NEW MUSIC: IN CONVERSATION with BEAUTIFUL MECHANICA

Photography by Eleonora C. Collini

Fusing the electronic sonorities of New Wave with the aesthetic of New Romanticism, Beautiful Mechanica (a.k.a. Graham Sampson on vocals/programming/keys/guitar, Van Naarden on guitar and Porcelain on keys/vocals) have created a unique sound, which is exquisitely dandy and dark, as contemporary as revivalist. 

So far they have only released the single "Always the Same", but their debut album is in the making, and they have already been gathering praise from critics and gaining many fans.

I caught up with frontman Graham Sampson and guitarist Van Naarden to discuss their influences, the Hotel Chelsea, Rockabilly and fashion. 

How would you define your music? 

GRAHAM: Reassuringly old, refreshingly new. Dark and romantic, electronically tinged. I’ve termed the expression electromantic. I think that covers it suitably well! 

What is the idea behind the name “beautiful mechanica”? 

VAN: The name embodies our sound: computerised (mechanical) beats and bass overlain with analogue beauty, voices, guitars, pianos. 

You recently released your debut single “Always the Same”. How do you think it has been received? 

GRAHAM: We’ve had nothing less than praise and kind words from those who’ve encountered it. The joy of being a modern, DIY musician is that once released, one’s work has an infinite life. In the past, where one’s validity as a musical artist relied on patronage of record companies, a release’s vitality was based on chart positions and remaining un-deleted. Now, we can be more long term and as each new person encounters us via our live work or social media influenced investigation, each release is a new thing, it’s re-born every time a new light is shone upon it. 

You have lots of other nice songs ready… are you planning to release a debut album anytime soon? 

GRAHAM: Yes, we are. All of the songs for the album, This Hotel Has Ghosts, have been recorded. Half have been finished and are ready for mastering. The remaining songs just require overdubs and final pre-master mixing. The plan is for the album to be finalised, printed and ready to ship for the beginning of 2016. 

What inspires you most: people, places or things? 

GRAHAM : All of those things. People, places, atmospheres, feelings, memories. 

VAN: I believe all are important. A thought provoking work of art; a good deed; a feat of engineering... there is inspiration in everything and everyone. You just need to be open and breathe it in. 

I know the New York’s Hotel Chelsea has been one of the biggest sources of inspiration for you. What makes that place so special? 

GRAHAM: It’s like a giant tableau of life in all of its beauty, darkness, art and extremities. For every worthless punk that air guitared a Sid Vicious pose, there is a painter, poet, musician who created their masterworks within its walls. It’s incredible to think what scattered across its floors and over the decades so many legends have lived and created timeless works there. 

What was the record that made you decide you wanted to make music? 

GRAHAM : My switch was tripped by Are Friends Electric by Tubeway Army. The six months of
June –December 1979 was when music, through Tubeway Army (a.k.a. Gary Numan), became my everything. Music and musicians create tribes and Numan identified me as someone who favoured the alternative, the dark, the beautiful, the haunting. From there I discovered Japan, John Foxx, Cocteau Twins and points in between. 

VAN: I can pin point exactly as it was the day John Lennon was murdered in December 1980. The radio, the television and all other media were awash with John Lennon and The Beatles music, which hadn’t been on my radar. I remember walking home from school on a wet dark winter’s afternoon and feeling sad. Looking back that was odd, as I didn’t really understand whom John Lennon was at the time, but felt he was important and was affected by the nation's emotion. Consequently, when home I remember getting out my mum’s Beatles records and placing them on the kitchen table. I put on Beatles For Sale, as I liked the autumnal styling of the cover, and here started a love affair with The Beatles and music. The more I played the records, the more I knew I wanted to be in a band, and an interest in playing guitar ensued not long after. 

Graham, you have been in a successful Smiths tribute band for a very long time. How does it feel to finally write your own music? 

GRAHAM: It’s been a return to writing and performing my own music. The two eras of my original music have been punctuated by my transition to being a tribute artist. That role is confined to the stage, and I view it more as a theatrical role, as I am having to embody the presence of someone else. Assuming the image of Morrissey on stage was easier for me than perhaps those others who are younger, as I was a teenager when The Smiths existed. My sensibilities were formed by my interest in Numan and Sylvian in particular, but Morrissey built on those, and so the adult me is shaped by sensitivities formed in those years. With a decade of “being Morrissey” done, I needed to reclaim myself. I literally did need to sing in my own voice, write my own words. Being Morrissey is nice, being me is better. And transitioning from original to tribute to original is a journey less often taken, especially when one has been in such a globally known tribute act. 

Van, you also play in a couple of rockabilly bands. Can you please talk about them? 

VAN: Rockabilly is pure and honest music. This was the music genre that grew out of Country in the US in the '50s, and it was the birth of Rock 'n' Roll - Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Johnny Burnette and so on, great artists who all had great bands. Without guitarists like Scottie Moore, Cliff Gallup, Carl Perkins and their influence, there would be no George Harrison, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck etc. The Stray Cats and The Polecats kept the revival going in the '80s, and in more recent times acts like Imelda May have been successful in crossing over to the mainstream. 

As for the bands I play in, Carlos & The Bandidos are a very well known band on the Rockabilly global circuit for some twenty-five years. They grew up on the scene with Imelda May and Boz Boorer. The band’s Mexican/West Coast rockabilly style is unique, and we simply don’t sound like any other band. For me, the best part is that I get to play with fantastic musicians. There will be a new album coming out next year. 

I also play with The Savage Hornets, which is more a bluesy/rockabilly affair. We were lucky enough to record the debut album at Imelda May and Darryl Higham’s studio, which they subsequently released on their record label. Again, all brilliant musicians such as Rob Tyler, who has played drums with so many acts, but is probably best know for playing with Restless. 

I also love the rockabilly styling. From the stage the crowds look amazing: girls in their '40-50s dresses with bright hair and make up complimenting their colourful body art, and guys in their '50s shirts and Levi’s with the obligatory turn-ups and chains. Rockabilly fans are passionate and take the music and styling very seriously. I love it! 

Beautiful Mechanica played their debut gig at Islington Academy in July. What other upcoming gigs do you guys have? 

GRAHAM: There’s plenty in the pipeline, with many as supports to well known bands. By presenting ourselves to their audiences we hope that we can become the favourite new band of those who loved '80s and contemporary electronic, romantic music. 

What is your worst fashion secret? 

GRAHAM: For several years I worked in the Fashion Industry – that’s my secret, now revealed. I feel dirty just saying that. If you mean clothes I should never have worn, oh they never stop..the last is constantly superceded by the next. I’m sure some will say my Velvet Jacket worn at our debut show was ill-advised. The pains of the Dandy…

VAN: I don’t really like any of my clothes in general, but I think the '90s were pretty rubbish. Everything baggy. I look back at photos and cringe. 

If you could have a super power, what would it be? 

GRAHAM: To be invisible. 

VAN: X-Ray vision 

Beautiful Mechanica are playing the following UK dates:

Friday October 30th - Holmfirth Picturedrome (supporting Toyah)
Saturday October 31st - Manchester Academy 2 (supporting Heaven 17)

Check them out here

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PHOTOS: BEAUTIFUL MECHANICA at 02 ISLINGTON ACADEMY

I am honoured to have done the cover of Beautiful Mechanica debut single!

I also caught up the band playing their debut show at London's O2 Islington Academy.
Here are some photos

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NEW MUSIC: IN CONVERSATION with OH! GUNQUIT

All Photography by Eleonora C. Collini

Combining Surf, Exotica, Garagepunk, 50's R&B and Twisted Freak-a-Billy, Oh! Gunquit are one of the most interesting and unique London musical acts of the last couple of years. 

The nucleus of the band started in 2010 when neighbours Tina Swasey (lead vox/trumpet) and Simon Wild (guitars/vox) met frequenting a Camden DJ cellar club.  Evolving into a five-piece over the years, Oh! Gunquit released a couple of 7"singles before recording their debut full-length, Eat Yuppies and Dance, which is out on the 21st March via Dirty Water Records.  

The album is a superb showcase of frenetic guitars, pounding snare drums, vibrant exotic sounds and kitsch humour that catapult you into a world of B-Movies' adventures.

I caught up with Tina and Simon to discuss the band's story, their debut record, life in Camden and their worst fashion secrets.

How did you two meet?

SIMON: We met at our local pub, the Constitution in Camden. We were going to the Nitty Gritty club nights there, and then one night, while we were walking home, Tina sang a song and we decided to start writing music together. Then it developed from there. 

TINA: Sam, another neighbour at the time, had a drum kit and she had played in a band a bit before, so we decided to do a little three-piece together. 

Do you remember what was the first band you realised that you both loved? 

TINA: I think we just realised that we liked a certain type of music that might be loud, fuzzy, garage-y, and throbbing. I grew up listening to a lot of punk, I went to many punk gigs back in the days, and with my friends I did a few shows at this place called Garageland in Denver, Colorado, where I am from originally, to just go to the other side a little and enjoy putting things and crystalizing them in a band. 

From a trio you then developed into a five-piece. How did you meet the rest of the band? SIMON: We had a few lineups as a three-piece, but then we wanted to add a saxophone to have an exotic kind of sound, sort of dirty, sexy R&B thing, so we got our mutual friend Kieran Ridgers in the band. We played as a four-piece for a while, with a few different drummers, till Alex De Renzi joined us permanently. Finally, while recording the album, to make the sound a bit fuller we got another mutual friend, Veronica Arcilla, to play bass, and then she stayed.

What is the story behind your band’s name?

SIMON: It’s a play on the name of a place in Maine, Ogunquit, which was an artists’ colony in the 1800's named after the Abenaki Indians partial to the idea of all gun quitting. 

TINA: That is one place where I would go to every year and I consider home in spite of having moved around quite a bit. My dad is quite bad at telling jokes, which I think I’ve inherited as well, and he once told this joke about how that place got its name: there was a French fur trader that spent the whole winter there with the Indians, and to thank the chief he gave him a gun, and then went his way up to the French Canadian territories trapping beavers and stuff. When he came back down, he saw the chief holding the gun over his head saying "Oh gun quit, oh gun quit" because the gun had broken, and that’s how the place got its name.

Your debut record, Eat Yuppies and Dance. is coming out on the 21st March. Tell me a bit about the production. Did you record it all analogue? 

TINA: Yeah, we recorded at Gizzard studio in Hackney Wick. There is a crazy evangelical or Lutheran church where people are singing and playing while you are recording, so it’s a very nice atmosphere. The producer, Ed Deegan, was very helpful at putting the tracks down, he is an absolute wizard. 

SIMON: Yeah, Ed is great. We decided to record there because we had a lot of friends that had recorded there already and Ed is into the same kind of music we make. Also they have lots of great old gears there, like organs and great amps. 

Why would you “eat a yuppie”? 

TINA: It’s the idea of this kind of aspirational society of being careerist and getting a mortgage, that old outlook on life which is just not conducive to society on a long term at all. And you just want the society to digest those people and spit them out properly. 

What is the idea behind the album cover? 

TINA: We were at a gig in a crazy old warehouse in Artwerp and there was this guy who had a art 

show upstairs and sat around with scissors, and people were giving him interesting pictures of things that he was continuingly cutting and putting together in crazy ways, putting them on top of paintings and collaging things. 

SIMON: I think the story is that he had found a few old paintings and he decided to subvert them with clashing images to create a strange collection of styles. So our idea was also to cut out different types of images related to some of the songs. 

TINA: Anyone can cut down pieces and reconstruct them visually, relating to certain emotions, without necessarily being a painter or a drawer. 

Are there ever sounds you hear in nature or elsewhere that you'd like to incorporate into a song? 

TINA: Yeah, for instance you hear songs that have heart beats incorporated and I always go for them! 

SIMON: The tube train goes underneath the flat, so we should probably incorporate that into a song. 

Tina, you are originally from the States. How do you enjoy living in London? 

TINA: I say I am from Denver, Colorado, though my family moved every two years in the States because my dad was in the military, but my mom is from Ireland. As for London, I initially struggled to stay here for a year or two, but then I finally got it, I figured out how to use public transport, find some work and meet some good people. You are always surprised by the different kinds of people, food and culture. It’s like the whole world on your plate in a city. 

You guys live in Camden, which historically used to be the hub of the London music scene, whereas now everything seems to happen in Hackney. How would you compare the two? 

SIMON: Camden glory years in music are sort of gone, as lots of venues got corporatised and lots have moved, because nobody can’t afford to live there anymore, so it’s not the same vibe as it used to be. But there are still some old coops trying to exist, though you have to search a little harder to find those pockets of interesting things. 

TINA: Yeah, you have to go where it’s cheaper and cheerful when you are young, and in a big city you end up where you can afford to live. But Camden has a lovely history of some of the old revolutionary groups and also blues-based areas, and it still has a nice vibe. 

Tell me five things you'd need to survive on a desert island. 

TINA: A good cutting tool, a very large flint stone to light fires, though maybe matches would work better. Then goats, as you can make instruments and milk out of them. Then chickens. as I love eggs. A pair of surf boards as well. Ok I have done this too seriously…. 

What is your worst fashion secret? 

TINA: I bloody love 1970s huge pointed collars. Sometimes they even hit you in the eye when it’s windy and you say “yep, that is my collar”. 

SIMON: Bad underwear I bought at Primark. 

What colour? 

SIMON: it’s not about the colour, it was more a panic buying…. 

What’s next for Oh! Gunquit? 

SIMON: Just playing more shows around. Along with two London shows, we are playing a couple of dates in France soon and we are in the process of adding some European dates as well. We are also talking to Detroit garage-rock producer Jim Diamond and hopefully should record with him this summer.

Oh! Gunquit are playing at Blues Kitchen on the 19th March and at Elixir Bar on the 21st March.

Eat Yuppies and Dance is out on the 21st March via Dirty Water Records.

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IN CONVERSATION WITH CRUSHED BEAKS

All photography by Eleonora C. Collini

Combining fuzzy, shoegazey dreampop with clever, intense lyricism and dark, quirky aesthetic, Crushed Beaks is one of the coolest up-and-coming London bands of the last couple of years.Starting out as a duo in 2011, guitarist-vocalist Matthew Poile and drummer Alex Morris released three singles and an EP, before recruiting bassist Scott Bowley last year. Finally, the band’s long-waited debut album Scatter is out on 9th February via their own label Matilda Records.

I caught up with the trio in a lovely pub in Battersea, not far from where most of them live, to discuss their new record, horror films and how relevant music videos can still be today.

Matt and Alex, you formed the band in 2011 and then Scott joined you last year. How did you actually meet him?

Matt: Scott used to live with a friend of mine that played in a band. I had known him for quite a long time, but I didn’t realise he was a musician as well. Then, one day I just saw a picture of him holding a bass guitar on Facebook, and after he came down to one of our gigs in Hackney, I talked to Alex about him. We had tried out a few bass players before, but you need to find the right person, someone that could really fit in.

And what do you think he has brought to the table?

Matt: Some quality bass playing for sure. He does backing vocals too, and he knows his way around with delay pedals.

Scatter was inspired by a chapter from Music Communication, a 2004’s book about the relationship between music and the moving image…..

Alex: I think that book is actually something that influenced our video-making more than our musical aesthetic. We are all into films and would like to make interesting, different videos, and that is probably where the association comes from more than our music itself.

Matt: That is also something we had in common when we first started. Alex and I had known each other for a very long time, but it was only when we started talking about specific types of films that we realised we really had something to talk about. I don’t think that necessarily influenced our music though, more the visual aspect of it, like for instance our artworks.

Speaking of artworks, what is the idea behind the new album’s cover?

Matt: My cousin makes these very interesting images, and we used one of them for the front sleeve. It’s kind of unclear what it is.

It looks like three hands one on top of each other….

Matt: No, it’s actually a 3D scan, a rendering of a fossilised elephant’s tooth, a prehistoric type of elephant. My cousin was working with the Natural History Museum to create these renderings to study those elephant’s teeth and find out more about them. Basically the teeth of these creatures wore down as they ate, and once they wore down to a certain level the elephants couldn’t eat anymore, in spite of being perfectly healthy in any other way. I just found that idea very interesting. I liked the story behind it, but the main thing for me was this really striking image. I did the artwork myself as usual, and I also got the help of some friends of mine that run a graphic design agency, as this time I wanted the full package. I really like the typography as well, it makes it look a bit more professional than if I had done it myself.

Alex: Our first three singles did fit very well together as they had a similar artwork because we were recording them all at the same time. Then the EP was the next step up in terms of what we were trying to do with music, and this record is a further step up. So the artworks all have a different approach and represent our music and growth over time.

Scott: Now we also have our own logo, as before we didn’t have an official one. I think it looks very cool with the letters and everything, and all the singles associated with this album are also linked together visually.

Your music videos have always been an important part of what you do. How relevant as a promotional tool do you think videos can still be today?

Alex: They are still very relevant. If you watch something and you like it, that will obviously get you to listen to the music as well. Also, I think a video can have an effect on the music, you can listen to a song, then play the video and that can completely change it. It actually works the other way around too, as the music can change a video as well. That’s why I really like silent films, because you can put a different music to it and it will be a completely different thing. So yes, videos are important as a promotional tool, as we all watch music videos, don’t we?

You guys are big fans of horror films, Dario Argento's in particular. Would you ever consider scoring a horror film in the future?

Alex: We were actually approached by someone that runs a film club in London sort of casually at a promotional event Matt and I went to. He wanted to do a silent screening of an old film and was looking for a band to do it, so after discussing it with Matt I told him that we would be interested. Now we also have a new person on board, so it would work even better. Scoring a film is something in the pipeline, it might happen with him or with someone else, but it will definitely happen at some point.

And what challenges do you think that would entail?

Alex: I think it would be very difficult, as you need to decide straightaway what you want the film to be

like. For instance, in Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror there is a scene where Nosferatu walks away from the camera, and in the score, which has been used for most of these films, there is a very sinister beat. But I once went see it at the Prince Charles cinema [in central London] and there was a live band playing a post-rocky, at times jazzy score, and in the same scene where Nosferatu walks away they played a little more comedic music, which gave a completely different atmosphere. So you need to sit down and discuss how the music should affect the film and what you want to bring to the table before you start composing anything.

Matt: I think we would probably use a very different set-up.

Alex: Yes, it would be less poppy and there would be keyboards and stuff like that.

What do you think of contemporary horror films?

Alex: I think they are generally pretty good. It’s the same with everything, there is lots of good and lots of bad stuff. There are some good French, Swedish ones recently, also Australian, English and even American. People always say that American horror cinema is dead, but I completely disagree. I think it has never been a thing that is gone away, though maybe now they’re making more bad films available to be seen by people. But you just don’t focus on the bad, you just focus on the good.

Lets talk about the new album’s production. You wrote it in London, but you recorded it in Rome, in the studio of Italian film score composer Fabio Frizzi. How did the whole thing come about?

Matt: We went to one of his shows at The Union Chapel [in London] and we got to meet him afterwards. We talked about all the films he scored, and he told us that he had a studio in Rome and offered us to let us use it for a week to record the album, which we gladly accepted.

Alex: Yes, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse. And also it was in Rome, which is such a beautiful city.

Matt: Yes, it was amazing to be away from normal life and to completely focus all our attention on this one project, realising something we had been working on for a long time. Before we left we did a last session in London with our producer Pete Hutchings to tidy the arrangements up, and once we were in Rome it was just a question of getting everything that was in our head down and record it, trying to make it sound as true to what we imagined as we could. It was pretty much just the three of us 24 hours a day, we even slept in the same room.

You just mentioned Pete Hutchings who, along with Scatter, has produced most of your stuff…. What impact do you think he has had on your music?

Matt: He just has a good way to get down to the bare essentials of the song and strip away everything unnecessary by just putting down the melody at the heart of it and keeping a solid and consistent sound throughout. He has a really positive effect on the songs.

Alex: Also, on a personal level he is very enthusiastic and we get along very well. He gets you in the mood and really motivated. When I look at him while I am playing something I can see a smile on his face.

Matt: Yeah you have been in the booth trying to do your take with your headphones on and when you look through the window, instead of seeing someone that sits at his desk, you see Pete cheering, and that is very encouraging.

The new record will be released on your own label Matilda Records. Can you tell us about the label a bit?

Matt: This time we wanted to do it ourselves to give us more flexibility. We are not totally on our own though, as we have a good team of people working with us and helping us put things together.

What there a record that somehow changed your life and made you decide to make music?

Matt: I don’t think there was just one record.

Alex: Yeah, I think it happened organically. I don’t remember a moment in my life where I heard a record and decided that I wanted to play the drums. I managed to get hold of an old drum kit from someone in my family, then I played around with it a bit, and from that my decision of making music developed organically.

Scott: Also, over the years your taste changes. I think I started playing pop/rock music around the time the first Gorillaz album came out. It has a hip-hop style, but it also has some riff-based songs, and I think the way it covers different styles opened up my mind. So in a way, that’s when I started feeling very passionate about music and wanted to play an instrument, but at the same time it’s so hard to place just one record that influences you today

Originally published on London in Stereo

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IN CONVERSATION WITH FEATURE

All Photography by Eleonora C. Collini

One of the things I love most about music is when there is a big sense of community. and that’s what is happening in the super vibrant neighbourhood of Hackney (London) right now, thanks to a new wave of interesting underground music scene with bands willing to support each other and often even share members.

Among these cool emerging bands, a personal favourite is Feature, a.k.a. Liv Willars on guitar/vocals, Jen Calleja
 (Sauna Youth) on drums/vocals and Heather Perkins (Slowcoaches) on bass/vocals. Their music is quite hard to define. Some label it as melodic drone-punk, but I actually prefer the way the band describes it: simply “unpop”.

Following the 2013’s EPs Memory and Culture of the Copy, the trio recently put out Tourists - a split EP with friends Slowcoaches. Recorded live by Alexander Bradley at Hackney’s Audio Underground,  the record (which contains two new tracks and a cover of Wire’s “Mannequin”) was released digitally as well as being available as a limited risograph poster/download at their UK tour dates last September. Feature, a cassette featuring songs from their previous EPs, is also about to come out first on Australian label Ruined Smile.

I met up with the band in Stoke Newington, where they all live, to discuss their writing process, lyrics and why it's totally wrong to call them a Riot Grrrl band.

Eleonora: Liv and Jen, you started out as a duo in 2012, then Heather joined you after moving to London earlier this year. How did you actually meet her?

Jen: I first saw Heather’s other band Slowcoaches playing with our friends Omi Palone at Wild World Festival in Brighton maybe a year and an half before we actually met, and I remember thinking they were such an incredibly powerful band and she in particular was so amazing. Though we didn’t know each other at all, both Slowcoaches and Feature were on the same label, Tye Die Tapes, so we were part of the same music scene and merging together was a natural thing.

Heather: Then we finally met through friends. I know Liv’s boyfriend from when I lived in Leeds through my boyfriend at the time, George Mitchell, who plays in Eagulls. After moving to London last January, I asked Jen and Liv if I could join the band, but they told me to shut up!

Jen: That’s because I thought she was joking! When I realised she wasn’t I thought it was perfect as Liv and I had been talking about getting a bass player, but after playing together for two years we were worrying about bringing in someone else who genuinely liked our music.

The songs featured on the Tourists EP were the first written as a trio. How did you writing process change?

Jen: Writing together is so easy. When it was just Liv and I, we always had this brutal honesty, which is very important when you write as a band because you can get frustrated very quickly if you don’t like what your bandmates want to do. And it stayed the same now that Heather is in the band too.

Heather: Also, we all share vocal parts, and thankfully we all have quite a good sense of what each of us will be doing. For me it was very easy to go from a band where I sing with just another person to a band where there are actually three people singing.

Jen: It’s the same for me with Sauna Youth. With them I can’t do a lot of freely stuff now as the two vocals are meant to be the same, so if I ever do a vocal flourish I would be told that is not happening, because it doesn’t fit with the band. With Feature it’s different.

The lyrics of Culture of the Copy were inspired by the omonimous book by Hillel Schwarz. What inspired the Tourists EP?

Jen: Similar things. That book is about doubles, repeats and translations throughout different cultures. The lyrics are highly pretentious because I write them and always avoid typical subject matters like parties or falling in love. The lyrics of “Wisdom Teeth” from the new EP are about a kind of objective truth, as the song references to the notion that when observed, light particles change, because electrons are never in one place at the same time. And “Tourism fiction” is about that specific genre of fiction by writers who try to raise the prominence of their small hometowns by setting their novels in those places. That was because I wanted to write a fiction about my small hometown. The lyrics are always the very last thing we write. Like for instance for Culture of the Copy, when we were on our train to go to the studio in Sheffield, I had brought just half of the lyrics and a copy of the actual book with me to read together and find ideas that we liked, then we wrote the lyrics on the actual day we recorded it.

Are you currently working on any new material?

Jen: Yes. We played shows almost every weekend since June, then we had a month off when we did nothing and got very depressed. But now it’s time for a proper album and we are hopefully going to record it before next summer.

You covered Supergrass “Caught By The Fuzz’” and Wire “Mannequin”. Would you mention them among your music influences?

Liv: Personally I wouldn’t. It was actually Jen’s idea to cover that Supergrass song. I initially wasn’t sure about it, but now I am a converted Supergrass fan. As for Wire, I was always aware of them, but I had never been a huge fan, so that was just a nice chance to go back and have a proper listen.

Heather: I am not a huge Supergrass fan either, but I am a big Wire fan. I think Pink Flag is one of the best records ever written. We decided to cover “Mannequin” before we realised another band also had done that, but I just wanted to do it anyway as I think it does work very well in terms of what we can do with the instruments.

Jen: I had just heard “Caught By The Fuzz” played after a gig. Whenever you think about covering a song is mainly about the vocals, but that song is also so punk, yet full of harmonies.

London is a city that offers many opportunities for musicians, but at the same time there is a lot of competition. How difficult do you think it is for young London-based bands to stand out? 

Heather: The music we make is about the community we are part of regardless of what city that’s in. And we all have lots of friends that support each other in making music. When I was living in Leeds, many people were complaining that’s quite difficult to make a living outside London, but at the moment there actually seems to be a lot of focus on bands that are outside of London.

Jen: If you live in a smaller city like Brighton there will only be one big show on Friday and everybody will go to that, whereas in London there are so many shows every night. When we went on tour we saw a bit of difference in terms of show culture. I think we all agreed that Sheffield is probably the best place to play, because shows are busy and people are enthusiastic. For us what matters is not that a show is busy but that people actually have a good time.

Liv: Yeah, we have always been in bands as that’s just a natural thing for us. We really like playing shows and going to friends’ shows too, but we want to enjoy it for just what it is rather than seeing it as a pathway to somewhere else.

You wrote a couple of very interesting articles about feminism and Riot Grrrl bands. How much do you think the fact that journalists abuse the definition Riot Grrrl to describe almost every band whose members are mainly women has to do with lazy journalism and how much with gender discrimination?

Jen: Every single band can tell you how annoyed they are by comparisons or mixed-up genres. But in this case when a band of women is called Riot Grrrl is not just about mixing up genres, it’s actually a stereotype based on a gender. In spite of not sounding like a Riot Grrrl band at all, we have been called that hundreds of times and even Sauna Youth, where I am the only girl, were called that for not other reason than I am a woman. So it’s lazy journalism fundamentally, but it is also discriminatory. We just want to make music and not be constantly reminded that we are different. There are other bands that actually like being called Riot Grrrl. It also depends on the genres I think. Like for instance in hardcore punk there is still a big problem with misogyny.

You can catch Feature at the following dates over the coming months:

January 8th 2015 - Old Blue Last, London w/ Claw Marks, Witching Waves & Van Stonholdt

January 24th 2015 - Gold Sounds / Sockformation ‘Idaho’, The Star of Kings, London w/Tyrannosaurus Dead, Doe, Thalassocracy, Warmhammer, Hundredth Anniversary, Native Birds, Rad Stewart & Grubs

February 2015 - London, Tourists 7" EP launch TBA

February 2015 - Leeds, TBA

February 2015 - Sheffield, TBA

March 13th 2015 - Fawn Spots Album Launch, The Great Gatsby, Sheffield w/ Fawn Spots

April 3rd 2015 - Wales Goes Pop Festival, Cardiff, Wales

May 1st-3rd 2015 - Odd Box Records Weekender, The Shacklewell Arms

Originally published on The 405

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PHOTOS: GIRLPOOL - ALEX G - DOLOMITE MINOR

Here are a few cool up-and-coming bands I recently photographed

GIRLPOOL- More photos here

ALEX G - More photos here

DOLOMITE MINOR - More photos here

NEW MUSIC: IN CONVERSATION with OMI PALONE

Photography by Eleonora C. Collini

After a sold-out self-released cassette and a couple of split 7 inches in 2012, London-based Omi Palone have finally put out their self-titled debut album. Showcasing post-punk melodies beautifully interwoven with jangly guitars, hypnotic rhythms and deadpan, spacy vocals, Omi Palone is a joint release between Faux Discx and new label Negative Space.

Just a couple of hours before the album launch party originally planned at the Victoria but then rescheduled at the Old Fire Station on the 14th April, I hang out with the band at Homerton’s Sound Savers studio where their first full-length was recorded.

The album had a long gestation as the Hackney quartet started working on it in 2012 when they had a couple of sessions at two different studios but neither was really successful. The songs recorded during the first session actually ended up on a split 7 inches, whereas the material they worked on in the second studio wasn’t really what they were aiming to achieve. “It involved a lot of tracking, recording each instrument one at a time, but then we found that it was more suitable for us to do it all live”, vocalist/guitarist Phil Serfaty explains.

They finally found a home at Sound Savers where under the supervision of owner Mark Jasper they recorded and mixed most of Omi Palone in late Spring 2013. “Mark Jasper actually owns two studios: Sound Savers where we started and did most of the album, then another studio with a much bigger room and better sound where we had a second session“, drummer Jack Gillis specifies. They recorded everything down onto quarter-inch tape and then the overdubs were done digital. Joe Caithness gave it his final touch at Subsequent Mastering.

The album cover was done by Lucy Anstey, a friend that lives with Phil and Jack in Hackney Wick, and the band’s guitarist Simon Marsham. “We wanted it to be in black and white and have a similar style to Mark Rothko, a sort of ink dragged on a white canvas. We spent a lot of time painting together then I let her finish”,  the guitarist says.

Simon was also heavily involved in the making of the ‘Architecture’ video, a visual homage to relics of the Brutalist and Modernist architectural movements and social housing of the 1960s and 70s. “We had had this song for ages and then summer last year my girlfriend and I had to move out so we were looking at house websites a lot”, he recalls. “Then I got bored of that and had an idea for a video. I got inspired mainly by architecture tourism, like people taking pictures of buildings. The video came naturally from that and then visual artist/ filmmaker Emma Charles filmed everything.”

Phil, Simon, Jack and bassist Liam O'Neill have known each other for a long time and used to play together in a more acoustic, not electric guitar-based band. Liam, who had a full classical percussion training when he was at school and was originally playing drums, moved back to his home country Australia for a few months and it was then that the others started a new electric outfit with another guy on bass. “When I moved back to London I felt like I was missing out, so when I saw that their bassist had left I just jumped in. This is my first time playing bass in a band”, he explains.

Phil’s role has also become a bit different over the years. “At the beginning I didn’t really think of myself as an electric guitarist at all”, he admits. “I used to feel more comfortable coming up with really simple song structures and then just writing lyrics around them more than anything else”. At first electric guitar seemed quite complicated to him and he only began becoming comfortable with it over the course of the year before Omi Palone was born. Funnily enough, now he actually considers himself a guitarist more than a songwriter in a straightforward and traditional kind of way. The band’s writing process has evolved quite a bit too and it’s now more a collective effort. “Before it used to be the case that I’d just write a song, now it’s more a process of us getting together, letting the song happen and allowing a melody to evolve into a song”, Phil points out.

Omi Palone’s music influences have changed since they started making music together. “Initially we wanted to be a Silver Jews kind of band”, Simon confesses. While collectively writing their first tape, they were all listening to a lot of The Feelies who have always been an open influence for all of them in many ways, and also, as Jack recalls, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and other Australian bands, especially on Flying Nun Records like The Clean. “When we started out we were all concentrating on the music we were really into at that moment and mainly the bands we had in common such as The Velvet Underground and 90s indie rock”, Simon says. Personally the guitarist was also into punk a lot and still considers John Cage a biggest source of inspiration, for all his work that went beyond music and his collaboration with John Cale.

Phil, Jack, Liam and Simon may come from different influences and backgrounds but somehow they manage to push them all in. “If you hear a melody from someone whose musical influence is different from yours you will hear that melody from a different reference point. And if you write a melody and someone else hears it in a different way thinking of a different genre or era, then the song will move into a different direction”, Simon tells me. They now got to a point when sometimes they deliberately try not to be themselves. “If we are comfortable doing something, sometimes we just try to break that and be creative with the new things we have been writing”, Liam adds. Being part of a community of very creative, arty people is also something that has a huge impact on their music. “We have a lot of friends in bands we play with, friends that have put out our records, friends who are artists or who write. Being around people that are creative and enjoy being creative is a very good thing as it keeps you inspired”, Jack carries on.

‘Omi palone’ means ‘man woman’ in Polari, an East End cant slang used not exclusively but mainly by the gay community and also by artists and musicians who seek more discretion and secrecy when they talk to each other. The Polari language came out of a conversation Phil was having with a friend to whom he was explaining the difficulty to find a band name. After being introduced to Polari, Phil started looking into that and did some research. “There were different reasons why we liked that name. First of all I just really loved the sound of it, also the meaning of it which literally is ‘man woman’ and was perfect to dissociate ourselves from machismo, being four guys playing in a rock band and everything”, he explains. “When Phil suggested it we were all seating around in a pub looking for words that had a meaning to us on the Polari Wikipedia page ”, Simon continues. “There is also a scene in Velvet Goldmine where there are guys in a club talking in Polari with subtitles, which added extra meaning.”

I finally want to discuss how difficult they think it is for new bands to breakthrough today and they all agree that their aim is not really to become a big band. They seem perfectly happy with their daily jobs and want to keep their creative life as separate as possible. Jack thinks that if you get paid a lot for the things you do creatively and become an international band, that somehow creates a confusion and complicates matters. “I think that puts a lot of pressure on you because you suddenly stop making things for yourself and you just do it to keep the money rolling, and then how do you do that? What decisions do you have to make?” Phil concludes.

Omi Palone is out now on Faux Discx/Negative Space.

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