First of all, I have to dispel a rumour that you are from Limerick-is it true?

Well I am from New Jersey. I am three or four generations into the States and everybody is from Cork, I mean EVERYBODY. They all go back to the one place. My great grandparents are the most recent but that didn’t stop my grandmother from having an Irish accent. It’s true.

So, you have just come back from a tour with Arcade Fire. How was that?

It was great. It was really different. It was kind of nice to just not be in charge. It was like a festival. I kind of enjoyed it. I didn’t think I would. I didn’t think I would enjoy fitting into someone else’s schedule but I really enjoyed it.

You did a 7” single with the band. How did that come about? Did you all just sit down and decide to do a single together?

Well I don’t know. Things with us just happened pretty organically. Like we knew them and we met them a bunch of times and did a bunch of festivals and we got to know them more and more. I‘ve known some of them for a few years now and just kind of enjoyed playing at festivals together and hanging out. We could hang out with all the guys in the band and get along with them and it seemed like such and interesting thing to do. We thought it would be cool to do something with someone else. Like have a double bill more or less.

So the tour was more or less a double bill?

Yeah! It kind of lets off the pressure somewhat. It was not like some weird jerk headlining. It was like “Oh it’s just like a festival”. It worked out great.

You were brought up in a small town in New Jersey and your only musical outlet was the Princeton Record Store. Can you describe it?

It was a pretty incredible store. It still is. It’s still worth driving down from New York to. Princeton is a big university town. I lived in the town next to Princeton, which was not a big university town. It was an old classical and jazz record store, which was famous around the world. It was old and tiny. Originally it was a storage room with a tiny front. What they originally did was make copies of what they had and send them to Germany and Japan and people would order it by mail-very rare jazz records and pristine classical records. Eventually one of the guys who worked there was a punk rock guy and it started carrying punk rock records. They would be beside the counter on some crates. There were no pop records in the store, you had either rare classical and jazz or weird punk records. There were record stores in the mall that had like Billy Joel records. So that was it. You just go to get punk records, there was nothing else so it was kind of great.

So did the records there save your life?

Oh sure. It just made it a little bit easier. Now, if you are growing up in a small town you have the Internet but you don’t know, it is so, um, it is too free. I mean it’s too unfettered. There’s too much music and there are too many opinions.

It’s like a haze of information now?

Yeah. It’s like the loudest opinion will win or the most clearly defined opinion. When you’re a kid you’re pretty immature about stuff like that so you end up listening to a lot of shit. I listened to a lot of shit when I was a kid and I still do. But having a really good store was nice as there was an opinion in that store that was something local. It was something you could argue with, you could embrace it or be against it. You were dealing with something localized that seemed more manageable and when you discovered something from outside it was kind of a revelation.

Like what?

I remember the college radio station didn’t like The Smiths when they first came out but WTR-a harder station to get- did. I heard the first Smiths record there and the Princeton record store didn’t have it so I took a train to New York. I was like 12 or 13. I skipped school and went with a friend and found a record store with it. I was made fun of in the store cause I got the name wrong. I said “The Smiths Brothers” and I kept saying that and they were saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about”. I said “Well this song- This Charming Man” and they were like “Oh! The Smiths! Duh!” and I was really embarrassed. But then about five years ago I told this story to a friend of mine and they were like “You were from a foreign town and you took a train to New York. You were like 12 or 13 and you found a record store and you got the Smiths first record on 12” import and the guy made fun of you because you didn’t know what you were talking about?! Well that’s pretty cool!” I was like “Yeah! Well fuck that guy!” Then I felt great, as I was the only guy with the song. But I feel now there is a difference. There is so much information and so many records coming out.

You have been in other bands before like Pony and Speedking and now you’re in LCD Soundsystem. Is LCD Soundsystem just another stage or are you in this for the long haul?

I don’t know. The big difference to me is the bands that I was in before, I was a guitar player and singer and I was terrible. In Pony and Speedking I decided I was going to be a drummer. That seemed really dignifying. That was always going to be temporary as I cold never deal with people super- well in bands. Like, I don’t collaborate well. I get too frustrated and get panic attacks and have to leave. I used to lock myself in the bathroom during Pony and Speedking practices ‘cause people don’t listen to each other and there’s no hierarchy. I just can’t be around that. So LCD is easier, it suits my personality. I have been able to make dance records by myself and able to go on tour with the band. If I just wanna be by myself working on stuff in my house, it’s fine.

Thinking about that,you made a Fabriclive CD. What was that like?

Well, I hate doing mix CD’s for various different reasons. They are hard to do because eh, I used this analogy a few times before. It’s like acting a movie on the phone. The thing for me about Djing is playing records to people. I am able to react to how people are responding and without that you’re just, well, you could just go home and do what you want. But this was fun as Pat (the drummer) and I have been Djing on these tours regularly. We wrote them down and sent them in and got most of them approved.

Your new album Sound of Silver is a lot more seamless compared to the jagged sounds on the first album. Would that be true?

Well I looked back at the first record and I was a little disappointed that the songs sounded a little too different from each other and not like there was too much variety. It sounded like, incongruous. I made this song and then I made this other song at a different time. I was just really obsessed about making this album more similar and more cohesive and more as a piece if that makes any sense.

One of the songs is called North American Scum. Were you afraid some people, especially North Americans may take the wrong impression when they heard it first and saw the title?

I’m not really afraid. I am quite sure people do get it. It doesn’t really bother me in theory. It’s not something I get too worked up about. I get somebody who will say something and it’s very presumptuous. It’s funny because I thought my presumption was that people in the U.S would get it and people in the U.S would get mad and I was shocked to find that it was almost the complete opposite. Americans totally got it, people outside the States didn’t get it at all. What I think is outside the U.S people think they have a good grip on American culture because it is such a diasporadic thrust. There’s American TV and films everywhere. You think you have a really good grip on what American culture is like because I am inundated with it in a way Americans are not inundated by other places. But all that stuff is Hollywood and media, which is completely different to what actual people are like. It’s the most unapologetic and simplistically overconfident part of the culture, an unreflective, overconfident part of the culture.

It’s weird when you think of that cause you go “wait a minute!” In the seventies we had American film, pre-Star Wars which was incredibly thoughtful and incredibly introspective and filled with identity questions. All American punk rock is about identity questions and the same with American indie rock to a certain degree. So those people totally understood the feeling of growing up and wishing to be from somewhere else. Most of the Americans who were in the position of hearing the record were definitely the people who went through that phase. They understood the double meaning. I was surprised and kind of proud of my brethren not really needing to ask about it. They weren’t like “So are you criticizing Bush?”

That’s what you must be getting over here (in Europe)?

Yeah, like every French interview. I love France and I get on really well there. The people are very welcoming and accepting but that one song…. I was getting “You’re not really American. You’re from New York and I would just say “What the fuck are you people saying?!” That’s a European classic. I go “ have you been to New York?!” It’s not a European city. It’s a very specific American city. That’s a really common perception that New York is not American.

I am always stunned when people say that to me and think it’s a compliment. It’s like “Wow!” It usually comes in the same breath that Americans don’t usually know other places other than America and think they know everything. What they are basically telling me is that they think they know all about my country but they don’t.

And you’re not really from New York anyway!

Yeah. I grew up in a small town that changed a lot. When I was born it was a farm town with a couple of suburban houses. There were no trees and it was built around very tiny towns from the 1600’s. My town became bigger and overtook those. So growing up it was half of these low-rent suburban kids and farm kids. My neighbourhood also was forty percent Taiwanese, which was really strange. It was just a weird little place. There were a lot of drawbacks for a lot of the kids like the small mindedness but on the plus side people just didn’t mouth people off. People didn’t get away with this kind of psychological cruelty without getting a punch in the face.

What do you mean by psychological cruelty?

Like these kids and friends I know who went to fancier prep schools. The viciousness of kids always trying to outdo one another, always saying the smart ass things, always trying to make you look stupid, always trying to humiliate you. That sort of thing was very alien to me. Where I was brought up if someone tried to humiliate you, you punched them in the face. But these kids would go “Oh you got to resort to violence?” and I am like “Yeah! You’re being an asshole! You are going to continue being an asshole so I am gonna punch you in the face so maybe next time you’re not going to be an asshole to someone bigger than you”. That was sort of my childhood.

I suppose you still get that now?

Yeah. Like, I was in London and was Djing and this guy goes like “I like some of your records but I think your set is shit”. I just grabbed him by the collar and said: “This is what it is going to be like. I am going to come over the fucking barrier and I am going to kill you. I am going to beat the shit out of you”. First of all I thought to myself “You think you are being clever. You think you have a deep sense of irony. You think you’ve got me. That’s what you think but you are wrong”. This had already happened to me there like thirty times so he was at least thirty deep in the same fucking hole. I was going “You have never met me before and you come and talk shit to me like that, thinking it’s ok cause I’m famous?! You presumptuous ignorant fuck!” He was shitting in his pants and saying I should be able to take criticism. I said I could take criticism from people I know and my friends and are you really telling me that you would walk up to someone in the street and say “You look like a fucking idiot” and not expect to get punched?

This guy obviously grew up in a cruel environment where you got respect from humiliating somebody and showing others that you were just not a simple person. Everyone else was enjoying themselves there and if he didn’t like it he could just go.

So what did you do?

I told him “You are going to look at the floor and walk out. If you so much as make eye contact with me or say a fucking word I am going to come up and beat the shit out of you in front of everybody”. So he left. It was a very satisfying moment!

So you lost your temper. On that note, thinking stupidly, are you afraid of loosing your own edge?

Not really. I think it’s a natural curve to things I am comfortable with.

Are you going to age gracefully?

Nah! I am 37 and I am still doing this. I think I missed that opportunity! Now I actually wanna do even more embarrassing things that I am too old to do. I am training to fight. I am doing Brazilian ju-jitsu!

Architecture in Helsinki are an octet hailing from Melbourne on a mission to pepper your ear drums with the finest indie pop that will make you do the whirlwind, whatever that may be. Three albums in with the fabulously playful Places Like This just released this spring. They have succeeded in fashioning a sound full of eccentricity, combining the stranger spectrum’s of indie rock with the simplicity of pop. This is a band not only intelligent but also frolicsome who are well worth splashing out a few bob of your hard earned cash on.

So what are we to make of these antipodean pop stars? I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to the uber friendly and charming Kellie Sutherland. Just like the band she eschews normality. “I’m a modern day musical gypsy” Kellie happily pronounces when I mention what must be the travails of being in a band these days with constant touring and push and pull between concert venue and recording studio. “I got rid of all my stuff. I pretty much have what’s in my suitcase and a few boxes of records and CD’s and books in my family’s storage space” she says with a friendly smile. “It’s quite liberating. You should try it!” Em, I don’t know. Does one not long for the comforts of home, the feeling of “Damn! My favourite sweater’s in Melbourne and I am in San Fran!” but Kellie is resolute. This is a woman changed by touring and the relative ease of modern day travelling. “It has really changed my mind about looking at things and how much impact I was making on the earth. I said to myself ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I have accumulated this stuff to begin with!” So there you go folks, touring is good for the soul and the environment. I’m not sure it is the life for me.

Constant touring and experiencing new environments and cities has over the course of time slowly changed the dynamic and style of the band. Change is definitely the correct term to use to describe the last two years, especially the time between the most recent album and the one prior to it, the strangely named In Case We Die. A change of scenery for some band members-the vibrancy and cacophony of Brooklyn for lead singer and songwriter Cameron and Kellie, well, all over the place, have brought about a shift in direction for the band. This has enamoured the band with new fans but also alienated one or two who feel the new, more pronounced electro sound anathema to them. So has this new environment aided the new shift in style? “Definitely the intensity of the environment in Brooklyn had a huge impact on how Cameron wrote the songs and being away from home changes the way you think about recording” Kellie tells me.

With band members strewn across the world it seemingly brings up the question of how does one record an album together? If Cameron’s in America, the rest of the band in Australia and Kellie somewhere between San Fran and Mumbai can a band actually work separately? It seems you can and Architecture in Helsinki are testament to that. So how does one do I? “We wrote songs without actually playing them together”. Odd….”It sounds like a really strange concept but it kind of worked for us and the record. If Cameron hadn’t moved then we were at risk of making the same album and that was the last thing we wanted” So how was this done I ponder. “We wrote the songs and demos and sent them over instant messenger and we would have meetings once a week online and talk about ideas and swop ideas and piece together songs” Ah the wonders of modern technology!

The change continued into the recording and producing fields of the album Places Like This. “Cameron had this world drum machine which could make loops and I think just one or two synths. The initial demos that turned into songs really infiltrated how the band sounded. We didn’t have horns as melody makers as in the last two albums” So it seems we have found the origin of this progression to a more electro sound. “We have been touring for quite a few years” Kellie continues. “We did the first two albums ourselves. (Fellow band member) Gus did a lot of engineering. On this last record we had our own engineer and the pace that we recorded was a hundred times quicker. Our ideas and how we expressed them were really turned quickly into reality. It was pretty amazing!”

So a new lease of life and experience into an already lively and intelligent band augur well for the future of Architecture in Helsinki. So I bid adieu to Kellie as she continues on her worldwide tour and look forward to the next musical instalment from Melbourne’s finest.

The experimental duo who brought us the gloriously filthy single Hustler last year sit down with Analogue before their pounding set at the Electric Picnic to answer a few questions.

So although you are now on your own, Simian is no more, why did you keep the name afterwards? Why not call yourself something different and break the reference to your old band?
Jess: People say Simian Mobile Disco was instrumental in breaking up Simian but it wasn’t at all. It was part of Simian, it was part of the band. The band had split up over differences between each and all of us and we just sort of carried on after the band and did out own thing. It has been a good three year gap between now and then and we have evolved from then. We used to DJ under the name Simian Mobile Disco while we were in Simian and we just thought we would keep the name.

So you are now in a band and make your own music and have just released a CD. However James you also produce, most notably you produced the Arctic Monkeys second album. In which area do you feel more comfortable in? Producing other people’s music or making your own music?
James: For me personally I think the studio, whatever it may be. Whether it would be with Jess or whatever, in the studio is the bit for me.
Jess: I think that’s why we do it. We really like gigs and we like to make music. We enjoy playing but we are just essentially playing music we made all the time gigging so it is probably the studio where we feel more comfortable.
James: having said that, the gigs have been more fun than we have given them credit for. We weren’t that super keen on it but we made a system where we were flexible and it would be different every night. It has been really fun but if it came down to it I’d be with Jess and say the studio.

You seem to have been one of the bands at the vanguard of this period in music in that you have been able to seamlessly marry dance, rock and electro. So for example you have made indie kids dance. How does that make you feel?
James: I think in a way we were pretty late into electronic music. We weren’t born or brought up with house music. We are definitely from a rock background and in to all sorts of types of tunes but mainly what you would call rock music. But it has been only recently that we have begun to get excited about electronic music so I suppose it’s a good thing that we can be that stepping stone to that whole new world of um, bleeps.

There’s a cross breeding of genres so to speak recently. Has it been an exciting time for you in music-recording and producing?
Jess: Yes. It’s great. All these set genres that you used to go into the rock section and dance section in like music stores. That doesn’t fit anymore. All these genres seem old fashioned. Well the terms, they seem wrong. It’s great. I love the fact that there’s this cross pollination going on between all this different stuff. It means that people like us now, who are young are now opening up to electronic music and stuff. By mixing these things together it’s not so polarized as before. It’s not like two separate camps of dance and rock as before. Now you can get people who like pure electronic into bands like Lcd Soundsystem and from there get them into something you may call traditional rock and indie. I think it’s good.
James: I think it’s a testament to the way people listen to music these days. For example you have access to all different types of music and you just shuffle them up on your iPod. I think that has changed the way you listen to music. It definitely has for me and I think that in turn more so in the future it will change the way people make music.

So it is almost liberating now where preconceptions about music are gone and blurred?
James: Yeah. Like the way you mix the music up and be more I suppose eclectic is good. Nowadays you hear DJ’s playing a good broad range of stuff and I think that’s great.

So what should one expect from a Simian Mobile Disco gig? How does say a festival compare to a stand alone gig?
Jess: Yeah. That’s the thing with festivals. You never know what it’s going to be like ‘cause people are there for a laugh, not just to see you and you have to focus on that. You have to kind of watch people and rope people in somehow. It’s different. I think it means you can play a slightly weirder set. In a festival you have to be aware that people will walk off if you’re not holding their attention so we will be watching the crowd and if people start leaving we will be aware of that.

Is it hard trying to mix and play a song and watch the crowd, trying to gauge their reaction?
James: That’s the best bit of it really. That’s what we liked about DJing. If a song wasn’t working you could change direction and that’s a really good thing about DJing. Like in a band you generally have to play your own songs.

So you have been together for almost ten years. Have there been many good and bad times?
Jess: Oh there’s been some bad times!
James: I think to be in a partnership and travel around and go through stressful situations you have to get on with each other where in a band with other people you can kind of deflect that tension a bit onto others-not intentionally but you know…But Jess and I, we’re pretty laid back so we have gotten to a point now where we can almost know what we are going to do in a musical sense, when we’re DJing.
Jess: The whole reason we did this was as a side project for a laugh. I don’t think we would have done this otherwise, if we don’t have a laugh doing it.

So what does the future hold for Simian Mobile Disco?
James: Well we’re booked up until something like 2012! Nah, well May next year and then there’s festivals and it’s crazy. The DJing has been good. We don’t know what to expect though. It could all end up wrong either. We have a tour of America and you never know we could break up which is what happened to Simian!

Really? How?
James: We had an argument in a fish restaurant in Texas. That’s how Simian ended!

“It was offensive!” Emma Gaze explains to me about that infamous incident at the Trinity Ball in 2004. The programme that year had made some below-the-belt comments about a four piece from Brighton, the enigmatic Electrelane. “It was offensive ‘cause it said something like ‘you had better watch out if they start mentioning feminism’. ‘It was bullshit” adds Mia, ‘It was just people assuming because we had talked about that and people had brought that up in interviews, we were going to bring that up! Like we were going to be lecturing people from the stage. It was stupid!” And there you have it. 3 years later the band have finally been given the opportunity to state their opinion. “It was mean about most of the bands but most especially us and Buck 65, and we asked ourselves- ‘why are they doing that?’’’ concludes fellow band mate Verity.

Electrelane, hailing originally from Brighton, have added a welcome conviction to a music scene that in many cases has been sorely forgotten and neglected. This has from time to time been a source of curiosity to the press. Sometimes it has been skewed into becoming a source of feminism almost anachronistic with today’s world. However what I discover in this delightfully erudite band is nothing more controversial than a love of their music and a strong sense of direction musically -and with life as a whole. This is a troupe of women who have no qualms about stating an opinion and playing a blistering set, and thank goodness for that.

Formed almost ten years ago in the bedroom of band member Emma Gaze’s house, they now have four albums under their belts. These include their fantastic sophomore album ‘The Power Out’ and the beautiful ‘No Shouts No Calls’, which was released just this spring. But it hasn’t been all plain sailing. A few disagreements with the record company and of course, the age-old strain of being in a band for so long had begun to affect the band. With the release of their third album ‘Axes’ in 2005, things came to a crossroads. “It was the worst period we ever had” Mia recalled. “It was like saying to ourselves ‘we would finish or we would do another record’”. So what brought about the change in sentiment and eventually the release of a fourth album? A split! No, not from the band as such but a break from the local environment of Brighton. Emma headed to London and Verity to Berlin. “It was more productive meeting in certain times and places and doing your own stuff in between” Mia continued. So was the break helpful and refreshing? A resounding nod of approval answers my question. “Being in Berlin was so inspiring. We would wake up and it would be nice and sunny. It comes across in the record as it’s nice and happy,” Emma tells me. ‘No Shouts No Calls’ was brought forth into this world by a stronger, more content band than the one that gave us ‘Axes’.

‘Axes’ is an odd record. Odd for it is a totally live album. Yet it is not an album recorded in the Astoria with the background sound of wailing fans. This is an album entirely recorded in the studio. Verity explained to me the concept behind ‘Axes’- “We are more of a live band and wanted it on record. We half -tried it on albums before and now we thought ‘why not do it in a studio, in one go?’” The record company were predictably, a bit dubious about such a departure, especially after the critical success of The Power Out? “The record company would have liked to have us record something with singing on it as it would be easier and sellable. However the only way we could do something is if we could do the stuff the way we wanted”. The girls stood their ground. “We caused them a few problems”, Emma continued, “because we’re not like, you can do our art work and stuff. They were like, ‘No Shouts No Calls’ would have done better if we hadn’t done ‘Axes’ but we told them that there would never have been ‘No Shouts No Calls’ if we didn’t do ‘Axes’”.

So there you have it. Electrelane are not going to badger you with feminist rhetoric and they are not going to sit down and let people or record companies get in the way of doing something they clearly feel passionate about. Electrelane are true artists and believers in what they do and worth checking out the next time they play. They also -thankfully for us- don’t hold a grudge.

These days, with the sheer dominance of the language, it is almost a rite of passage for foreign bands to sing in English – and their ticket to greater things. So what does one make of a band who shun our native tongue and sing purely in their own? Well recently it has worked for some people, most notably Bonde do Role (but then again a lot of Brazilian people know what they’re singing about anyways) but not many more. So what is one to make of Malajube: a band from Montreal that sing entirely of French? “Montreal!” I hear you coo. Well that’s all one needs to say these days. A Canadian passport will almost guarantee you instant recognition and attention here with such fellow bands as Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. However Malajube are a little different and it’s not because they sing in French. No, this is a band that sit above the throng of Canadian bands and are intent on showing you another aspect to the Canada that we know.

Malajube were initially formed many years ago in high school in Montreal. “We wanted to start a punk rock band,” Francis the drummer tells me. But fate had another route for them to take. Immersing themselves in the vibrancy of the Montreal music scene, they honed a sound which has been described strangely by some people in the media as a cross between The Arcade Fire and The Super Furry Animals. Delightfully odd I must say. In 2004 they released their debut album Le Compte Complet – which fellow band member Mathieu tells me means “a baseball term. It’s hard to explain in English. It sounds good in French” to which I won’t argue as Conor don’t know any French – but it was with the wonderful Trompe L’Oeil last year which got most peoples attention. Trompe L’Oeil was nominated for a Polaris, the Canadian equivalent of the Mercury awards and that year Malajube were the “who the hell are they?” nomination. Eventually it was won by Final Fantasy but it was one major step up into the limelight for the budding band. It was a major surprise even to the band. “We were really surprised to be nominated with bands like Wolf Parade and Broken Social Scene” Francis beams and for us all the better we are for it.
So I bring them to the age-old question many of us are asking-what the hell do they put into the water in Canada and especially Montreal that has produced so many great bands over the years? “Montreal is so cheap and there’s so many venues and parties. Lots of bands are coming to Montreal but are not originally from there. You can rent a space for cheap and so on,” Francis illuminates. So there you go, all we need are some cheap dingy venues and we have a killer musical scene. There has to be something more. Is it the mixture of French and English culture in an American setting perhaps? With the answer comes a fascinating insight into Montreal when Francis states “There’s so many different cultures in Montreal. Also it’s half Anglo and half French. They don’t mix so much together and the Anglos have their own venues and so on”. So a slight cross breeding may occur which will eventually over time mesh and create something special like Malajube.

We go back to the beginning and I enquire about the reasoning behind singing solely in French, which for many a band could be a handicap to future success. “People are making it an issue that we sing in French” Francis tells me. “For us it’s natural. People aren’t making much of an argument about it really. All the places we go don’t really mind. At first we started in English and Julien our singer wasn’t really comfortable with it and we thought ‘well if everyone sings in English, why not French?’” So it’s because people are now more open to the idea of listening to music in another language like French? “I think so,” Francis continues. “We never thought they (the people) would take it and think we’re stuck up”. “I think the people now who need to be convinced are the people in radio and so on,” Mathieu adds. “People who are really into music get our music. We are not too much open or fussed about major radio play here and in the States. Some people are not ready for that.” So there will be no chance of this band selling out any time soon.

So what does the future hold for Malajube? A long tour through France and Britain, with a brief stop off in Japan, before heading back into the studio to continue the good fortune of quality from Canada. This is a band to look out for in the future. You may not understand what they are singing but don’t let that mask what are ultimately Canada’s next big musical export.

Ninja and Ian from Brighton’s finest dance mash- up band The Go! Team take some time out at The Electric Picnic to speak to Analogue about their new album, getting old and George Michael.

So Ninja and Ian, what do you think of the Electric Picnic?
Ian: There’s so much detail in it. Like that Body and Soul bit- it’s really cool.

Great. So if we may go way back to the start, to before The Go! Team. Ian, you were making documentaries. What kind of stuff did you do?
Ian: Oh, lots of stuff for American t.v. about mummies and dead bodies and space travel and sleep walking and stuff like that. Nothing great or major.

So did you kind of go to yourself at some point in time “Enough! I want to do something different. I know! I’ll start a band!”?
Ian: Well kinda. Not really. We all had jobs quite well into The Go! Team. Ninja was in university. Everyone else had jobs and we would go off at weekends to do some gigs and come back on Mondays. It got to a certain stage, it got to a point where we were taking the piss too much and had to leave our jobs. So we made our leave.

Were you friends beforehand? Or was it a situation where you started making music and then it developed from there and asked people to come together and make a band?
Ian: Yeah
Ninja: No!
Ian: Oh, I was writing and wrote the music and asked people did they want to be part of it (the band).

So how did you go about putting the band together? Was it like the age-old method of placing a message in a magazine?
Ian: Most of it was that way. Ninja was from a message board off the internet.
Ninja: The message didn’t say or ask if I wanted to be in a band. The message said “Female rapper needed” and it was for this gig in Sweden.
Ian: Oh so that’s how it started, for that gig in Sweden? When we first started it was about getting through our first gig. It was a way to get through this first show. That went ok and we thought “Let’s do another one and another one”. We never even spoke about the future. It was just one week at a time.

I remember an article from the Guardian from over a year ago where you kind of said or at least implied that you were only going to do one album.
Ian: No no. It was more like I didn’t want to be an old man, still making music.
Ninja: You are an old man!
Ian: Ha ha. Yeah.
Ninja: Well it depends on how old old is.
Oh so it’s more like a mental thing?
Ninja: Well what I mean is there’s Iggy old and then there’s Wayne, Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips old. There’s two kinds of old.
Ian: Some people are suited to getting old but I don’t think that being in a band called The Go! Team and in your 40’s or later is suited…
Ninja: But then you can have an album saying “I Told You There’s Proof in Youth!”
Ian: Ha. Yeah. Well we could get plastic surgery.

On that note, your stage presence is very eclectic-it looks like a great workout! Could you see yourself in 30 or 40 years time and then going “Damn! I need a new hip!”?
Ninja: I think I should release an exercise DVD. I’d say there’s good money in that!

So, going back to the music. Your first album Thunder Lightning Strike is full of samples. Did you have problems finding and getting them and getting the rights for them? In fact, where the hell did you find some of them?
Ian: All over the shop really. I’m always on the hunt. My ears prick up when I hear something and when I’m in a club or something…..Like that bit in Battle Rocket, you know “2-4-6-8-10”? I heard that in a club in Brighton one time and I just went up to the Dj and asked him what it was. Some things came from documentaries when I was working on them…a whole bunch of stuff really from all over the place.

Was it hard getting the rights for some of the samples?
Ian: When it was first released it was 100% illegal. It was just out there and when the record companies picked it up and were involved we had to go back and change a few things but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been- but there were some real heartbreakers.

Did you have to leave some stuff and songs on the wayside as you just couldn’t get permission to use them?
Ian: Nah. They all wound up alright. All the original songs wound up but they were slightly different in the end.

Was the process of getting samples easier with the second album?
Ian: Well we had a bit more knowledge on how it works so yeah.

Going back to your stage presence and your future gig here at the Picnic. You all always change positions and instruments. How did that come about? Why the constant changing of roles?
Ninja: There are a lot of instruments and a lot of sound and not enough people so it has to be done really. If we had one person playing what needs to be played we would need like 30 people on stage and it’s bad enough with two drum kits and six people onstage. So it’s kind of necessary really.

Do you ever get sick of it and all the hassle of getting the kits ready and moving around all the time?
Ninja: Nah. But it makes things more exciting on stage as we like the idea that you can watch a song that we do and then you want to watch to see the next one as you don’t know what we are going to do. So it makes you wanna stay.
Ian: There are so many bands around that you go to a gig of theirs and you pretty know what to expect. I even like the idea of swopping instruments in mid song, like, drop your guitar and run to the drum kit.

That must be great for jamming. Do you do a lot of jamming?
Ian: Well…you can’t really jam with samples. I mean, you could jam. Everyone in the band could jam but I’m not a good jammer. We don’t really for that reason but you never know. Good ideas could come out of it in the future.

Two years ago you were nominated for a Mercury Music Award. How did you find out and how did you feel?
Ninja: We were in America at the time and we got a call saying, “You might be nominated for a Mercury”
Ian: It was the day before and we got a text about it.

Were you chuffed? Was it like a milestone in being part of the band?
Ian: I was chuffed, yeah. I mean it was kind of like “if nothing else happens at least I have the award and show it to my grandmother”. In fact, she has it!

And another milestone-you got Kevin Shields of My Bloody valentine to remix one of your songs. How did that come about?
Ian: Em, it just came about. I think he’s a fan really and we have the same booking agent and he came to one of our shows and I met him afterwards and he was bigging us up. I think it was the production that he liked about us. He said he had an idea about making a Jackson 5 kind of band with more of a garage sound but that we had beaten him to it so we kinda went from there to remixing our song.

I was just thinking about side projects some of you guys have been doing. For example, Ninja, you did the song “It’s The Beat” with Simian Mobile Disco. How did you get involved in doing that song?
Ninja: I honestly don’t know. I just kinda ended up in the studio with them and I had never heard of them at that point. I just spent a few hours putting down lyrics and it was just cheeky and cheerful and we had a lot of fun doing that and they didn’t know what they were going to make of it. I didn’t know what they were going to make of it and it was literally a couple of weeks later they sent me an email with two songs for me. One was called “Hot Dog” and the other was “It’s the Beat” and it had really bad dirty basic rap lyrics. “Hot Dog” was made from a song I did in school and it was really fun and they were really fun guys and great fun to work with. They had a room full of gadgets and all!

Could you see yourself doing your own stuff in the future? Recording a solo album possibly?
Ninja: I was writing my own stuff before I was in the band and obviously that’s not going to stop, so maybe sometime in the future, yeah.

Has The Go! Team given you a fresh impetus to do that? A spur perhaps?
Ninja: Not so much a spur but touring has made me listen to stuff that I wouldn’t normally listen to. Just looking for sounds like. Just watching bands I wouldn’t normally watch, and that has been a real influence on me. I think it’s difficult as a normal person watching tv and reading magazines…you’re exposed to only a bit, so being in The Go! Team has exposed me to more.

Have you discovered new bands while touring?
Ninja: Not really. It’s a case of “I like that” and “I definitely don’t like that”. It’s easier for me to pick out the negative points than it is the positive because a lot of people aren’t really doing anything original and the people who are are not really known or are on very early at a festival like this. You have to go out of your way. You have to be told about someone or someone has to give you something specifically. That’s the way it is for me anyway. I won’t go out of my way to find someone. People have to give me pointers otherwise it’s way too hard to look.

There are so many different mediums nowadays that it is almost like a haze out there. You have to search and grope around almost.
Ian: People are drowning in information, aren’t they? Theres waaay too much choice.

So finally, talking about influences and music out there, do you have any musical guilty pleasures?
Ninja: I probably have got loads. Like, I really like George Michael and Ian doesn’t like me saying that in interviews! But it’s out there now and there’s nothing you can do about it Ian!

LCD Soundsystem, just not like your average dance band, are they?

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