Buraka Som Sistema

illustration by Phil Dunne

Kuduro isn’t a genre known to the vast majority of the Irish populace. In fact, the chances are quite high that you weren’t even aware there was such a thing as kuduro until curiosity inspired you to read this article. Either that or you’re a die-hard fan of the stuff; my sincerest apologies for patronising you if this is the case.

Likewise, Buraka Som Sistema are a band you’ve either never heard of or are madly in love with. Analogue had the chance to sit down and have a chin-wag with these Portuguese beat-meisters at their pre-Christmas DJ set in The Twisted Pepper. Two of the band - L’il John and Riot - producer Conductor is sadly absent - and guest vocalist/pretty-much-member Kalaf have been busy touring Europe.

Riot, guitar in hand, idly strums some tunes as L’il John gives a brief explanation of what exactly kuduro is. “You can describe it as a sound that’s based on […] African DJs’ and producers’ attempts at doing techno and house music. It’s picking up on the different aspects that they created around their own interpretations of these things, and it’s developing that and giving our own European version of it at the same time.”

Fast tempos, frenetic African beats and pounding bass drums under a rapid fire of MCing are typical characteristics of Kuduro. The genre is almost exclusively of Angolan origin, and with a high concentration of Angolan immigrants in certain suburbs in Lisbon it’s no surprise that the city is essentially home to the movement.

L’il John and Riot, making music since their teens, hooked up with kuduro producer Conductor a few years ago and formed Buraka Som Sistema. Describing themselves as “progressive kuduro” (pretty much a meaningless term; “it was a joke in an interview” confesses L’il John) and with a handful of EPs under their belt, they managed to attract the attention of M.I.A., who quickly got in touch. “It got to a point where she knew about us because we met so many mutual DJs and producers,” Riot explains, “so basically one day she called our studio, she talked with Jo?o [Barbosa, a.k.a. L’il John] and that’s how we got together.” Their collaborations resulted in Sound of Kuduro, the most popular single off their debut LP Black Diamond, which was released in November.

The album title reveals a lot about the band’s approach to their craft and origins, according to L’il John. “In South Africa, they had all that apartheid stuff, black people were excluded from experiencing the whole country, they were restricted to areas. What they call a black diamond is… imagine, a son of a couple that lived in apartheid, a son coming up from nowhere and making it for himself. That’s called a black diamond.”

When the genre first began to emerge in the poorest suburbs of Lisbon, kuduro artists were essentially forced to use aging and severely limited equipment to make their music. “It actually comes from production,” L’il John says. “It was never traditional, it was a reaction to traditional music. It was kids with their parents and grandparents playing the same instruments throughout their lives, […] and, even though they can play the same instrument, they broke that link in a way and just grabbed a shitty PC from seven years ago, installed Fruity Loops or some software like that, and started doing beats.”

These days Buraka Som Sistema have managed to accumulate enough of a following to be able to afford a plush studio in Lisbon, complete with de rigeur studio software behemoth Pro Tools. While other dance acts may grow to obsess about analogue synths and vintage compressors, this clearly isn’t in the Buraka/kuduro spirit. “It’s not about having the ultimate kick drum or snare,” L’il John says, “it’s about trying to pass on an idea or a concept.”

When I ask them for their thoughts on illegal downloading and whether I think it’s hurt them or helped them, their response is refreshing. “In Angola, it’s more or less the same process; when you release a track, people buy your albums, but they also [illegally] copy the music,” Kalaf explains, “so if your music is really good, you’ll find bootlegs; if it’s crap, you’ll find bootlegs. Simple as that.”

Future plans for the band include the release of Black Diamond in the United States, though Kalaf is already looking onwards. “We really want to make the biggest show that we can make with our size,” he reveals. “To be able to throw a good show, thats the way you fight the downloading - to be able to make a show that people will like to see and will remember.”

Patrick Kelleher

I interviewed Patrick Kelleher before Christmas for a pilot of the Analogue Hour. I ended up going back to a party in his house on Saturday night after the Skinny Wolves brilliant dj set in Anseo. At the party, I realised I should probably post up the interview for more people to hear. Patrick will be releasing an album later this year on Irish label Osaka Recordings.

Daedelus

Alfred Darlington is a singular, compelling figure. His aesthetic is full of contradictions; he performs in exquisite, tailored Victorian finery, colliding and sequencing countless samples onstage using an achingly new software interface. The music itself draws on jungle, techno, breaks, hip-hop, dubstep, jazz, electro, funk and even breakcore; this is a guy who sneers at boundaries in his rear-view mirror. He is Daedelus – the misspelling is intentional - and like his Greek counterpart, he is not lacking in ambition or invention. His superb concept albums, loaded with personal meaning and shimmering with warmth, are intricately detailed and stunningly diverse.

Based in Los Angeles, Daedelus has been making dreamy, genre-splicing tunes for the past decade, building up a hugely impressive back catalogue on labels such as Plug Research, Warp, Phthalo and Ninja Tune, with whom he currently resides, having released some of his best material – including 2005’s Exquisite Corpse, 2006’s Denies The Day’s Demise and this year’s masterpiece, Love To Make Music To, with them. Over the course of more than twenty albums and EPs, he has combined a bewildering array of styles to produce something unique and brilliant, cementing his reputation as a producer in both the hip-hop and electronic scenes and picking up a succession of quality collaborators along the way. TTC? Check. Saul Williams? Oh yes. Bus driver? Yep. MF Doom? Better believe it. Humility is still his watchword, however - when pressed, he simply says, “Thank goodness they were open to giving a chance to some sideways beats.”

Because of his interest in the subjectivity of music and the unique experience of the listener or audience member, he has expressed an interest in performing in “non-traditional spaces”. He has this to say about listening to music: “Sound largely lives in the air, and acoustic space decides quite beforehand where it will all have room to proceed. Now that might all seem a little too strange, but in one example think about how often we escape into headphones to abstract us from our limited or loud
acoustic environment. It isn’t dissimilar to when I’ll play a show and something about the temporaries will effect every decision.” Here is an artist who thrives on the opportunity to live in the moment and connect with the audience – you could say he was a more dapper Dan Deacon. He has occasionally taken this connection with the crowd to a logical conclusion, by sampling “whole bits of crowd interaction… But the technology is still coming together to make it as performance- (rather than chaos-) based as possible. For now it is somewhat a parlor trick rather then musical
gesture.”

Now to the technology. Daedelus has placed great stock in improvisation and rapid recording, with the smallest number of potential barriers to creative expression; with this in mind, he can be seen tapping away furiously at a couple of small boxes onstage, in an effort to create vast, textured soundscapes “on-the-fly”. These devices are Monomes – essentially interfaces for any number of software applications, whose neat rows of buttons can be used by musicians to trigger and loop samples, produce tones, tweak filters and quite possibly do your homework while you play the PSP. For Daedelus, it’s “very quick to play, lots of nights go many different directions, something that keeps me very interested in playing live”. The monome provides the immediacy which fuels his compositions and live sets, so he can concentrate on feeling and melody – “I prefer feeling because I understand it to be a quicker way to listeners’ hearts. Process music is far too much work, whereas melody makes
weepers and inspiration. I think that is what I am in it all for anyways.” Such devices seem to be taking off recently – witness the Tenori-on and Lemur promotional campaigns – and despite their “wildly different approaches” and varying degrees of flexibility, we can expect to see many more of them on the electronic scene in coming years.

Wandering through his back catalogue, you might imagine that Chris Clark, Aphex Twin, RJD2, The Avalanches, Prefuse 73, Plaid and Squarepusher had been secretly recording together as a supergroup for the past decade, under the radar and way out in left field. There is so much stunning music to be found here that it can be intimidating. There is a seamless, fearless mastery in all his work and an unpredictability and sophistication to everything he produces. It can all turn on a dime. Perhaps due to the thread of hip-hop and jazz running through much of his work, many see him as a Ninja Tune artist, and he’s unrestrained in his praise for the label: “Amazing history coupled with an eagerness to push forward. I have been
caught in their riptide, so to speak, thus far. It is amazing to be with a label that people have tattooed on their body, says something strong…” That said, they declined to release 2004’s lush Of Snowdonia. Maybe one label isn’t enough to contain all this restless invention…

It’s abundantly clear that music is his life. His wife Laura is another of his collaborators, as the other half of the gorgeous Long Lost project; incidentally, he says of friend Flying Lotus that “I think their will be a Laura and Lotus collaboration before I get the chance to. Never enough time between shows and records yet to do it”. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, having once played in a ska band which bore witness to the unmentionable dancefloor antics of pornstar Annabel Chong during a set. He mentions “bubblings up from the underground” of L.A., in the shape of Nosaj Thing, Matthew David, Free The Robots and Ras G. With one finger on the pulse, one foot on the dancefloor, one hand on his heart and his head in the clouds, Daedelus continues to draw listeners into his labyrinthine world.

Moritz von Oswald

Innovator is a term cast around somewhat gratuitously when it comes to describing the creators of electronic music. Perhaps this results from its fans’ propensity to describe the subtleties that differentiate the good from the bad in hyperboles.

Exaggeration of Moritz von Oswald’s status however, would be difficult. His influence on electronic music, in particular since the inception of his and collaborator Mark Ernestus’ Basic Channel imprint (or rather, ideology) in 1993 is unparalleled. The man’s constant musical development, and involvement at every single stage from conception to consumption is almost unheard of.

It would be very easy to slip into the realms of the philosophical when it comes to the music of Moritz von Oswald. The majority of his releases, in particular, the nine Basic Channel records released during the de facto operation of the label, eschew traditional song structure in favour of the abstract development of echo, delay and hiss over a single extended groove. Rather than the coldness and austerity one would expect, the music is fluid, compelling and brimming with soul.

A brief retrospective glance is undoubtedly in order, although only an abridged selection of his innumerable projects is possible. His music career before Basic Channel was preceded by what he refers to as “the normal musical education”. He cites his brother as a major influence as he “brought music into the house”. The transition from a desire to quit piano lessons (the point at which the similarities between the musical careers of both myself and Moritz start and end) to the realisation that music was going to be something special for him came when a relative introduced him to blues. Becoming a multi-instrumentalist and the beginning of his career as a drummer was a major turning point for Von Oswald. He claims that “Drums took me to a completely different level.” During the 80’s, he was involved in the Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave) joining the influential avant gardists Palais Schaumburg set up by Holger Hiller and Thomas Fehlman. Von Oswald’s work as a percussionist throughout the 80’s took him through many experimental phases after the split of Palais Schaumburg. Collaborations with Detroit techno stalwarts Blake Baxter, Juan Atkins and Eddie Fowlkes in Von Oswald’s Love Park Studio in the early 90’s forged the relationship between the Berlin and Detroit techno scenes that was instrumental in the development of the genre. These projects, in partnership with Thomas Fehlman, known as 2MB and 3MB were part of the experiences “which were important to decide to do Basic Channel as it appeared at the time”.

One of the most fateful meetings in electronic music occurred at Hardwax Records in Berlin. Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald met and realised that they had “ a musical understanding” and played reggae, house and techno from the vast array of difficult to find records available in Hardwax to each other. When asked was it the music from Detroit and Chicago that comprised their common ground von Oswald’s response of “not really, not only” made much sense, as the German brand of hypnotic, sweeping techno made by the duo obviously had its roots in other places. When questioned about the relationship between reggae and the Basic Channel sound he becomes more decisive. “I liked to listen to [reggae] early on. The stuff that Mark and myself first listened to were empty instrumentals. This was always in the back of the mind. To wonder how it was made”.

The gleeful giggle that comes from the phone assures me that this wonder still gives Moritz a thrill. He continues on to describe how his fascination with reggae delves into the technical. “I always liked the idea of using the studio as an instrument. The whole story about dub. You don’t just use the studio to record, you use it as another facility”.

Continuing with the reggae theme, I asked Moritz about how the winding up of Basic Channel as a label, after the release of the nine most influential records in electronic music, and the decision to emphasise the reggae element more conspicuously. In particular I asked him about his relationship with Paul St. Hilaire, aka Tikiman, and how his involvement in what became yet another label, Rhythm and Sound, influenced the direction of the Basic Channel movement. To get to that point, we must traverse another tangent, another label, and another musical direction.

After the release of the last Basic Channel record in 1994, Von Oswald and Ernestus decided to have a crack at producing what he describes as “ for our years, quite straightforward house which was very well received in New York”. In order to release this very different musical project, Main Street Records was born, releasing both I’m Your Brother and New Day featuring vocalist Any Caine, as Round One and Round Two Respectively. I’m Your Brother is a special one. Its upbeat Chicago House sound may be the victim of a raised eyebrow or two when thrown into the middle of a set, but its eponymous refrain could only fail to melt the heart and shake the arse of the most cynical music (s)knob. However, in typical itchy footed style, despite the success of the first two Main Street records, “[they] wanted to get away from that song structure and thought about working with someone from [the Caribbean]. [They] heard about two or three people from tapes, and Tiki was one of them. He immediately got the idea and had the right lyrics, melody and presence.” I had the good fortune to witness this pairing in action in Berghain in Berlin during the summer and it was clear from the contented grin on his face that afternoon that Moritz von Oswald’s musical allegiance still lies with reggae. “Yeah it was fun,” he laughs again when I mention this to him.

The first Rhythm and Sound record with Tikiman was the “Showcase” series released on the Burial Mix label. Each track was released on 10” vinyl with the vocal on one side and the instrumental “version” on the other. This was the original format favoured by Jamaican reggae producers.

Over the years, the identities, opinions and ideas of the two revered figures behind the Basic Channel movement have been subject to much speculation and adoration. The idea was that there was no need to say anything as the music explained more than any interview ever could. When I questioned Moritz about his current project, the Moritz von Oswald Trio featuring Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay) and Max Louderbauer, I found that the reason for this rare interview might lie in his candidness in describing what the Whelan’s audience is to expect on October 26th.

“The project I’m coming with in October is a bit different. It is like an experiment which is quite different from stuff that happened on Basic Channel. I really wanted to get people playing live….Not with laptops anymore. Also the idea of having a small group of people who are interacting and improvising on a highly abstract level. This is what we try to do with this trio.
It’s free and open with long tracks which are often very calm. On the other hand, I try to keep the rhythms not too far away from the club idea. I wanted to have a non tonal, dissonant vibe with a kind of dark impression.”

Excitingly, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio plan to release a record at the end of next February with the live experience being replicated in studio. Moritz is also releasing Recomposed Vol. 3 with Carl Craig this month. This is a recomposition of an original 1987 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recording of Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”.
Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnola” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Bilder einer Ausstellung”.

The work of Moritz Von Oswald intersects in my mind with another great artist who had a fondness for the abstract. I’m no art expert, but the paintings of Mark Rothko are the perfect visual representation of Moritz’s music. A quick sideways glance will give you a flash of colour or darkness, but it is with further inspection and introspection that the layers and textures become apparent. The same is true of Moritz’s art. A basic idea developed and built upon forwards and backwards until it forms a cycle that absorbs and envelops you despite its intangible nature.

There’s a reason why anyone who hasn’t yet, should begin the exploration of Mortiz Von Oswald’s backcatalogue. It isn’t to get a historical reference point on today’s relatively stagnant electronic music scene, nor is it to gain access to the hoards of Von Oswald imitators, but because he is one of the true inimitable innovators.

An ideal place to start if the music of Moritz Von Oswald and the Basic Channel crew has managed to slip past you is the Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks by Scion. It is a cut-up mix of basic channel tracks done with Ableton Live and gives a good overview of their sound. The ideal would be to go to Hardwax and buy the entire back catalogue on vinyl .

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Fucked Up

When I first meet one half of Fucked Up, the trio of Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas and 10,000 Marbles are quietly hunched over their Macbooks in a quiet corner of a darker-than-usual Whelan’s. As I introduce myself, hulking front man Pink Eyes, AKA Damien, jumps to his feet and enthusiastically pumps my hand while drawling “Hey man, you want to go upstairs and do this?” I’d imagined a somewhat less affable first encounter with the band and, as if to remind me of that ‘fuck you’ punk attitude, founding member/guitarist 10,000 Marbles, AKA Mike Haliechuk, meets my extended hand with a watery smile that suggests he is about as fond of journalists as George Bush is of carefully considered foreign policy.

Formed in 2001, the Toronto band (completed by Concentration Camp, Mr Jo and Young Governor) have over forty releases to their name, most of them 7’’ limited edition singles. They are currently on tour to promote their new album, The Chemistry of Common Life, an ambitious opus with a thick dollop of hardcore running through it alongside some surprisingly un-hardcore flourishes. As we sit, Damien offers me a beer and I enquire about their interview process. “Jonah (Mr Jo - drummer) and myself are the two that talk”, he says, as Jonah shouts from the toilet that he’ll be joining us in a minute.

“Generally we’ll all do interviews but the others in the band are more reserved or quiet so it tends to be a little off-putting for some.” I mention the cold shoulder I got from Mike. Damien nods, “Yeah, Mike is like this weird guy. There’s people, like friends of mine from Toronto, who have known him for 10 years and are still like ‘does he hate me?’ So…he has a real issue with opening up and that makes for awkward interviews. He’s great on email though. Mike excels in written communication but his verbal communication leaves a lot to be desired. He and I aren’t speaking right now though; we go through these periods. I guess that’s why we’re still together. You’ve got to love someone to leave them and we don’t love each other.”

I admire his candour, but punk has always been about attitude and causing problems so maybe Mike is just the apotheosis of punk- aloof and moody. I talk with Damien about the musical elitism that has permeated the scene since its inception. “I can understand that. I didn’t like any band that deviated from the formula. And I’m kind of still that guy but now I understand why these bands do what they do. Maybe not as dramatically as someone like Discharge (British hardcore outfit whose changes in sound over the years alienated much of their original fan base) but you get to a point where it’s like, could you write the same song repeatedly?” I remark that Minor Threat based their career on that ethos. Damien sits up. “Yeah and they were around for four years but here we are in year seven.” Jo finally comes out of the bathroom with his laptop, where he has been ‘emailing and evacuating.’ Damien continues, “With this record it wasn’t a conscious thing to change direction. People were down on stuff we did, like the Hidden World album. It doesn’t seem as dramatic for us but I’ve seen the songs evolve. It bummed me out because I can understand what they’re saying but it’s something we had to do.”

Years ago, I read Henry Rollins book, Get In The Van, about life on the road with Black Flag in the eighties. Rollins meets a lot of horrible people on tour and I ask what the scene’s like at present. Damien laughs, “Well he’s a huge asshole. We met him and he was the worst.” Jo cuts in, “We’ve had amazing luck with meeting people though, in a punk canon through the years, but Henry…” Damien is still laughing, “He really couldn’t have given a shit!” Jo is eager to clarify, “And before Henry Rollins picks up this magazine and is like ‘what the hell?’ he was pretty friendly. It just took the right keywords. He was like a voice-operated machine and if you didn’t say the right words he wouldn’t have switched on. One of the highlights of this thing is meeting this imaginary list of people. We’ve met Keith Morris, Jello Biafra, Ian MacKaye, Iggy.”

Our conversation returns to the subject of the new album and its weighty themes. “I think this record is more about understanding,” says Damien. “The last record was about identification and this is about comprehension. The last one was… Not juvenile… But it was sort of a broad ‘Fuck Religion!’ This one is more, ‘why do we need religion?” The door opens and bespectacled bassist Mustard Gas, AKA Sandy Miranda, slopes in and perches herself in the corner. It’s hard to imagine this hodgepodge of personalities coming together on stage, and I’ve recently read that Mike does not enjoy playing live at all. Jo shrugs. “I like playing live. I mean there’s always going to be some pretence but when you hit someone right away with that music and those words, you can’t really sit and ponder it.” Damien agrees. “There’s a loftier ambition with our records but playing live is just forty-five minutes of trying to break down that wall that people have.”

The Matador deal has changed things, with Fucked Up’s profile growing recently. The images of a naked, bloody-faced Pink Eyes, with his genitals between his legs Buffalo Bill-style, have become ubiquitous in the music media. I ask what had happened with previous label, Jade Tree. Damien explains, “I think there was a problem with Jade Tree in the end because what they wanted and what we wanted became two different things. I think with Matador, they know how to make bands feel comfortable. Plus, I wanted to meet Cat Power! She has one of the purest voices in music.” Recording the new album wasn’t without difficulties though and the pair mention an incident involving the master copies of Tokyo Police Club’s newest album. Damien sheepishly mentions the engineer who “Went right from doing the Tokyo Police Club record to us. It was a huge headache for them.” Jo continues, “The room where the effects pedals are is also where the hard drive is and the engineer was like ‘Yeah, go get whatever pedal you want’. All of a sudden we hear ‘What the fuck!’ and he says the computer is frozen. He goes ‘Did you do anything to the hard drive?’ and we were like ‘No’ but…well, one of the heaviest pedals fell on top of a hard drive. They managed to fix it but for a while it was really scary.”

All of Fucked Up’s releases are dotted with sigils from the Aleister Crowley realm of ‘Magick’. For a band of their ilk, this seems quite a Jimmy Page-esque angle and it seems unlikely that the whole band is on board. Damien says he was initially sceptical. “But man, Fucked Up is proof that sigils work.” Jo laughs, “Yeah through effort, good song-writing and black magic, you can make it!” Damien goes on, “black magic is all you can attribute this too. It’s not looks! It’s got to be some evil higher power. But it is seriously practised by some people in the band. Y’know, maybe this band is a sigil. This band is magical!”

In an age when social networking sites are the medium through which bands disseminate their work, Fucked Up are notable for eschewing this approach and using a blog, lookingforgold.blogspot.com, to communicate with fans. Jo talks of “goading and prodding” on the blog and say that “A lot of it is to elicit a reaction while some of it might be because the writer(s) might have a touch of arrogance in their personality…” Sandy interjects, “I like the blog but it’s pretty much coming from one person.” I ask if it’s Mike. They nod.

But Damien adds, “I like reading it and it wouldn’t be as good if it was all of us. We got into it once and put up this photo of Mike with a bunch of Toronto people and we were all ‘Look at Mike’s new band’. After that he changed the password.” “He holds more power than I do,” says Sandy. “He has the clearest ‘vision’ for what we’re doing… There’s an interesting balance of power in the band.” Damien explains the ‘politics’ of Fucked Up to me. “I think musically we have more of a say but aesthetically it’s still Mike’s baby. I’m pretty sure it pisses him off no end that I’ve become the face of the band. “I think he’s one of the most creative, intelligent people I’ve met, so part of it is my jealousy of that, but part of it is that I think he’s an idiot sometimes. I’m sure he thinks I’m an idiot all the time. He probably resents the fact that I can talk to people and don’t have to use a computer to do so.” As we finish up, I compliment Damien on his frankness. He thanks me and leaves me with these parting words, “One thing I’ll give you is honesty. We’ve got nothing to lose! This is either the best, most elaborate persona ever or it’s just embarrassingly honest.”

Built to Spill interview

Self-professed “fanboy” Darragh McCausland talks to Built To Spill main man Doug Martsch about their upcoming tour dates.

For their current series of European gigs, Built To Spill are playing all of their epic 1993 alt-rock classic Perfect From Now On in its entirety. The album is a true benchmark. Not only did it define their career, it married the questing, far out guitar sounds of Dinosaur Jr and Crazy Horse to a whimsical, melodic and lyrical sensibility redolent of contemporaries such as Pavement. It is a meandering, cosmic sprawl of an album that always chooses the scenic route; only one song clocks in below five minutes.

Ahead of their Irish date in Whelans, I get a rare opportunity to talk to their frontman and songwriter, the wonderfully bearded and angelically voiced Doug Martsch. Now is about the right place for my disclaimer. I am a drooling fanboy when it comes to Built To Spill. A sick, irrational, drooling fanboy idiot, like a ten-year-old McFly worshipper. Getting a chance to talk to someone like Doug is one of the reasons I started writing for Analogue in the first place. So when I pick up the phone to chat to him, I am experiencing a dose of dishwasher tummy, a mixture of raw nerves (what if he’s a grump?), excitement, and the obvious need to temper my sycophantic instincts. Thankfully, I manage to keep my inner teenage girl in check and ask Doug (who turns out to be very soft spoken and open) some sensible questions. Beginning with the current tour.

I ask him what it is like to return to the Perfect From Now On material in such an exhaustive way after what must presumably have been a long break from most of it? “Yeah”, he says a little wearily, “we started working on doing this a long while ago, and now I really don’t know what to make of it.” How come? “Well we’ve been doing that album for about two months now, and I don’t know. I mean it’s just a bunch of fucking music.” He sounds a little exasperated. Perhaps it is because with Built to Spill being a constantly evolving touring force, he now feels constrained by having to play this stuff in full every night. I ask him if there is anything he would change in those songs, now that he’s coming back to them, especially considering the bands reputation for tweaking things live? Or is the album like Ronseal and, like it says on its tin, perfect?

Doug tells me “You know when we first came back to the album we tried to play everything as close as possible because we had been playing some of the songs and they had changed over the years. We never try to stick closely to our records that way. So we did try to do that. But now, we’re sort of fucking around with it a bit. To some people it might sound changed. To others it might not.” I’d warrant that for fans of Built To Spill, a bit of tinkering with the source material will be forgiven. After all, the band thrives on a live reputation that sees them playing lengthy sets with beefed up versions of songs, which often sound even better live than on record. For my money, the definitive version of “Stop The Show” is on their live album, Live.

For a band that tends to look forward, two months is a long time to be spending in bed with so many old songs. Considering that they are reportedly putting together songs for a forthcoming release, I wonder if working with the old stuff will have a creative impact on their new material? Doug tentatively admits it might. “Maybe so”, he says. “The new album was going to be a bit more stripped down and coming back to Perfect From Now On has me thinking more in terms of adding layers and stuff. I think we were starting to do that anyway, but I think with the Perfect From Now On stuff at the fore, I’m a bit more excited about getting back to do that.” But first there is the question of the road.
Built To Spill seem to be always on the road. Like Bob Dylan, the last few years saw them on a seemingly never-ending tour that has criss-crossed North America and Canada with the odd jaunt across to Europe. You would imagine that Doug would enjoy touring. I ask him if, like in the Lee Marvin song, he was born under a wandering star? Funnily enough, he doesn’t like being on the road.
“No I’m not the travelling type at all”, he says. “I do like playing live and doing all of that. But if I didn’t have a reason to be out in the world, I wouldn’t be at all.”

In saying this, he does acknowledge that after so many years playing in the States, they want to bring live shows further afield. Ireland is a case in point. Doug says that “the tour was all set up but we didn’t have any shows in Ireland but we made sure with the booking agent that we get to play there and Scotland.” This meant the band adding ten days onto their tour in order to play for two dates. I secretly and deludedly fancy that this is because of the begging messages I personally left on their MySpace page to play here.

Another MySpace page that sees its fair share of begging messages belongs to The Halo Benders, Doug’s on-off project with K Records main man Calvin Johnston. Fans are always anxious to hear new material from this group, whose brilliantly odd songs have to be heard to be believed (much of their material sounds like two completely different songs being sung at once and, curiously, works brilliantly). He tells me that this project is still alive, if a little delayed.

“We got together a couple of years ago and wrote some songs. But then Built To Spill became so overwhelming and it just fucked with the schedule of everyone. One of the guys went to school full-time. But we have a batch of songs that everyone is pretty excited about, so maybe when Built To Spill have a break we’ll get back around to it,” he tells me, providing a bone for material-hungry Halo Benders nuts to chew over. He also laughs when I request “Virginia Reel Around the Fountain” as an encore in Whelans. “Maybe if you or someone else shouts it out loud enough, sure,” he says. Well, Mr Martsch, that better be true because I can shout pretty loud.

Something casual Built To Spill watchers may not know about Doug is his interest in Reggae music. One of the more recently recorded Built To Spill tracks, “They Got Away” has a distinctly reggae sound. He tells me he only got into reggae in his 30s, when “someone gave me a really nice Lee Perry compilation. From listening to that stuff for a couple of years that song grew out of a sort of a jam that we did.”

The song marks an interesting departure for the band and although Doug tells me “it’s just a one off”, it will be fascinating to see if any of Perry’s vibes rub off on the next record’s sound.
The song structures on previous Built to Spill records can be crudely divided into two different types, the eight minute round-the-solar system epic (“Goin’ Against Your Mind”) and the punchier, hookier short track (“Centre Of The Universe”). Doug says that he doesn’t deliberately plot a course toward either one of these poles. “The songs sort of tell me what they are doing themselves”, he laughs, sounding a bit Zen. “The song is there and it looks after itself. There are lot of songs where we have done everything we could to shorten them but they just won’t let us.”

This is a lovely insight. It’s nice to think that Built To Spill songs exist somewhere “Out There” and that Doug just plucks them from the ether. It certainly befits a catalogue of music which, for all its catchiness and big hooks, has at its heart a sort of cosmic unknown; an awestruck wonder at the universe around us. Such wonder is beautifully expressed in the first song the band will play in Dublin next week, “Randy Describes Eternity”, where phased, squalling guitars carry a beautiful vocal line which contains the best metaphor I’ve ever heard to describe infinity. Amidst all of this, Doug decides he’s going to be “perfect starting now.” With a bit of luck, it will be the perfect start to a perfect show.

Bonde do Rolê Interview

Photo: Orla Graham

Brazilian party-starters Bonde do Rolê came to Dublin recently for their first show on these shores since their hi-octane performance at last year’s Electric Picnic. When I spoke to Gorky last year, he mentioned some vague plans for the second album. Before their late night Bacardi B-Live performance I spoke to group’s other original member, Pedro D’Eyrot. He explained that, with the departure of Marina Vello, the MTV Brazil talent hunt, and the subsequent initiation process for new members Laura Taylor and Ana Bernardino, recording another album hasn’t been at the top of their list of priorities. “We have some ideas, and we plan to realise them after this tour.” After Dublin the tour continues across the globe, and only after this will they sit down to work on the album. As far as the new members are concerned, Pedro is delighted with the manner in which the two girls have settled in. “They’re great. They’re just perfect now.” While reality television is generally the mainstay of the worst recesses of modern society, the results of this show seem to have borne much sweeter fruit. That said, it was not a lengthy process. “I was like ‘we have our own reality show, we have our own reality show!’ even though it was just one half an hour show on MTV! It lasted for us a whole week, but we only had a half an hour window on MTV.” He is particularly happy about the spread of on-stage responsibility – with an extra body on stage, “we can catch our breath.”

The group is in an interesting position label-wise – they were the first signing to Diplo’s Mad Decent label, but they also find themselves at home on the indie label Domino. They live in Brazil, and their manager is based in Berlin. With a geographical situation like that, it must be difficult to have any sense of community with the other Mad Decent artists. “We like Boy 8-Bit, we like Blaqstarr. We don’t relate with them very much actually, we should do more. We do when we’re in America. I think Blaqstarr is the one that we relate most, we always meet him when we’re in America. But I’ve never seen Boy 8-Bit.” At the same time, a shared point of origin does not always result in any level of artistic consistency. Another Brazilian act rose to prominence around the same time as Bonde do Rolê, but CSS are a very different act altogether. I asked Pedro how he felt about the constant comparisons drawn between the two acts. “It sort of works, we’re the same attitude I suppose, for CSS and for us it’s all about the party and fun. It’s all about the party, and I guess that’s where we can relate with CSS. And we don’t mind because they’re really big friends of ours.” The two groups also have a shared history, and this has gone on to be documented on CSS’s new album Donkey, on tracks such as Rat Is Dead (Rage). “We were part of the story behind it. A lot of songs are about our ex-manager. Which was our ex manager and their ex manager.” You heard it here first.

One major difference between CSS and Bonde do Rolê is that the latter have only rarely used lyrics in English, while the bulk of CSS’s charm comes from their consistently clumsy attempts to communicate their thoughts in a language that is not their own. That may change, as new member Laura was raised in New Zealand. “We speak English but it’s different when you’re writing songs in English and you’re not a native speaker. It’s a really hard job to make something that’s not empty.” For Pedro, the Brazilian trash aesthetic is paramount. “I know everywhere in the world you can have trash stuff, you have the whole white trash thing in America going on, but we have our own special kind of thing of white trash which is very dear to me, I just love it, I absolutely love it, it’s so amazing, I wish I could, we tried to share it with the rest of the world with Bonde do Rolê, it’s really hard to share, it’s a very unique thing. I wish everyone could understand it.”

Over the past two years a number of artists have taken Bonde do Rolê’s music and imbued it with their own twisted visions – from turntablists like Diplo and A-Trak to blog-house favourites like Crookers and Radioclit – but one that stands out is that of the mysterious Fake Blood, who remixed Gasolina to devastating effect. Speculation is rife regarding his identity – think of him as the Burial of bloghouse – so I decided to ask if Pedro knew anything about this. “I made all the contact through Myspace, I haven’t actually met him. My memory is really bad. I remember I was going to meet him, his first name was Sang.” Apparently his real name is Sang Foley. If one has an ear for French, one might note that sang is the French for blood, and, shortened, faux is the French for fake. Fake Blood. Either this is a clever twist on his own name, or we have a carefully constructed back story for an artist determined to make music under a new moniker. When I put this theory to Pedro, he was a little bit taken aback. “Dammit! Bastard tricked me! Cause it sounded like a name to me!” Either way, whoever Fake Blood is, he’s producing some great remixes at the moment. What impressed Pedro most about Fake Blood was his remix of The Black Ghosts’ Anyway You Choose to Give It. “The whole blog house scene, much of it sounds the same. But the thing that he had done that really caught my attention was that he did the glitch, like you know when you take the vocal pitches and you chop them, he had taken one track of audio, of voices, and he had overlaid [it] with another one, and he made a chord with it. I think it’s really good that he’s getting big now.”

Bonde do Rolê occasionally turn their hands to remixes themselves. The remix of CSS’s Alala was, for Pedro, a special one. “That one was so much fun. We did that one actually back in Brazil. It was one of the first remixes we ever did, and I really like it, the way it’s chopped up.” Another recent effort was Gorky’s Brazilian remix project for fellow Domino artist Lightspeed Champion’s Galaxy of The Lost. “He was trying to do an EP, with remixes of Lightspeed Champion cause he really likes Lightspeed Champion.” Gorky, Database and Bo$$ in Drama all turned in remixes of the track, but, unfortunately, none of them saw an official release. “He tried to make this Brazilian EP out of it, but it didn’t work out, which is a pity cause the remixes are really good.” Gorky’s own remix of the track first found its way online through the Mad Decent blog, which is presided over by Paul Devro, who is not the type one might expect to be so interested in world music. “He’s this skinny little Canadian boy, it’s super funny,” says Pedro. “We played a party for him to help the kids in the favelas, and it was super funny we were in Canada doing something for the kids in favelas in Brazil.” So he’s a great DJ, a thoroughly knowledgeable blogger, and a humanitarian – clearly a good person to know all round!

Photo: Orla Graham

Pedro’s own taste in music is currently going through a period of revision. “I’m listening to a lot of dance tracks from the 90s, the cheesy ones, from Kriss Kross to the Vengaboys. I’m kind of lost song wise, I’m really bored actually.” Pedro sees Bonde do Rolê’s music as an antidote to what he thinks is wrong with dance music today. “They’re not blog house and they’re not maximal. I really like this idea that we can be an alternative for people that cannot listen to maximal anymore, without getting bored. It’s a pity cause I really like it, I really do, but it’s everywhere.” It is certainly true to say that much that has followed in Ed Banger’s wake is little more than a pale imitation of what has gone before. And Pedro is keen to take the group in new directions, and who better to join for the ride than Switch, who, after his work with MIA and Santogold, seems to be the UK’s answer to Timbaland. “We have this idea for a song, it’s sort of like dancehall. We thought he would be the right guy to develop it.” Their exhilarating show out of the way, all we can do now is wait, and hope no new obstacles get in the way of album number two which, with Switch, and of course Mad Decent head honcho Diplo on board, looks to be just as breathtaking as With Lasers.

The Cool Kids interview

Chicago-based duo The Cool Kids are probably the most interesting hip-hop group out there right now. If you’re bored with Lil’ Wayne and aren’t enthused by the return of The Game, then look no further than Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks, two young guys who “press and twist knobs just to make your head nod”. While their first official EP, The Bake Sale, isn’t released on this side of the Atlantic until August, their material has been floating around online for over twelve months, and their profile has grown exponentially in that time, with international club tours and slots at festivals the world over. While they were originally in Dublin to support M.I.A. in Tripod, upon her cancellation they were granted a late-night headline slot in the more intimate confines of Crawdaddy in late June. This situation came as both a blessing and a disappointment to Chuck: “I’m not tripping on the fact that she’s not doing them, and I’m not excited at the fact that she’s not doing them. I really like seeing her, man, and I really like doing shows with her.” This Dublin performance came on the back of a series of Scandinavian tour dates with none other than member of the hip-hop royalty Jay-Z, shows which went some way to spreading the group’s name to new listeners, people who will “just stop and watch what’s on stage. They might not know who you are but they’ll stop and look cause you’re up there. You can get a lot of new ears from festivals.”

Rather than naming other acts as inspirations, the boys are driven by a hunger to constantly improve their skills and expand their repertoire. “We can always be better, or we can always make something iller.” For Chuck, the important thing to remember is that “there’s unlimited sounds in the world.” What makes them different is their uncanny ability to rap about everyday life while at the same time twisting ideas into knockout phrases, and making it seem completely effortless. The standout line, both in terms of their ability and their attitude, is when Chuck states that there’s “no sense in throwing punches, let’s do lunch man, you like me too, ain’t no future in your frontin’.” For Chuck however, this isn’t just about getting away from the violent clichés of gangster hip-hop. “Who the hell can’t say that line and feel like they can own that? I can’t say that I’m gona punch you in your jaw or some stuff like that, that’s just not my personality. I will, but that’s not something that I’m necessarily rapping about, because it doesn’t make sense.” Key for him is grabbing your attention with witty lines. “We like to spend our time being clever. It’s fun that way. If we just said what was blatantly evident we would lose steam, doing this would not be interesting at all. Our job is to find the coolest way to say it.”

While speaking of festivals and the notion that fans aren’t always interested in hearing new music in a live context, the Public Enemy performance of It Takes A Nation of Millions came up. While it is a sure-fire way of playing tracks that people know, it also seems a regressive step, celebrating the past rather than moving on to the future. “I’m kind of on the fence about that, all songs ain’t supposed to be done live. You have to be a fan, that’s kind of a niche thing. It’s gotta get old at some point, especially if you’re the dude doing the show.” The Cool Kids themselves grow tired of performing the same tracks, night after night, and so they are constantly writing and recording while on tour. As Mikey says, “there’s no specific time. It’s always going on.” As far as performing new tracks, Chuck is wary of straying too far from the familiar. “People won’t get up unless they recognise it or unless it smacks them in the face so you gotta teeter totter that fence between smacking them in the face and giving something they can relate to right off the bat. People’s attention spans are like this [clicks].” He is aware that at festivals people park themselves in front of a stage, while at a club the artist is always in competition with the bar or the bathroom. “People want the next song. Like, “Speed it up, let’s get it going.””

Mikey and Chuck are making the most of their international tours, but there are certain inescapable truths one must face on the road. “We’re not at the point yet where we get a bus with TVs and video games, so I can’t play Playstation 3” says Mikey. “I can’t go and sleep in all day and then wake up when I want to.” That said, he’s not about to give it up for the sake of a few extra hours sleep. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s fun and it’s necessary. A lot of people take touring for granted, and you got a lot of artists who just don’t tour, they’re like “fuck that shit, I’ll just put out songs, and I don’t gotta do shows”, and that’s pretty idiotic, because the whole in person aspect is a whole different world for the people that listen to your music.” This drive to spread their music is what keeps The Cool Kids busy, and they take every opportunity that is thrown their way. Featuring on DMC winner Craze’s Fabric and an Ed Banger showcase CD from Mixmag has helped to boost their profile worldwide, and Mikey does not take this lightly. “It’s all for the better, especially when it’s somebody with a good reputation, that is in a different lane than you are, spreading your music to other people that might not have heard of you before. Even when we got bootlegged with that Totally Flossed Out bootleg, we’re not really mad about it, that’s basically one of the reasons why we’re here today. People pay to get their stuff spread around like that man, and it happened for free!”

Following a riotous run-through of their oeuvre The Cool Kids’ manager sold tee shirts from a suitcase on stage, tee shirts which will no doubt find themselves being sold for large amounts on eBay. At their last show in February I was taken by Mikey’s attire, as he was wearing a Milkcrate-designed purple hoodie showing a blinged-out, Nike-wearing slice of cake. “Man that’s a collector’s item now. There are no more of those being made, those are gone man. That shit is rare man” Disappointed as I was to learn this, at least I know that, whatever about the tee shirts, their music is going to keep coming thick and fast. Well, at least until they stop enjoying themselves. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

Deerhunter

Photo, Loreana Rushe

Sometimes great music is cerebral, engaging the brain and gently stroking the synapses. Other times its visceral, punching you hard in the gut and grabbing you by the sex bits. Sometimes, like in the case of Deerhunter’s second album cryptograms, it can be both. In cryptograms, the American noise-rock outfit drew on difficult personal circumstances to record a record that charted a feedback driven course between suffocating freak-outs and blissful psychedelia by way of ambiguous instrumental interludes. It was wayward, challenging and one of the best albums of recent times. After touring the shit out of cryptograms the band returned home late last year feeling knackered and leaving fans worrying that Deerhunter were no more. They went into hibernation and frontman Bradford Cox focused his energy on his sample driven solo work released under the Atlas Sound moniker. One super Atlas Sound album later and it seems the Deerhunter juggernaut is roaring back into life, this time with a bunch of songs that (while still noisy) trade some of the more wigged out elements of cryptograms for a tighter, poppier sound. At the start of their first spate of gigs showcasing material from the forthcoming album microcastle, Analogue interviews the band before a Foggy Notions show in Whelans. Bradford in particular is in ebullient form. With his legs sprawled across the table and his hair falling across his forehead in a boyish bowl-cut, he seems energised, animated and full of opinions.

Analogue: I was a bit presumptuous and thought I was only interviewing Bradford so some of the questions will be directed just to you Bradford. But there are a good few questions that I’d like to direct at the band too?

Bradford Cox (lead singer): That’s totally okay, that’s totally okay.

Analogue: I saw earlier today on your blog you put up some nice photos of you all arriving in Ireland. Was that just this morning or have you been here longer?

Cox: Just this morning. I’ve gotten really quick on Flicker. Really the reason I did that is for my family but I’m also putting it on the blog just to keep the blog active. I was really disappointed with myself when I went on the Atlas sound tour, I just let the blog go dead. The blog is really important for the band, especially now that its straightened up into something that’s really music focused. Rather than just focused on silly things because I really feel like music is changing. The way its made and produced and the rules are kind of becoming more and more useless. For over a year now I’ve been giving away free music as me. It seems like now that’s becoming a more reasonable thing to do. Music doesn’t have to be made and you’ve to wait for months to hear it. I don’t really give a shit about the music press.

Analogue:: Woops

Cox: No I mean there are people in the music press I like but I do resent the way they have come to control the way music is manufactured and produced. They create this 4 month time lag between the creation of art and then it goes through these elitist filters and gets criticized before it reaches the audience. That’s bullshit. What do you think Josh?

Josh Fauver (bass guitar): I think that there’s a lot of industry loopholes you’ve to go through to make music anymore and I think its obnoxious and it hinders the process a lot.

Cox: Specifically the press though. I’m all up for music. I didn’t have much money growing up. But as soon as I heard of stuff like soulseek and napster, I was right on it. Exploring weird stuff like free jazz. Its just a great way to cross reference weird stuff you know.

Analogue: When you talk about the music press then, who are you referring to? Is it the big music websites?

Cox: Not necessarily. I mean the last Breeders album was leaked by a Spanish journalist and suddenly its all over the world.

Analogue: OK but I think even over here, many music fans’ first point of reference for music is the website pitchforkmedia.

Cox: Pitchfork isn’t bad . They won’t leak a record. They won’t compromise your property. As far as I know pitchfork has never done anything like that. Let me tell you something I resent. I resent someone else deciding when to leak your music for you. Like I’m not going to put our new album microcastle on the blog for free. Its an album we worked pretty hard on so its going to be more traditional. I’d like in the future with our albums to do something more unconventional.

Analogue: Like what?

Cox: Maybe give them away for free and sell them on vinyl only. I think CDs are dying. Vinyl, there was an article in a US magazine recently, like business week, and there is a huge surge in vinyl sales. Everyone talks about the failure of the record industry, but I say give the music away and if people like it and you produce something quality then people will want to own it on vinyl. Its an aesthetically interesting format. The music industry has gotten away with some shit over the years. Especially the 50s and 60s, records were like one or two great songs and a bunch of filler. But now people can fucking stream the whole album on myspace and you can hear the single in context with all the filler. So if the album is shit you know in advance and don’t waste your time.

Analogue: There’s a sense of that on your blog. Another band that seems to be happy to let the fans hear new stuff early or work in progress is Animal Collective. There are a lot of high quality recordings of exciting new stuff they are playing live that they seem happy to have out there.

Cox: Yeah their new stuff is really trancey. I’m really excited for them.

Analogue: Yeah I read on your blog that you went to see Animal Collective and it was one of the best gigs you saw. Now that you are touring with them, it got me thinking that one of my dream musical collaborations would be Animal Collective and Atlas Sound (Bradford’s side project).

Cox: You see the thing about these things is, I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t like to ask people to just do stuff with me. Plus we work with tapes and loops and stuff so it wouldn’t be that easy. But I have a very similar set up live, and I’m sure on this tour people are going to think I’m ripping them off. I think we come from a very similar place in terms of our spirit and what we do, using old sounds, mixing them with new sounds, looping, trance oriented stuff. But the problem a lot of the time, for me working with Animal Collective would mean we all have to load our samplers with new stuff. A lot of what we do is like tape music. So its not like a guitar where you just come up with a new chord. But yeah, I guess, I’ve thought about how cool that would be.

Analogue: Their new stuff is incredible though.

Cox: That’s had some influence on my end of Deerhunter. In an odd way, I’m so into what they are doing right now that its made me want to take Deerhunter in a new direction. They are so good at what they are doing I don’t want to see another band doing that type of music right now because they are pretty much dead on.

Analogue: I don’t think anyone could copy them if they tried.

Cox: Right. But ambience, electronic samples and stuff, and loops, this is the direction I want to go with my writing and this is gonna sound silly but I want Deerhunter to just be a pop band. Art pop, a band that makes records that have odd elements.

Photo, Loreana Rushe

Analogue:: This question is for Whitney. The last time Deerhunter played they had a different guitarist but now you’ve joined so the band remains a five piece. I believe this is your first live show with the band, how do you feel about going out live for the first time with Deerhunter?

Whitney Petty (guitarist): I puked up outside [laughter].

Cox: Did you?

Petty: Naww just kidding.

Analogue: I want to ask questions about the new record Microcastle. How far along is it? Are you just trying it out live or is it done?

Cox: Its finished. Its totally mixed and done.

Analogue: Are you happy with the finished results?

Cox: Yeah sure.

Analogue: Are you not going to tell me any more than that?

Cox: I was thinking internally, just about mastering tics. Just thinking about that sort of stuff.

Analogue: So what is it? Are you not far away enough from the record to talk about it yet?

Cox: All I know is I think its amazing. I think it’s a classic record.

W: All I know as an outsider, just coming in for the first time and hearing it is that it’s a really, really exciting album to hear. Its awesome.

Cox: I really feel like it’s a lot more put together. Its straightforward and direct. Not as ambiguous.

Analogue: So different to the usual Deerhunter sound then? I read somewhere that it was going to be more poppy?

Cox: Yeah sure. I’m sure its going to piss off some fans. Like some of the small army we’ve had from the start are probably going to be a bit confused and bewildered by why we are not going to go the way they expect. Like I’ve already had messages. Someone already sent me a bizarre message, an analogy that I did not understand. It was “just remember Bradford for every two people that liked crooked rain, crooked rain, there were 10 that hated it”. Like saying Pavement’s early stuff was weird and hard to listen to, but Crooked rain is more accessible but we lost our original fanbase. I don’t know what they were saying. I mean we don’t fucking sound like Pavement.
[Large discussion on the merits of which is the best pavement album ever follows for 2 minutes, then Bradford starts talking about Stephen Malkmus]

Cox: He’s such a snooty…

Analogue: Who is?

Cox: Malkmus.

Analogue: Really? You interviewed him once right?

Cox: I like him though. I don’t like throwing insults around

Analogue: Right what did you say? I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He’s one of those people.

Cox: I got really drunk beforehand so that I wouldn’t be really afraid and make a total ass of myself.

Analogue: well I had a few drinks tonight, just because I didn’t want to make a total arsehole of myself in front of you.

Cox: Oh yeah?

Analogue: I just had this feeling with you that I might say one thing, and you’d eat me for breakfast.

Cox: Well I don’t know why people think that about me, like what could you say?

Analogue: Well I could say something like…ah no.

Cox: What? What? Do it! Do it!

Analogue: Well just from other interviews I’ve read, I could say something like “you sound like a genre of music we call shoegaze. Have you heard of shoegaze?” and then you’d go on the attack.

Cox: I’d just be like, I hate Ride.

Fauver: He would leap across the table and throttle you.

Analogue: Oh yeah I read that somewhere, you hate Ride. Whats that about?

Cox: I hate Ride. They are fucking bad. I think they are one of the cheapest, like in the States you find Ride tapes in all the bins in the 2nd hand shops.

Analogue: At the end of the last tour, at the end you went on hiatus. Or how do you say that in a way that’s not an Irish accent?

Cox: Hi-ay-tus, that’s right.

Analogue: Well it seemed you were finding the cryptograms material wearying to play?

Moses Archuleta (drummer): We had been playing that stuff long before it even came out.

Analogue: But here in Dublin, it didn’t come across. You seemed to play a phenomenal gig from our perspective.

Cox: But that was exceptional. Sometimes things are exceptional.

Archuleta: I mean it was just us sort of going through the motions and we felt that the whole tour. But Dublin was the exception.

Analogue: Irish people, we love hearing bands tell us we’re the best fuckin crowd ever.

Cox: You guys got the one good show of that tour. That was so interpreted. Like a lot of people thought we were going to split up. But it was more of a case of I wanted to be home with my parents.

Analogue: Everyone thought it was the end of Deerhunter. Do you still feel the same way about the cryptograms stuff or now that you are back touring again has your relationship with the material improved?

Cox: I’m so excited to play all our stuff live. Especially now that Whitney’s joined because I had a lot of problems with Colin [the former guitarist] because he wasn’t exactly a team player. I mean I’m not gonna shit talk somebody but his work ethic was really bad. He wasn’t in it for the right reasons. He’s just not compatible with me psychologically. We’ve never had any chemistry. I’m already having a better time with Whitney in the practice sessions. If she doesn’t get a part, I don’t care. She can just make shit up. I’m not super-protective about how I make songs. Some days I am, but its like Colin wasn’t reliable if he was wasted, which was a lot.

Analogue: We met him after the last gig and he was sitting with us.

Cox: He’s such a douche

Analogue: He had drunk a bottle of cough syrup I think.

Cox: Yeah he’s rubbish at holding alcohol.

Analogue: He was pretty drooly, but we were getting on well with him. He didn’t rubbish the band or anything he was just really sort of… on the old cough syrup, the jaw was hanging down wide open.

Cox: Yeah [laughs].

Analogue: To change subject, Bradford you’ve expressed in one or two interviews that there isn’t enough noise or psychosis in indie rock?

Cox: I’ve pretty much given up on indie rock. I hate indie rock. I never listen to it anymore. Because indie rock to me is safe. Like college rock in the 80s. It has a lot to do with like economic oppression. It has a lot to do with rich kids. When I think of indie rock recently I think of sort of bands whose names I won’t mention appropriating African music.

Analogue: Will I say it? Vampire Weekend?

Cox: Yeah. New York, upper West side people.

Analogue: But in relation to what you think about noise. Do you not think that’s changing a bit now with bands like Fuck Buttons?

Cox: I always like a bit of noise, like I like a lot of a little bit of noise I like. That make sense? I mean I don’t like a small level of noise in a song. I mean I like a fucking noisy level of erotic… in my brain noise is what sexuality is in a lot of other people’s brains. I mean I get aroused by noise. I don’t mean physical, I’m being figurative here. But where most people might get lonely or horny or get the urge to give it to somebody or hook up, I get this urge to fucking like hear an exploding guitar sound. Hiss and feedback. Noise to me is like sexuality.

Analogue: Okay like visceral. And you don’t hear that anywhere in indie?

Cox: No not at all. Wait, the Raveonettes. They do a pretty good job. I mean I like Fuck Buttons. What I’m waiting for is a band that can take pop music and do that, not traditional noise pop.

Analogue: I read you say something about Patti Smith.

Cox: Yeah dangerous like Patti Smith. Exactly. And like sexually attractive. That’s what I’m waiting for. That would be my satisfaction.

Analogue: Your jerk-off record of the century?

Cox: Yeah [laughing]

Bradford will be back in Dublin with Atlas Sound supporting Animal Collective in Tripod on Monday May 19th. The entire Deerhunter gang return on June 14th to play Vicar Street with a bunch of other cool bands as part of the Foggy Notions Future Days festival.