It sounds like a pitch for a show on children’s television- ‘Imagine 3 sisters. And they’re in a band. A rap band. A pop-rap band. And they’re from London. And they manage themselves. And they’re into fashion. I’m thinking funky clothes- like P.V.C pink thigh-high boots.’ While one is unsure as to how the executives at Nickelodeon would favour P.V.C. fetish footwear, it is a certainty that the Real Heat were made for the entertainment industry. The Real Heat’s origins are as organic as it gets. Sisters Shaki, Zaza and Suki make dirty, sexy witty electro-pop-rap records. They write the music themselves. They write the lyrics themselves. Yet, they’re still not quite sure how they became a band- ‘we all got our studio equipment, and then we all started writing together and then after that we were like ‘oh, we’re a band now!’ We have music wars still, like blasting out different types of music around the house, and my mum gets all like “argh!”‘ When lyrics are written, it’s a collaborative effort, though sometimes unknowingly. In a scenario that could be take straight from a Nickelodeon show; they relate how most of their song lyrics come about. Zaza begins- ‘We all have our own notebooks or something.’ Shaki interjects- ‘One of us might write something’. Zaza cuts in ‘-and leave it on a bit of paper-’. Suki laughs, saying ‘- and the other will find it, and be like, this is good!’ Zaza, now also laughing, continues ‘and someone will be like that’s personal! They’re my personal words! Why are you singing them? And they’ll be all ‘ah shut up, this is good!’ Shaki, finishes the imagined conversation, giggling –‘and they’re like “but I didn’t mean that when I was writing it!’’

It’s difficult to separate the Real Heat’s physical presence from their music. Resplendent in chains, leather, fishnets and pink lip gloss, the trio are a walking photo-shoot. When asked if they feel that they could perform while wearing tracksuit bottoms, their answer is surprising- Zaza has previously appeared on stage in leisure-wear. Although, ‘these are ¾ length silver tracksuit bottoms, with silver stripes and studs on them. Excuse me, they’re not velour.’ Shaki explains further, ‘We’ve always enjoyed clothes and dressing up and stuff. Tracksuit bottoms are for when you’re going to the gym, and when you want to get out quickly. They’re not for the stage. I don’t think image is anything to do with it though. Before we did music, we always dressed up, so I think that when it comes to having a stage show, and performance, it’s nice to be able to put on a show. Like, when you go out raving with your friends you make a bit of an effort, you know? Just to feel nice, it’s fun, you know? It’s cool that people associate that with us, and notice that we make an effort and that.’

Though they’re often pitched as the anti-Sugababes, the Real Heat are comfortable being filed under pop music. Their early live repertoire included some brave pop cover versions- ‘One of the first things we did with Richard (X), we did a cover of ‘Criticize’. That was quite funny. We did Bohemian Rhapsody for our live sets before, but we’ve stopped doing it now. We had a band, and re-jigged the music a bit, and sang it in a more soulful’. Richard X has produced some tracks on their album, and the girls are willing to work with anyone that they find interesting, apart from Mark Ronson- ‘He’d be all like “I’m Phil Spektor. I’m gonna put some, like, bells on your track.” I do like his stuff though.’ However, they’re adamant that they’re not going to change their sound drastically for the sake of a successful record- like Estelle did on her Kanye West track. Suki notes that Estelle ‘does sound a little Lily Allen-ish.’, while Shaki adds that ‘it’s a little dumbed-down, cause she’s got a really nice voice. I guess you’ve got to sing accordingly to the track, but I don’t think we’d go for a whole change.’ Zaza, who is in the middle age-wise, and the diplomat of the three, concludes that ‘our personalities are all quite strong, so it’s not going to be that easy for us to turn into something completely different.’

It would be easy to gloss over the business savvy that the trio display. They sacked their manager after 6 weeks, because they had ‘different goals’. When I ask whether they could see themselves existing as a band in another decade, Shaki rejects the 60’s as being ‘too oppressive. Not that many female producers and stuff. Definitely different challenges for female artists at that time.’ Suki is incredibly goal-orientated- a trait not common in her fellow members of the NME’s ‘Cool List’ of 2007- and admits that ‘it does make things easier having a good manager, because you can just concentrate on doing you music, and you don’t have to do a lot of stuff. We want to be successful, obviously, and sell shit-loads of records, and tour the world and stuff like that. Those are, like natural progressions.’ The Real Heat’s manifesto is as fun on the outside, and driven on the inside as the sisters themselves: Suki shouts ‘Lick me out!’, then Zaza intervenes, saying, ‘the serious one is-’, leaving Shaki to finish with ‘stand for something or fall for anything’, before Suki cuts back in with a final ‘lick me out!’, ensuring that the interview concludes with a tri-fold giggling fit.

Thanks to Allison Paisley for the photos.

Band member and the man behind the greatest thing to come out of Brazil since Giselle! Adriano from CSS talks to Analogue.

So 18 months on the road and over 5 concerts in Ireland alone, you must be the hardest working band today!

Yeah our agency, since we have been through a lot of bad things made this little frame or picture saying “Most Hard Working Band Of the Year”. We played like a 180 shows last year!

When you were leaving Brazil 18 months ago you were just getting big. You went back recently for the first time since and now you’re huge. How was that?

It’s weird as a lot of people didn’t like us and then they wanted to interview us but we didn’t do anything we didn’t want to. Like we didn’t speak to Globo Television (Brazil’s largest tv company). They wanted us to go on the like the David Letterman of Brazil and we said “no way we’re not doing this”. We don’t sell that much records there, we don’t have a record label there. So there’s no point in doing those things. We were wasting our time rehearsing and recording and we didn’t want to waste our time doing those things for people who didn’t like us. Just because we were famous in Europe and America. It’s really boring.

But you did a few shows in Brazil when you got back. How was that?

Yeah we did. We were at a festival and 6000 people were there watching us, which was cool. We were on at the same time as Lilly Allen and people left her to see us! That was emotional. For a moment I thought people were there to criticize us but they were all there singing and dancing. It was really beautiful.

The first time I met you guys was when I was living in South America and you were on a bus, a normal bus from

Sao Paulo to Rio in November 2005. Then I see you less than two years supporting Gwen Stefani on her European tour. That must have been weird, that quick rise, that trajectory from local band to world tours.
Yeah we played the Wembley Arena 4 times! Like 12,000 people each night! Ok they’re not there for us but to see Gwen Stefani.

But you must get people who go to those gigs to see Gwen but come back to you and say “Wow, I didn’t know you guys before and you’re really good!

Yeah! I never thought of the marketing aspect of touring but when we do tours like that our sales increase tremendously after. Of course there’s a lot of people who have never heard of us. You know if we play in front of those 12,000 people and only 10% of those like us and buy our record that’s 1200 people buying our record. So they are in HMV or Virgin and they see our record and go “That’s the band that opened for Gwen Stefani!” and they buy our record. That’s really cool.

How do you come about nabbing these big names to support? Is it a question of the record company coming to you?

Nah, it’s the agent. It’s the people who schedule our show. Like Gwen Stefani is from Primary, our agent. Primary, they have been really good to us. Our agent, he’s brilliant.

You’ve supported over the past year or so Ladytron, Basement Jaxx and Gwen Stefani. Which one was the best?

Ladytron. We became really good friends with those guys. They are the sweetest people ever. Like Daniel from Ladytron, he lives in Milan so everytime we go there we meet up. His wife is Brazillian. She’s really nice and we really became close friends. Like Helen from Ladytron always goes to our gigs in London. And Gwen, she’s really, really cool. She always went to our dressing room and she brought her kid Kingston and she is so down to earth. But she’s also kind of unapproachable as she’s a big star, you know. So we didn’t get that close so I don’t have her email or her phone number so I can’t ring her up and go “Hey Gwen, how are you!?”. Basement Jaxx, we met them 3 or 4 times in the catering area at the gigs and they are really nice. We had the most fun supporting Gwen. Basically we had a show and a day off, a show and a day off. Her show is also amazing. Watching that show every night it was amazing.

So you’re working on the second album. How is it different in sound from the first album?

I think it’s gonna sound more like a live show. It’s going to be less electronic but still sound very pop. When we recorded the first album we weren’t a band. We didn’t play that much and I didn’t know what we would end up doing. I have been working on this album since we started touring. I work on it on my computer touring and I am a workaholic so I am writing all the time. We already have 13, 14 songs so the album is all done. Man, at the beginning we didn’t even have songs. We would have maybe 4 songs and we would do one song twice and move on. And everyone was so shocked we had the guts to do that. But now the girls have gotten way better. I really trust them as musicians. I know I can make a bassline and Ira would pick it up. At the beginning they couldn’t. But now we play every day and we’re practicing. I still write all the arrangements for the instruments but now when we’re playing they’d change something as maybe it’s easier for them or they discover it’s better. Although I’m not really happy as we won’t be able to rehearse all the songs before we record and that’s something I really wanted to do. I wanted to go somewhere like a farm away from things and play the songs for almost forever but it’s not gonna happen. It was funny we were thinking about songs in ways like how it would sound on the main stage of Glastonbury or we would go “let’s make a break here so Lovefoxx can jump into the crowd” and stuff.

What goes on in Lovefoxx’s head when she thinks of things like “Music is my hot hot sex”?

She’s really unique. I think she’s a little genius. Her first thing is not music. It’s drawing. She’s an amazing illustrator. She’s more graphical than musical. I think her lyric writing is very visual as she is so graphical. She’s one of the best artists I have ever met.

So how did you two meet up?

It’s all Ira’s fault. I used to have another band called I Love Miami, which was the worst band. It wasn’t a proper band . It was me with like 10 other girls and we would just go on stage and make loads of noise. Then Ira saw us play one time and said “ I would love to be in a band like that” and she called me and said “lets make a band” and I said ok. She invited the girls. I never met Lovefoxx before the first rehearsal. She said we met once when I was in my other band but I don’t remember.

Did you get on well from the beginning?

Yeah! Ira was thinking when starting the band about who would be the best people to party with so she thought it would be cool.

With touring and the stress, do you still get on well?

Yeah we do. I think it’s because were a lot of people. I get along very well with Ira. Yesterday we went for dinner and I live very close to her in Sao Paulo. Lovefoxx hangs out with Luiza. Its not that we are jealous of each other and we have two gangs, it just seems natural.

So what is it like as the only guy in the band?

I never really thought about it. Most of my other bands had girls. I was in one band with all guys. The difference when you
have a band with girls is that people tend to treat you better. In Brazil they would put you in a better hotel as they would think they wouldn’t put a girl in certain hotels.

Have the girls rubbed off on you? Have you developed an appreciation for good shoes and make up?

Ha, and astrology too! We speak a lot about astrology too. I don’t know how they do it but they guess the star signs of everyone. They go “ Oh you are a Virgo” and I go “Yeah!” They are always right. And it’s good. They always have creams like when my hands are so dry….

So what do you think of today’s fast moving world where people come and go and more specifically bands form, go global and break up in such a short space of time?

Since we get along so well and we had a lot of shit together and we didn’t break up or fight I think that if we want we could be a band that could last 10-15 years. This idea of brief famousness is so new now. I think our fans are not those trendy people looking for trendy bands. They like our music so if we get smaller or become less famous we would do well.

Are you the beginning of something new, a wave of Brazilian bands to come over here and make it big?

Nah. There are a lot of bands that suck. There are a lot of bands that sing in Portuguese. Bonde do Role kinda work cause they have this different funky kind of sound. But they’re not big in Brazil because their lyrics are so filthy. Like if you understood what they were saying you would freak.

What is it with Brazilians? You guys and Bonde do Role.You seem to be overtly sexual? And your lyrics are too?

Well it’s when we sing in English and its not our first language. Like when Lovefoxx sings Art Bitch she would be ashamed to sing it in Portuguese.

But why sing in English and not Portuguese?

Well because I was listening to bands singing in English. I’ve been that way since I was in bands at 14 years or age. I’m a terrible Portuguese writer. In English the words are very small.

And so you’ve been on the road almost 2 years non stop. Are you going to take a break?

No! All New Year we are recording the album and then we are back in March. Actually in January we are going to Australia from Brazil for three days, which from Brazil is awful. We have to go to Chile, then New Zealand and then Australia. Its gonna be awful. Then we will be back. In February we have 2 or 3 shows.

And this year you’re making the big move to London. Are you apprehensive about going to London?

I don’t think about it much. We stay so much there so don’t think about it. Once I have my own house Ill be fine. I hate hotels. I’m paranoid to the point I travel with my own pillow! I keep thinking about who has drooled into that pillow. I was even thinking about bringing my own sheets but I thought that was too much!

Will Butler, “His Brother’s Band,” and the Old Flame

Only rarely does a band reach a stage of recognition where they no longer need to be named, let alone introduced. “A certain band from Montreal” has become a code name — used in the first issue of Analogue, but in common trade by various DJs as well — for only one band from Montreal. They join the likes of Radiohead and U2, which defined Oxford and Dublin in much the same way. The difference, of course, is that Arcade Fire has only released two full-length albums and an EP, and has been on the radar for about three years. The Oxford gentlemen will mark fifteen years of music next year, and the Dublin lads now have twenty-six. All three bands have been called the best in the world by reputable music magazines at assorted high points of their careers. This is either a lot of pressure on one relatively young, talented, and earnest group of people, or it is a truly twisted new level of hype.

It is tempting to put it down to the latter, and say that Arcade Fire is a fluke of the market, that rare case when something packaged and recommended as “good music” convinces everyone at once. Top-ten lists are mostly an echo chamber; the right critic makes an album great. Agents and companies manufacture success, and this time they did it well. It’s certainly true that there has been no shortage of hype. In some music circles, this has provoked the first Great Arcade Fire Backlash, because for the insecure connoisseur, popularity is a sure sign that something is wrong with the music.

It turns out, however, that Arcade Fire is an even rarer case than perfect market synergy. It is the case where the music, the albums, the band, and the live show are in fact that good. It is the case where Bono hears you and decides he wants to use your song as entrance music on his tour, and later asks your band to open for his. (You are able to say no.) It is the case where David Bowie buys up boxfuls of your debut album to give away to his friends for Christmas, then comes and sings with you in Radio City Music Hall. This type of success is not about what management, record companies, and marketers did well. It is about the transcendent power of what the musicians carved from noise and silence.

What is the role of music journalism when confronted with this achievement? Naturally, the impulse is to convince as many people as possible to take notice and listen. That task done, however, what can be added to what the band has already done? Who would rather read a review of a great album than listen to a great album? Criticism is always secondary to the thing itself. The risk is creating more distrust and exhaustion with excessive praise that the music manifestly does not need. It is thus with no small amount of trepidation that I enter the fray, add to the flood of ink that has already been spilled in the name of Arcade Fire, and tell a more personal story about the experience of their music. While the band may need no introduction, one of its members might. Also, I have a rather unusual story.

I met Will Butler because in the summer of 2004, he was travelling around Europe with my ex-girlfriend. All three of us had gone to the same college in Chicago, but I had graduated two years before them and moved to Berlin. In spite of the potentially awkward conditions, the terms were sufficiently amicable that I could happily host the two of them in my apartment, cooking them food and giving tours of the city, for three days. I had a guitar sitting in the house which was occasionally picked up by various residents and played. From this, it emerged that Will was part of a band, mainly as a percussionist. We learned that we had both attended boarding school — rivals, actually — and that we shared an interest in poetry and Slavic languages and literature, both of which he was studying. There were some other obvious matters of taste in which we did not disagree. We laughed a great deal, walked a great deal, and found a certain comfort particular to recent strangers. It was a few months before Funeral was released in the United States, but I like to think that while he was in my home, he already had the songs kicking around in his head: his crazy drum, his brother’s crazy voice.

I said goodbye to them as they boarded a high-speed train on the tracks at Zoologischer Garten, the same “Zoo Station” of a certain Dublin band with whom Will (and his brother) would later refuse to tour the world. I could write that I knew I’d see him again, or her, but there was at most only the mirage of a hope. I can no longer see clearly how I felt, standing there or walking home. I can hear songs that were in his head then only because they’re in my head now. From here, all of us are infected with the awareness of what Will would become, just as this story is infected by its journalistic context, by the illustration on the cover.

Not having really paid attention, I missed any connection to Will Butler when America put Funeral on its top ten lists of 2004. As the album wasn’t released in Ireland until 2005, I hadn’t sought out or heard the music yet. I was in Chicago that January, fighting the snow and ordering a coffee, when Will and I saw each other through the window of a café. We caught up only briefly, and he said rather excitedly that he was leaving school to play in “his brother’s band.” I wrote down the name of this band, and said I would find it when I returned to Ireland.
I had no idea it would be so easy. When I walked into Tower on Wicklow Street, Funeral was posted on the wall, number sixteen on the European charts. I took it home and listened, but I can’t say anything about this. I pored over the liner notes, looking for Will. He isn’t there in person; he missed the photo shoot. He pointed out to me last month, during his impromptu visit to Trinity FM, that he is the extra shadow on the wall in the photo of the band. They had tried to add his face with Photoshop, but when that didn’t work, they just gave him a shadow.
Will as a shadow: this is an inherently poetic idea. Will’s enjoyment of himself as a shadow: this is a characteristic of the poet, not the rock star. He did go back to school in the end and finished with a thesis of poems, which I’ve never read. I trust him to have found the right words. He laughs the laugh of the keen observer, relishing the small absurdities of modern life and, increasingly, the large absurdities of his own life. At his level, it remains one of the most difficult and most demanding jobs in the world to play two days on, one day off. In particular, the degree of commitment for which the band has become justly famous means that each time they perform, they risk everything.

No man was ever less of a shadow on stage. Will climbs the truss, throws the drums, wears the helmet, and on occasion tackles others while playing. Somehow he never loses the rhythm. His catharsis becomes ours through sheer fearlessness, through absolute force; this is the essence of rock performance, and something unique to that art form. Offstage, even directly after a show, he is surprisingly quiet, and as generous and attentive as he was previously insane. He is loyal to the imperatives of form; in rock and in life, he is concentrated, energized, wide-eyed, awake. This just has different results in different worlds.

After their show in the Brixton Academy this March, I heard a man congratulate Will personally on his performance, and when I commented on how familiar he looked, Will simply said, “Oh, that was Ed from Radiohead.” Oh, right. Ed. Will is unfazed; this is not uncommon. This is his job. He’s doing what he knows how to do, what he needs to do. We might feel indebted, as I certainly do, but the band seems to lavish us with music with the sole expectation that we will enjoy it, that it will matter to us. Everyone has their own story of the music, and to remember the commonality and scale of this in the face of our own emotions is humbling.

There are two reasons that Bono, Bowie, and Ed are drawn to their shows. First, they all react at the same level that we do — like Will himself, these are people first, not celebrities — and they know the real when they hear it. Second, though, is the recognition of themselves. Arcade Fire is seriously attempting to fulfill its own potential. Through the mysterious alchemy of love and risk, this potential is virtually limitless; it’s bigger than Funeral in the same way that Radiohead’s was bigger than The Bends. Critics who say that Neon Bible is no Funeral are as short-sighted as the fans who kept asking for “Creep” a decade later. These questions may be worth asking when the band is on LP ten or LP twenty, continuing to make the music that summons them most urgently at that time, evolving their lineup, their style, their instrumentation. When I asked him whether the ever-growing success of the band is changing the tours, Will was enigmatically accurate, saying that this time is no more different than the other times were different.

It’s a good lesson in fame, particularly in Will’s fame, that nothing was particular or unique in our first meeting or in our most recent goodbye. People are people, and friendship is friendship. I can’t help but think that Arcade Fire’s success is rooted in this same realisation, and that this is one source of their authenticity on stage. Their own story is about marriage, brotherhood, friends, family, and loss. They have placed so much priority on reflecting this in the music that anyone similarly situated — that is, anyone who has suffered or rejoiced in the business of living — hears themselves.

The sign on their Myspace says Asheville, North Carolina, but King Tut’s pyrotechnic psychedelia might be more at home in Scandinavia. An understated yet frenetic fusion of acoustic instrumentation and electro beats, Tut are perhaps closer to Sigur Ros or even Aussie improvisationalists Architecture in Helsinki, than American contemporaries ‘Explosions in the Sky’. From Appalachian guitars plucked over heavily sampled vocals on ‘Alone Together’, to cathedral electronica on ‘Luke’s Hymn’ - a slow-burning forest fire of a track, reminiscent of Agaetis Byrjun’s ‘Staralfur’, to the shoegaze theatre of ‘Somehow I Found You’, and the 8bit electroclash of ‘The Ocean of Motion’, Tut’s debut album ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ is an acid mouthful of fruity originality.

King Tut are Mark Boyd and Drew Veres, school friends out of Bay Village, Cleveland, who’ve taken time off from college to live and play music together. Tut are currently signed to Amaro Dolce, a tiny Boston indie label. Their upcoming album will be the label’s debut release. In July 2006 the boys struck out for Asheville, NC; a manicured Tuscany of the Mid-East, drawn by the area’s artistic community and outstanding natural beauty. The ’self-consciously amateur’ music that’s emerged since, and from months before spent trading loops in isolation, is a complex fusion of folksy improv and electronic experimentalism. ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ was laid down in bedrooms, dorms and college studios, in Garageband on an aging Macintosh; while Mark and Drew worked minimum-wage jobs to fund recording. The album’s rustic origins, its stylistic variety, raw layered harmonies, and epic refrains (Mark calls them ‘Peak Moments’), bring to mind Mirah’s collaboration with Ginger Brooks Takahashi, 2003’s ‘Songs from the black Mountain Music Project’; and indeed Carrying Water shares the sizzling fury of Phil Elverum’s discordantly thrilling Microphones productions. Says Mark of such moments - “When it’s done right it’s a kind of holy thing to me, it really reaches out to you and into you and surrounds you and you just understand. There is a clear open channel of communication between you and the musician and it’s beautiful.”

There’s so much variety here that it’s hard to draw general comparisons, but fans of Mogwai, Broken Social Scene and even Grandaddy should all find something to enjoy. Likely to draw attention are the album’s spare but intricate drum loops. Drew cites the influence of everyone from John Stanier, to JoJo Mayer and Thelonius Monk. “A good drummer is able to sing through his instrument and compliment the parts of his fellow musicians. John Coltrane is a personal favorite. He literally sings through the tenor saxophone. His playing has influenced me to really hear the tonal qualities of the drum set and fit them with the guitar lines to create a fuller more distinct sound for a song.”

Tut have arrived at an understanding of the contemporary music market that often eludes more established acts. Aware that obscurity is a far greater threat to young artists than piracy, the band have gone beyond using MySpace (where Analogue heard first heard them), and set about directly emailing songs to a growing list of fans. Mark is particularly positive about P2P, “I love peer to peer sharing.  I think it’s got corporate big guys in a bundle and that’s great.  At least some of the reason people don’t buy records any more is that they know it’s not going to the band. Why should we require people to toss some paper with imaginary value into our hat? Music has real value. Emotions have real value. That’s what matters.”
I ask him to explain how the birth of the net and the drawn out passage of the ‘industry’ proper have affected the bands promotional decisions.
“Being able to spread music so easily and to such a large audience is a beautiful thing.  We have the ability to play our music for someone on the other side of the world, by just clicking away from the comfort of our own home. As for the death of the major labels?  Well it’s about fucking time… It’s so easy for people to overlook one of the true meanings of making music, self expression. The idea that there are corporate know-it-alls deciding what the general public should be listening to is a joke. Now there’s finally a way for damn good musicians to get their music out, and it has these big types on edge.”
Mark is similarly dismissive of Radiohead’s latest foray into digital marketing, ‘In Rainbows’.
“I think what Radiohead did was great, but it’s by no means revolutionary. Big bands in Japan and other countries had done this years before, figuring that if people like them enough, they’ll buy the CD, but they’ll definitely go to see them in concert.”
King Tut are the kind of band we’re seeing more and more right now; a potpourri of influences, keener on developing as musicians than aspiring to a traditional major label recording career. With independent releases this year from everyone from M.I.A to Prince and indeed Radiohead; the group’s independence shouldn’t prevent them from making a splash deserved by this fiery, original and charming release.

It might be a while before they tour, but King Tut release their album ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ (title taken from ‘Be Here Now’) soon. If you’re in the neighbourhood of Asheville, you would do well to catch them. Otherwise, hit the band up for demos at keepyourkingsinthebackrow@gmail.com or check out their new material on MySpace.

A brief history of Lo Fi indie rock

A friend once asked me, “how come so many of your favourite records sound so shite? Its like they were recorded for 50p!” And he was right, they do. In fact, not only do they sound like they were recorded for 50p but at least one of them (‘Vampire on Titus’ by Guided by Voices) is so shoddily recorded it may as well have been screamed into a banjaxed Fisherprice tape recorder on a windy cliff. Well, its ‘cos a large chunk of my CD collection is devoted to the crackly magic and haphazard musical charms cast by lo-fi recording artists.

What exactly is lo-fi then? Well, if you were dreary and took the term at face value, you might say it simply means low fidelity, as in music that was recorded on equipment by bands who for financial or other reasons could not afford to record their music on high fidelity equipment. Lo-fi, you might then argue, has been around for as long as recording itself. You might argue that all the great bockety garage rock from the 60s and the scuzzy DIY stylings of punk were lo-fi because of the cheap way in which such music was recorded. But its not as simple as that. Otherwise lo-fi would be merely a style of music determined by practical necessity, whereas in reality it quickly grew beyond that to become an aesthetic for bands to wilfully aspire towards. It became a genre in and of itself that flourished and peaked in a whoosh of cassette tape hiss in the early to mid-nineties. Indeed, looking back to the genre’s early-nineties peak, practically all the best American indie records, including Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand and Sebadoh’s III, seem like they are barely held together by sellotape and pritt-stick. If these bands were plasterers they wouldn’t bother with polyfila because hey, the cracks in the plasterwork were more interesting. Lo-fi was also a bit political. It was a determined kick against the bloated belly of mainstream alternative rock, which in those days was all post-grunge MTV drivel padded out by millions of dollars worth of big studio turd polishing. As Stephen Malkmus aptly sang about some big grunge bands of the day on Pavement’s lo-fi call to arms, ‘Range Life’ “I don’t understand what they mean/ And I could really give a fuck.”

Unlike other more tightly defined genres like shoegaze, there is no real unifying lo-fi sound. Rather, it’s the way in which things were recorded that holds the genre together. The musical styles vary from the detuned and decidedly wonky guitar fuzz that ultimately makes Pavement such a sublime acquired taste to Calvin Johnson’s baritone singing over Beat Happening’s austere musical structures. However, for my money, if there is one band that could speak for them all and represent the genre in some sort of United Nations style musical Security Council (hah, imagine that!), then that band is Guided By Voices (Sebadoh fans are bound to disagree with this, but if they want to really work this out I am willing to meet them in the car-park of Whelans to sort it out properly). Here was a band of seedy looking thirty-something dudes with beer-guts who recorded most of their best material while they were blind drunk in a laundry room below one of their gafs. Led by The Who and Beatles obsessed primary school teacher Robert Pollard, Guided By Voices used some unbelievably ropey equipment to record music that at its best, climbs to the rarified heights of the best work from those 1960s bands he idolized so much. Although it takes some leap of the imagination to describe much of their polished later material as lo-fi, Guided by Voices’ blinding early run of four wonderful albums from ‘Propeller’ through ‘Alien Lanes’ are shot through with the idiosyncrasies and imperfections that make lo-fi such a love it or hate it genre. You see, one man’s imperfection is another’s accidental wonder. The fact is that Bee Thousand (to take one Guided By Voices release) sounds positively destroyed with tape hiss, badly overdubbed vocals, too much treble, out of tune guitar parts, unfiltered sounds of studio doors slamming, and (half way through one track) a band member snoring drunkenly. Yet these things only add to the record’s legend. Its hard to explain, but all that ramshackle madness eventually worms its way into how you experience the album, finally becoming as important a part of the listening experience as the fine music itself. It gives things textures, depths, and a unique sense of time and place that crackles and sparks. In fact, Bee Thousand is miraculous in that a huge part of its brilliance is wrapped up in how shite it sounds. As a musical statement it is a million miles from the edgeless studio polish and easy to digest radio-friendly mixes that characterize much so-called ‘alternative rock,’ which are little more than mushed up liga for your ear-drums.

Of course, lo-fi does not begin and end with Guided By Voices, Pavement and Sebadoh. The big three are a gateway drug into a scene crammed with dozens of lesser known but fascinating groups such as Silver Jews, The Mountain Goats, The Olivia Tremor Control and the grandaddy of them all, Daniel Johnston. On this side of the Atlantic lots of artists took the baton and ran with it too, most notably The Beta Band, Badly Drawn Boy when he was in his early bedroom phase (in other words when he was worth giving a frick about) and more recently, Graham Coxon and our own Jape. What ties all these groups together might not just be the homespun nature of their recordings but something else too. It’s the honesty that is inherent in recording music this way. Its impossible to cloak poor quality with the smoke and mirrors of studio trickery. Lo-fi brings the listener’s attention back to where it should be. Back to the song itself.

Contemplative and endearing music from the inspiring wilds of the Danish countryside.

There’s something to the wild, barren landscapes of Scandinavia and Iceland that seem to breed such beautiful and jaw-dropping music. The faintest sound of dripping water or the howl of the northern wind seems to inspire their natives into creating cascading walls of sound that bring shivers down one’s spine.

Efterklang hail from tamer wilds of Denmark. They have, over the years, released numerous mini-albums and their accomplished debut Tripper. October saw the release of their second album Parades. Efterklang has its genesis in the wilds of the Danish countryside, on the island of Als to be precise. “It’s extremely beautiful with many isolated places” local and lead singer Casper tells me. “It’s pretty desolate. I wouldn’t call it a cold place but it’s extremely beautiful”. Casper and fellow band members Mads and Rasmus grew up on Als but in time they felt this “common feeling that we were too big for this place”. So they left for the bright lights and cosmopolitan charms of Copenhagen. Over a few years they met fellow band members Rune and Thomas and with the addition of visual artist Karim Ghahwagi, Efterklang was brought into this world.

Efterklang are an odd bunch. “We are just curious about sounds in general”- Casper explains -and it shows in their music. Combining an orchestra of violins and electronic beats with harmonious vocals, it’s a rich mixture that tickles the mind and soothes the soul. “We don’t think we can find music that won’t fit into the Efterklang universe”. Would that include such things as garbage cans? Well maybe. “If we find a nice soda can we would generally bring it home and start a song with that one”. That’s what constitutes the Efterklang universe, and what a universe it is. This is no ordinary band churning out album after album, it is more of an overall sensual experience. The eye is treated just as handsomely as the ear. “We are all fascinated by cinema and visuals in general and we use it in our music” Casper continues. “Sometimes it is nice to have a visual to create a scene and story in picture to help to make the music. It felt like a natural way of making music”. Because Karim is an integral part of the band all this works to a mesmerizing degree. “We would make the music and he would create the universe”.

Debut album Tripper left many a critic salivating over its lavish musical texture. Comparisons with the aforementioned Sigur Ros made others sit up and take notice. The band embarked on a European tour and then it was time for a return to Copenhagen to create a new sensual experience. This time the band members decided to enlist an outsider to produce second album Parades. “We wanted to find a person who could deal with epic things, with both electronic and acoustics”. The band decided on Darren Allison- the man behind such classics as My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Spiritualized’s crowning glory Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. The result is an album more coherent and more lush than its predecessor.

Efterklang are not content with just music and visuals. They have taken it upon themselves to set up their own record label Rumraket. But what brought about this recent foray? “It was just a reaction” Casper tells me. “We wanted to release our first mini album and it was simply just nice to have a label behind it. We created it for that purpose and afterwards we used it to release some special editions of Tripper. Efterklang didn’t think much would come of it but opinions and fate soon changed. One day an email popped into the Rumraket inbox from none other than Grizzly Bear asking the band to remix one of their tracks. The band said yes,one thing led to another and Grizzly Bear ended up on Rumraket. Score!

So Efterklang are a band that want to wrap you up in a warm, sensual duvet and treat you to an overall experience bordering on the religious. Go catch them in Dublin in Whelans on November 28th.

Up and coming bands play gigs, do interviews where they extol the massive influence Bowie has had on their lives and how they want to make it big and tour America all while they glaze behind you to the mirror to fix their angular haircut or to-scraggly-to-be-natural hair. So when someone says to you “I really wanna play every county in Ireland!” and with such playful eagerness you sit up and take notice. Comprising of two bezzie mates Meabh and Megan they have combined a love of techno with the added spice of rap to create something, which stands out from the normal swathe of Irish bands.

Meabh and Megan are an odd mix. Meabh has spent many a month over the past few years in Berlin soaking up the avant garde lifestyle that city uniquely has to offer. She learnt how to MC and get into German rap there among other things. Megan on the other hand is still in school. In fact our interview was delayed so that Megan could finish supervised study! However as it is in all such cases it was a love of music and mutual friends that brought them together. They met each other at a friend’s club in Waterford. “Our eyes met across a crowded room and we knew that it was meant to be!” jokes Megan on that fateful night. So a few weeks later in June just past they met up, found out they both loved the same music and so in Megan’s bedroom over Alex Gopher’s Motorcycle Clutch they decided to join forces and unleash You’re Only Massive on the country.

So what are they like? Well think Chicks on Speed without the pretentiousness. Add in some rap and a bit of techno with some girly charm and there you have it. Since June they have toured relentlessly and although they havn’t yet made it to every county in Ireland (I’m still dubious about Longford) they have garnered a lot of praise for their tongue in cheek style and music. “ we don’t have the knowledge to sound like a proper group” Megan explains, “I don’t really know how to mix properly so it [our sound] just sounds like this out of necessity”. Nevertheless as a band live they seamlessly and flirtatiously rap over their favorite vinyls. Justice’s Phantom becomes a saucy, slinky number while Alex Gopher is transformed into the whimsical ‘SugarShake The Cool Away’. It seems all so odd. It shouldn’t work but somehow it does and it has taken them around the country to Hard Working Class Heroes, Kilkenny, Dublin Fringe and em, Navan. “That was a really weird gig” Megan giggles “Girls were coming up to us afterwards and going ‘that was the best fun we ever had!’”

This all seems quite a lot for such a budding band, especially when Megan is busy preparing for the Leaving Cert. How does it all work? “Its kind of really hard actually” Megan tells me “not that it affects school really but in terms of playing gigs”. A recent gig in Limerick on a school night resulted in Meabh roping in a friend to take the reigns for that show. So nothing will stop this band. A possible brief pause coming up to the exams will be followed by a massive burst of shows around the country. Gigs-a-plenty will occur. “We really like playing shitty little towns” Meabh eagerly tells me. So watch out Longford.

You’re Only Massive may not be the most professional band out there. They may not think much about what they are doing or care about how they are perceived but as they rap in SugarShake The Cool Away “I’m tearing it up/Get ready to rave/Right here/Right now” it’s all fun and games to Megan and Meabh. So catch them the next time they hit, um, Ballina.

The phone rings out a half dozen times. Finally, he answers, his voice soft and weary, unenthusiastic. Andrew Bird has been composing; fusing the seeds of separate musical ideas into an overarching medley. “This happens a lot, where I donʼt realise that Iʻve been writing the same song in three different songs, so then I take the best parts of the song, see how they fit together and distill it into one song.” Such compositional deconstruction is analogous to Bird�s famed looped performances. The man adores playing live, “I pretty much hate the rest of the day”, and
has turned looping into an indispensable instrument of interpretation. Building a melody around a pizzicato rhythmic frame, he layers on more amorphous flourishes “a gaseous state, you can almost visualise in front of you”, “this blob of sound that youʼre trying to carve and shape”. “The songs have a certain amount of built-in room, I try to make sure I donʼt write songs that are gonna pin me down too much, but even the most conceptually overburdened arrangement, itʼs up to you to make it live and breathe again.”

Working with percussionist Martin (Luther King Chavez) Dosh and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker, Bird creates an intricate vertical landscape, traversed by eerie whistled riffs and his trademark ʻapocrypha’ of concrete imagery.

He writes words “speaking in tongues”, that “stand in to fill the crevices of the melody”. Like Owen Pallet, Bird’s loops build epic soundscapes and shivering violent crescendos. I ask him how much further such techniques can be pushed. “The variables keep multiplying, because I’m playing with Martin, who’s also developed his own technique in a vacuum with drums and keyboards. But what’s really cool, in the year and a half I’ve played with him, every time we get together we try something that kind of multiplies the possibilities. All three of us on stage, Jeremy Ylvisaker as well, we’re all manipulating sound or noise and shaping it with looping.” “I came up with my approach to it in my own vacuum. It was during a time when I was very isolated, and just saw it asa tool to turn a linear instrument into a vertical instrument. I just kind of stumbled into using it live. I was vaguely aware of people like [Ohio born singer songwriter] Joseph Arthur, Jon Brion and people like that using the same technology, but I think it’s the ultimate tool for someone who enjoys solitude. So it’s interesting to see everyone using it in different ways.”

Educated under the Suzuki method, playing violin from the age of four, Bird has developed an organic relationship to performance and composition. He describes Suzuki as “this prefab oral tradition”, which turns children into natural musicians, “teaching kids to play music like they’re learning a language, when they’re really young and their brains are still developing” but one that leaves them ill-equipped to deal with the formal elements and pressures of the classical world. “Suddenly there’s this rude awakening when you’re thirteen or fourteen and you’re supposed to play in an orchestra and read music. That was kind of a nightmare. It was very competitive, I couldn’t read music at all, but I could learn entire concertos by ear.” Bird almost burnt out during his early twenties, “playing eight to ten hours a day trying to prove that I could make a living as a musician.” Surmounting the experience, he made a conscious decision to never again allow a performance to feel empty, “like a wasted moment.” “Whenever I’m in a musical situation and it starts to feel jammy or futile, I get really uncomfortable. So every moment I’m making music, I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to make it ʻmusical’.”

With a head full of melodies (“One thing I never worry about, is that drying up. It’ll happen as a result of being alive”), Bird is sceptical of semantics; “Words are trickier, words fill you with self doubt”. Lately he’s been seeking a way to escape language entirely, looking for “some sort of springboard into just making sounds with my mouth”. So far his experiments have made themselves known in coruscating logos, lyrics that bring to mind the tongue twisting impenetrability of poly-rhythmic naturalismo nymphet, Joanna Newsom. On this years ʻArmchair ApocryphaʼLP, his eighth studio album and third solo outing, lyrics drift from references to neuroscience ʻthey’ll fight for your neural walls and plasticities’ [Plasticities], ʻas if you lack the proper chemicals to know’ [Armchairs], to subtle scientific wordplay, ʻdespite what all his studies had shown / what’s mistaken for closeness / is just a case of mitosis’ [Imitosis]. Pitchfork’s review speaks of the album exhibiting a distrust of science and psychology, but I find here more a fascination with uncertainty, a yearning for unknowable things. Bird insists that any such coherence is emergent, not a deliberate commentary or theme.

“I have words that sort of stand in to fill the crevices of the melody and I just wait till something starts to make a little more sense or seems emotionally true. But more or less the beginning of the process is not concerned with meaning or intention at all. At theend of the process I’m like ʻnow I see what I was talking about’. I find the common threads. People have suggested doing an instrumental record, and for some reason the words feel really important none the less. One gives the other a reason to exist. Armchair Apocrypha, I guess the Apocrypha part for me has revealed itself to be about the origin of ideas being a little more dubious.”

ʻApocrypha’ is an explosion of fury in contrast to Bird’s last, more experimental record, the wonderfully titled ʻMysterious Production of Eggs’ (“a nod toward ʻWhere do these ideas come from?’ The mysteriousness of the creative process”). The albums didactic melodrama grew out of the process of live collaboration with Dosh, “I went from a couple of years of playing solo and kind of more subtle textured stuff, to playing with a drummer again, and I was doing songs from ʻEggs’ like ʻTables and Chairs’ where I sing ʻWe were tired of being mild’ and the song became so extroverted compared to the record, and I heard the record for the first time in a while, and I head
that line, and I thought, well Jesus if I’m so tired of being mild, why do I sound so restrained? So I’ve tried to get closer to that kind of fever, that kind of intensity, that comes over me in a live show”. According to Bird there are two species of album and “You’re going to either make a decidedly living room or bedroom type record, which is carefully balanced and measured, or you’re going to make a live type record, that goes for it.” Despite his protests to the contrary, ʻApocrypha’ manages to scupper such divides, seeming both energetic and perfectly controlled. The record mixes the scratchy veracity of Buckley’s ʻSketches’ LP, with the tightly measured pop of a Ziggy-Era Bowie album, and the unselfconscious classical flourishes of Final Fantasy.

A love of touring has insulated Bird somewhat from the fear currently coursing through the recording industry. “My bread and butter has been playing live, and I’ve always written off the recorded product - never expecting to see anything come of that - except being this reason to tour and play live.” I ask about rumoured plans to toy with the visual aspect of performance, a favoured tactic amongst independent musicians of all means these days. Bird’s reply is typically understated. “We’re dabbling in a little bit in the projection thing lately, but it’s a different way of experiencing music and it can be slightly less personal. Really what I’m trying to do is to think of the stage as a thirty five mill’ frame, and how are you going to fill that frame with as much cool functional stuff as possible. I’ve been working with a lot of artists in Chicago to make the actual instruments on stage visually interesting.” One such practically elegant gizmo is Bird’s twirling double headed Victrola speaker, built by Chicago sculptor and instrument maker Ian Schneller’s ʻSpecimen Products’. Despite a fear of overwhelming the performance, Bird plans to extend such visual elements, “We’re trying to use projections as just an interesting way of casting light.” Fans in Ireland had the pleasure of Birds visuals at his November 3rd show in Tripod, but missed out on the spinning ʻJanus Horn’. “Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get that stuff over seas, it’s really sad but it’s almost impossible at this stage. But yeah, I really enjoy employing really creative people. It’s been my diversion, I don’t like to hang out with other musicians, I like to hang out with visual artists mostly and to collaborate with them on stuff.” Such a collaboration was evident on ʻEggs’, where Bird worked with musician and artist Jay Ryan to build narrative illustrations for each song. “Jayʼs a good friend of mine, and we just hung out and joked around, and he was just sketching while we were talking and that was it.I love it when things are that easy.”

Moments of ʻEggs’ were reminiscent of the swing-influenced Jon Brion cut of Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine LP. Perhaps this touch of bassy waltz was a shadow of Bird’s first brush with fame, collaborating with North Carolina 1920’s revivalists ʻSquirrel Nut Zippers’. Off his own pressings Bird had made a habit of guesting on releases as various as Ani DiFranco’s 2005 ʻButton Down’ and Neko Case’s early ʻCanadian Amp’ EP. “Every Winter seems to be the season for side projects, and a more collaborative phase. So I’m starting to concoct different ideas to pull me out of my own universe and play other people songs. I like getting little homework assignments now and then. Even if I’m like not really into it at first, like getting asked to cover that Bob Dylan song for Mojo a year ago… I like to pick the most elemental songs I can find, that don’t really have too much of a stamp on them, and then totally rethink the whole thing.”

Andrew Birds latest album Armchair Apocrypha is available from all good music sellers. He is currently touring Europe.

Ailbhe Malone talks with Hildur Ársælsdóttir from Amiina about Playing by the Rules, Instrument-Swopping and Sigur Ros

‘I think a lot of normal stuff influences us, like food and textures of things, and handcraft, stuff like that.’ No matter how Eyebrowy deem to classify Sigur Ros, ‘pretentious’ is not a word one could ever use in conjunction with Amiina. The group, comprising of Hildur Ársælsdóttir, Edda Rún Ólafsdóttir, Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir , originally worked as a classical string quartet before recording with Sigur Ros (on () and Takk) and finally releasing their first solo album Kurr in 2007. The quartet’s classical background is apparent, a fact which Hildur readily acknowledges- ‘Classical music- our education- has influenced us a lot. That’s the pillar, if you can say so. That’s where we come from, that’s a really big part.’ Whilst they embrace their classical training, they admit that, as a style, it is too constrictive-‘We come from a classical background where, you know, you’re not supposed to decide a lot of stuff for yourself, you’re supposed to play by the rules. When we met the guys (Sigur Ros) we started doing more creative work and we just found it fascinating.’

Though Amiina are quick to stress that they are a separate group, and not a side project of Sigur Ros, the effect that Sigur Ros has had on them is undeniable. Hildur speaks about the group as if she was a 16 year old girl describing her first boyfriend- ‘When we started working with them we realised that you can do whatever you want, that there are no rules.’ It would appear that ever since then, Amiina have been doing whatever they want. Their music mimics that of Sigur Ros in that it has no lyrics-. ‘It’s much more natural for us to write songs without lyrics, because of our background. We’re so used to inter-weaving melodies and that kind of focus on nuances and sound rather than lyrics. I think all of us kind of, when we listen to music, we don’t listen to the lyrics and remember them. We listen a lot more to other stuff, other factors in the music. So, it was something we didn’t even think about, it was just so natural for us to do instrumental music.’- but it has more drive, and an inherent sense of fun that their fellow Icelanders lack.

In keeping with their organic ethos, Hildur explains that- ‘when we create the song, we’re not really thinking of how to perform it live, so we use whatever instrument we want, not really thinking about it in practical terms. So when we then do live versions, arrangements, sometimes we have to sit down and discuss how we’re going to do it, practically. We would really love to have more hands than eight, but we don’t, so we have to figure out a way to make things work. It’s kind of our choreography.’ Watching Amiina perform is a singularly serene experience. It is clear Amiina are at ease in their current musical territory, during concerts they glide around the stage whilst swapping instruments at a ferocious pace- sometimes mid-song. . The group members dress similarly in long, pretty dresses and they alternately bop, sway and nod to the music as they play. Alarmingly self-contained, even when playing more upbeat tracks such as ‘ammaelis’, Amiina act like they’re all in on a big exciting secret- which they might, just might, let the audience in on. Hildur giggles that- ‘We like cosy little festivals. We’re not really fans of the big festivals with all the loud drunk people rolling around. We’re more into cosy indoor things.’ They shun projections and showy visuals, stating that – ‘We think there are so many details happening during the show, just in the performance. At the moment, we think that may be enough to look at. I think that’s what at least some people like about us, that there’s always something to watch.’

Quietly, Amiina are still building up their musical artillery – ‘We REALLY want to learn to play the Theremin. We have one and we’re trying to practise, but it’s hard to learn. That’s one of the instruments that we’ve been dreaming about for a long time. I’d also like to learn to play the clarinet, that’s a really fascinating instrument.’ Every member of the group is a multi-instrumentalist, and their list of instruments ranges from Viola, to Glassophone, to Musical Saw. The latter instrument shines on ‘Rugla’, transforming the melody from prosaic to hypnotic. Further on in the album, ‘Hilli’ swings gently by, allowing for Japanese influences, whistling, and ethereal vocals to happily co-exist within a waltz tempo. Lead single ‘Seoul’ showcases a Gideon Harp and Service Bells duet over the shadow of a Korg drumline. Amiina’s musical fearlessness seems to stem from, finally, being able to do exactly what they want to do. Hildur agrees-‘We always had it in the back of our heads this idea of doing something together that was our own thing, and we didn’t really have the time to do it until a few years ago-’, before mischievously adding that- ‘It’s much more fun making stuff up on your own than doing what people tell you to do.’

The first time I heard Asobi Seksu was when my sister arrived back from New York with a copy of Citrus. She had heard it some record store and immediately asked them what is was and bought it. It turned out to be Asobi Seksu’s second album, Citrus. That was about three months ago and I haven’t stopped listening to it since. A more accessible blend of shoegaze and dream pop, Citrus is a collection of songs perfectly combining the beautiful ethereal vocals of Yuki Chikudate with the peddle heavy crashing guitars of James Hanna which bend and weave up, down and beyond the octaves of the six string. The 2006 album was re-released by One Little Indian in Europe in August and now Asobi are on a massive European tour.

As Yuki sat in traffic in Manhattan, I gave her a quick call ahead Asobi Seksu’s first Irish. Starting out in New York at the height of the Strokes popularity, Asobi Seksu are a band that have struggled to command attention. Even in their home town of New York, Yuki explains that when Asobi Seksu “first started out, people were not so open to what we were doing.” Back then “it wasn’t a very popular sound” but a few years on and things have changed “it’s exciting for us now that people are actually paying attention.” And with Lyrics that hop, skip and jump between Japanese and English, AS make for interesting listening.

The Asobi Seksu sound while it may be raw at times is extremely honed and finely tuned, Citrus had a master plan to make sure everything came together in recording “we had crazy charts and we arranged everything before we went into the studio, there was a lot of preproduction.” Time well spent in my opinion, as the songs possess certain dynamics that go beyond the obvious My Bloody Valentine comparisons. Although MBV are clearly a big influence, the comparisons do get a little taxing for the band at times “obviously it’s a band we like a lot, you know and it doesn’t bother us that people see the comparison that they reference that band but at a certain point it gets to be a little too much but it’s just that one band, there were other bands around at the time who were experimenting with those textures and with that kind of guitar sound.”

What makes Asobi Seksu so good in my mind is their ability to merge really upbeat pop vocals with psychedelic synths and layers of pitch bending tremolo laced guitars. They don’t just emulate the sounds of those that have gone before but instead make the sound and textures their own. When I asked how it felt to continue touring with the same material for the past two years, Yuki simply replied “every song feels new because of the audience” and because of that it gives the songs “a whole new perspective, a fresh new take”. So with that in mind, try catch them live and see what your perspective is.

Asobi Seksu play Crawdaddy, November 25th.