“Holly, Michigan is a small town full of small-minded people”. Our Brother The Native are a band that seem to come straight out of suburban middle America. There is nothing small-minded about their music, however. It is experimental and ambient, and above all it is imbued with an over-riding sense of space. Heima showed us that Sigur Rós are making the music their landscape commands, but it is a testament to the artistic powers of this trio that they can conjure music of such scope from a world of white picket fences.
The obvious thing to mention about Our Brother The Native is their age. Of the trio, only John-Michael Foss could legally attend gigs in clubs in America. Chaz Knapp is close too, but has his own DIY label to keep him occupied instead. Josh Bertram, who I talked to, is eighteen and not long out of high school. They met over MySpace in 2005 and signed to the same label as Animal Collective and Sigur Rós in 2006. And their latest album, ‘Make Amends For We Are Merely Vessels’, is not even their debut. It can’t have been easy starting out in the weird world of freak-folk and post-rock that their dense, pastoral music inhabits.
“The reviews of [debut] Tooth and Claw made me think we weren’t taken very seriously. But I feel anyone who has met us or seen us hopefully could understand that we are very serious about our music”, Josh says. That’s that then. “I know for me, college is just for the time being. The band and music is my definite priority and passion in life”.
The band’s formation is a matter of some discussion too. Josh and John Michael met in high school in Michigan and had started playing together, but Chaz lives in California. How did they even find each other? “I contacted Chaz through the MySpace for his DIY label Delude Records. He had been putting out some really interesting obscure folk recordings and I told him that if he ever needed a new release to contact us. So he did. He was really adamant about putting out something of ours. We put out the six-track EP “Cheer Up My Dear, The Sun Will Shine Again. Over the course of working on the recording, we became great friends. I talked to Chaz on the phone almost every other day. We started to do collaborations via e-mail on two songs, and they turned out beautifully. So I thought we should just add him to the band. He accepted the invitation, and that was that.
Tooth and Claw was received as a record from the New Weird America camp, but Make Amends… is much more panoramic and spaced out. Combining that sort of cinematic quality with falsetto vocals was always going to draw comparisons to Sigur Rós. This is not a problem for Josh.
“That is an endearing compliment to have. To be compared to Sigur Rós is an honour, and I will always strive to make our music as dramatic as some of Sigur Rós’ work. However I think we are much different in terms of what we are trying to convey. We will always be much darker in mood. I also think there is a little more experimentation happening on our part. I try not to have many rules for us when we go about writing a song.” And the vocals? “The falsetto comparison I can understand, but I have been singing that way long before I heard Sigur Rós. I have a weird fascination with women’s voices and hushed, cute vocals. Also I guess I have always wanted to have a range that fits the mood of any style I want to sing.”
Fat Cat signed the band after Chaz sent them a link to their MySpace in the hopes of getting some constructive criticism. The label liked what they heard and asked for a demo. They liked the demo even more, and instructed the band to record a full-length album with a view to releasing it. For an experimental but still mostly teenage band, to share a label with the likes of múm and Sigur Rós must have been exciting.
“I would say we feel a closeness to the bands on the label. They are all so amazing, and I feel we share a lot of their ideals. There is a lot of bands on the label trying new ideas all the time and that’s something inherent in our goal as a band as well. But if you’re asking if I think we’re on the same level as múm or Animal Collective or Sigur Rós, I would have to say no way. We still have much more room to expand and grow.” Most bands that lean towards the sort of organic, experimental music Our Brother The Native make come to it through improvisation, or jamming at the very least. It’s interesting to find out how that works in a long distance set-up.”John-Michael and I wrote Tooth and Claw long distance, sending parts of songs back and forth to Chaz until they were complete. On Make Amends… John-Michael and I wrote songs over the course of two years since [the band's first gig, at a Fat Cat festival in] Belgium, playing them live with Chaz occasionally. Parts got added here and there as they aged. When the time came to record, Chaz wrote a load of new parts for it, including the piano base for one song and the entire two parts for The Multitudes Are Dispersing.”
“There is a balance of improvisation and structure. The music part of it has been planned out for the last two years and hasn’t been improvised on the album. But a lot of experimentation I did with the atmospherics in each song came from testing new ideas out to make the songs fresh to me, considering I had been playing them for quite awhile. I do a lot of searching for the right samples to fit each song.”
In an attempt to have a little fun with Josh, I asked him to describe his idea of Ireland. “Lots of pubs, green pastures, Nessie and leprechauns”. Despite this slight gap in knowledge of the specifics of European affairs, he says there’s a good chance they’ll see Ireland this summer. “We actually are looking at a little summer European tour. We have a couple of promoters inquiring about us in Ireland, France, and the U.K.” A good chance to get to know the place a little better perhaps.

“Hi, sorry, you’ll have to speak up a bit, I’m a little deaf”. Phil Selway, drummer with multi-platinum selling, genre-hopping, conscientious stadium behemoths Radiohead, doesn’t quite hear when I say hello. Human after all. Radiohead’s profile was perhaps higher than ever in 2007, due largely to their announcement in October of the release of their seventh studio album, In Rainbows. It’s not so much the music that got people talking though. The little blank boxes on the In Rainbows download page sparked more discussion, debate and parody than anything else in the musical sphere. Even Pitchfork, notorious for specific ratings, left their review score up to us.

There were whispers of a great social experiment, that Radiohead were testing their fanbase and the world to see how much value was placed on their music. If file-sharing democratised music for the masses, then Radiohead were the great established band trying to legitimise that once and for all. Pay as much or as little as you like. It’s up to you.

Nothing is as simple as it seems, however, and reports started to trickle out that Radiohead had made more money with their download than they would have from an ordinary CD release. The only way to own a physical copy of In Rainbows initially was to pay fifty-five euro for the admittedly well-presented discbox release containing the album, a bonus disc, the album again on double vinyl and a book of artwork. Then they signed regular record deals to release the album conventionally too. They were setting a precedent that common or garden indie bands couldn’t follow. They announced a European tour and sparked a backlash due to high ticket prices. The New York Times called it revolution in the music industry, but Forbes called it one of the 101 Dumbest Business Moments of 2007 . Was it revolution? Was it just more capitalism in a different shape? Does it matter? More on the politics later. First and foremost, the music:

In Rainbows took nearly four years to come out, why was that?

Well, we took… [thinking sounds] 2003 to 2007… 2003 was the year Hail To The Thief came out I think, wasn’t it?YeahYeah, so we toured for a year, then took about half a year off after that, away from the band. The actual process of making this record has been about… watch my maths now, but I think it’s been about two years. Two and a half years, actually. A year and a half of what was, with hindsight, preparation really, trying out different approaches to how we would record, just trying to find something that excited us in how we were going to present the material, how we were going to play the material. And then we went in with Nigel Godrich last September [2006]. It’s been quite a painstaking process making the record. Especially when, you know, you start the process and you hope it’ll be fast, but it just isn’t. And when it doesn’t happen spontaneously initially, you kind of know that you’re in for the long run, really, till you get to the point where those moments of spontaneity are there. Not that you construct spontaneity, but you put the right situation together for it to happen. I hope that comes through in the performances. It was a very painstaking process. But we completed it, which is fantastic.

The album sounds very carefully constructed, very complete as a whole. It sounds different to Hail To The Thief, was the process of writing the songs different in any way?

Well, there are similarities. Apart from Kid A, we’ve always started with a collection of songs, and us in a rehearsal studio. And at some point we will have played those songs live as well. So a very similar process from that point of view. We spent a lot more time in the studio this time, so hopefully we got to the point where we felt more comfortable with being there. The biggest difference really was the length of time it has taken. Hail To Thief was a relatively quick record to make, and this one has taken a lot longer. I think with any of our records, a part of what drives it along is a bit of a reaction to the record that’s gone before. With hindsight, I mean, there’s a lot of good things about Hail To The Thief, from our point of view, but there are also elements that we’ve come away thinking “wish we’d done that differently”, or spent a bit more time on that. So you act on those impulses on the next record you make.

You’ve put out an extra disc in the discbox version of In Rainbows. Was it difficult to decide which songs to put on the actual album proper, which to put on the bonus disc, and which to leave off altogether?

I think the difficulty came in realising that we’re not going to get everything onto the record. We kind of felt like we put everything on Hail To The Thief, and we didn’t want to do that again. So I think once we got to the point where we’d decided that we want to make a ten-track record, then you actually select the ten tracks that sit well together. So it kind of then decides itself. It was probably a good three or four days of trying out different tracklistings and different combinations of songs on there until we got to the point where it became sort of self-evident which songs sat well together. And oddly enough actually, the second CD sits well together as a collection of songs.So you’d consider the second CD to be a complete…Oh! You’ll have to wait a moment! My youngest son is just about to burst into the room… hold on… [sound of a small child] “Hi Dad!” [Phil, aside, amidst shuffling] Hi Patty! Hold on, I’ll just go somewhere else… Sorry about that.

I think we were pretty much done with that one. Everyone’s been talking about you giving away the album for free, or letting people choose what they want to pay, which in practice means giving it away in a lot of cases. What was the thinking behind doing that?

Well, one of the initial things was actually getting the music out there as quickly as possible. Generally, you get into this… you finish your album, you deliver it to your record company and three months later, after all the marketing processes, the record comes out, having run the risk of being leaked in the meantime. I think for us it was kind of almost leaking our own material, if you like, just at that point being in control of that process. Also, it was having that immediacy of getting the music out there very quickly. It was under a week between the final mastered version of the record getting to us and it going up as a download. That was something we’ve always wanted to, work a bit faster, especially when you’ve been working on a record for two and a half years. You’re just absolutely desperate to get it out there, really. So then you think, okay it’s going out as a download, how do we put it out there? Do we put a price on it? I think the important thing was to get the music around to as many people as were interested, but then at the same time there was scope in there for almost like an experiment, saying, well, what value do people place on the music? We could give people an opportunity to think about that. It seemed a very fair way, and a transparent way of putting the music out.

Certainly novel, as well. Do you feel that releasing the album as a download was equal to a CD release? Do you not think there would be some disappointment for people who weren’t able to go out on the morning and buy a physical copy of the new Radiohead album?

Um… sorry, I think I heard that, you’ll have to excuse me, the line was not quite there. But the whole thing behind it, with the release, it was like viewing as different formats. If you take it from the basis that we want the music to reach as many people as are interested, and if you put out something as a download only, you’re cutting out a lot of people who wouldn’t have access to that. But we’ve never wanted it to be exclusive, we’ve always wanted it to be a CD release at some point. So it is just different formats really. Hopefully there is something there for everyone who wants to listen to the music.

You’ve signed to XL to release the physical album…

Yes.

Thom put out The Eraser on XL, was it because of his experience with the label that you chose to do that, or was there any other reason?

They seem to have a very good understanding of where we are as a band at the moment. And yes, Thom had a very good experience putting out The Eraser with them. When you’re in a position where you’re out of contract, you can view as who is the most appropriate place to release the record, who is the most appropriate label to be with. And XL definitely “ticked all the boxes” on that one.

And how is your relationship with EMI now?

Um… well… we still have a huge amount of respect for all the people we worked with at EMI and Parlophone. There were a lot of people there from when we released the earlier albums, from around The Bends era, and we had a very good working relationship with them. We just felt that ultimately, it wasn’t the right place for us to release In Rainbows.

They’ve put together their own boxset, I believe…

Yes, they have, all of the previous…How does the band feel about that?Um… well, it’s our music, you know… I think we’d prefer to concentrate on the release which we feel most connection to, which is In Rainbows. Um, you know, they’re all our records and of course we stand by them, but we’ve kind of moved on from that point…

Are you afraid that they might try to put out an unauthorised “greatest hits” or something like that in the future? Or is that a possibility?

It’s well within their rights to do it. [sigh]. So we’ll have to see. But as I say, for us the main thing is that we’re excited about the process of releasing In Rainbows and what we’re doing, around the touring, around the way we’re able to release it, and most importantly around the music itself.

About the touring, tickets for your gig in Dublin went on sale this morning… it’s very expensive, it costs €70.70, and there’s been some discussion about how you can justify releasing your album in such a fair way, as you say, and then charge that much for a tour gig?

Right… and what’s been the general response on that, that you see?

There’s been arguments that you might be pricing out some fans, people who may have bought the diskbox, or students who may not be able to pay that much money to be able to go to a gig.Right.Do you have any reaction to that?

Well, whenever we’ve looked at ticket prices and set them, we’ve wanted to make them as fair as possible. So I would hope that we’ve pitched it right on this one, made it as fair as possible on the price. We’ve never really set out to max, as they say, our tour revenue. So I think we’ve always put out reasonably priced tickets. That’s as much as I can say really.

It’s just something that’s come up in the last few days in Dublin.

Yeah.

The use of Dead Air Space [the band’s blog on radiohead.com] during the making of the album, what was the reasoning behind that? Did they the band enjoy doing it? Do they think it was a good idea?

It was just to have that kind of immediacy in what we were doing, really. It was somewhere that if any of the band members wanted to air their feelings about the recording, or put pictures up, if anyone was interested in seeing it then yeah, there was a place there for that to happen. It’s been a good space for us to have. We were able to put our announcement about the download out through there, and that kind of thing. It’s like with the release of the download, it’s a much more direct way of reaching people who are interested in the music. That’s very much the feeling with Dead Air Space. It’s a very honest representation of us, really.

Was there the same sort of thinking behind the Radiohead.tv broadcasts?

That seemed like a lot of fun to do.It was! It was very random, but it was also fantastic for that as well. It was great. Especially after having taken such a long time in the whole recording process, to do something that didn’t have that weight of scrutiny on it, to be in the studio and have loads of different thing going on, happening quite quickly, yeah, it was great! It was fantastic fun, it was a good response to how we’d been working for two and a half years.

You did a couple of covers, The Headmaster Ritual [by The Smiths] and Ceremony [by New Order] I think, how did you decide which to do?

Yeah, our Manchester section really, wasn’t it? It’s funny because when we were at school, we never really played covers. It’s something that we’ve not done an awful lot of either, at any point. We’ve always kind of worked on original material. So to come back at this point and just go in and work on these songs which we’ve all really loved at some point and seeing if we can pull them off… we enjoyed doing those versions of them.

So if those were the songs you were listening to in your youth, are you keeping up with music now?

I hope so! [laughs]

Is there anything in particular that you’ve been listening to recently?

Personally I’ve been listening to Juana Molina, Will Oldham, Adem, Fourtet, those kind of Domino artists… Tunng, that kind of thing. Between the five of us, we’ve got a very broad musical spectrum.

So you’d all consider that you’re staying sort of hip?

Sorry?!

You all consider that you’re keeping up with what’s going on?

You’d get five different responses to that one, depending on who you speak to in the band. Where we are at the moment is just a great love of music, from wherever and whenever really.

With all the political causes Thom has been involved in, in the past couple of years, is there ever a feeling within the band that he’s becoming a bit of a Bono?

[laughs] Two very different characters though, aren’t they?

They are different, but do you never consider what he is doing naff?

No, because he does it from the heart. I don’t think it is naff at all. I think he speaks very effectively on the issues that are very close to his heart. You’re kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t with that one really. I think he uses the platform that he has effectively. He doesn’t, well in my opinion he doesn’t abuse it, he just uses it effectively.

But even in the general sense, it’s sometimes considered that a musician shouldn’t talk about politics. You don’t think that applies at all?

I think if you stop somebody talking about… well it’s the basics of principles here, you don’t want to impinge on anybodies’ free speech, do you? Different people are probably more effective at it, or less effective, but I think in Thom’s case he has a very strong interest, so he has a great grasp of what’s he’s talking about.

Reviewing Spanish Prisoners’ debut “Songs to Forget” for the forthcoming issue of Analogue struck a chord as an exciting new prospect in the chockablock American “bedroom” music scene. The mastermind behind the record, Leonid Maymind, talked to us about poetry, progress and makeshift percussion.

What’s the reaction to “Songs To Forget” been like so far? It seems to act more as an introduction to your music than a self-contained album. Is this what you were going for?

Seems like the reaction has been small in scope, yet the people that it does reach seem to really enjoy it. I don’t think it’s very widespread at all really.

Is there a lot of effort still involved in trying to organize shows and get booked, or have venues start coming to you?

Half and half, I’d say. It also depends on what kind of shows you are trying to book. There are a million venues in New York city, so there never is a shortage of places. Then again, there are a million and one bands. I enjoy the competition, to a certain extent.

There’s not really one defining sound or genre on the album, what do you think binds your songs together? What makes them “Spanish Prisoners” songs?

This is true, the album is very diverse sound-wise, which is definitely something I was aiming to achieve. I enjoy having a variety of instruments and textures. I think what binds the songs together is my voice, both physical and lyrical. And I hope that the general feel and recording quality of the songs is pretty consistent as well.

You’ve lived in New Orleans and Latvia amongst other places, how have these different cultures affected your music? Of all the locations you’ve lived which do you think has been the most formative to your sound?

I think living in a variety of places has affected me as a person, and that in turn has affected me as a musician. I don’t know that the specific locations that I’ve lived have had a direct influence on the music- there aren’t any zydeco songs (yet)! I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more in tune with the music that is happening around me.

In your songs you often jump unexpectedly in a new direction. Is this contrived, do you feel you have to keep the listener on their toes, or are you more concerned with challenging yourself not to keep to conventions?

It is completely contrived! No, I’m kidding. I don’t really feel that the songs are made with the listener in mind, mostly because I have no idea what the listener wants to hear or who the listener is. Different people might want to hear different things and I think you would go crazy if you tried to do something to please or displease a generic “listener.” I simply feel like I’m chasing the song, trying to figure out where it wants to go, and then following that path the best I can. It’s also due to the fact that I have a short attention span and I do enjoy challenging conventions.

Would you view your music as “experimental”? Do you always try to maintain a level of accessibility for listeners?

I would view it as experimental pop music, sure. I think it’s pop music in the simplest sense, just with a whole lot of other ‘musics’ mixed in.

Is the lo-fi sound out of choice, or necessity?

Both. I recorded most of this album by myself at home using really simple tools, because that was all that I had, that was all I knew how to use, and I was content with using them. I also think that songs should create a place and using shiny production destroys that. There are a lot of random sounds in the album that may appear to listeners over time, and I think music should be like that- layered and nuanced, just like humans.

The poet James Wright is an inspiration on you… What affects you about his poetry? What elements of his work do you incorporate into your own?

I think he has a way with words that often disregards their standard meanings, a sense of playfulness, and that is something that is inspiring to me. Admittedly, I’ve only read a small chunk of his poetry. I’m also very into Neruda, Billy Collins, David Berman, many others.

There’s an arsenal of different instruments on the record, are they all yours? Did you play them all yourself in recording? What’s the pride of your instrument collection?

“Song for the weary” was recorded live in someone’s living room, so the only thing I played on that was the banjo. Mantequilla also had some help from Eric Metronome and Erik Kang, who is now in Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. Most of the drum parts were played by friends. Other than that, most of the rest of the instruments were done by me. The power of overdubbing!

Was calling the album “Songs To Forget” self-effacing, or were you playing a game of reverse psychology?

Definitely self-deprecation, but also trying to dispel the notion of hyperbole for new bands. Take that as you well. It’s also a sly Leonard Cohen reference, most of his albums were ’songs…”

Is the name “Spanish Prisoners” a reference to the film? What are its origins?

Yes, the Mamet film, a great one, in my opinion. I also just like the cadence of the sounds.

Are the days of using a cardboard box for percussion over? Do you think it’s important to keep a ramshackle element to music?

You never know, the cardboard box might re-appear someday!

Check out Spanish Prisoner’s MySpace for some songs to remember (ahem.)

Some bands are absolute gifts to bloggers and music writers abound. Rather than forcing terribly unoriginal writers to devise headlines like “A GRAND Auld Time” to sit pretty on top of their features they provide us with hyperbolic ammo in interviews such as “We’re Like Juninho Playing For Middlesborough Football Club” and are confident and assured enough in their own opinions that we don’t have to invent some for them. Even more of a boon is when they admit Pavement influences so we don’t have to force those on them either. Thank God for Grand Pocket Orchestra.

Singer and guitarist Paddy’s proclamation comparing his band to Brazilian midfielder Juninho isn’t quite as strange as it seems. Middlesborough represent the Irish music scene: steady, mediocre, filled to the brim with bog-standard players that will never attract attention overseas. Grand Pocket Orchestra, with a select few others (Bryan Robson and Fabrizio Ravanelli, at least) are the few exotic delights the banal roster offers to excite fans tired of seeing the same old dogged generic performances week in, week out. They feel most bands in Ireland are constantly five years behind, and take themselves far too seriously- an allegation GPO can never have held against them.

There is something wholly unique and un-Irish about the Dublin four-piece. They attribute this to their “camp energy”, manifested in their ADHD performances. Paddy explains that it’s difficult enough for him to sit still without fidgeting, nevermind control himself onstage. Keyboardist and xylophonist Bronwyn’s trademark nurse’s uniform and table of toys is another contributor, and drummer Peter’s seemingly neverending grins seal the deal. Their self-description says it all: “We are the lovechild of Pavement and Liza Minelli”, a mixture of an Oooh-Look-At-Us attitude and genuine introverted artistry, all pulled off with the aplomb of a band who’ve been playing gigs and reeling off interviews for as long as Liza’s been troubling the divorce courts.

Paddy, Bronwyn and Peter (Luckily guitarist/bassist Chester wasn’t around- the scarf isn’t nearly long enough)

Yet their lifespan has been a short, though eventful one. Formed in June of last year (when they kidnapped Peter and exiled themselves to Cork) they emerged with a definite identity, and a handful of songs. While a major release has still not seen the light of day, the band have managed to play to two capacity audiences thanks to support slots with Fight Like Apes and Les Savy Fav. From the latter the band took the lesson that it’s acceptable to be a bit mental onstage, as they’ll never be quite as off the rails as Tim Harrington. They recorded several songs that made their way on to a limited release and, more importantly, their Myspace, which has seen a massive amount of traffic for a fledgling band already. A little done, and a lot more to do then.

2008 looks likely to be even more hectic than their stage set-up. A reel of gigs has already been organized (including a return to Whelans, and their first overseas trip to England and Germany). They endeavour to have put out a second video and full scale EP too. If they hit success they plan not to replace the toys with acutal tangible instruments, but to buy bigger and shinier playthings. It appears though that Grand Pocket Orchestra’s ambitions are less temporal than this though. There’s is a quest to stand out from the Luke Youngs of the world and inject energy, colour and the “f” word (mentioning the word “fun” around Director, I imagine, is like cursing the baby Jesus in a nunnery) back in to the greying body of the Irish music scene.

www.myspace.com/grandpocketorchestra

“Odd Socks” - Grand Pocket Orchestra Official Music Video from Michael Healey on Vimeo.

Pete Silberman’s story is a familiar one- A prodigious American singer-songwriter releasing under a plural noun pseudonym capitivating the hearts of bloggers from New York to, well, the Irish Times’ finest with wistful songs and lush instrumentation. Yet, like the best stories, it’s one with replay value and a promising plotline. Currently on his 5th album “In The Attic Of The Universe”, the 21 year old New Yorker is steadily building up reputation and a brilliant back catalogue. He may well have that Basset Hound soon:

Why “The Antlers”?

I’ve gone by a few names throughout my time writing and recording
solo. By the time I moved to New York (about two years ago), I was
using a variation of my real name, but feeling less and less like
being a singer-songwriter. I decided a little over a year ago to make
what I was doing less of a solo affair. The name The Antlers was
taken from a Microphones song called “Antlers”. I think I also
probably got the plural noun idea from The Microphones, as “the band”
was mostly Phil Elverum, but with a rotating cast of people involved
in the recording and performing. You can’t really tell who you’re
listening to, where sounds are coming from, and it all becomes one
thing. So far it’s just been me on the recordings, but that’ll change
with the next record.

What’s your mission statement for the band? What do you want to achieve?

That’s hard to say. At this point, I’m loving recording and hearing
those sounds come to life through the band. I’d love to do some
serious touring soon. I guess I’d say my goal is to be able to do
this for a living. I haven’t loved doing anything in my life nearly
as much as this. I’ve also wanted a Basset Hound for awhile, so if I
someday find myself with one as a result of making music, that’d be
great.

“Uprooted” was a very folksy affair, what prompted the more widescreen
feeling of “In The Attic Of The Universe?”

Uprooted was recorded right before and right after I moved to
Manhattan, and I think my goal was to record something I could
replicate by playing solo shows, as I didn’t have a band at the time.
Universe came practically out of nowhere last September, but I think
in recording it I tried to make an album that I would like. I’ve
recorded music that I’ve been attached to but don’t enjoy listening
to. For Universe, I tried to imagine an album that I would enjoy if
it came from someone else. I ignored the practicalities of an album I
couldn’t perform by myself, and that eventually forced me to get a
band together. Aside from that, Universe was made to sound huge
inside something small, or small inside something huge, depending on
how you look at it.

You’re already writing your next album, “Hospice”. Are you concerned with maintaining a steady output of music, rather than promoting the stuff you’ve already made?

Well it’s easy to release something and then move on to the next thing
you want to write, or the next point you want to make. I’ve always
had this problem, and it’s something I can’t really turn off. Even as
I work on Hospice now I’m putting together ideas for the album that
follows it. I have a terrible short term memory, so if I don’t record
things as they come into my head they go the way of laserdiscs. It
seems funny to me that I’m still promoting Universe, but the fact that
that album doesn’t let me leave it alone is encouraging.

How did you hook up with the other members of the band? Some of them
are artists in their own right, does this lead to a conflict in
interest?

I actually found three of them through Craigslist around the time I
first put out Universe. I met the newest member Darby (trumpet,
banjo) through Justin (bass, vocals). I’ve actually found that it
helps that everybody has their own musical projects or is involved
with other groups. There’s no competition to be writing songs in the
group, and everybody has an available cast of players for recording.
I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to songwriting, but it
works because everyone can be a control freak for their own projects
without getting in each other’s way.

What’s the reception been like in New York to the Antlers so far? Is
it a positive environment for new bands?

Reception’s been…slow. I probably played twenty shows to empty
rooms in the first year I moved here, but they’re getting much better
now. The blogs here have been really helpful by booking me/us for a
bunch of shows around town. But I think New York is an insanely hard
place for new bands. There’s so many of them, and some of those blow
up the second they start playing shows, but most don’t. Pay
attention, work hard, be patient.

Do you have a dayjob? How much time do you devote to the Antlers?

I’m finishing up my undergrad here in New York, though studying
something largely unrelated to music which I hope to never use. I
spend as much time as possible on the Antlers, and tend to put it as a
priority before anything else, which is good for Antlers and not so
good for school.

What informs your lyrics, what influences your songwriting?

It depends on the album. Uprooted came out of leaving a life I’d
started in upstate New York to chase music here. It began as a sort
of hackneyed idea that evolved into something else once I arrived
because I stopped feeling that magic for an unreachable place.
Universe feels as though it happened independent of me. I remember at
the time feeling completely fascinated by space and dwarfed by its
size, reading and thinking about it all the time, but I can’t say
where that music or those lyrics came from. I guess that’s the thing
about songwriting for me - Once it’s done it’s sort of out of my
system. That helps if I’m trying to get over something But with
Universe, it makes it harder to understand in retrospect. Hospice is
my “relationship/breakup album”, and I know exactly where it came
from, but I might not after it’s done.

You’ve covered My Bloody Valentine, are you excited by their reunion?
Are MBV a strong influence on your music?

All these reunions make me nervous. I’m not sure any of them have
been good yet…but maybe MBV will break the curse. I honestly became
a big MBV fan pretty recently, at about the time I recorded that
cover. It’s the kind of music that can easily become all you listen
to if you’re not careful…which happened to me this past summer.
Since then, it’s definitely been influential on the album I’m working
on now. Hospice has alot of guitar that doesn’t sound like guitar,
but like Universe, it’s narrative, whereas MBV’s lyrics and vocals are
usually pushed to the back.

The band is signed now by Fall Records, what made you choose this label?

Around the time I first released Universe, my friend turned me on to
Page France’s Hello, Dear Wind, which I obsessively listened to for
awhile. After some research, I found out that it was originally
released by Fall, and decided to send them the album for the hell of
it, maybe because they seemed so approachable.

Would touring outside of America interest you?

I’d love to play Ireland, actually. I visited when I was about 12 and
thought it was beautiful and have been wanting to come back ever
since. Lately Iceland’s been appealing, France too…At this point
I’m really open to playing anywhere and everywhere. If the
opportunity appeared to tour Europe, I think I’d kick myself if I
didn’t take it.

In The Attic Of The Universe available for streaming, and a copious selection of free downloads available, from www.antlersmusic.com. Buy a few records and we might get him over to Whelans.

The notorious, euphoria-inducing Belgian band Soulwax continued to do what they do best and destroyed an Ambassador full of people’s inhibitions with their pounding remixes from their new release, Most of the Remixes.
Re-workings of LCD Soundsystem, Robbie Williams and Felix da Housecat ignited an already charged crowd into strobe-esque movements while we pogo-ed in unison. Wincing as sweat-filmed skin peeled on and off my own, arbitrary elbows from some blur in the crowd jabbed the air and stilettos haphazardly syringed my feet, I took a moment to look fondly back on more hygienic times when only a little while earlier I had been sitting comfortably upstairs in Soulwax’s changing room. Greeted by the Dewaele brothers, core members of the band, they wasted no time in making us feel welcome, offering plenty of champagne, beer and other various food and drink littering the room. Displaying equal benevolence with their time, I got a chance to ask them a few questions…

You’ve just released your new album – Soulwax, most of the remixes… and it has loads of different stuff on it from Kylie, LCD Soundsystem. Did you find it hard to get copyright clearance from anyone?

David: Eh no, the reason we did the album with EMI, is because they own the rights for most of the artists.
Stephen: Yea it was really convenient ‘cause most of the people used to be on Virgin or like Parlophone.
D: It was really easy.
S: They were like-‘hey yeah, we got 15 other tracks you guys can remix.’

So there wasn’t anyone who you remixed who you couldn’t put on this CD?

D: No I mean they had a few, people who wouldn’t pick up the phone, that kinda stuff and the next week they did, it wasn’t kinda, nothing…
S: No big stories
D: Kinda boring
S: All boring stuff

(Voice in the backround: Make it sound exiting!)

D: Oh yea, well ok, the Klaxons they were real assholes.
S: Those guys especially, and LCD were rude, they were just rude.
(Same voice in backround: LCD Shitsystem, that’s what.)
S: Ooh quote/unquote…And Justice they were being French to us, you know like, ooh I don’t like your remix, Daft Punk they don’t even acknowledge the fact that we exist.

I hope you do the same to them.

S: Yea I ignore them, I’m like Robot? No you’re not! No actually it was all really easy, there’s a couple that we didn’t put on there, very few, but there’s one from a Mexican Band called Moderato which we did a couple of years ago which we really liked. But there’s only… we didn’t have enough… there wasn’t physically enough time on one c.d. to put it on and it was also a really fast tempo so we didn’t put it on there. That would have been one that we would have really loved to put on there, but which we skipped but maybe now, some kid will put it on a blog and it’s out there…

So you’re not going to be playing it tonight, it’s not going to be included?

S: The Mexican song? It’s really hard ‘cause we don’t understand what he’s saying, we actually did a remix and we completely did the remix without knowing what he’s saying but they love it. So I guess we kinda made some sense, cause we cut up his vocals a little bit but there’s no way I could sing that cause I don’t even understand what he’s saying, so we’re not playing that one, maybe we should if we go to South America, it’s a really good idea…
D: I hate to be the theoretical analyst but Mexico is really Central America not South America.
S: Yea you’re right.

Have any of the artists you remixed responded to your mixes?

D: Well I guess 75%, or maybe 72% of the people that are on the album are friends of ours…(thinks) maybe 68%.
S: How bout 23?
D: And you know we know them personally so, either they were…either they didn’t tell us honestly what they thought of it and they just lied, but most of them said they liked it.

Do you feel more pressure to do a good remix because you know them?

D: Yea it’s tough, it’s tougher for… there’s a few that we don’t know but we love, like Daft Punk and when we got to get asked to do DJ Shadow we were like ‘oooh Shadow!’ and it’s tough. It’s tough because there’s other people like say Robbie, who we like but we didn’t really care about the track, it’s easier to remix a track that you don’t really like.

Cause you feel like you can improve it?

S: Or fuck it up.

Or have a different take on it?

S: Yea yea, yea, but Shadow was hard cause, like we said yes, but we listened to the track and we were like ‘ahhh, this is like really slow, folky’ and I mean it’s nice when it’s someone you really respect but it’s easier when it’s someone who you can be like ‘ok let’s see what we can do with, like Robbie Williams or the Sugababes or something like that.’

Robbie Williams, Sugababes, they’re kinda like mainstream, do you find that people dismiss mainstream artists today, how do you feel about it?
D: Yea we do the same, yea booo, no I mean, why would you say today, yea we like mainstream. I mean we could get into a longer discussion about the mainstream but it used to be good, it used to be really good.
S: When was that?
D: I think, anytime between 1955 and …

S: Long pause, long pause.
D: No I’m trying to think….89?
S: 89? So 91 the mainstream sucked.
D: No I’m just saying as a general, obviously there were good things in the 90’s that were hits
S: Like Spaceman by Babylon Zoo, would that be great or would that be seen as…
Midnight Mike (to David) : What identifies the thing that made this great shift?
D: Money
S: Yea but that was always one of the biggest factors.
MM: Yea but more money being made
D: Yea so more shit being made

Do you think artists feel obligated to make the same kind of records because they are under pressure from their labels not to deviate from that?

D: It’s not necessarily the labels, its just the whole… everyone’s scared, everyone’s just scared and I think that when the music industry was really booming say, 70’s, I think that there was just like this spirit of yea lets just make a crazy record and we’ll sell millions. People were more open-minded then they are now. It’s a shame and you know it’s getting worse and worse ‘cause 5 years ago there were still things in the mainstream that I think were great quality but to give a good example someone like Bowie today, he wouldn’t get signed by any record company because he’s too much of a risk. Even if it’s good, it’s potentially good, it’s too much of a risk and people don’t take risks anymore.
S: (to Midnight Mike as he leaves to perform) Watch out for the mainstream!
MM: It’ll take me away like a river

How do you approach remixing, how would you go about choosing the songs?

S: Every remix has a different story and I think the ones that are the coolest are the ones where we decided to choose the song ‘cause we liked the song and we played it, like the Gossip song. They asked us to do a remix and we never actually had time and when ‘Standing in the way of Control’ came out we played it as DJ’s but we found it was not fast enough and we wanted to make it sound bigger and we actually asked them can we remix it and that’s a good way of doing it cause it’s the reverse way but we knew what we wanted to do. It was clear from the beginning that was the thing that needed to be done. I think the Justice one is the same in the way that it went but then they’re all different, each one has a different story, they’re all like… its not like we… cause the Shadow one, like Dave says, and the Daft Punk one, you’re kinda intimidated but that’s it, but at the same time I respect as much James Murphy from LCD. I rate him as high as I rate Shadow and all these people but I know him so that makes it even harder for us, but I think we’ve learned to deliver what people want. In the beginning we used to do, say the Kylie one, we used to be a little more like stubborn and do rock versions but now I mean people just want to dance, want to go crazy, want to put fluorescent glasses on.

So you got Soulwax and 2 Many DJ’s, do you feel like your background with performing with instruments in Soulwax has helped you in djing and making the remixes?

S: Yea definitely, I think the fact that we are all good at playing our stuff, we play instruments, we play live, like say tonight we play the remixes live which is pretty hard. Steve has to change his drum sounds every song, I have to manipulate the vocals to sometimes sing the vocals, like in the Gossip and like Kylie I can’t do it so we found this thing where we can fuck them up live on stage but it’s hard work. But I think the fact that, it’s a little bit the same with LCD, we’re all rock kids or punk kids and we’re all used to playing in bands and we all know what its like to be on a bus and play in toilets so all of this is a holiday, it’s a fucking picnic, its amazing, its really amazing and I do think we challenge ourselves to be more, I wouldn’t say emergent but I think we have the same attitude as rock bands but we play it with synths, so we kinda change the guitars for synths although today we will use some guitars.

With 2 many djs and with your remixing, would that ever influence what you are doing with Soulwax?

D: Well to be quite specific about it, all the remixes were made as Soulwax, but they were made with the intention of playing them as 2 many DJ’s so not many 2 many DJ’s would influence Soulwax.

So they’re not completely separate?

S: We don’t separate them, we have to put lines, we have to do it sometimes cause otherwise we are like ‘aahh’ but it actually is the same thing for us, we DJ, we play in the band, we remix, and for us it’s just another discipline.

As regards influences, you mention explicitly Ghent in the very long title of your album, it must be an influence on you, or is it?

D: The city? It’s just where were from, I don’t know, I mean obviously wherever you live is a massive influence on whatever but I don’t know if it’s tangible.

Do you think though if you grew up somewhere else, like has it got an especially good music scene or…

D: Well first of all its apathetic, there’s no way you can know, but yea we do think that we’re kinda like a product of partially of where we live but I don’t know, I don’t know if we would have grown up in Poland it would have been different.

S: There’s like 250,000 people, it’s actually a small town but there are a lot of students and there’s a lot happening, like it was the first place to have a techno label called RNS and I always think that a lot of people from the north of France and Holland always came to Ghent. It’s in between cultures, it’s always been an interesting place, but it’s also never, it’s also small, tiny which is the reason why, I think a lot of people haven’t heard about it and maybe we kinda fucked it up. But it’s such a small town, the more people from outside come in, the more people from there start thinking oh we’re Paris and they’re like, you’re not. You can drive your bicycle from one end to the other and it’s done.

What other influences would have affected you? Your dad being a dj?

D: No
S: I don’t think his DJing was an influence, I think the fact that all his records were in the house and we stole all of them, that was the biggest influence but it also meant that Dave and me used to go to gigs and concerts when we were young and we would be… it was a different upbringing to a lot of other kids. I do think we had access to all these things but then some other kids whose dads we know who were also DJ’s ended up being dentists.

You said that heavy rock bands would have influenced Soulwax, but what would have influenced you as 2 many DJ’s, dance-wise?

S: I don’t know. I do think as 2 Many DJs we were influenced by a lot of rock stuff, I don’t think there’s one particular dance band or people or DJ that really influenced us but I think it was a lot of things, but it wasn’t only dance music so… and I do think as for Soulwax, I do think that we were influenced by Kyuss and Monster Magnet and all these bands. I do think that’s always been our core, as rock bands we like rock music. I like 15% of dance music but there’s 85% of bullshit. But I love…and it’s something that really gets me going, I say the first Daft Punk record was really a big influence on us cause I think it showed you that you could make electronic music but have the same attitude as a punk record or like a metal record or something.

Is DJing just something that you fell into?

S: The 2 many DJ’s thing is just something that just happened but I mean we always DJ-ed before like when we had the band, and I started DJing with Steve and then he left for a girl to New York, it’s always a girl, and then I asked Dave to DJ with me and we became 2 Many DJs and it’s all because we were bored. Playing with the band we’d spend so much time doing nothing and we’d be like cool let’s do…and we’d always be done at like 9 o’ clock because we’d be doing support for some band, let’s say for Muse or something like that, which was fun but you’d be there and be like cool what will we do now and you would always end up in a bar, at a club and be like hey, cool let’s ask if we can DJ and that’s how it all started.
It’s really…there was no plan like hey let’s do this, and I think we started playing a lot of stuff that people were either pissed off about or like really happy about. People were like ‘you can’t play the Stooges you have to play house music’, and then other people would be like ‘yea you played the Stooges’ and we’d be like ‘okay cool’.

Do you have any favourite remixes that you have done, or maybe a fairer question would be to ask if there are any remixes that you are especially proud of?

S: No it always differs for us, but I think I really like the last one we did for LCD Soundsystem ‘Get innocuous’. I really like that one, but that’s not even on the album so therefore and I always think that it’s going to be the last thing that we’ve done because it’s newest. But it’s fun like tonight to play live, it actually shows that we put a lot of work in there. Yea they’re more then sometimes remixes, we have to re-write the whole song sometimes.

So you’re proud of this?

S: I’m proud of this, I’m proud of night versions, of 2 Many DJs, of Soulwax, of stuff that we’ve done as production. I mean for me, I know it’s all different for people but it’s the same for me, everything is the same for me, it’s all music and me having fun with it.

Is there anything in particular that you play that everyone goes crazy for?

S: When we DJ or when we play with the band? Cause they’re very similar.

Both.

S: I think when we play with the band and we play the Justice remix they go crazy. They go really nuts.

So do you enjoy it because of that?

S: No actually no, its extra, its extra when you do something that you really like and people are like wow, you can tell some tracks really…but its good because you start understanding how crowds react to things, to dance music. A build up, a breakdown, it’s a bit like the Pixies. You have the verse which is like the bass line, the drums, the vocals and then when the chorus comes in it like kicks in. Its like build, un-build, there’s a structure to music, music has a definition and I think the more we play it the more we understand how it works. (laughs) We unlearn it then.

Would you tend to follow these structures or do you try and experiment with different ideas?

S: You mean in the studio? No I think we try and fuck it up but I mean there’s always going to be a build up, a breakdown, something, but say in the Robbie one, we stretch it out, and people are going ‘ahh give us something’. I think we’re really really really…I mean someone told me that when you’re on E or something and you come to see us DJ or something, like it really freaks you out because we play with it the whole time and apparently when you’re on drugs its not good. I don’t do that many drugs so I don’t know, I’ve never done drugs in my whole self, but Steve once I think, was on a lot of drugs and he was like ‘you guys are freaking me out’.

Your tickets should have a warning on them…

S: Yea it’d be a good warning though, (puts on a cheerful voice) ‘Don’t go when you’re on drugs’

What have you planned for Soulwax or 2 Many DJs or do you have another project on top of that?

S: I think we’re going to start making a new 2 Many DJs record and new Soulwax record soon, we’re going to produce Tiga’s record, we’re releasing a new movie that we’ve done that Sam’s been filming the last 2 years and actually there’s footage of Electric Picnic, there’s a lot of good stuff on it, it’s good.

And when is that coming out?

S: I think it’s going to be February.

And is it going to be a DVD release?

S: I think it will be DVD but we’re going to try and film copies so we can play at venues and show it.

That will be good.

S: I know, I think it will too.

It’s an hour before O’Death tear a blistering live set out of Whelan’s impressive new soundsystem and three of the guys from the band are holding court on everything from murderous cats, beards, blogging, grunge and Yeats. It would seem banter comes as naturally to these lads as one of their dirty jugband banjo riffs. Guitarist and ukele thumper Gabe is doing a comic piece of interpretive physical theatre that casts the influential music website pitchforkmedia as a giant robo-monster (replete with terrifying robotic voice) zapping bands with its judgemental death-rays. “BZZZZZ BRRURRRR. You get an 8.2! You get a 6.5. RARRRRR, YOU GET ZERO. Pitchfork has spoken!” But first, the music.

O’Death are a New York based band that trade in a wild ‘n’ rootsy American style of music that sounds like Tom Waits and a bunch of pissed-up skeletons at an Appalachian barn dance. When asked to describe their music, fiddle player Bob tells me: “Dirt. Our common influence is dirty sounding music, we want to sound dirty. I think you can hear that we are influenced by that kind of stuff, punk rock whether it’s the misfits or something, or old tradtional American music, like old roots, gospel or the blues. Old dirty recordings, old dirty performances of that.” Lead singer Greg agrees, “we like dirt.” They also told me later that they like the Alice in Chains record Dirt. Thankfully, in spite of this dirt-talk they all looked rather clean (if bearded) and there was even a mild smell of deodorant in the room.

Greg tells me “Death is inevitable. Death is gonna happen. We’ve always sort of embraced death in our music. Y’know dark matter as it were.” Gabe adds “right, like the New Orleans funeral march or the Irish wake. Its sort of like, yeah when granpa died we all partied down. That sort of thing.” You can see what they are talking about in the barmy but brill video for their single ‘down to rest’ which is literally crawling with stop motion ghoulies and skeletons. According to Greg, “Oh Death is an old poem by Yeats I think. [Its] also an old folk song, something that’s been around for a long time.” Bob adds “its also a little Biblical, its in the Bible I think. Its everywhere”
Continuing to talk about their sound the guys tell me about how vital the live aspect of their art is to them. “It’s the most raw and immediate thing” says Greg. Bob elaborates “when you record a group you tend to lose certain energy. Listening to the record, you can’t pick up or see what people are doing. Its gets lost. You get so used to recording effects, thinking that stuff is overdubbed.” Greg then explains the live feel of their records “We try to stay as close and true to our live performance on our records for the most part, and there might be just the odd bit, the odd few minutes where it just doesn’t carry over or we want to add a little something else. This is important because our live show is just really where people are affected by it, and we have the most fun there.” Later on at the gig proper, this makes sense. At the end of the set, the band are giving it socks in the midst of the audience and everyone is swept right up in the experience. Greg’s voice is a versatile thing, manufacturing guttural and raspy vocal lowdown tumbles one minute, high and yelpy somersaults the next. It’s a Tom Waits versus David Byrne vibe. Bob tells me about Greg’s singing, “you’ll hear a lot of traditional sort of vocal stylings in Greg’s voice. And he uses his real voice, other than his vocal inflections there are no other effects.”

In keeping with the zeitgeist, and considering that Analogue magazine has a large online component, I ask the band about blogs. “It gives a lot of exposure to new bands. It hypes up new bands”. Gabe explains. Though, Greg sees a bit of a downside to this “they might not be ready for it. Bands get hyped now before they even bring out their first recording. With all that pressure, there is a danger it might not be good for them. They might just peter out under the pressure.” He mentions fledgling US band Black Kids, who are swamped in hype despite having barely played a gig outside of Florida and only releasing a few demos. However, the guys generally agree that blogs have been good to O’Death. “I’ve read blogs where some dude has posted a much more accurate description of what we’re about than one of these internet journalists.” It was this comment that prompted Gabe’s impromptu pitchfork spoof.

Before winding up I ask the band two last things. First off, with me being a proponent of the virtues of facial hair (on men) I couldn’t help noticing that O’Death do a good line in beards. Do they have any beard care tips for Analogue readers with beards of their own? Greg (whose hardcore beard looks like impenetrable curls of black barbed wire) tells me he shampoos his. So does Gabe. I’m flabbergasted. I never thought of a beard as something that might need shampooing, and being told this by a band who are describing themselves as dirty? Yikes. But Greg has a good excuse, his wrought iron follicles need softening. “My beard shaves razors,” he tells me. Finally, I ask what to expect from tonight’s show. Gabe says “Its gonna be about ten minutes long. We’re all gonna be naked and I’m gonna sing lying down.” Greg chips in “Yeah and I bring face paint and paint everybody in the audience’s faces.” Well, there was no face-paint, but three of the band did take their their tops off, and everyone who was there with me agreed that it was a proper hoe-down. Just before I switch off the recorder and wish them luck, Greg sums the O’Death experience up nicely: “actually how about a bunch of hairy sweaty guys who really care about the music they play.”

Broken Social Scene have been keeping a secret from the world. Since You Forgot It In People established the band as indie pop champions in 2002 they have appeared a decentralized band, a band with no real leader, no chief songwriter, nobody in the driving seat. Sure, that guy with the shaggy beard was always at the front singing, smiling, and spontaneously hugging audience members. However, the recent release of Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew- Spirit If has destroyed a myth; Kevin Drew has been the beating heart and driving force of the collective from the start.

This is your third time in Ireland , do you feel you get a good reception over here?

I think so… Stars were here, Feist was here, we all help each other out in getting press and whatever.

You once said “We want to affect audience’s hearts and minds with honesty”. Do you draw a line on what’s too personal in your lyrics?

I don’t. I never really have. I never really wanted to take any personae to protect myself from myself on stage. I really wanted to get the people who could relate and take it to their own lives. I never wanted to tell personal stories, it wasn’t really a goal of mine, but I also didn’t want to hide anything from anyone who was giving me the time of day. And I never really have.

So you find it pretty cathartic writing songs?

Yeah I don’t really “write”, I just speak my mind, and I did that especially with this album. I didn’t write any lyrics, except for a couple, just made it up as we went along, and then we ended up keeping them.

How did the idea of the Presents series come about?

It kinda came at the end. Bernard (Canning, co-founder of Broken Social Scene) was making his own record, and I made this record with Ohad and Charlie (Benchetrit and Spearin, also of Do Make Say Think). We were wondering what to do because I made it as a solo record, and over the space of a couple of years everybody came in eventually. Once you have certain people come in, well, you’re like “I have to get everybody in”. These are my friends, and these are the people I make music with. And then once we chose the selection of what was going to be on the record we saw that some of these were band-written songs, songs that Ohad and Charlie had written, like Big Love which I just sang on top off. I started to see that it wasn’t so much my solo record anymore, but my stream of consciousness solo record. So we thought we’d start this Presents series 1. because Bernard had made his record, and 2. we didn’t want to veer off all the work we had done already with Bren, and our friends and this family we’d built up with Social Scene. And also because we have so much fucking music that we never know what the fuck to do with! So if we had another system to put things out, everything was great then.

What I think you’ll see more is more soundtrack work, or maybe we pull together a whole bunch of B-sides from everybody’s records and (re-do those with a Broken Social Scene line-up). And also, maybe we find some old guy who no-one ever heard of and he had these 16-track recordings of him and a banjo and I don’t know… Just somehow take it to the next level. It’s right there above you! (He points to a Buena Vista Social Club poster). That’s it! That’s it, man!

Spiral Stairs and J Mascis (Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. members) are on the new record. Do you think they’ll contribute again?

Yeah! I love both those guys now. I became friends with those two guys over the last few years.

How did that come about?

Both relationships were good men coming together, boyfriend-boyfriend. Scott (Spiral Stairs) was sweet, because I heard he was playing some of the You Forgot It In People record. I got that phone call, you know, the “DUDE! THE GUY FROM FUCKIN’ PAVEMENT’S PLAYING YOUR SONGS!” one. Then he asked to open for us in Atlanta, because he was on tour with Preston School Of Industry. So we met the Preston guys, they were all sweet, sweet guys, and then I stayed in touch with him, and then we stayed in touch more and we hung out in Australia when I was over. And we pretty much stayed in touch since. J Mascis was the same- We played with him, we met him, we stayed in touch and we did some shows together.
They say don’t meet your heroes, but you know what if they’re fun and sweet…

Get them in your band!

Yeah! Exactly!

And do you think the roster’s going to keep expanding?

I think it’s going to expand, increase, implode. I don’t know. All I know is I’m in it for life, and I’m excited to see what happens.

Who would be your dream guest to get in then?

There’s a lot of people I’d have liked to play with on this record, but I didn’t know them, and I didn’t want to reach out and ask them to play on it, in terms of I wanted to make this a really personal record, and wanted to know everybody who was doing it. There was only one person I didn’t know, and that was Tom Cochrane, but at the same time I knew he was the right choice. I grew up listening to his music as a kid, he’s a Canadian rock icon. I wanted to bring him in because nobody would’ve been expecting me to, and I wanted to throw in a bit of juxtaposition.

When do you think the next record will be released? There was a big gap between Spirit If and Broken Social Scene.

It’s pretty quick, it’s Brendan’s and it’ll be out in Spring. Then I think we’ll have the soundtrack work. We have shit we haven’t listened to in two years, on a hard drive somewhere. But also, we don’t take things so seriously, we might just release digital and vinyl releases from now on.

During the gig later that night, it’s obvious that some of the legend status of his album’s guests have been rubbing off on him. Commanding the stage, the band, and the crowd, he echoes Bruce Springsteen spearheading an E Street onslaught. The band even manage to come out the right side of a tongue-in-cheek U2 cover. It’s a testament to Drew’s charm and charisma that the 1000-plus die-hard indie heads comprising the crowd all sing along with him. Broken Social Scene’s big secret is out.

They may have been nominated for the Mercury Music Award (for ‘Fantastic Playroom’), but New Young Pony Club’s musical preferences remain firmly rooted in the past. Andy Spence, N.Y.P.C.’s guitarist, notes with pride that ‘I picked up a 7 inch version of Human League’s ‘Love Action’ yesterday- that was pretty cool.’, while going on to muse that ‘I like the 7-inch thing; it reminds us of the 80s, which is a period that we love musically.’ Indeed, the band’s fascination with tacky, sweaty, sexy pop music is illuminated by the song they choose to sing at Karaoke- ‘The last time we played in Dublin, we headed out for Karaoke afterwards and did a killer version of ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ by Bon Jovi. We got the entire room singing it!’

While New Young Pony Club embrace their Nu-Rave moniker more heartily than other similar bands do, they are by no means musically exclusive. They describe themselves as‘fresh, fun, exciting, flirty, edgy, punky and poppy’, and while ‘shameless’ may not be the right adjective to use, as long as music is involved, their interest can be roused. It’s difficult not to appreciate the wide-ranging musical capabilities of the group, though they shrug off notions of virtuosity, laughing that - ‘seriously, we’ll do anything, we’re slags!’ Andy composed the music to the Tibetan film ‘Dreaming Lhasa’, because of a fortuitous coincidence- the directors were his landlords. ‘They had heard the stuff that I did with N.Y.P.C. and really liked it, so they asked me to compose the soundtrack. They were lovely so I said yes. As landlords they were really nice, they never raised the rent in 7 years.’ From film soundtracks to remixing (a Seven-Inch for Gossip and ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’ for Amy Winehouse, amongst others), N.Y.P.C’s musical enthusiasm is limitless. When possible collaborations are mentioned, Andy gets incredibly excited-‘Well, obviously we’d love to do one with Bowie- though we might be doing a track with Paul Weller soon. There’s a Best of British compilation coming out, and we’ve written a track that he’s producing, but I don’t want to give too much away just yet.’ Despite being signed to the hip Modular label, N.Y.P.C. remain true to the minor venues where they honed their immaculate live set-‘ Well, we’ve never played a stadium… I’d like to be given the chance, though not as a support act, that’d be too difficult. You can’t beat a small, packed, sweaty club.’ Amongst their various side-projects, the band is also in the midst of writing their second album, the follow-up to ‘Fantastic Playroom’. Once more, when writing music is referenced, Andy’s enthusiasm is tangible- ‘with N.Y.P.C. there’s more of an emphasis on having fun, doing what we want… really, we don’t want to write for anyone else.’

Brazilian trio Bonde do Rolê have come a long way since their first Irish show last October. They’ve gone from playing a half-empty Crawdaddy to filling up the Bodytonic Arena at this year’s Electric Picnic, as well as countless other festival performances across the Globe this summer. I spoke to DJ Gorky ahead of their November performance in The Button Factory. Of course, this being my first interview, the recorder stopped working and I lost the first five minutes of the conversation. I can tell you however, that they will be performing Gasolina for the first time on this tour, as Marina has finally learned her cue points. As well as that, the next album will (hopefully) feature a full brass section, provided by none other than the Brazilian Military Brass Band. The rest of the conversation went something like this.

You play a lot of Brazilian music [in your DJ sets], but you’re kind of like Erol Alkan and 2manydjs, that kind of style? But then the Bonde do Rolê sound is much more inspired by 80s rock. Do you ever have a difficulty keeping the two of them separate?

No, not really. The whole influence for Bonde do Rolê was 2manydjs as well, blending stuff, but the difference between us and 2manydjs is that we blend with Brazilian influence. If we were doing with anything else it would sound just like 2manydjs trying to be a bootleg band. Not Soulwax though, they’re completely different.

You know the first Solta o Frango single? The track Bondallica that’s on that CD is different to the one on the album [the original version features the voice of a heavy metal fan shouting “Heavy Metal rules” etc].

Because we couldn’t clear the Heavy Metal Parking Lot sample. That’s from a documentary from the 80s called Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and we couldn’t clear the sample. That release that was out on CD in Brazil only, had the sample. We put all those tracks there, because we didn’t have any other songs to put on, and then it ended up on the album as well.

I got that at the show in Dublin last year.

I remember that show, we were so happy, we sold so many t-shirts and CDs, we were running back to the hotel, it was fun. [Gorky had earlier mentioned that it was after this particular show that Bonde do Rolê were signed to Domino.]

Do you ever find that you have a crowd that doesn’t really want to party the way that sort of crowd did, have you ever had any bad reactions?

Yeah, we played this show in New York, but New York’s like that, especially Manhattan, they’re over there just to be at the place, and talk about it afterwards. We played at the Natural History Museum, that couldn’t be a worse place for us to play. There was like ten, fifteen, of our friends having fun with us, and then I could see fifty-year old couples, drinking wine and not paying attention at all. But we managed to have fun by ourselves. It’s funny because in Manhattan it’s always like that, but if you go to Brooklyn it’s completely different, and it’s the same city.

Crazy. I was going to ask about DJ Chernobyl [aka Freddie Van Halen], he’s a big legend in Brazil, right?

Indie-wise yeah, not like mainstream wise, he was one of the first people who mixed baile funk with rock and stuff like that, like ten years ago. It was really fun working with him, and he’s our friend.

He worked with you guys on the album?

He recorded the album with us, cause he was the one with the good microphones, we only had the cheap ones. We recorded the whole album back in our place with him, it was fun.

Who’s been your favourite person to work with so far?

Freddie is really good to work with. Yeah, probably Freddie, because if we go on to him at 4am in the morning “So he’s like “yeah yeah, sure, just gimme a beer and we’ll do it.” Diplo is like, [makes explosion sound] we have to be babysitters, “Let’s work right now” and we have to sit him down and put his computer [away], and not let him check his emails, and put away his cell phone, and his sidekick. We have to put all that away, “No, let’s work.” But he’s fun.

And what about Radioclit?

The only track we did with them on the album was something we recorded in five minutes, and we kept doing re-edits between us, using the internet, one sending each other the stuff. They’re really professional as well. I lived the whole summer with Johann, one of the guys from Radioclit, and I know he’s really committed, he’s down for you. We needed some help with some stuff and he was the first one to help.

Oh, cool. The artwork on the singles is pretty crazy.

Thank you. It was done by this friend of ours from Curitiba. For the first Domino release, the Solta o Frango one, we were like “oh, we want a girl in a bikini doing barbecue, and you have to put a weird setting.” For the second single [Office Boy], I was like, “I want a naked guy”. But then we couldn’t do the whole naked guy, so we had to cut him in half. For the Gasolina one, we actually didn’t say anything to him, he used the lyrics. It’s a gorilla smoking a pipe. It’s fun. It’s my favourite one so far.

And then the second Solta o Frango one has some chickens coming out of a barn [Solta o Frango translates roughly as release the chickens, or to go crazy].

The second Solta o Frango one had a better version, but Pedro and Marina didn’t like it. I kind of liked the old version, but we’re never going to use it. Maybe on a box set in like 20 years, “Oh this is the cover we never used.” There’s like tons of different versions of the tracks on the album, but I don’t have half of them. I’m asking all my friends that I sent the tracks at the time, “Do you have this version of blah blah blah?” For instance, Office Boy had a different chorus, it was something in Portuguese, but I don’t have that one anymore, and everyone keeps asking me about it. The new version’s better.

What do you think of the remixes that people have done for you?

Usually I get to choose them, since I’m the DJ. I’m really happy about them. My favourite batch is going to be the Gasolina single. The Buraka [Som Sistema] remix was already out, but we’re re-releasing it because it was really good, there’s also going to be the Crookers, and Fake Blood, Peaches as well. That’s my favourite pack. And the Brodinski remix and Shir Khan ones [of Office Boy] as well. I tried to call people that we liked but they’re not really big. For instance, we would love Soulwax remixing us, but they’re too big for us. I tried to call people who I admired but it could be easier to work with, like Brodinski and Shir Khan. I hope they get big, so I can go like “Oh, we had one of their first remixes”.

Is there anyone else you want to work with? I know Marina worked with The Go! Team.

Oh, yeah, and she’s working with TTC right now. I really want to work with a lot of people, on the second album, like Switch, and the Crookers, and Simian Mobile Disco. We want to finally ask Spank Rock and Amanda Blank to be on the album, they’re always at our gigs, and we sing together on some songs as well. It would be nice to actually have them on the record. Who else. I would love to work with Soulwax, but that’s impossible.

I know you like Surkin, have you tried talking to him?

Yeah, maybe for like a remix, for the second album.

Do you wish there was something you could say in an interview, but it never comes up?

We always say everything we want to, even the bad parts. Even when my mom gets a magazine, especially the Brazilian ones, and we say a lot of crap on them. She’s like, “Why did you say this Rodrigo? Your grandpa could read this!” I’m like, oh whatever.

Words & Photos: Aidan Hanratty