the record. I was thinking much more about myself, rather than strategizing about reinventing an art form. I wanted to do electronic music but not without my instrument. Normally everyone would say, man, that’s impossible, you need a keyboard, but I wanted to do it.

Have you always been a fan of dance music?

I love dancing and I love the idea of dance music, even if I’m not a big fan of techno music. I love its structure, how it rises and falls. I love to dance to slow music, especially reggae. What I love with dance music is the culture, being in a club, drinking, dancing, having fun with friends. I love bass. Sometimes the most beautiful thing I can hear is stuff that is all low end and only the slightest, most delicate high end melodies: it can be pure chaos but so beautiful. But I don’t really follow it much, not on a mainstream level at least. I mean, just who is this Calvin Harris guy? I’m not familiar with him. I’m inspired by a lots of different types of music and there are different things I like about it and with dance music I love the culture. Even if I don’t really know who Calvin Harris is.

Originally published in Drowned In Sound

http://www.myspace.com/hauschka

Inside the mind of Jai Paul, the British electronic scene's most elusive producer

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:42:00 +0100

There’s elusive, and then there’s London producer Jai Paul. The throbbing bass notes of his 2007 demo BTSU have been shaking the foundations of clubs for almost five years now, earning the attention of Drake and Beyonce, who have both mined the track for sample on recent tracks. However, the Londoner has so far declined to capitalise on the slow-burning success of that track, failing to release another note of music since - that is, until now.

A brand new song, the similarly sumptuous Jasmine, was posted online last Friday, prompting speculation that finally momentum might be gathering in the producer’s camp. But just who is Jai Paul, and is he really the future of British electronic music?

In today’s rapid fire music culture, it’s not unheard of for an unknown artist to become one of the most sought after acts on the planet in a matter of months. It is, however, unusual to do that on the basis of just one song - even Lana Del Rey had Blue Jeans to back to up the plaintive piano sparkle of Video Games.

But Jai Paul was snapped up by revered indie imprint XL Recordings on the basis of just BTSU in December 2010 and days later received a BBC Sound of 2011 nomination. Such was the brilliance of BTSU - a track grabbing the pulsating low end and wobbling synths of dubstep by the scruff of the neck and dropping them into more soulful territory, like Prince at a grimey South London basement rave.

That BBC Sound nomination might seem laughable in retrospect - the 23-year-old didn’t release a single track in 2011, let alone shape the year’s musical landscape - but at the time it felt perfectly reasonable. Jai Paul’s sound was fresh and quietly innovative, with an irresistible pop twist. The song eventually ended up on the radar of Drake who used it as the basis for Dreams Money Can Buy before the track’s ghostly falsetto vocal ended up on Beyonce’s 4 album in the guise of Till The End Of Time. But these cameos were to be Paul’s only activity in 2011.

So, what has been the hold up? On the surface, it might look like the producer is simply lethargic, or even nonchalant about the whole thing - certainly if his Twitter page is anything to go by: “In all honesty, I don’t give half of a shit,” was his last missive on the social media platform, delivered in February on one of two sparsely-used accounts linked to him.

However, fellow young gun Hudson Mohawke has a different theory. “Being so young and signing to a record label with a huge amount of history pedigree, there’s definitely a huge amount of pressure attached to that,” he says. “When I signed to Warp [aged 23], it was a massive, massive deal for me. I almost didn’t do it, because I was worried about stepping to be alongside those artists. It’s daunting, you know?”

“After I signed with them, I didn’t do anything for a like a year. I didn’t submit any music,” he adds. “The pressure stopped me. It was like being fucking paralyzed. It was a pretty hellish year. A lot of sleepless nights, starting thing and scrapping them. It took me a long time to get over that stage fright.”

Has Jai Paul suffered a similar crisis of confidence? It’s impossible to say, especially given his apparent aversion to the spotlight (a quick trawl of Google suggests he’s yet to grant a single interview). But whatever has stopped the Londoner from releasing the glut of music you’d expect from an artist at the start of a promising career, Jasmine suggests he may be getting over it and although XL insist “things are still very much unconfirmed with what comes next” for Paul, it’s not a moment too soon.

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:28:00 +0100

Since the release of their debut two years ago, Japandroids have begun creeping into mainstream view, even though on the spectrum of noisy garage-rock duos they lay closer to lo-fi experimenters No Age and fellow Canadians Death From Above 1979 than the chart-dwelling White Stripes. Their second album, Celebration Rock, delivers more of the same: good time guitar-pop anthems about girls and nights on the tiles, delivered at breakneck velocity and near-deafening volume.

The record crackles into life with the sound of bonfire night rockets on The Nights Of Wine And Roses, but the fireworks don’t end there. The House That Heaven Built, boasting bruising Springsteen-ish power chords, is thrilling, as is the firecracker pop-punk of Younger Us. Reason to celebrate, indeed.

Originally published in Q Magazine

http://www.japandroids.com

North Atlantic Oscillation - Fog Electric

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:47:00 +0100

North Atlantic Oscillation’s 2010 debut Grappling Hooks elicited comparison to everyone from Pink Floyd to Granddaddy to Squarepusher – a list of acts dissimilar enough to suggest the Edinburgh duo are actually true originals. New album Fog Electric picks up where their first outing left off, carving glacier-sized soundscapes out of gentle keyboard sounds, emotive falsetto vocals and crackling electronics.

The band are at their most engaging on tracks like Empire Waste, which threads a pumping drum machine beat through the billowing synths and post-rock-ish swathes of noise, while The Receiver is similarly impressive, evolving from a lifting piano ballad into a thrum of orchestral swells and distorted guitars. Fog Electric isn’t the masterclass those songs threaten it to be, often meandering into no-man’s land, but it’s certainly a sturdy effort.

Article republished from Q Magazine

http://www.naoband.com

Lower Dens - Nootropics

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:42:00 +0100

You wouldn’t have guessed Lower Dens’ second album was written from the claustrophobic confines of a tour van. This expansive follow-up to 2010 debut Twin Hand Movement manages a tsunami-sized wash of sounds, recalling the tenebrous dream pop of Galaxie 500 and fellow Baltimore exports Beach House, despite being composed on keyboards in the back of their bus while on the road.

Leading the charge on Nootropics is songwriter Jana Hunter, the one-time apprentice of freak folk luminary Devendra Banhart, whose vocal provides a bewitching focal point to the group’s gothic meld of gliding guitars and spectral synth noises, like the Cocteau Twins on a comedown. The locomotive-powered brawn of Brains and Lamb excites, but it’s the celestial simmer of Nova Anthem that impresses most, slow-burning towards success – much like the quintet themselves.

Article republished from Q Magazine

http://www.lowerdens.com

Interview - James Mercer, The Shins

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:30:00 +0100

With The Shins’ recent fourth studio album Port Of Morrow currently positioned in the upper echelons of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, frontman James Mercer has plenty of reasons to be cheerful. It’s not a bad turnaround for the group that saw their keyboard player and drummer depart in 2009, after Mercer sidelined the group to explore his electronic interests with producer Danger Mouse in side-project Broken Bells. Now the Shins is a full-time concern again, I caught up with the singer to find out why he wrote this record solo, what prompted the change in personnel and how he ended up writing parts of the album in Elliott Smith’s old house.

Port Of Morrow being the Shins’ fourth studio album, was it an easier record to make?

“It’s never easy. I was commuting each week, flying from Portland to Los Angeles to record it with Greg [Kurstin, producer] at his studio. That sounds arduous but it wasn’t too bad. I would nap, read… in fact one of the songs, No Way Down, came about on a flight. I was reading this article about the American trade deficit and the lyrics just came out of me - which was cool as that song was causing a lot of trouble. I’m happy with it, definitely. Greg worked really hard with me on it, so yeah, it feels good.”

Did being in Broken Bells have an impact on the record?

“It made me let go of the reigns a little. In the past I would really sweat on every little detail. I would really get in there and move things around. But after working with Brian [Burton, better known as Danger Mouse] I was a bit more trusting – I realised I don’t have to be so controlling. The guys I’m working with, they’re talented musicians, you know? I eased up a lot thanks to Brian. It was a really rewarding experience working with him in every way. I never actually left the Shins mindset, it wasn’t hard to switch gears or anything. I was working on songs for this album alongside Broken Bells the whole time.”

So what took it so long?

“Well, there was actually a pretty similar gestation period to [last album] Wincing The Night Away. I began working on songs as far back as 2007, when I was winding up things on the last record, and worked right through till last summer on and off. I tend to write pretty slowly, to make my time with things. Simple Song [the album’s lead single] was one of the earlier songs. I wrote it on the living room floor of my old house, which weirdly used to belong to Elliott Smith. My wife and I had no idea when we bought it, it was just a weird coincidence. The neighbours told us once we’d moved in. My friends were like, Man, that’s a place in music history! Can we come hang out? [laughs]”

There’s a more intimate feel to this record. Was that something you purposely tried to introduce, this time around?

“Well, this record was definitely more personal, insofar as Wincing The Night Away had just been finished and I had gone through a pretty serious transition period in my life. I had decided to really take the reigns on my professional life. I needed to take it a little more serious and represent the band personally, to make it understood that this was me, James Mercer – that it’s my personal thing. It’s not like I write when we’re practicing anymore - it’s not a communal thing. So yeah, it’s definitely more personal.”

You’re a father now. How much of a bearing did that have on the lyrics for the album?

“Oh man, quite a lot. When you love something like that, something as fragile as a child, it completely changes you and your thinking. You just have this joy, you know? It’s like a… tentacle of love stretching out of you, all the time. When I was writing the album, one of our children had a health scare. It was terrifying. Having children is this whole new world of emotional terror. So yeah, a couple of the songs are about that.”

What was the fall-out of that, with your former bandmates?

“I still haven’t really dealt with all that, really. It was part of a bigger thing, where I had lots of different friendships changing. Being in a band with The Shins’ trajectory, going back home to people in Albuquerque… it shakes things up. I had just started this life with this beautiful woman. I was in transition, total flux. I like to think of it like streams, like, when you talk about boating: between where the current is and the standing water is, I was in the stream.”

Simple Song has amassed quite a lot of radio airplay. Did you know when you were writing and recording the song it was destined to become a hit?

“Ironically, Simple Song was the most difficult song to put together in the studio. I think I cursed it by calling it that. [Laughs] Writing it was fairly straight forward but recording was tough. It’s a very different style of song for us to do, so it took a while to get it right. It has this real ‘60s mod sort of vibe to it that makes me think about The Who when I play it. It’s the sort of song you have to play with a lot of attitude for it to work, because it really is so fucking simple – just the same riff, over and over. To make that entertaining you kind of really have to, I don’t know, wear a pirate hat or something, give it some real attitude. Maybe that’s an idea for stage outfits…”

There’s a much wider spread of sounds and instruments on this album…

“Yeah, there really is. A lot of it was quite simply a case of experimenting – Greg is a really proficient keyboard player and I’m lucky enough to have some really talented friends who play all kinds of instruments. There’s a horn solo on one song, Fall of 82. Was it inspired by the sax solo on Lady Gaga’s Edge of Glory? [laughs] No, no it wasn’t. Though we did record a sax solo on one song – it just didn’t make the cut.”

This is the first Shins album to be released on your own imprint, Aural Apothecary. Did the move away from Sub Pop change anything for you, psychologically, whilst preparing the album?

“Not really, you know. When I write songs it’s such a different mode: it’s something I do at home, I’m usually just lost in the moment and not thinking about business type stuff. So no, there was no real kind of difference in the songwriting this time around I don’t think, even if I was technically a bit more liberated. Sub Pop were great, always a pleasure to work with, so it really wasn’t a radically different experience for me writing this record.”

So, what’s next for The Shins and Broken Bells?

“There’s a sketch for touring that goes all the way until Summer 2013. Our future is laid out for us! I’m nervous about the time away from my wife and kids. I know it’s time well spent, touring and setting this record up. As for Broken Bells, Brian and I will pick the weeks we both have off and start writing again over the next year, interspersed through touring. Beyond that, who knows? It’s an exciting time.”

Interview originally published in Q Magazine.

http://www.theshins.com

Welcome to Portlandia, where Sleater-Kinney meets Saturday Night Live

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:44:00 +0000

Portlandia is the TV sitcom taking the American indie scene by storm. Created by Carrie Brownstein – the cult hero behind punk bands Sleater-Kinney and more recently Wild Flag – with Saturday Night Live comedian Fred Armisen, the show has got the blogosphere talking thanks to guest appearances from the likes of St. Vincent, Joanna Newsom, Johnny Marr and The Shins’ James Mercer. But with the show yet to hit British shores, what exactly is it?

Set in Brownstein’s native Portland, the show is an irreverent, loosely-scripted caricature of the city’s bohemian inhabitants: from a pair of feminist bookstore owners to a reggae bass-playing mayor played by Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan, all the way to a couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they run out of episodes of Battlestar Galactica to watch. The programme is now in its second season and fast becoming a phenomenon, attracting guest spots from Hollywood heavyweights such as Jeff Goldblum, Tim Robbins and Bridesmaids’ Kristen Wiig.

“I met Fred when I was still in Sleater-Kinney,” Brownstein tells me of her co-star, who also has a musical background – he once drummed on a Les Savy Fav album, as it happens. “He was a fan of the band and we had a lot of friends in common, so he invited us down to the filming of an episode of Saturday Night Live. There was this instant connection. We shared a lot of the same interests and sensibilities and we wanted to work on something creative together.” From there the pair began working on comedy shorts together - or “little vignettes” as Brownstein calls them - under the name of Thunderant. “They were all these different permutations of our friendship and explorations of our different relationships with people - just for ourselves and our friends,” she explains. However they didn’t stay ‘in-jokes’ for long, quickly attracting the attention of US channel IFC who commissioned a TV series based on the pair’s work in July 2009.

Comedy might not be a typical career digression for a musician like Brownstein, but it’s something the singer says it’s something she’s long been curious about. “I’ve always loved comedy. I’m interested in the way something serious can start to feel humorous, how something that feels earnest can become farcical, the way gravity and levity intersect,” she explains, citing Father Ted as an inspiration. “I love that show. The contrast between the rugged island, this kinda beautiful, pristine place, and its buffoon-like residents. In what should have been this peaceful remote enclave in Ireland, you start digging in a little further and it’s so hilarious and absurd,” she explains. “It was such an amazing study in friendship. I was fascinated by it, the way it revolves around a place.”

It’s a tactic that the Wild Flag guitarist clearly carried over into her work on Portlandia. “They’re similar in that way, yeah. The city functions almost like a character in our show. It’s about how people relate to their environment and how a place informs their decisions,” she explains. “But Portland could be substituted for almost any other city. That’s why people all over America can relate to it.”

The show has been frequently described in the American media as a “hipster satire” - a term that frustrates and bemuses Brownstein in equal measure. “I think what’s interesting about the term hipster is that no one actually knows what it means. It’s a really benign and banal term that’s just applied to variety of people with very little commonality between them,” she sighs. “Anything we don’t understand or perceive as being cooler than us, they’re a hipster. To me, the show has nothing to do with hipsters. I don’t even understand what that word means.”

So what next for Brownstein and Armisen’s Portlandia empire? The pair in January embarked on a US tour, performing sketches and musical numbers from the show live, while a tie-in book is due for release in November. “There’s a few things in the pipeline. Right now we’re just concentrating on writing the third season,” says Brownstein, who insists she’s surprised by the interest in her hometown satire.

There are currently no plans to air the programme in the UK but the singer remains positive: “The show is gradually getting picked up in Europe so who knows?” she says, laughing off the suggestion of an international hipster spin-off. “Portlandia: Port Of Call Dalston? Well, erm, we’ll see!”

Article republished from Q Magazine

http://www.wildflagmusic.com

St. Vincent on Gossip Girl and the indie acts taking over teen TV

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000

St. Vincent appeared in a special Valentine’s Day episode of Gossip Girl aired last night on American TV (13 February). A little digging online reveals she’s not the first of her kind to do so – in fact, there’s in fact a long history of indie acts appearing on teen soaps that includes the likes of The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth and The Breeders. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from Robyn and Lady Gaga, both previous guests on the popular drama, but there’s something intriguing about seeing an artist as eclectic as Annie Clark rubbing shoulders with the show’s cast of ~~whining socialites~~ affluent teens. How did this happen? What draws acts to these programmes? And do these cameos, as some detractors claim, cheapen the music?

The Strange Mercy singer is probably not the first musician you’d expect to guest on a show as far-reaching as Gossip Girl. The US teen soap is broadcast in 197 countries and has amassed millions of fans across the globe since its pilot on The CW in September 2007 - imagine a modern day Dawson’s Creek set on New York’s well-to-do Upper East Side and you’re pretty much there. St. Vincent, on the other hand, credits cult noise bands like Big Black and The Pop Group among her main influences and makes arty indie rock recently described in Q as a “combination of brain-squatting hooks, shrill riffs and themes of sexual deviance”. So what’s she doing here?

If there’s one person who should know, it’s Alexandra Patsavas, the show’s music supervisor. The 39-year-old is credited with sparking a resurgence in the use of music in film and television having overseen the music choices for the likes The O.C. and the Twilight series. “Artists can commonly expect to see a pretty big spike in sales after featuring on a show like Gossip Girl, especially on iTunes,” she explained. “In The O.C, we would use music like a character. It was a way of reflecting the stories and emotions of the other characters. So we would have the likes of Death Cab For Cutie and The Killers come on the show and play,” she said, explaining the importance and impact of guest appearances. “Death Cab in particular went on to great success after featuring on the show.”

The success of Ben Gibbard’s band following their exposure on the show was something of a watershed moment for bands on teen TV, alerting labels and show executives to the lucrative crossover potential of guest spots. The phenomenon may have begun in 1995 with The Flaming Lips’ performance on 90210 but it was Death Cab on The O.C that established the cameo as a ticket to success in an age where MTV is more focused on showcasing New Jersey socialites than on new music.

For indie acts and their labels already hamstrung by a lack of national radio in the States, it’s an opportunity to tap into a massive audience that just can’t be passed up – even if it means the occasional accusation of – here comes a tired phrase – selling out. “I think in the past it’s been hard for bands to feel good about it but that has changed,” explains Patsavas. “It’s still a mainstream endeavour for bands, but they know that we will use their music respectfully,” she adds.

Of course, often acts appear on these shows for less money-minded reasons: “Kim [Gordon] and I are pretty fanatical viewers of the show,” Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore told Rolling Stone after appearing in an episode of Gossip Girl in 2009. “It’s sort of our dose of Shakespeare every week.” It appears it was a similar case for Clark appearing last night. “With Gossip Girl we look for acts with pop sensibilities and whose sound is suited to the New York locale of the show,” said Patsavas. “St. Vincent seemed a perfect fit, so we reached out to her management and it turns out she’s a huge fan of the show. It was great to have her on.”

Article republished from Q Magazine

http://www.strangemercy.com

Perfume Genius - Put Your Back N 2 It

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:08:00 +0000

It is strange to think that in the early weeks of 2012, while Lana Del Rey was cranking blogosphere buzz up to near tinnitus-inducing levels, another pouting singer of washed-out piano ballads was readying a album almost unnoticed actually deserving of that hysteria. That singer was Seattle’s Perfume Genius, who on Put Your Back N 2 It has crafted a collection of songs so arresting they seem to slow time, haunting in their emptiness and breathy anguish.

The 27-year-old – real name Mike Hadreas – is something of an enigma. Having retreated to his mother’s Washington home to address his various spiralling addictions, the musician began work on a record he describes, strangely enough, as a “tender reinterpretation” of the 1999 Ice Cube song of (almost) the same name. The results are remarkable: sumptuous cuts of hushed vocals and plaintive piano, each laced with warped, distorting organ sounds, matching the much-lauded Bon Iver debut for emotional candour and indomitable spirit.

Hadreas’ recent music video controversy may have brought him to public attention – a clip for the song Hood was deemed “offensive” by YouTube for its depiction of two men committing the heinous crime of, err, hugging – but it’s his songwriting nous that should really be grabbing headlines. From opener AWOL Marine, it’s an album of unerring quality. Take Me Home offers echoing percussion and a glowering vocal hook atop a backdrop of throbbing ’80s-esque percussion while Dirge stirs in its soft simplicity, Hadreas’ soft falsetto evoking the tender croon of Antony Hegarty. Normal Song, intriguingly, recalls the gentle waltz and wistful longing of Iron and Wine’s Flightless Bird, American Mouth, albeit with lyrics that hint at more complex sexual politics than the ones made famous by the Twilight film saga. Hadreas’ wordplay is obtuse, but delivered with a tenderness as if to suggest their true meaning is too painful to sing aloud.

For some, Hadreas’ reliance on soft piano and unrelenting introspection will get tiresome. But Put Your Back N 2 It sees the songwriter make good on the promise of his 2010 debut Learning and deliver an entrancing minimalist pop gem guaranteed to claw at your affections.

Article originally published in Zero Core magazine

http://www.matadorrecords.com

Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:47:00 +0000

With rock music again supposedly on its death knell, along comes Ohio foursome Cloud Nothings with Attack On Memory, their third and most abrasive album to date. Once bringers of breezy pop-punk, this new release finds the foursome sounding serious and conflicted – imagine The Get Up Kids caught in an existential crisis, glumly thrashing out their upset in bursts of power chords and strained vocals. Then crank the volume several dials.

Sparking elements of Nineties emo, art-rock and grunge, Attack On Memory is an exhilarating listen. This might be the third Cloud Nothings record but it has the energetic fizz of a band on their first outing – which, in a way, it is. Having recorded a spate of cassette releases, 2007 debut Turning On and 2011’s self-titled follow-up alone in his bedroom, the group’s mercurial songwriter Dylan Baldi is here joined by a supporting cast of musicians who help him assemble what is easily their best album to date: adventurous, upbeat and gleefully acerbic, Baldi spitting out his lyrics with a fierce Cobain-ish venom.

Beginning with the slow-burning No Future No Past, its eerie dissonance building to an fist-in-the-air finish, the group accelerate their way through a succinct 32 minutes of music, perhaps wary of not outstaying their welcome. They needn’t have worried. Attack On Memory is full of highlights: the scrappy harmonies and fuck-you spirit of Fall In, the stomping Faraquet-esque punch of No Sentiment, the way Wasted Days extends to nine minutes of guitar histrionics, to name but a few. It might make for a disjointed listen but, well, who cares?

The lyrics on Attack On Memory are a blend of fairly-route-one emo laments and intriguing nods at their own place at a crossroads between cult notoriety and something bigger. New York Times writer Jon Caramanica noted an emerging genre of music called “blog rock” in a recent article, describing a new wave of groups “united by audience and distribution arc more than by sound” - in other words, acts defined by their blogosphere beginnings. Cloud Nothings, with their Pitchfork-approved brand of scuzzy lo-fi punk, fit this bill and seem to play with it. Baldi threads lyrics through the record that sneer at the next-big-thing-isms of blogosphere rhetoric: “original, it’ll never get old,” he sings sarcastically on Our Plans. “Tomorrow, we’re through,” he drones similarly on No Future No Past with a blank resignation.

But on the evidence of this record, Cloud Nothings seem equipped to last. Attack On Memory might be on surface a pretty routine blast of crashing percussion, throaty vocals and biting guitars but repeated listens reveal a more nuanced affair full of charisma and spark. Its rough-around-the-edge snarl will be a bit much for some – it was, after all produced by veteran noisemaker Steve Albini. For others, it’s one of the first must-hears of 2012.

Article originally published on Drowned In Sound webzine

http://www.cloudnothings.com

Interview - Kevin Barnes, Of Montreal

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:02:00 +0000

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, psych-pop favourites Of Montreal were founded Kevin Barnes in 1996. Having recently marked the release of their first ten albums with a special cassette boxset, Barnes and his supporting cast are now looking to the future as they gear up to release eleventh long-player, Paralytic Stalks. But how does the enigmatic frontman cope with the depression that has plagued him throughout his career? And how does the new release stack up to other releases? I caught up with Barnes to find out.

How are you?

“Pretty good man. Pretty good. It feels great to have the record finished and ready to come out. You know, you make a record, you sit around for a bunch of months and wait for the point when it can finally come out… It feels good to be at that stage where people can hear it at last.” The new record is your eleventh studio album in fifteen years”

Would you consider yourself a prolific songwriter?

“Maybe. I’ve already begun working on new stuff for the next record, so I guess so. [laughs] It’s just part of my life. I don’t think, oh God, I’ve gotta write a new album or new song. It just comes naturally. It’s a pretty long process, songs don’t come easily to me or anything, but yeah, songwriting is very much a part of me. I like to get in the studio and totally immerse myself in the spirit of the record. I don’t want to have any distractions. When I get into that state of mind, it’s a messy place to be. It’s difficult to maintain relationships outside of it. I become obsessed with it.”

How obsessed did you become making Paralytic Stalks?

“Err, I got pretty obsessed with it, sure. I was working through a lot of stuff emotionally at the time. I was in a very pessimistic, frustrated state of mind, dealing with a lot of self-loathing issues. I wanted to try to do something positive with that energy - I’m not sure how successful I was with that. The album is the most chaotic mess of ideas and emotions I have ever put together. I am proud of it, in a sense. It certainly captures what I was going through.”

A cathartic process, then?

“Well, I suffer from, err, chemical problems, depression issues, all that stuff. I just have to fight through it. I’m not completely destroyed by my own mind but I struggle a bit with things - every twenty minutes I feel different. I’m having a nice conversation right now, but in a few minutes I could be banging my head against a wall. So, yeah, it’s really cathartic having an outlet for all that stuff. I use music as a form of therapy.”

You’ve just announced a US tour, with hopefully more dates to follow in the UK. Your shows are notorious for being extravagant, colorful affairs. What do you have planned this time around?

“In the past we’ve used performance artists to be more playful and, well, comedic. This time because we’re doing something darker and more personal. We don’t want to have people dancing around in pig masks or whatever. We wanted something that was going to work with the music a bit better. Something that’s visually interesting and adds to the experience, using projection and lighting to create a more cinematic experience. The record is kind of cinematic, actually - kind of like a Stanley Kubrick meets David Lynch meets Dario Argento horror movie, you know?”

It’s been a few years now since you appeared in a T-Mobile advert. You got a fair bit of criticism for it at the time. How do you feel about the whole thing now?

“I’ve been thinking about this recently. There definitely was a period where we were more involved in commercials and on TV more. Looking back, it’s really embarrassing. God, man. I got so bored of it. When you get in that world, you become this kind of caricature. The TV world, it makes a character out of you. Look at Lady Gaga for example. She’s been very successful at creating that whole Fame Monster persona. But eventually it just becomes more and more pathetic. You can’t do it forever. It almost seems we became less successful for doing the whole TV thing. The way it works in the indie scene is the more commercial you become, the more people think you’re selling out. The more people will turn away from you.”

Do you regret it now? You wrote quite an angry response to your detractors at the time…

“I don’t know why the hell we did it. I must have been crazy or something to go along with all that shit [laughs]. It’s really bad for me as an artist. I was seduced by the possibility of becoming more famous. Now I’m just embarrassed. I can’t believe I could be so petty. It’s difficult - if you’ve never had money and someone’s there offering you a lot of money to do something like that, it’s a terrible predicament to be in. Am I just going to say No and be broke? That’s the kind of quandary you see a lot of indie artists in. Having a romantic connection to an artist is important, you know? It’s easier for me to like someone who’s a bit of an underdog. I hope we always have that.”

As someone with long-standing ties to the Elephant 6 Recording Company, are you happy to seen Neutral Milk Hotel songwriter Jeff Magnum back playing live again?

“I totally understand why someone like him would want to go into seclusion, to not do interviews. Not play shows. I think it’s great if he’s getting something positive out of it, that he’s back doing it. I haven’t talked to him about it so I don’t know how he feels about it but hopefully he enjoys it and it will encourage him to make more music.”

You have been rumoured to be working with Phoenix on their new album. Are there any plans to collaborate with other acts in the near future?

“Nothing like that, but I have been kicking around this idea that’d be fun to write songs for someone else. But every time I write with some one else in mind, I end up thinking, no, I like this too much, I want it for the next Of Montreal record! [laughs] I would have loved to make a record for Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone. Someone like that. Those two had these tortured private lives and I’m kind of drawn to that. It makes the music feel more real.”

What are your plans for the year ahead?

“The plan is simply to, yeah, release the record, go on tour, continue writing, just keep going, you know? I remember seeing this Bob Dylan interview where this guy was asking him, so you’ve been tour for like forty years. When are you going to stop? Bob just looked at him like he was crazy. You just keep going till you die.”

Article originally published in Q Magazine

http://www.ofmontreal.net

Did Steve Jobs kill the secret song?

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:21:00 +0000

Over the next couple of weeks, as the year rolls to an end and music fans look back on the events that shaped 2011, you can expect to read a lot about Steve Jobs. The Apple founder died on 5 October after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, prompting a flood of tributes to the Californian and his legacy to the music world - the iPod. Jobs’ MP3 player and the accompanying iTunes store have undoubtedly changed the face of music. However, spare a thought for one of the victims of Jobs’ success - the secret song.

From The Beatles’ album Abbey Road onwards, musicians - or possibly the mastering engineers whose job it is to record albums in the final order - have enjoyed surprising and confusing their fans by adding bonus songs to their records, hidden after a period of silence and not listed on the album sleeve. But since the rise of the iPod, secret songs have been put on mute.

It used to be that a CD or good old fashioned 12” vinyl would simply start playing and your only indication of where it would end was the album tracklisting printed on the album sleeve. Hearing another song start up just as you thought the album was finished, just as you got up to change the record, was always an unexpected thrill - a surprise encore in your bedroom, a sort of reward for listening right through to the end. It always felt so exciting.

Skip forward to 2011 and hidden tracks have all but vanished from new releases. It was tough enough with CDs to keep secret songs secret, as the total running time was visible. But with most MP3 players tracking with precision where exactly you are in a song with a dot scrolling across a toolbar, the surprise factor on has faded drastically.

Even albums like Blur’s Think Tank, which hid its secret song Me, White Noise before the album started - you had to start rewinding the CD the moment the opening track was cued up - were dispatched with by iTunes, which simply stuck the song at the start of the album when you ripped it.

Yes, secret songs have become practically obsolete in the modern world. From the Beach Boys to Beyonce, some of the most important acts of the last 40 years have included secret songs on their albums. It seems a shame that we seem to be letting go of a tradition so deeply embedded in our musical culture. The iPod and its many variants have transformed the way people listen to music, but as someone who grew up waiting excitedly when an album finished to see if there was an extra hidden treat at the end of an album, I’ll always see the death of the secret song as the sad flipside of its success.

Article originally published in Q Magazine.

A.A. Bondy - Believers

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:55:00 +0000

Believers sees A.A. Bondy complete a phoenix-like rise from the flaming fuselage of a stalled career as a major label artist. Having experienced the fickle nature of the music industry with failed grunge experiment Verbena in the late 90s, the Alabama troubadour retreated, as so many wistful musician types do nowadays, to a barn in the Catskills mountains near New York to explore his gentler side, penning an album full of wounded paeans to love, loss and everything in between. That album, American Hearts, was a transformation. This third solo effort, his most assured and intuitive to date, is a revelation: elegiac, tender and often achingly beautiful.

Guided by chiming guitars, soft percussion and near-whispered vocals, Believers is an wonderfully wintery listen. The songs here unfold slowly and quietly, like ice thawing from the branches of an oak tree or melting on the grill of an abandoned car. Bondy’s raspy vocals sting with that sad nostalgia that creeps up on you as another year draws to a close. Shut your eyes and the crunching snare hits sound like footsteps on a crisp snowy terrain. “I wanted to make a world, complete with typography, weather and night and day, all that stuff,” the musician told NPR in a recent interview. The world he resides in on Believers could be a snow-globe, shaken softly, with Bondy its sole, lonely inhabitant.

This is, at heart, an off-piste country record, its author spurning acoustic guitars for muted electric rumblings and murmurs of organ. There are echoes of Ryan Adams, Bonnie Prince Billy and, inevitably, fellow one-time woodland recluse Bon Iver in the mesh of pedal steel and sumptuous harmonies. One of the album’s highlights, The Twist, is exactly that, a surprise upbeat turn that shares Interpol’s brooding intensity. The strange lyrics of Surfer King point to a polished-cum-cryptic Leonard Cohen-esque wordplay, Bondy crooning enigmatically: “Behind the red door in American skin there is a murder of roses and in the midnight hiss come cover me there, where I am electric nothing”. But, amid all these similarities and base reference points, there are snatches on the album which suggest Bondy is an original: the ambient soundscapes slotted intermittently between songs, the pensive pacing of songs like Scenes From A Circus, the long pregnant pauses within tracks that throb menacingly and fill with unease.

Believers isn’t a rousing album. The album’s allure is slow-burning, almost unnoticeable. There’s little sense either of who exactly Bondy is either, A.A. sometimes frustratingly, well, anonymous. But there’s something here that leaves you groggy with emotion after an up-close listen, something warm, enveloping and frankly unmissable.

Article originally published on Drowned In Sound webzine

http://www.aabondy.co

Atlas Sound - Parallax

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:51:00 +0000

Just who is Bradford Cox? This much we know: he fronts psychedelic blogosphere darlings Deerhunter, teeters somewhere on the cusp of his thirties and churns out albums at a ferocious pace - this, Parallax, is his seventh solo outing if you count his various bedroom recording internet releases. The rest can be pieced together from the rare interviews he grants - reluctant discussion of how a genetic disease has twisted his body into something resembling one of Guillermo Del Toro fantastical creations. How he developed an addiction to ambient music while blissed out on painkillers after ensuing spinal operations. How somewhere in him his quirky Machiavellian wit and deep-seeded frustrations intersect: “I don’t understand what kids want any more, and I’m not interested in catering to it,” he told the Guardian earlier this year. “All they want to do is dance and fuck, and those are two things I’m completely incapable of.”

Less shrouded in darkness is Cox’s incredible, prolific talent. Whether he’s on duty with Deerhunter or going it alone under the mantle of Atlas Sound - a moniker he has employed since the age of ten - there’s a distinct, almost impossible quality to his musical outpourings. Parallax sees the Georgia resident conjure up more of the same languid, lo-fi magic that is dusted across the rest of his canon. Those familiar with Cox will know precisely what to expect - shimmering dream-pop, sparkling with ideas and irrepressible, seductive imagination. There’s a glimmer more polish to proceedings than on last year’s Bedroom Databank, three separate collections of songs fashioned in his home studio, but this follows the same carefree philosophy that made his back catalogue so warmly enjoyable: “let’s just see what happens, shall we?”

Moments of genuine marvel, each one craving its own flowery descriptives, come thick and fast. The 8-bit barrage of bleeps, blips and bells decorating Te Amo turn it into one of the most enveloping soundscapes you’ll lose yourself in all year, unfolding slowly and strangely like a acid-stained night spent stowed away in a haunted arcade. Mona Lisa, the only song reprised from Bedroom Databank, is an infectious jolt of indie-pop swagger so inspired it makes Da Vinci’s portrayal of the lady in black seem like a crude crayon doodle on a restaurant napkin. The gentle percussive thrust of Lightworks draws the album to a close with a psych-pop-meets-sixties-garage snarl guided by electric guitar licks and tufts of harmonica.

The riddle at the heart of Parallax, and indeed every Atlas Sound release that comes our way, is how Cox remains so fiercely mysterious, how regardless of the time you spend in the company of his music you glean next to nothing about the man behind the rich, bewildering swathes of sound. But perhaps that’s what keeps it all so dizzyingly enchanting, like stepping into someone else’s delirious, sweat-soaked dream.

Article originally published on Drowned In Sound webzine

http://www.myspace.com/atlassound

Interview - Girls' Christopher Owens

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:51:55 +0000

Christopher Owens has had quite a life. The 32 year-old Californian has gone from growing up in the infamous Children Of God cult to garage rock stardom in acclaimed four-piece Girls via bouts of drug addiction and despair. But having just released second album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Owens is proving there’s more to him than an unusual backstory and a Kurt Cobain haircut. I caught up with him to hear about the new album, his admiration for Tyler The Creator and his obsession with house plants.

How the devil are you?

“I’m good, thank you very much. Quite well, in fact.”

The new record feels like an intensely personal snapshot of your life – it’s quite upfront. Was it a conscious decision to be so candid?

“Yeah, it was. It’s extremely personal. In terms of the actual music and instruments, not so much – the musical elements aren’t very inspired, inventive or modern even. It’s not even all that different to this [gestures to hotel muzak playing in background]. All of that is just a backdrop – it’s the lyrics that are entirely personal, entirely exclusive to my experience of the world. What you have, really, is a very personal and bitter pill encased in a lovely musical sugar-coating.” [laughs] I could very well just be a poet. I just don’t think I’m smart enough or have a good enough vocabulary to do that. But yeah, “my cup runneth over”… I’m just trying to get things off my chest, you know?”

Your personal history is quite remarkable – you have no shortage of things to write about, I’m guessing.

“Yeah. The crux of it is I grew up in this weird hippie cult. I was there until I was sixteen. That was kind of the start of it. I could go on…”

Does it frustrate you that people are so preoccupied with your backstory? Do you wish there was more focus on your music?

“It’s not really frustrating, it’s more… interesting. It’s like seeing yourself as a fictional character, a character catching people’s interest. People are always hungry to know more, and that kind of interests me – the whole process of that. I think it all comes back around to the music in a way, so it’s fine.”

The title of the record has obvious religious connotations. Are you still coming to terms with religion after your unorthodox religious upbringing?

“It’s actually quite detached from all that. It’s a title that comes from Catholic and biblical culture – not some very fine-tuned catchphrase from a hippy cult. It’s nothing particular to my upbringing – this is a household phrase, you know? The fact that it’s religious, okay, you have a point there. But really it’s not actually meant to reference religion at all. It’s a conceptual title. It’s meant to reference the origin of something, the identity of something and then the spirit or soul of that same thing – all in the same thing. Like in one album.”

There’s a song on the new album called My Ma. What’s your relationship with your mother like now? Do you resent her for the strict upbringing you had to endure?

“When me and my sister left the cult, my mom stayed - she was alone. We’ve never had any hard feelings. Even when I was very angry and hurt and ashamed about what happened to me growing up I was never mad at her. There’s never been any angry exchanges, I like my mum a lot. But there was something robbed from us, you know? Our relationship was flawed. As is anyone’s though, you know? The song is just acknowledging that I’d like her in my life more. I do wish we had a better relationship.”

There’s quite a diverse spread of sounds on the album. Who were the main musical touchstones for the album?

“Randy Newman was a big one. Ariel Pink is another major influence. But the best possible finished product would not point to its influences very clearly. I mean, I love Michael Jackson but at the same time I’m not going to go and steal ideas from him. You just try to absorb what makes them great. Hopefully that comes across on Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”

Your vocals has a certain Elliot Smith ring to them. He also battled drug addiction, something you’ve spoken openly about in the past. Do you feel a kinship to him?

“I’m happy anytime I’m mentioned in the same breath as him. He was a much better songwriter than I am. But the two of us are, we don’t really use effects and the music quite simply is what it is. Also, we’re both obviously big John Lennon fans. So yeah, there’s definite similarities. But I don’t want to go around saying I’m like Elliot Smith – we’re talking about a genius here, you know?”

You’ve gone through eight band members since Girls started. Will you ever settle on a fixed lineup or do you like to keep mixing it up, keeping it fresh?

“I wanted from day one to have a real band but it has just not worked out. It’s actually a real point of frustration for me. There are specific people I never wish had left. I wish we had been the same four or five people from the beginning, that we could have matured together. I’ve never had a problem with anyone that has left. You just find people play in two bands. They don’t want to tour. Things like that.”

Do you like being on tour?

“Yeah. It’s a real privilege. But there’s moments where you have to weigh it up and think is it worth it? It’s a lot of it is very hard work. It’s not always fun. I like to be at home. I like San Francisco very much. I like to just sit in my room all day. [laughs] That sounds weird but it’s true. I have hobbies back home…I actually grow house plants in a very serious manner. Re-plotting them into larger plots when they get too big, plotting them together as pairs, arranging them in decorative ways. I like experimenting on them, cutting pieces off, things like that. I like wiping every leaf. It’s been the subject of every email home to my girlfriend, making sure they’re looked after. I spend about half an hour every day fussing over plants. You can relate, right? It’s really rewarding.

The video for your song Lust For Life is now infamous for being, well, essentially homemade gay porn. How did that come about?

“The song is two and a half minutes long so the idea was to go to our friends’ houses and play Lust For Life on a boom-box and let them just do what they want. Most people just danced and sang along with the songs. But my friend Seth’s house and his boyfriend Alexis… well, they didn’t bother putting clothes on and eventually started “hamming it up” for the cameras [laughs]. We thought it was a beautiful moment so we kept it in. The label made a clean version and tried to sneak it past us but we made sure the proper video came out. I think it was a very beautiful thing.”

You have been on tour promoting the new record. What have you been listening to on the road?

“I fell in love with Tyler The Creator’s last album, Goblin. It’s the best rap album of the last five years, an amazing achievement. People are whacking off about this Watch The Throne thing which I think is garbage while Tyler is pushing the boundaries of what is expected of young black men. They’re supposed to be aggressive and macho but artists him, Drake and Lil B are saying “it’s okay for me to be sensitive and weak”, you know? Tyler’s whole concept is himself talking to his therapist, questioning himself and spilling his guts. It’s extremely therapeutic and honest. It’s exactly what an album should be. That’s what music is supposed to be.”

Do you think there’s shared ground between you two and your music in this sense? Therapeutic and honest are words that certainly could be used to describe Father…

“For sure! But I somehow doubt he would be as happy to see it that way.” [laughs]

Interview originally published in Q Magazine.

http://www.myspace.com/girls

A decade of Drukqs - Aphex Twin's true beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy revisited

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:11:00 +0100

Released ten years ago today, few could have predicted the apoplectic sonics of Drukqs by Aphex Twin would still be resonating as they are. Rolling Stone called it “indecipherable” and “gratuitously weird.” Billboard slightly more diplomatically deemed it “an ambitious but ultimately failed experiment.” Q Magazine simply scratched its head in puzzled despair, asking: “what is it for?”. But a decade on it is more vital and relevant than ever, not only in the murky undertow of “credible” music circles but in the cold harsh light of mainstream pop culture too: mined for samples by Kanye West, used on the much cherished American institution that is Saturday Night Live, the album’s twitchy mechanical clutter audible in blockbuster films and BBC2 primetime TV programming.

How did it come to this? How has an album so aggressively avant-garde - crafted by a self-professed “irritating, lying ginger kid from Cornwall” no less - lingered on in the popular imagination like this? As the last ten years have lurched on, Drukqs has accrued more and more cultural momentum. Aphex Twin is now practically a household name, a sort of shorthand for an unapologetically obtuse ethos. The album’s warped sounds, strange timbres and arrhythmic glitches have inspired an entire breed of new artists: its shadow looming large over Sufjan Steven’s Age Of Adz and traceable in the xx ’s gloomy soundscapes, not to mention a certain gargantuan Oxford band who credit all their most compelling work to Aphex’s influence. Drukqs has become, quite simply, a touchstone for daring, intoxicating musical adventuring.

Audacious, overly long and seemingly impenetrable, Drukqs should have faded into obscurity by now. Achingly hostile throughout bar a few tender swells of minimalist piano, it should be cherished only by nostalgic survivors of pilled-up youths spent in dirty basement raves. It should be discussed only by high-brow intelligentsia types, the album’s every nuance dissected between sips of a macchiato in softly-lit coffee houses, gushed over breathlessly with an intensity usually reserved for Cage, Stockhausen and Reich. Instead its popularity simmers on a more public domain. How the hell did it come to this?

You could ask the man himself but you almost certainly wouldn’t glean much from the encounter. Every bit as erratic, unpredictable and provocative as his music, Aphex – or Richard D. James to use his real name – has never really spoken genuinely about his craft to the press. Or if he has, any truth has been buried, lost the provocative jests, self-made myths and laughable fibs that he invariably floods interviews with. His record sales have made him millions, he attests. He lives in a converted bank vault. He owns a tank and a submarine (“…missiles, rockets, you can get all that shit. You could probably buy a battleship if you had enough money,” he once told the Guardian). He sleeps only two or three hours a night. He thinks schizophrenic people are “fucking excellent”. He refuses to release his most innovative and inspiring work because “it’ll only get ripped off.” Prior to Drukqs he told the world any forthcoming releases would be posthumous.

Perhaps that’s part of the lasting appeal of Drukqs and its creator. In age where artists are drilled for information from every angle, carefully briefed and prepped with PR-happy responses, the album and James remain perplexing mysteries; endearingly elusive and begging interpretation. To me, he’s insolvable, like a Rubik’s cube to a colour-blind child, and Drukqs remains his most enigmatic puzzle.

Has the endless digitized bleeping of the eminent technologies of the last decade made Drukqs’ mechanized buzzes and barks less alien over the years? Or is the record’s enduring appeal all thanks to Radiohead? (Thom Yorke only days ago delved into Drukqs for a track on his BBC 6 Music mix). Released in the fallout of the September 11 attacks, Drukqs touched a cold, steely nerve amid all the constant television noise of the time. For me it was an epochal moment of my teenage years – thirty songs bootlegged on a minidisc (remember them?), shoved into my hand in a school corridor by a friend. It then clawed its way deep into my musical affections. Sometimes bleak, sometimes beautiful, always evocative: never mind Kanye West, Drukqs is a true beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy.

Article originally published on Drowned In Sound webzine

http://www.warp.net