Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category:
the interview show: the presets
The Presets are Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes. They met while studying classical music at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music. They are on Australia’s Modular Records, the same home of hype bands Cut Copy and Wolfmother.
The Presets make 80s-influenced electro with a harder edge, which often gets them compared to Depeche Mode, NIN and even Nitzer Ebb, but they also make the soft dreamy tracks that would make Cut Copy fans swoon.
Strangely enough, their experiences as The Presets wouldn’t change how they would interpret the classics, if they decided to throw in the towel and go back to Beethoven.
The Presets on the interview show
The Presets “This Boy’s In Love” (Lifelike remix)
The Presets “My People” (DIM remix)
the interview show: CR AVERY
CR Avery’s art is like a beautiful car wreck where poetry, song, harmonica and beatboxing are all twisted together into something you want to put into a museum. It has a timeless feel, yet is undeniably in the now.
I had been looking to interview the elusive CR Avery since I saw him perform at the CJSF Anniversary Party, where he opened for Secret Mommy no less. And I was warned that Avery is sometimes hard to track down.
Finally, he found some time to chat. So, we did the interview while he was standing on the sidewalk outside his Commercial Drive home, waiting for his lady’s mother to arrive for a special dinner so he could let her in. Apparently the apartment buzzer was broken, and you can hear him stop to say “hi” to all his people on the Drive as we talk.
CR Avery on the interview show
CR Avery “The Boxer Who Just Returned From London”
CR Avery “Hell Of A Hotel Of Harm”
the interview show: alan braxe
It’s impossible to discuss house music in the early 2000s without mentioning Alan Braxe. If you were high on E in a sweaty basement back in the day, you will know all his tunes. Even now, Stardust’s “The Music Feels Better With You” is a club staple, even classic.
Braxe, born Alain Queme, hails from Brax, a region in the southwest of France. And note, “Braxe” is pronounced like “ax.”
Recently, Braxe lit up the music blogs after he got into a scuffle with DJ Assault. Could this be the beginning of the DJ beef? After talking to Braxe, it is hard to imagine such a calm sophisticated French man is prone to fisticuffs. Listen to the show to hear the full story.
Alan Braxe on the interview show
Stardust “The Music Feels Better With You” (Sinclair remix)
the interview show: ewan pearson
Ewan Pearson is a producer—Rapture “Pieces of the People We Love”—a remixer—Goldfrapp “Train”, Ladytron “Evil”, Playgroup ”Make It Happen”, Franz Ferdinand “Outsider”, to name a few—and DJ… He tends to mention DJ last, but to most of his fans, this is his most important job. Pearson is the type of DJ that reaches beyond pyjama-patterned hoodyed hipsters to highly advanced aural sects.
Pearson also reveals which is his favorite remix of all time—and which remix is also the perfect track to put on whenever a DJ needs to go to the toilet.
Ewan Pearson on the interview show
Goldfrapp “Ride A White Horse” (Ewan Pearson Disco Odyssey Parts 1&2)
Depeche Mode “Enjoy the Silence” (Ewan’s 2004 remix)
the interview show: the teenagers
If you HAVE to listen to only one track this year, it’s “Homecoming” by The Teenagers. It is a laugh-your-ass-off-funny track—and at the same time it somehow manages to say something almost profound about those 20somethings wanting so desperately to be a character from the The Hills.
The Teenagers, however, are more than just that one kick ass song. They skewer geeky teenage obsession on “Starlett Johansson” and comment on those complete strangers so willing to be your new myspace/facebook best friend on “Fuck Nicole.”
Quentin from the band was surprisingly subdued—insisting that his life is not all about alcohol and ketamine, but “has some other stuff as well, like fruits and veggies.” He also revealed the family-friendly lyrics they use when performing the chorus to their controversial “Homecoming” song—“I touched my American crush”—and talked about his own crush on the original 90210’s Shannen Doherty.
The Teenagers on the interview show
The Teenagers “Starlett Johanson” (Les Petits Pilous Remix)
the interview show: glass candy
Ida No, one half of italo-disco act Glass Candy, was exhausted mentally, emotionally and spiritually after Glass Candy’s show, yet she was still gracious enough to chat with us in the dingy backroom at Richard’s On Richards. Collapsed on some steps, she sipped from a 4-litre jug of water to re-hydrate as the crew tore down the stage.
Most bands never want to do interviews after a show. Typically, they want to chat at soundcheck or sometime before the performance. When the show is over, bands want to party and hang out with their pals. Rumored to be very shy, Ida No likes to leave the time before a show to meditate, to prepare herself for the audience.
Although she was ready to sleep the entire ride home to Oregon, I still managed to get Ida to talk about metaphysics, the pet rabbit that brought Glass Candy together—and I even got her to rap a verse from Lil’ Troy’s “Wanna Be A Baller”!
Glass Candy on the interview show
Glass Candy “Digital Versicolor”
Glass Candy “Computer Love” (Kraftwerk cover)
the interview show: Kid Sister
Kid Sister is a self-described “good girl” from the Midwest, who got into the rap game with some help of her kid brother Josh from Flosstradamus.
AllMusic.com describes Kid Sister as “a tongue-in-cheek throwback to the first golden age of hip-hop, when it seemed like anyone, even your kid sister, could have a hit.”
And her skills have attracted the support of many, including Kanye West, who put her single “Pro Nails” on his Summer 2007 mixtape Can’t Tell Me Nothing, as well as Kayne West’s DJ, A-Trak, who is also Kid Sister’s man.
But she is quick to point out that she was gaining plenty of underground attention before Kanye and before A-Trak. Check out our chat with this “hungry” upstart, who was no afraid to school us when we got it twisted.
Can you believe, just a year ago, she was working for Bath and Bodyworks?
Kid Sister on the interview show
Kid Sister (featuring Kanye West) “Pro-Nails”
Kid Sister “Control” (JFK from MSTRKRFT remix)
Chromeo “Tenderoni” (Sinden remix featuring Kid Sister)
the interview show: mobius band
The Mobius Band make a very accessible of electronic-indie rock hybrid. I think a Details magazine music critic described them best, by saying the guys are “rewriting pop songs through washes of electronica, furious shoegaze guitar, and Krautrock repetition, this Brooklyn-by-way-of-Shutesbury-Mass trio have made an album every bit as endlessly playable as their moniker would indicate.”
The band’s unappreciated album Heaven is the perfect music for the latest critically-acclaimed 20something angst film. Something starring Shia LaBeouf and Natalie Portman and directed by Cameron Crowe. The pitch would go something like this… “A burnout 20something guy has an unsatisfying job and takes it out on his dedicated girlfriend. She dumps him and it becomes the catalyst for him to quit his deadend job take a life-altering, epiphanies-in-the-rain type road trip.”
Why everyone doesn’t know about the Mobius Band, I can’t quite explain, but until everyone notices them, they are the soundtrack for my bittersweet life. And I kinda don’t wanna let you know about them, cuz then they won’t be all mine.
Mobius Band on the interview show
Mobius Band “The Loving Sounds of Static” (Junior Boys remix)
the interview show: Caribou
Dan Snaith admits that he is a complete nerd. (He has a PhD in Mathematics.) But more importantly, he makes electronic music strongly influenced by the Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys sound. A few years ago, most people knew him as Manitoba. But a strange lawsuit put an end to that. Snaith is tired of talking about the whole ordeal in interviews, so I avoided the subject. However, it is an interesting story, so I lifted it from exclaim! magazine below.
From exclaim! magazine…
When electronic psych-pop wizard Dan Snaith was greeted by an email from someone who (sort of) shared his nom de plume Manitoba (under which Snaith released two well-received albums, most notably the creative breakthrough of 2003’s psychedelic wonderwall Up In Flames), little did he know that this stranger was in actuality a hater intent on taking his name away from him right at a time when the buzz was spreading like wildfire. But with one simple click of the mouse, Snaith was looking head-on into the malicious wishes of a man named Handsome Dick Manitoba.
“He was like, ‘You gotta change your name,’ and we were just like, ‘Are you kidding? This is the most ridiculous thing ever,’” recalls Snaith.
No stranger to the realms of the ridiculous, Handsome Dick Manitoba (real name: Richard Blum) achieved a small amount of recognition in the mid-’70s with his New York-based group of bratty upstarts the Dictators, which The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll describes as “much closer to brazenly amateurish heavy metal than punk.” In 1976, Handsome Dick had a famous near-death experience at CBGB after heckling transvestite rocker Wayne/Jayne County, who retorted to Dick’s comments by planting a microphone stand into Manitoba’s skull. You’d think the man would’ve learned right then and there — being a hater doesn’t make you friends.
At the time of his email encounter with Handsome Dick, Ontario’s Manitoba was juggling writing his PhD thesis and the Up In Flames tour. “I consulted a lawyer in the UK and he was like, ‘No, this will be fine, and it’ll be fine in Canada,’” says Snaith. “Then we did a show in L.A. and I got called to the door with like, ‘Somebody’s here to see you’ or whatever, and [Handsome Dick had] hired a private investigator from the other side of the country to come to the show and serve me with a subpoena. I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ That’s when I started realising, as funny as this is, it’s serious shit.”
After consulting American lawyers about the situation, Snaith was informed that it would cost him about $500,000 U.S. to fight the lawsuit (an amount Snaith obviously couldn’t afford), and that he still stood a good chance of losing if he decided to go through with it. It became a huge source of frustration for Snaith, but his kind nature won out in the end.
“It got to the point where I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter that this case is ridiculous, it doesn’t matter that in some sense I should fight this because he’s getting away with murder.’ I just realised that if I spend all my time thinking about this and dealing with this annoying little guy, that’s just such a waste of my time, so I was like ‘Why don’t I just change my name and move on?’ Immediately upon realising that, it was kind of this release, like, ‘Yeah, it doesn’t matter buddy. Do whatever you want.’ Out of principle it would’ve been good to be able to say, ‘No, no, no, you can’t go around bullying people with lawsuits,’ but at the end of the day I don’t want to have spent all my time arguing with some guy.”
Instead Dan Snaith took some acid and went on a hike in the woods with some friends. While trekking through the woods, he stumbled across a bear. The bear told him to call himself “Caribou” and that was that.
Dan Snaith aka Caribou on the interview show
Caribou - “Melody Day” (Four Tet remix)
Caribou - “She’s the One” (Hot Chip remix)
the interview show: the cliks
Lucas Silveira, lead singer of The Cliks, has said, “rock is the best place to be who you are.” Rock has a long tradition of gender exploration from Bowie to Freddie Mercury to 80s metal bands. Lucas himself is one of the most visible transgendered persons (female to male) in the music industry.
That said, the Cliks are a straight up rock band and they have have done a killer cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River.”
FYI: clit + dick = The Cliks!
The Cliks on the interview show
The Cliks “Cry Me A River” (Justin Timberlake cover)
