Editor Brendan McGuirk takes a look at experimental electronic duo, Psapp.

Toy guitars, toddler play sets, a wind-up chicken named Brunhilda and a variety of novelty Casio keyboards are all part of collective that is used to create the musical entity that is “Psapp”, the love-child of musical experimentalists Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant. Using whatever they can get their hands on the pair make their own unique type of music and this has not gone unnoticed featuring on numerous American hit series such as “Grey’s Anatomy”,”The OC” and “Nip Tuck”. Analogue got a chance to catch up with “Psapp” for a chat about what makes them tick before their recent gig in Whelans.

Psapp is a pretty cool name, where does it come from?

Carim: It originates from the sound of a fire in the backroom of a venue, just crackling and us speeding that sound down and modulating it through an elephants trunk.

Galia: And that sound is simply “Psapp”.

You’ve been credited with inventing Toytronica, for people who don’t know what that is, how would you describe it?

G: I’m not really sure what that is either, it wasn’t a genre we come up ourselves.

Is it like a NME term that was forced upon you?

G: There’s that band the Klaxons, everyone’s calling them New Rave but I don’t reckon they woke up one morning and said ‘hey guys, lets invent new rave’….well they might have.

Well they’re taking the credit for it…

G: Well, it’s quite melodic, but I’m not a massive fan of it. I do think there’s quite fun music in there and you know, they seem to be having a laugh. They look a little bit self conscious on stage though.

C: Well I don’t think we use only toys anyway, any object is allowed in “Psapp” as long as it makes nice musical contributions. It’s not toys exclusive, but we’ve got a lot of them.

What kind of instruments or pieces do you use to create your music; what’s your favourite?

C: I think we’ve got a really large selection of cardboard boxes at home, they’ve all got different tones so we use them quite a lot for rhythm, a lot of Casio keyboards, ah, a lot of sort of toys we buy for like fifty pence in the charity shop and you wouldn’t believe how many different ones there are out there

G: And how sonically exciting a toddlers toy can be, it’s surprising really. I really like this egg slicer that we got off my mum that sounds really really good, it’s sort of twangy. What does it sound like?

C: Like a miniature harp with steel strings.

So your mum knows what kind of presents to get you?

G: She’s pretty good, yeah, my whole family actually keep getting us good stuff.

You record a lot of your material in your London flat, it must be nice to work within your own space, it must be a really natural process.

G: Yes, although Carim pointed out that I don’t do as good vocals if I’m wearing my pyjamas as I do when I’ve actually got up and got dressed. So we kind of have to get ourselves ready to do a session first.

Like getting up to go to work?

G: Sort of, yeah, I can’t remember who it was that said he worked from home and he had to get up in the morning, get dressed, walk round the block, and walk back into his house and start his day of work. I can kind of understand that as well but we usually go out and buy coffee

C: Yes, but it’s sort of less recording in a flat, we have a proper studio. I’ve been running a recording studio for a long time and we’ve got more things to play with rather than just a laptop and a little soundcard.

I think a lot of bands prefer to do that now because they don’t end up in debt when they start off selling a record.

G: And plus, you can do it at your own pace, maybe a lot of guitar bands write the songs separately and record all of them separately but for us, it’s all one process, so we don’t start working in the studio with a definitive idea of what it is we want to do and that’s part of the fun of how we work together, as we like to experiment with things as we go along.

So its kind of like writing a novel, you add bit by bit.

G: Yeah, well, though, I suppose people who write novels have a finite idea of how its going to go but we kind of like the story to lead us where it will.

C: And also, I think if you record over a year or a year and a half for an album then you’ve got different atmospheres and different sounds and different mixes in there and it doesn’t sound like a record that’s been done in a day and mixed in a day. I think it gives you a lot more variety. I really like that.

G: And there’s a narrative with the lyrics.

C: It’s more a summary of a year than just of an intense period of a month or two.

A lot of your album art work features cats and you even cover ‘Everyone Wants to be a Cat’ from the Disney classic the Aristocats, does that all stem from being cat lovers?

G: Its stems partly from liking cats a lot and partly from a love of the absurd and surreal, and I think that we got a kick out of becoming insanely obsessive about one thing, but I mean that will probably change because things are in flux. We both really do love cats; it would be a lie to say we didn’t.

Do you have many yourself?

G: We did have a lovely cat, but when we moved we found there was no way to let the cat in and out so we had to leave her at the old place so now we’ve only got cats that we’ve made ourselves out of wool and pipe cleaners. We’ve got lots of imaginary people actually that live with us. A guy called Bernard and a girl called Jenny who we like to imagine really exist but they don’t.

C: Don’t they?

G: Course they do, yes, sorry.

The artwork is very original and its something that stands out as your own thing. You said you like to obsess about it, is that an extra part to “Psapp”?

G: I just think it would be really weird if you wrote a record and you just said to the record label “you sort out the artwork”, you know it’s just surreal to put so much love into something and then to sort of let it go. It’s hard enough just putting it out and letting it go in a way and making it a public thing but I think if you’re going to do something you should make it yours as much as possible and a personal thing. That’s what we’ve tried to do, Carim does most of the layout of stuff and so we work together on everything, drawings and the visuals. It’s a shared project.

What I really like about it is that its so childlike and it looks like it could be in a children’s book and I know that a lot of your lyrics are quite imaginative, so I suppose it goes naturally with that.

G: Well, the lyrics kind of are quite adult, with adult themes. This is a thing people always ask us about, I always say the same thing is that life is a combination of like surreal joyful moments and quite evil scary negative moments and something’s are sort of childish and playful, and something’s are just incredibly dark. We try and mix all those things together, because we think that songs should have all of those parts. Really, I find it really boring when someone writes a sad song and it kind of plods along. It kind of makes a song sadder if you inject it with some sort of humour or weird noise or something. I mean to me then its kind of more lifelike and genuine.

You guys composed the theme song “Cosy in the Rocket” for the American hit series “Greys Anatomy” and your songs have featured on the “OC” and “Nip Tuck”; that must be kind of surreal. Do you get a lot of positive feedback from that?

G: We didn’t compose that song for the show, it was just a song that we’d written and they said “can we have it as a theme tune?” and as we weren’t planning on releasing it, we said they could have it. Yeah, it’s weird having stuff on the telly, we don’t have a TV. Sometimes round my boyfriend’s “Grey’s Anatomy” comes on and it really makes me giggle, I just find it really weird.

The other side of the Atlantic, it must give you some really great PR?

G: We get some really weird people who are really into “Grey’s Anatomy”, we don’t even watch it. But yeah, I’m sure it’s raised our profile. I can’t remember how many viewers but it’s a massive show in America apparently.

C: But It’s not something you really think about, though, especially not when you’re writing the music, you don’t have those things in mind, I mean, it’s not that different from music being played on the radio because you’re not aware, once in the public domain it sort finds its own way and gets played here or there.

Is it better than getting fame through an ad? As a lot of stuff is now like the José Gonzalez song Heartbeats and stuff like that.

G: Well, it’s the same kind of thing, we’ve been on ads as well, and I think we’re just not really that bothered about it. I mean its fine, if it happens, it happens, but we don’t run around saying “oh I wish I was on a T-Mobile ad”.

I actually only got introduced to the original by the Knife recently and I really like it, I think prefer it to the cover.

G: Yeah, it’s really nice, I’ve got fond memories of the cover version because whenever José used to play it, we used to get up on stage and just try and ruin the song. We toured with him and Juana Molina and we were all on the tour bus together and it just got incredibly silly, the whole thing, there was lots of teasing. I mean, one time, we were playing one of our shows and Juana Molina came up behind me and just hit me on the head and I was really dizzy because I head-butted the microphone. There was a lot of stuff like that happening, it was really good fun actually.

On your live set, because a lot of music is created in such an imaginative way, it must be pretty hard to recreate it live. Is that a challenge you enjoy?

C: It was actually really hard work to rearrange the songs, to try and find people to play it, people who sort of understand it, as well, our music because of the way its composed, it’s not like here’s a few chords , a verse and a chorus. Every instrument becomes a small part of the whole.

G: There’s lots of layers of melodies

C: So it did take us a while and we had to try a lot of people and rearrange the songs quite a lot to make them playable. In a way we didn’t want to use any playback, so its all played live.

So it definitely was a challenge.

C: Yeah, but it feels much nicer, you know when you play a song you don’t have to wait for half a minute until the song kicks in, so you interact more when you play.

Do you have fun touring with the live material, something that you created at home in your flat and now it’s taken out?

G: It feels really separate to working on writing music, though, it’s like a completely separate project in my head. I don’t associate it with writing music because it’s a different kind of thing. It’s great playing live, especially you get lots of people and they’re all into the song and you start having a dialogue with them. I mean, to me, the point of playing live is for it to be interactive, otherwise, just sit on your laptop at home and don’t do anything. So what we do is often quite messy and junkshop sounding but, you know, we put a lot of love and effort into it and it’s great, it’s really really good fun.

Do you take time out to write and record, or do you write as you’re touring?

C: No, we don’t write on the tour really, we write at home in the studio. Sometimes, we just have to make sure there’s no gigs in certain parts of the year, so we find time to actually sit at home and record something and try something, because I think you have to be in that frame of mind, we don’t come back from a tour and straight away go into the studio and work, it’s quite homemade music and we have to calm down a bit to get into the right mood to do that.

What are you listening to at the moment? Who’s on your mp3 player or in your cd player?

G: I’ve only got one record on there actually, which is the new Deerhoof album, ‘Friend Opportunity’, it’s great, it’s only just come out.

C: I’m still listening to that “Moondog” record; it’s from the 1950s ,that record. Its quite funny in some ways because it sounds like “Psapp” fifty years ago and we only discovered it like two months ago.

So if you like Psapp, check out Moondog?

G: He is the Don, he is amazing and he looks amazing, as well. This bearded man who used to dress as a Viking and he lived homeless so he could save up money to record, which was just absurd. So he lived in New York homeless and with his Viking outfit on, and used to occasionally record records and then go back onto the streets again.

I know you guys played in Galway last night and you’re playing here tonight in Whelans, I would say you’d fit well in at “Electric Picnic”?

G: We played in the summer at Electric Picnic which was our first show in Ireland, it was sort of a mixture of a complete disaster and really good fun but I think most of our shows are like that.

C: I mean, once we’re here, it’s good but it always a disaster getting over to Ireland.

G:We had a nightmare yesterday.

C: It’s not all that far away

G: I think we’ve just been incredibly unlucky, our tour manager’s sitting in the corner sniggering, I think in agreement.

Tour Manager: Yeah, the first show I ever did with you guys was Electric Picnic, the car broke down and the flight got cancelled and something else broke down.

G: Then Nich had left the band.

You just have to find your lucky shamrock?

G: We need shamrock, have you got any shamrock on you?

It’s not something I carry around with me!

G: It sounded like I was asking for drugs, has anyone got any shamrock? I just need an eighth of the Rock

C: Of the old Sham.

G: (Laughs).

Originally published in Trinity News.

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