By Aaron Richter

As we all know by now, new releases hit record-store shelves and digital-download services each Tuesday. So every week self-titled presents a new release you’d be stupid not to own (Buy It), one worth checking out if you’re the curious type (Burn It) and something you might have heard about but probably should avoid (Skip It). Simple, ain’t it?

Buy It
Al Green, Lay It Down (Blue Note)
Throughout the past five decades, Al Green has been one of the most consistent artists around, even if few listeners know any more than his Greatest Hits collection from 1975. With the singer’s latest, Lay It Down, producers Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots and James Poyser are looking to slap themselves with “Best since…” tags. As a songwriting trio, they emulate Classic Al in what ?uestlove has called a follow-up to 1977’s The Belle Album, the singer’s departure from the world of secular music. The album’s guest vocalists—John Legend, Anthony Hamilton and Corinne Bailey Rae—carry little weight, mostly serving as keeping-with-the-theme entry points, because the record’s real star, obviously, is Green. Though the highs in his voice aren’t really there, he delivers a late-career performance that on such tracks as “Lay It Down and “You Got the Luv I Need” rises to nod to some of his best standards. Green sounds relaxed, never over-exerting himself, though you can sense some done-it-before experience that kneads natural comfort into the compositions—no doubt putting his collaborators at ease. Almost better than Green’s performance, however, is ?uestlove’s patient, steady drumming. He never appears too eager or star-struck, lacing each track with skilled pacing, setting into a deep grove at the end of “No One Like You” or slowing to a crawl on “Too Much.” Lay It Down is the sound of everyone involved approximating a mood and energy that, out of place and time of the artist’s early recordings, is unattainable. But in the hands of ?uestlove and Poyser, Green soars above what anyone could have possibly expected.

Burn It
Ellen Allien, Sool (Bpitch Control)
Our quality receptors numbed by shoot-your-wad dance tracks, self-titled started making its way through this latest record by Berlin’s Ellen Allien, and we initially found the light, minimal, atmospheric tracks grazing past our ears as if they were soundtracking some pseudo-hip Sunday Euro-brunch locale. In the wake of money-shot gratuity and obvious grooves, we so easily forgot that carefully executed techno has can be just as exhilarating as immediate gusto. Much like the Al Green record above, Sool is a fascinating disc that tempers itself in patience and minimalism. Allien plays with vast empty space throughout “Sprung,” relying on a measure’s rests to drive the impact of its actual notes. “Ondu” behaves as if it’s laid up in a hospital bed and breathing deeply for its own survival, the bright white light not far in the distance. And even the vocal-driven “Frida,” threatening at several moments to escape into the Notwist’s emo territory, mostly just floats around in its cool precision. “Elphine” is one of the record’s livelier cuts, and it barely even leaps past a whisper, even as the skitter-skatter groove devolves into whistles, horn bleats and splat bass. Although some stretches (“MM”) might test listeners’ tolerance, Sool is a fascinating change of pace and unlike anything we’ve heard an artist of Allien’s caliber dare to attempt in quite a while.

LISTEN: “Bim”

Skip It
Midnight Juggernauts, Dystopia (Astralwerks)
US distribution’s on lag like dial-up. Talk about missing the boat! Hasn’t this album been “out” for, like, more than a year already? Bootleg this jam if you really want to hear the lazy Simian Mobile Disco-ish band that opened for Justice last year. Or avoid the Juggernauts singer’s Bowie complex completely and just make a playlist consisting of the Klaxons and the rock cuts on Attack Decay Sustain Release. Same deal, basically.

IT’S GETTING BETTER

It’s fair to say that the Futureheads are the buzz band of the moment in the UK. Which is both strange and silly, really, considering they’ve been around for nearly eight years and already got tagged a ‘Next Big Thing’ band a few short years ago, as they headlined major festivals and everyday gigs above such contemporaries as Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs. Why the sudden resurgence in interest, then? While bands like the aforementioned BP and Chiefs soared to relative superstardom, the Futureheads never quite made it. Floundering somewhere between their peers and the legions of young bands who would inevitably cop their styles, the grossly-talented foursome undersold all expectations on their sophomore effort and ended up dropped by their label, 679, in 2006.

So here they are two years later: self-releasing their third record, This is Not the World, and finding its lead single, “The Beginning of the Twist,” A-listed on BBC Radio 1. Meanwhile, the British press is championing them as poster boys for a new business model in which bands control their own destinies. self-titled caught up with Dave Hyde (drums/vocals) and Jaff (bass/vocals) in a Brixton Academy dressing room hours before they were to headline a celebratory gig for the popular UK radio station, XFM.

self-titled: How did you guys go from being dropped by 679 to creating your own imprint (Nul Records)? Walk me through the process.
Jaff: Basically, once we parted ways [with 679], about three months after that we got the call from Jazz, our manager, and he was like, “Well, how about we just do it ourselves?” And at the beginning, we were just like, “Nah this is gritty. Who’s gonna pay our wages? How are we gonna afford a tour? Who’s gonna pay the crew?” All that type of stuff. And the, as he put forward a few plans, you know, he was like, “We could put up some cash to get you going and float a couple of tours and stuff—we’ll pay for the record to get made.” As soon as he said he’d pay for the album to be made, [Dave laughs] we said, “Yeah, let’s do that.” Because producers are expensive, you know? Like, it took relatively little to do it, but we still didn’t have that money lying about. So it probably took about three or four months to get up and running, but we’ve kinda got a label manager now and stuff, so…
Dave: So it’s all good.
Jaff: We had a couple of tours left to do that we were gonna do anyway, so we did those. They were all breaking even or making money, so we didn’t have to worry about the profit/loss thing, didn’t need a record company to do it. We had Christmas off, got together in January; [guitarist/vocalist] Barry [Hyde] was like, “I’ve got a couple of songs.” We did them and it went really well, so we were definitely gonna make another album. Because I mean at that point it really wasn’t certain that we would, you know? We hadn’t had the best of years.

Well, that’s what I was going to ask next. Was there ever a moment when you considered splitting up?
Jaff: We never really talked about it, did we?
Dave: I don’t think we would’ve split up. I think (Barry) was having a hard time at that point; Baz was definitely pretty down. Which was kinda getting in the way of him writing, so I suppose it could’ve ended up with us splittin’ up.
Jaff: Yeah, so, basically, we spent about the first part of 2007, three or four months, getting about 10 songs together? Nine songs, really. We demoed them ourselves and then got Youth to produce the album, who Big Life manages as well.

Yeah, I was gonna say, who is this guy?
Jaff: Youth was in Killing Joke!
Dave: He’s a druid!
Jaff: He’s a druid.
Dave: He’s an actual druid.

Really?
Dave: He’s a total stoner.

You must’ve gotten along with him grandly.
Dave: He was great. We did it out in Spain, in the beautiful sunshine.
Jaff: Yeah, it was this amazing lake near Grenada. Youth’s done loads of albums; like he did, um, White Flag for Dido … Dave: [laughing] You know, a great album.
Jaff: He did Crowded House, Together Alone.

You guys fit nicely into that group.
Jaff: I know, right? He did that Crowded House album, he did Urban Hymns for the Verve.
Dave: He’s a big guy.
Jaff: He’s done loads of like, big selling records. He once came to one of our practices and was like, “How about you try changing that around, and this around.” He didn’t write anything but he was kinda like, “From an outsider’s point of view, this sounds like the chorus, and this sounds like the verse, and you’ve got it the wrong way around.” And you listen to his ideas, and you’re like, “Whoa, he’s right.”

Was that a different process than it was with past producers?
Jaff: Yeah, we wouldn’t normally let anyone change our songs. Which is fine, as well, but I think you just gotta let it go to let it come back a little bit. You know, like the second record we made entirely on our own, wouldn’t listen to the producer [Ben Hillier]. He just recorded it; had a few sonic ideas. But apart from that, we did all the lyrics, all the harmonies and all the everything, you know, ourselves. But with Youth, he’d say, “Right, ok, [let's do a] song a day.” We’d get through it, he’d get the arrangement, then he’d keep the guitar parts and the bassline, do a few guitar overdubs, lead vocal, double track it, get the harmonies on, go home at night, done. Don’t listen to it again for two weeks. It’s pretty crazy. It’s how the Beatles used to do it. It’s the best way.
Dave: Yeah, it was a good way to do it. It was a lot faster.

How long did it take you?
Jaff: Sixteen days; 21 songs.
Dave: Yeah. Twenty songs in 16 days, [spread over] five weeks.
Jaff: Three weeks.
Dave: That’s not including weekends.
Jaff: Ah yes.

Those were the days off with the druid, right? So, how are you getting distribution in America?
Jaff: I think in the US we’re gonna use a company called Red? That’s just getting sorted out this week actually.

“The Beginning of the Twist”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7eOGf0mnYg]

And what about touring in America?
Jaff: We’ve got one scheduled for September at the minute. Just TBC dates—no actual cities or anything yet.

You headlining?
Dave: Aye.
Jaff: Yeah, I don’t really agree with doing support tours that much. They’re not really very much fun—not unless it’s some huge band and we can try to steal their audience. Most of the touring we’ve done has been on our own. You get a better representation of where you are, really, and there’s less guesswork. It’s all fair and well to play this huge venue, and say “I’ve played this huge venue,” but if nobody watches you when you’re there …
Dave: [laughing] “We were AT that venue … ”

Yeah, it’s certainly better for the psyche of a band to play in really enthusiastic small clubs as opposed to like, empty, big spaces.
Dave: Exactly. Totally.

So, you guys are very vocal about this new business model in everything I’ve been reading about you. But what would you say to bands that don’t have the advantage of a [management team like] Big Life behind them?
Jaff: I know what you mean—it’s pretty tricky.
Dave: Um, I would recommend that you sign to a major. [lots of laughter]
Jaff: Take the money! Take the money and run, I’ll say.
Dave: Let them rip you off.
Jaff: Get in there, get them to spend 900 grand on you and then leave. They’ll drop you and you don’t owe them anything. But you’ve still got all these fans! It’s pretty set! No, um, it’s pretty tough. When you’re first starting out, you’ve just got to do loads of gigs and see how it happens for you, really. Get MySpace up and running. Look at Arctic Monkeys. I mean, obviously they had Domino behind them, but it was their Internet following that got them to where they are. So you can always go down that avenue. And if major record companies are gonna go in for you, you just gotta get a really good lawyer. Make sure you don’t get totally shafted on the deal. But I mean, even though we had a good lawyer, we got totally shafted on the [679] deal. In general, people don’t give you big money unless you’re gonna make big money back.

Well, there are those new 360 deals [like the Live Nation ones with Madonna and U2]. What are your thoughts on those?
Jaff: That’s pretty much what we’re doing, in a way. It’s just that we’re not doing it with a record company; we’re doing it on our own.

Right, with a manager. So, when you went into the studio, how many songs did you have?
Dave: About nine. We used to do a song, and then to entertain Youth …
Jaff: [laughing] … which we all wanted to do to start with.
Dave: We would do a jam at the end of the night, and record it.
Jaff: We did loads of jams, or whatever. His interpretation of “jam”—well, what if a band says to you, “jam?” What would it mean to you?

Um, play an unstructured, freeform song?
Dave: Yes, yes….
Jaff: Well, in Youth’s head, ‘jam’ is stealing a chorus from somebody else’s song, a verse from somebody else’s song.
Dave: Very BIG songs.
Jaff: “Jam ‘Take Me Out’ by Franz Ferdinand, mixed with ‘You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ by the Arctic Monkeys, and then just claim that we wrote it.” I’d say, EVERY man—90-percent of the English speaking world—have heard both those songs. But we’d take an old Joy Division riff, and take a Deadboys riff and then like, jam them for a bit, and change them.

What would you use this for? A B-side?
Jaff: Yeah.
Dave: Yeah, just b-sides.
Jaff: B-sides and just a, a bit of creation. I’d totally rewrite a vocal to go over the top, or like, a drumbeat from an old ’50s song, and then like, a punk riff, changed slightly. Change a couple of chords around, and then Barry would write a new vocal for it.

“Skip to the End”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sDXv5FcInQ]

Are you guys like, sitting around waiting to see how many music nerds figure out where the parts are all from?
Jaff: [laughs] Yeah.
Dave: There is a Gary Glitter drumbeat on the album [imitates drumbeat].
Jaff: Yeah there is.

Is there also a Gary Glitter affinity for pedophilia?
Jaff and Dave: No. [lots of laughter]

There were quite a few moments on this record where I found myself waiting for “Skip to the End” or “Return of the Berserker” to kick in.

Jaff: [smiling] Yeah.

Sonically, this stuff seems to be a natural progression from those songs. Was that intentional? Do you see this record as a development of those ideas?
Jaff: I think we see it as a development, yeah. We wanted this record to be a bit more direct, I think. The second record, looking back on it, was a little—ethereal, maybe? Do you know what I mean?

I love that record.
Jaff: Oh no, I do as well. I think we all do. But I think a lot of peoples’ criticisms of it—and I think we have to take them into account—is that it’s a little vague maybe? You know, sometimes it’s a little pastoral? Like, radio songs that never were on the radio. [lots of laughter] We wanted to take that aggression from the first record and put it with the songs of the second album, and make a record of structured songs with choruses that everyone could relate to. And I think like, lyrically, this third record is better. I think people can relate to the lyrics a lot more.
Dave: It’s just like, this new record is really happy. We were out in the sun; it was really beautiful surroundings. When we did the second one it was a bleak fucking countryside in Yorkshire. It’s a headphone album, the second one, I think. You listen to it on headphones and you’ll get it better. The third record, you just crank it up on the ghettoblaster.

But to be perfectly honest, when I first heard this one, I was a little disappointed in a way, because to me, a lot of it sounded …
Jaff: Similar.

Alike, yeah. Which you know, could be said for the first record too.
Jaff: Right, in a different way.

Yeah, but in listening to this third one more—listening to the lyrics closely and just spending more time with it—I fell in love. I mean, I read in an interview that you refer to the last record as making your fifth or sixth record second, and to me, that totally makes sense because this record does seem like it should’ve …
Jaff: Followed the first album.

Yeah.
Jaff: I just think this one’s like the first album, more coherent. The first album is pretty crazy; I think you know it is. And that’s why I love it.
Dave: The third album is a lot more traditional, like structurally. Not like the first. This one’s just like, really straightforward—intro, verse, chorus, verse, dual chorus, outro.

Do you think that had something to do with—you were saying that the radio push behind this record seems to be the most …
Dave: Successful?

Driven, yeah. Successful thus far. It seems a bit strange considering that the second record was maybe more accessible immediately.
Dave: Right.
Jaff: I dunno, I think it’s odd. I mean, over here, everyone we played this record to would say that the third album is more accessible than the first or the second.

Really?
Jaff: It would definitely fit on the radio here a lot more straight away.

Well, the single is amazing.
Dave: It was easy this time around! I dunno how, but it was.
Jaff: It was just all a laugh! Youth was just like, “Yeah whatever, I’m not gonna really take this that seriously. That sounds really good, that doesn’t sound so good, you may as well do it again…”
Dave: And then he’d just get stoned.
Jaff: “Yeah, uh, just do that second verse again?” [simulates taking a puff] “Whoooo.” [laughing]

Would you work with him again?
Dave: Yeah.
Jaff: I think we’re planning on it.

“Worry About It Later”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aZQtfkoII8]

This might be a bit of a reach, but it seems like quite a lot of the lyrics on this record could have double meaning, where they could apply to [everyday] life as well as the state of the music industry. Was that an intentional thing?
Jaff: Well, I think you’re kinda asking the wrong two guys. [laughing]

I know.
Jaff: Well, people have asked that question when talking about “the Twist.” Barry says that song is about mental illness and the way that he felt about it. But when I didn’t know he had said that, I took it very differently. To be kind of like, the allegorical relationship between the breakdown of a girl and boy’s relationship and the breakdown of our record company, with like, “the beginning of the twist” being the way that we were gonna start doing things differently and the way that the whole music industry was changing as a whole.
Dave: I know for sure that it’s about him being at a breaking point. Kinda cracking. I think that’s what “Twist’s” about. I don’t think it’s about the industry. There might be in a few of the others; I don’t know.
Jaff: I think the reason the single was such a good choice to go first is because of the title: “Beginning of the Twist.” Because of the way that things have started to change.

On the subject of the single, you guys made a really big push for your fans to go out and buy this so that they could get independent music on the charts. Were you satisfied with—what was it, 20?
Jaff: 20.
Dave: Yeah, we were all really chuffed.
Jaff: It was really good! When we did the first album, “Hounds of Love” came in at like, No. 8. You know, we sold almost as many singles last week that we did of “Hounds?”

Really?
Jaff: Yeah, it’s just the download thing. You have to sell a lot more to get higher.
Dave: If you see who was in the top 20 when we were in the top 20, it’s unbelievable.

Who was it?
Dave: Just huuuuge artists.
Jaff: We went in at 16 in the midweeks, which obviously doesn’t really count. The second day we were still there, third day we were still there, then obviously you don’t hear anymore because its Saturday, everyones gone home from work; and then we were overtaken on the last day. It was like, Girls Aloud, Westlife, Kylie Minogue. It’s like, if were competing with those people, in that world, we’re never gonna win. We won’t even try to beat them.
Dave: We didn’t spend a penny on advertising, so to get to 20 was very good.
Jaff: Ten thousand people bought that single and that was just off our website, so it was a pretty good effort from us, I think!
Dave: We’re over the moon.

How important is chart position anyway?
Dave: Not particularly. [laughter]
Jaff: We don’t really care, that’s the thing. But it’s like, it’s important for us to make a statement you know? Like, we’re back. We wanna get Radio 1’s attention, because they really played it. It’s nice for them to see, because over here downloads are directly linked to airplay. The more airplay you get, the more people download your music. So we needed to get a lot of downloads, otherwise Radio 1 would’ve said, “Well, there’s no point in playing you because no one likes you.” We got the third most plays on Radio 1 out of the whole country. They’ve really supported us.

How did that happen?? I mean, that’s great, but what the fuck??
Dave: Yeah, exactly!

Ok, well this DIY ethic is great for the UK, but a large part of that is because the UK is quite small. What are your thoughts on America?
Jaff: Well it’s funny, isn’t it? Because we don’t really know how it works over there, but I think it’s quite hard to get onto the radio stations and stuff without a bit of a buy on. Like, “We’ve got Green Day so you’ve got to play the Futureheads to get the Green Day single,” and all that. Obviously we won’t have that, so it’s going to be pretty tricky. But you know, I think you’ve gotta kinda scale things down when you’re not on a major in America. A band sells 300,000 and no one knows who they are anyway.

Well not really anymore. They’ll sell like, 30,000.
Dave: Ugh.
Jaff: Yeah, fair enough.
Dave: I dunno. Not many bands do break America. I can’t think of any band. I mean, well, James Blunt did it. That sums it all up.

[CW from top: Josiah Wolf, Doug McDiarmid, Yoni Wolf]

[Photos by Jacob Hand]

By Arye Dworken

self-titled: Yoni, what’s shaking?
Nothing much. Just got back from a jog. About to have some coffee and relax.

Are you still out in California?
Sure am. No plans to leave just yet. There’s been talk, some talk about moving to New York. I don’t know. The girl that I’m seeing right now is moving out there. My brother is talking about moving out there. We’ll see. Are you in the city or Brooklyn?

I’m in the city. I got married recently.
Wow, you’re all settled down and shit.

[Why? featuring members of Fog, who play on Alopecia]

Another terrific record.
Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

How did the Hollows EP come about with all the covers by Dump, Xiu Xiu, Islands, Boards of Canada and Dntel? That’s quite a roster.
I met Nick from Islands ages ago in 2002. He was a fanboy of all the shitty four-track cLOUDDEAD shit that we did back in the day. Like, hardcore. And when we were in Montreal for touring, we wound up hanging out with them, they were cool kids. We kept in touch since then.

That Unicorns record was terrific. What happened to the non-Islands guys?
I think Jamie is back in Islands now. He quit a while back when he got married to some Australian stripper or something and moved there. But I agree. [That album is] definitely good shit.

How did the Boards of Canada remix come about? Aren’t they pretty recluse?
I met them in Scotland also in 2002 when we were touring as cLOUDDEAD. They came up to us and started chatting. When we found out that they were in Boards of Canada, we like peed in our pants. After that, we kept in contact and they had done a remix of a cLOUDDEAD song a while back. After that, we heard that they never do remixes that much but I figured, what the hell. I’ll ask them to do a WHY? track. It was worth asking. I emailed Mike from Boards about it and said no sweat if you can’t do it.

He was like, “[I'm] not sure if I can get to it.” But a week later, he emailed saying that he had something they were working on and wanted to send it to me. I didn’t expect it to happen but was thrilled when it did. And the reason why this EP was great was because it’s a collaboration with all people that we listen to and really respect.

Who picked the specific songs from your repertoire?
It depends. I picked the ones for Boards and Dntel because I thought they would do good jobs with those specific songs. But Dntel KILLED it. He killed it. It sounds like nothing he has ever done.

Lyrically, Alopecia is an intense album. It may be a heavier and more introspective record. That song “Good Friday” in particular is an awkward song to listen to.
Yeah, I guess it is a darker record. A little more resigned to the hopelessness of what’s going on. But with that being said, it doesn’t take itself as seriously as Elephant Eyelash. It’s a little more disparate but not as desperate. It’s lost and okay with that. The other one was trying really hard to find something. It’s an abstract way of putting it but that’s how I see this new record. I played with the way I could say things without sounding like a sad sack.

There are some people who would listen to the lyrics and would find a preoccupation with mortality. I find references to suicide in your lyrics nearly half-a-dozen times.
I don’t know. I don’t even know how to answer that. It’s kind of an intense question to ask somebody. I guess it’s sub-conscious. I think mortality is a theme that most people our age think about. I don’t consciously put themes in these songs and maybe you’re pointing one out … I guess it’s something that I think about and it doesn’t have to be negative. It could be a positive thing … here I am talking about suicide but not having done it. It’s a conscious choice to stay alive.

Most people got into Elephant Eyelash in a very delayed way.
I expected that to happen. We’re not a big band on a big label. We don’t have a million dollar marketing campaign and we have to rely on word-of-mouth. I expect the delay to happen. In fact, I anticipate it.

Did you want Alopecia to be more accessible or less so? What was the mind frame going into the studio?
The process itself was very different. Our intention in making this record was organic and natural. It just flows without premeditating. Sometimes we have to look back on what we’ve done and then gauge how it’s going to be perceived. I have a vague notion of what I want but I’ve yet to accomplish that idea or expectation with a recording. As far as accessibility is concerned—that wasn’t in our head at all. When it comes to writing lyrics, though, I’ve gotten better at writing syntax and sentence structure. Images and structures that will get my idea across in a concise way with as few words as possible. I get way deeper into rhyme and intricate rhyme schemes.

Now, the recording process was way different. Elephant was recorded in a bunch of different places on 8-tracks and computers and compiled and then mixed in a studio. For this one, I made demos on my 8-track that sounded really similar to what it sounds like on the record. We rehearsed the shit out of those songs and then recorded them live with some overdubs. I’m not sure if that made a true difference in the sound but the process was quite different.

Is this the first record as Why? the band as opposed to the person?
Elephant Eyelash was released as a band as well but it wasn’t a cohesive recording like this record. My brother [Josiah] played a ton of shit on that last record but I guess I’m responsible for the writing and the lyrics so it’s seen as a solo thing.

“Gemini (The Birthday Song)”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUHw3mYQYTg]

Has your popularity changed as far as the amount of people showing up to shows?
Yeah, but we’re stuck in this in-between phase where the big venues are too big and the small venues are too small. We gotta find the middle venues.

Your music works out personal issues often. Last time we spoke we talked about your father, a rabbi, and his passionate involvement in religion. In fact, there’s a sample of him talking on the record [Elephant Eyelash].
He disowned me and we haven’t spoken since.

Really? I’m sorry.
I’m just kidding. [Laughs]

That’s not funny!
My dad is a songwriter also and he digs the records. He was kind of proud that he influenced my lyrics. He asked me if there was a song about him on the new record. But yeah, the lyrics have definitely affected my relationships. It’s a creepy little thrill. A creepy little stalker thrill. Is it healthy? I don’t know. Sometimes the people I write about don’t even know I wrote about them. But when they get it, I have some explaining to do. That’s part of like. That’s what it means to be friends with me.

It sounds like a Larry David kind of existence.
Ha ha. That’s kind of my life, my friend. I relate to that character. I found myself in that situation quite often.

“These Few Presidents” is my favorite track on the record. That one line “even though we haven’t seen you in years, yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere…” Will that person know who you’re talking about?
Uhhh …. I don’t know. We’ll see. [Laughs]

Where did the album titles come?
I had alopecia on my neck and it disappeared when I started writing the record. Awhile back, I stepped in glass and the infection in my foot caused the hair in my neck to stop growing. It’s connected like that. Slug [of Atmosphere] told me what it was. We were in Baton Rouge and he was like, what the fuck is that? Dude, you have alopecia. I looked it up and he was right. But the title is a personal metaphor. The idea of being bare, stripped down and not hiding behind anything. Not coloring the truth, just trying to be as clean as forthright as possible. I guess to be hairless.

That’s quite the metaphor.
Yeah … I don’t know. It works for me.

MP3: “The Hollows”

For more information about Why?, check out http://www.myspace.com/whyanticon or http://www.anticon.com.

KNIVES OUT

Photos by Aaron Pederson

Cadence Weapon approached his second album, Afterparty Babies (Anti-), with one of the purest goals an artist could have: the desire to meet Tina Fey. Of course, the rapper/producer also finds time to gripe about girls and dis ridiculous hipster fashion. But that’s besides the point, really.

self-titled caught up with Cadence, known to his parents as Rollie Pemberton, to talk about Canada, songwriting and his former life as a music critic.

self-titled: What were you aiming for when you started making Afterparty Babies?

Initially, I was trying to make an album about the housing crisis in Alberta [Canada], but then I decided to stop doing that because it was getting kind of boring. Then I noticed all my friends started doing coke. And I decided to kind of write an album about people and why they do things and human nature and the psychology of Cadence.

Did you handle production on the album?
Yeah, I do all the production, except for one track by DJ Nato. The rest of the beats are by me.

It has an electronic club feel. Why did you decide to go for that?
I’m into that kind of music…and I got more into DJing in the past couple of years. The whole idea of dance culture really fascinated me. Every beat I made ended up being four on the floor, just sort of dance stuff.

Who are your favorite dance artists that you draw from?
I’m a big Basement Jaxx fan. I like they way their music sounds really like it’s a party happening. It sounds really organic and super-tech. Switch. Obviously Daft Punk. I’m into very European stuff. I like some of the Ed Banger stuff. Dubsided Records.

So it’s probably safe to say that it doesn’t bother you that the beats on this album are unlike anything you’re going to hear in contemporary hip-hop?
Yeah, it doesn’t really bug me. I don’t think I’ve ever been into making traditional rap, I guess. It’s not to say I don’t like any of that stuff because I do. It’s just I feel like I probably don’t really listen to a lot of rap, and the rap I listen is like D4L. I listen to, like, club rap. I like fun rap. I feel like a lot of underground rap is extremely serious and is feeling itself a little too much sometimes.

How did you go about making the first track on the album, “Do I Miss My Friends?” Are you looping your own voice?
I just did it randomly in the studio. I was like, “Hey, Nato. Record me making these sounds.” And so I sampled myself clapping and slapping my legs and humming stuff and making sounds with my mouth. I had him arrange it for me, and I wrote and recorded a song right there. It’s kind of a different way of doing things for me because usually I make the stuff pretty painstakingly at home and then bring it into the studio and polish it up a bit.

It’s like a cappella hip-hop.
Yeah, I wanted to kind of have a barbershop vibe to it.

What inspired the lyrics for that song?
That song is me thinking about the nature of friendship. I’ve been touring a lot, and I’ve been thinking, “Do I actually miss my friends? When I am on tour, do they miss me?” In the time that I was recording it and writing about it, I’d had this summer were I was sitting around and hanging out with people a lot and playing video games and going to the bar, just wondering, “What am I doing with these people? Why these people? Why are these people my friends?”

“Real Estate” (on MTV Live)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jHSHTkRzZ8]

What was the inspiration behind the song “Real Estate”?
My dad was a real estate agent and a DJ. A part-time real estate agent. And the idea of real estate fascinates me. I think there’s a major parallel between that and battle rap. Like the idea of being number one in the city, like the idea that you’ve got my face on a bench, and it’s like, “I’m the number-one real estate agent; I have the most houses in this area.” It’s just a long extended metaphor about the rap industry and different areas of rap. For instance, I’ll be talking about brownstones’ floors being the opposite of west; that’s talking about Brooklyn and how down South it’s OK to have gold in your mouth, just talking about the dichotomy of rap and how people care so much about doing certain things and certain places.

So, switching gears, how long have you been rapping for?
I’ve been rapping since I was thirteen. So I guess, nine years.

You grew up in Canada. What was the hip-hop scene like there?
It wasn’t really extensive. Growing up, I didn’t really know anybody who rapped, which I guess made it easier for me to do something original. It made it a lot easier for me to do something that hadn’t been done before because I had no basis other than the records I listened to. I grew up on a lot of cerebral underground rap, like Raz Caz.

You mentioned that your dad was a DJ, and I’ve read that he was one of the first Canadian hip-hop radio DJs.
Yeah, he was the first guy who ever played rap and funk and stuff in Edmonton.

Did you two bond over the music?
Not really. I mean, I definitely heard it a lot around the house. I don’t know. It was more like I would get the stuff he didn’t like. He would give me CDs that he didn’t want to listen to, and I would be watching Nirvana on TV. I was basically trying to avoid music he would play. But as I got older, I started realized my parents actually had great music taste.

When you’re young, you never want to listen to what your dad listens to.
My dad’s like, “Oh, what is this Eminem? I’m going to throw this away. Do you want it?” And I’m like, “OK, I’ll listen to it.”

Really? Your dad gave you a copy of Eminem?
Yeah, he was weird about some of the mainstream stuff. He liked more Brand Nubian, like Afrocentric, funky stuff more than anything. When he saw Eminem, he was like… You know how you get so many promos that you think, “This has got to be shitty?” But I loved it.

As you went along, how did you get further into your own style of rap?
It’s like I started from a battle perspective, more into freestyling and battling people and talking about how good I was at rapping. But I got way more fascinated by the ideas behind everything you’re saying. I try to make everything I say meaningful in some way.

What’s the state of the Canadian hip-hop scene now? Do you feel connected to it now that you are on tour all the time?
I never really felt connected to the indie-rap scene. There’s some rappers I identified with. Peanuts & Corn crew I love, but I don’t feel any more alienated than I’ve ever been because I’m on tour. I call [what I’m doing] “folks rap” because it’s raps about folks. It’s not like I’m going to have a posse or something; it’s not like I’m going to have a crew of people who all identify with the same principals I do because I think that’d be too hard.

You mention this a lot on the album. You talk about hipster rap and underground rap being played out. Where do you think you fit in the larger scheme of hip-hop?
I like to think I’m approaching the same things as Madlib or Fracture…the idea of open-ended sampling, just breaking structure. I don’t think I’m a hipster rapper, per se. I guess I’m a rapper that is a hipster. I’m not like Spank Rock or whatever, but I do like Spank Rock. I don’t know where I fit in, really. I’m nowhere man.

When you were eighteen, you left school to pursue hip-hop full time. Why did you decide just to dive right in?
I really hated journalism school. I went to school in Virginia, and it was so stifling. So I decided to bounce and try and put out some shit, and it actually worked, completely. People responded to it almost immediately. I was pretty lucky, I guess. I mean, honestly, I figured I could always go back if it didn’t work out, and I felt pretty confident about what I was doing, that it was original enough that people would want to listen to it.

“In Search of the Youth Crew”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bziT0kkkSgw]

You used to write for Pitchfork, and they reviewed you the other day. As a former music critic, is it strange when other people review your work?
It is really weird because I feel like some of these people make mistakes or don’t really know what I’m talking about. I know I’m due for some negative reviews, just from the reviews I’ve given. It is really weird….Misspelling the album, songs and not understanding exactly what I’m doing is kind of frustrating because you don’t have control. You lose control of a record when you put it out. You lose control over everything about it.

Has there ever been an artist whose work you’ve slammed that you later ran into while touring who asked, “Why’d you give me that review?”
No, I haven’t done shows with someone who’s like, “Hey, you gave me a shitty review. I hate you.” But one example I would say is RJD2’s second record, Since We Last Spoke. Man, I first really thought it was totally pretentious. I thought it was wack as hell. And then I started listening to it more and more over the span of the year, and it ended up in my Top 10 for Pazz and Jop for the Village Voice, which was kind of weird, but that’s one of the only records I’ve ever changed opinions on so drastically.

I was doing a piece on the rapper Murs, and I found an old Pitchfork review that you wrote about him. I thought, “OK, it’s an 8. Cadence can still play the Paid Dues Festival.”
Yeah, I don’t think these people even remember. One example is Atmosphere—Slug. I reviewed a couple of his most recent albums. I like Atmosphere, the earlier stuff, a lot. I love Overcast; I love Lucy Ford. I think those albums are classic. But I just think those last couple of ones were just like, OK. I ended up interviewing him kinda recently, like a year ago, and he was like, “Oh, Rollie Pemberton, I fucking know you. You gave me a couple of shitty reviews. You hate this shit. Why are you interviewing me?” But I really like him, and I wanted people to go to the show.

One thing that made me laugh out loud while listening to your album was that you complain about nightclubs that still play Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon.”
Yes, yes, exactly! Thank you for understanding what I mean!

Don’t get me wrong, I like that song…
I like that song a lot, too! But oh, my god, they’ve ruined it! It’s not even music anymore. It’s like somebody playing “Happy Birthday” at a DJ party. It’s redundant. It’s kinda like—I think it’s funny—Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.,” like, “Yeah, let’s dance to this song ‘D.A.N.C.E.’” Are you kidding me? Oh, man, my song [“Unsuccessful Club Nights”] is about DJ culture and just how people need to get more creative. Everybody plays the same shit that Diplo plays. I just feel people need to have their own identity, if that’s even possible.

You talk about stuff that I’ve never heard any rapper talk about, like watching The Wire while not being featured in Wire Magazine or “Fey like Tina.” I’ve heard rappers talk about some crazy stuff, but that’s gotta be a first.
Yeah, I guess so. I guess I’m kind of a weird guy. I’m just fascinated by pop culture, and the whole point of that album, I guess, was to analyze the social structure, analyze the world today. I wanted to do a time capsule of what was going on right now in every way possible. So I guess that’s why I ended up talking about Tina Fey, or maybe it’s just because I’m in love with her. I just had to give her a shout out. Maybe I’m just trying to get her to Google [me], and then we can hang out.

That’s a noble goal.
Maybe that’s it.

Speaking of pop-culture references, I have to say, the joke about “I hang with the idiot like my name was Ian Curtis”… Come on! That’s terrible. [Ed: It is widely believed that Joy Division singer Ian Curtis was listening to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot as he committed suicide.]
I guess. I thought it was funny.

Well, yeah, it was funny.
I jammed that album so much. That’s one of my favorite albums, The Idiot. Perhaps if he hadn’t decided to hang himself to that album, perhaps I would have never heard it, so I guess something good came out of that.

Something good.
Something good.

MP3: Rick Ross vs. Simian Mobile Disco, “Hustlin’ Hustler” (Cadence Weapon  Hi-Speed Edit)

MP3: Ghostface Killah, “Save Me Dear” (Cadence Weapon AceRock Remix)

MP3: “Sharks”

MP3: “Black Hand”

[L to R: Dave Lombardo, Jeff Hanneman, Tom Araya, Kerry King]

Here’s something we would have never guessed about Tom Araya: the Slayer vocalist/bassist, one of the most important extreme music icons ever, still gets nervous before shows despite the fact that his cantankerous crew of thrash-metal pioneers formed 25 years ago.

“If I didn’t get nervous,” explains Araya, “it wouldn’t mean anything. Music would just be something that I’m ‘doing.’ Seriously; it wouldn’t have that same excitement.”

Fair enough, especially since Slayer’s last LP, 2006’s Christ Illusion, was hailed as their strongest in years, suggesting the band’s as tight now as they were the last time they played with founding drummer Dave Lombardo. (That’d be the double live album Decade of Aggression in 1991.) self-titled had a lot more questions for Araya, though, including the one question that was on the lips of many metal purists last summer: who’s idea was it to co-headline a tour with Marilyn Manson? So we got him on the phone and found out the most devil-horns-in-the-air fact about the Slayer frontman—he has a farm and his own beef cattle.

[Photo by Kevin Estrada]

self-titled: Be honest with me: Were you a fan of Marilyn Manson before your tour together last summer, or were you at least familiar with his music?
Yeah, well, I’d heard of Manson. [Laughs] That’s about it, just those songs everyone’s heard on the radio. I guess he plays OK music.

Well, do you at least feel a kinship between the two of you since he faced the same morality police problems in the ’90s that you faced in the ’80s?
Nah. Let’s hear it for Manson, though, for diverting some of that shit from us.

I hear some echo in the background there. Do you have me on speakerphone so I sound like an asshole?
No. I’m actually in the bathroom. [Laughs]

All right, then; let’s talk about Christ Illusion. A lot of the lyrics are in direct response to the war in Iraq and how religion affects politics in this country. This record is one of your tightest, most focused efforts in a while. Was what’s going on in the world a major force behind that?
The lyrical content on this album is actually 75-percent [guitarist] Kerry [King], because he wrote the majority of the songs. [Guitarist] Jeff [Hanneman]’s contribution was four or five songs. Usually, Jeff and I will collaborate a lot, using a basic idea of his. No matter what, I try to find melodies in everything. In the past I haven’t been allowed to [help as much] as I have lately. With this record, I definitely put my foot down and said, “Let me do what I’ve been doing for the past 20 fucking years and we’ll get along just fine.” [Laughs] Kerry actually writes a lot of the songs that are anti-organized religion or anti-anything that can control you. And he writes really good songs. Most of the time at least—sometimes I just have to make it sound good. [Tom pauses while his kid whispers something.]

What did your son just say?
He said I should hold onto my wallet or else someone will take it. He’s a smart kid.

“Disciple” (live on the Henry Rollins Show)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzz8-6LJ_2A]

So aside from seeing the potential for melodies, what song or songs of Kerry did you immediately gravitate towards lyrically?
“Cult” was pretty interesting, especially the part that’s like, “Religion is hate/Religion is fear/Religion is war,” because any religion is those things. The only religion that isn’t is Buddhism. Even pagans are to some extent.

Do you think one of the reasons people have been hard on Slayer’s lyrics is that you’re stating the obvious—things people don’t want to admit or think about?
Yeah. That’s why we wish people would stop and listen more. Don’t go talking out of your ass if you don’t know anything about it. A lot of people speak before they read, you know?

So what was it like working with Dave again after all these years?
Great. It felt like he’d never left. It was very easy to get back into the groove.

It sounds like you’re very relaxed these days.
Yeah, we’re just chill. We haven’t been ‘rock stars’ for a while now, not since I had my own personal wakeup call.

And what was that?
It was a DUI—a pretty bad one. It changed my life. If I was still behaving the way I used to 20 years ago, I’d be dead.

“Eyes of the Insane”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftK8YmDYIyE]

You’re one of the few metal acts that’s aged gracefully overall—without becoming a caricature of yourself. Got any advice for metal’s future veterans?
Well, one of the things that I’ve done is be more honest about my personal life as I get older, which helps people understand you better. Although it can get a little silly when people are amazed you shit or whatever. When people see me out shopping and ask what I’m doing there, I say, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Since you don’t mind sharing personal things, tell us something we don’t already know about Tom Araya.
That’s a tough question. Well, I like taking care of the cattle on my ranch.

You actually milk them and everything?
No, they’re beef cattle. They’re actually like big dogs that don’t bark.

So you slaughter them? How metal! Don’t you ever feel bad when you look them in the eyes, knowing full well that they will be killed?
No because you can pick and choose who will be ’set aside.’

You should pull a Kiss and do Slayer-endorsed beef.
[Laughs] I’ll give you credit for that if we do.

]]> http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2008/03/06/qa-with-slayer-interview-by-andrew-parks/feed/ 1 http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2008/01/23/3/ http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2008/01/23/3/#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:14:57 +0000 selftitled http://www.self-titledmag.com/2008/01/23/3/

Words by Aaron Richter

The windfall of attention soon to hit Hot Chip is obvious. It has built steadily since the UK group’s debut, 2004’s Coming on Strong, and gained momentum with 2006’s The Warning, ignited by the top-of-its-game single “Over And Over.” This past year, Hot Chip set out to match the full-throttle intensity of its live performances by hitting the studio as a full band for the first time and constructing some of the year’s most ambitious electro-pop anthems. self-titled caught up with band members Joe Goddard, Al Doyle and Owen Clarke as they spent some time in New York to do patches of press and finalize details for their third album, Made in the Dark.

self-titled: Alexis [Taylor, Hot Chip songwriter and singer] seems to have always been the balladeer of the group and Joe, you seem to bring more of the loud, club-oriented sound. Does that breakdown still hold true on Made in the Dark?
Joe: It comes from all of us. About a third of this record is recorded by everyone playing in a room together, like in a real recording studio. That’s track like “Out at the Pictures,” “One Pure Thought” and “Hold On.” So the mood of those songs is created by everyone while they’re playing. And then the rest of the album, the songs are pretty much written by myself and Alexis. If you had to generalize, the more somber, quieter moments are often Alexis’ songs, like “Whistle for Will” and “Made in the Dark.” Those are things that he pretty much wrote and I helped him to produce them. Other parts, the more raucous, bombastic songs, like “Ready for the Floor,” “Bendable, Poseable,” are things that I wrote the music for and Alexis wrote the words.

Is having everyone in the studio something new?
Joe: Only like three of the songs were made in the studio, the three that I mentioned. The rest of them were still kind of done in my bedroom.
Al: Even the ones that were done in the studio were still kind of added to in the bedroom.
Joe: The reason why we wanted to do those studio tracks is we had been playing those songs live for maybe six months or a year and we felt that those were the best versions we could do of them. So we went into the studio and captured those. We actually recorded a couple more songs within the studio. We recorded a live version of “Shake A Fist.” For the record, we just felt the version that I’d originally made on my computer worked a little bit better. But when I listen to the record now, the songs that excite me most are the ones with the band playing as a whole. They have a vitality that’s very hard to achieve when you’re working track by track in your bedroom. I think in the future we’ll do much more of that.

Is what you’re doing on the new album trying to bridge the gap between your live shows and your albums?
Joe: That is part of the reason we chose to record stuff live. Yeah, people have been telling us for so long that the live shows have this kind of energy, which they totally do. When I listen to Coming on Strong now, it’s one of the most gentle records you could possibly imagine, and mellifluous and soft-sounding. At the time, we thought it was a club banger, but we were obviously wrong. Yeah, we wanted to capture that energy. Totally.

Made in the Dark really shows your full range of moods. What was the rationale for making this record hit the highest highs and the lowest lows?
Al: That’s been part of what we’ve been doing for a while. We always have the more quiet and introspective songs, but we just don’t happen to play them live because they don’t always work in that setting. But it wouldn’t be true to what we were doing if we didn’t put them on the record.
Joe: I like the idea of there being these extremes, of making a record that if you put it on, you’re either entranced by the funkiness, the ingenuity or the intricacy of these rhythms that makes you excited or makes you want to dance. Or you’re captured by a beautiful melody or a lyric. For me, I want either one of those things in music I listen to. I want it either to capture me and just entrance me on the dance floor or just take my breath away from the starkness or the emotion of a quiet song. We didn’t want any in between and thought it would be a powerful thing to put those two things together on a record. But that also made it difficult to sequence. We took a long time trying to work out if it even works and how does that work to put something in that order.
Al: Loud song, quiet song, loud song. Or loud song, loud song, loud song, quiet song. Or anything in between.

And ending with the two quiet songs.
Al: Yeah, and a loud song at the start. Gotta have that.

You guys have been DJing quite a bit, too. How did that inform the sequencing?
Joe: In all of our DJ sets, we move between different types of music. And you learn about what works and what doesn’t from doing that. I tend to prefer when I’m watching a DJ to see different variations in styles. I’m more excited by that personally. You get ideas of ways things will work from that. Not like if you listen to my DJ set I’ll go into Leonard Cohen or something. It doesn’t prepare you for that. But we wanted to give people something that had these pop moments but in some ways was quite uncompromising.

It’s very jarring when you listen to it on the record. Do you have any favorite records that accomplish a similar thing?
Joe: If you look at old records like the White Album or Sign O the Times, they’re all over the place constantly. I guess the White Album is kind of a classic example of that because it’s the sound of four people trying to make music on their own and not doing things so much together.
Al: There’s the big ’80s massive albums, like [Dire Straits’] Brothers in Arms or Peter Gabriel’s So. Paul Simon and stuff like that. I suppose we had something really good mixed, and we wanted it sonically to be as powerful as it could be. Even some of those quiet songs have got a really nice sense of space and acoustics to them, like the piano on “Privacy” goes back to that classic feel. It’s really nice to allow yourself that kind of slight indulgence.

What else has DJing helped you understand?
Al: That DJs are full of shit and just get paid money for not doing very much.

Has it influenced the way you approach these songs?
Joe: It totally does. For me the whole idea of DJing is to play a song and see how people react. The whole thing a DJ is doing is responding to how people react to the music that he plays. So watching that reaction from a crowd is very insightful. It gives you ideas for how dance music can affect people and what things affect people in what ways. That definitely goes into our live shows and structuring songs. Then the kind of rhythms we use, like a track like “Hold On,” I see it taking this minimal techno rhythm and put these disco elements into it. So that’s informed by the minimal techno records that we might be playing when we DJ mixed with the disco records some of us have been playing as well.

What else has DJing helped you understand?
Al: That DJs are full of shit and just get paid money for not doing very much.

Has it influenced the way you approach these songs?
Joe: It totally does. For me the whole idea of DJing is to play a song and see how people react. The whole thing a DJ is doing is responding to how people react to the music that he plays. So watching that reaction from a crowd is very insightful. It gives you ideas for how dance music can affect people and what things affect people in what ways. That definitely goes into our live shows and structuring songs. Then the kind of rhythms we use, like a track like “Hold On,” I see it taking this minimal techno rhythm and put these disco elements into it. So that’s informed by the minimal techno records that we might be playing when we DJ mixed with the disco records some of us have been playing as well.
Owen: It’s like tesco music. A mix between techno and disco. We make tesco.

Humor has always been an important element of your music. Do you feel the tendency to get more serious now that more people are listening?
Joe: I think there is a tendency to do that. We felt it when we released Coming on Strong and people talked a lot about the humor. It made us feel like we didn’t want to be seen as just a novelty act. We want people to realize that we like to write serious songs sometimes. And that we cry as well [laughs]. If you cut us, we will bleed. So The Warning was a little more serious as well. And this record is kind of serious. A song like “Wrestlers” is obviously not. It wasn’t a conscious decision. We didn’t feel like we should put something funny in here. It was a kind of natural song that came about. But I’m glad that there are lighter-hearted moments because, the same as The Warning and Coming on Strong, we didn’t want to leave that part of our personalities out of the music.

Did you get the impression that you weren’t being taken seriously?
Al: Well we weren’t being taken seriously.

How did you notice?
Joe: Just in reviews.
Al: People getting us dressed up as clowns or being introduced as “comedy/novelty act Hot Chip.” That’ll give you a good clue.

Really?
Al: Well, you sorta see those words in reviews. But this was a long time ago. But that’s something, like Joe was saying with the previous album, The Warning, we kind of addressed that so people sort of forgot about it. Also, we just got older.

How do you approach it differently now so that people can take it seriously and still understand that it’s supposed to be funny?
Joe: It’s just become obvious. For instance, the song “One Pure Thought,” there’s nothing comic about most of it. It’s fun. It’s not silly. But it’s like this epic pop song. But there are parts of my words that are pretty stupid. I reference the “Macarena” because I thought it would be funny to make this cool dance record and reference that within it because it’s such a stupid hit, you know, number one in the UK for ages.
Owen: All over the world. It’s a worldwide smash.
Al: Yeah, and we just copied the rhythm.
Joe: So we like to throw small things in like that. But it’s obvious that is not a stupid song.
Al: “The Macarena.” That’s what he’s talking about.
Joe: Hopefully “Wrestlers” does it as well. There are completely silly moments where Alexis talks about hitting someone in the balls with a roll of coins. But toward the end of the song, he’s kind of making a serious point in some ways. The music becomes a little more somber. We’ve kind of tempered it a little bit so that it’s not the obvious jokes like, “I’m like Stevie Wonder, but I can see things” on the first record. It’s more subtle. But I like the fact that it’s still there.

Was “Wrestlers” intended to be an R. Kelly parody?
Joe: Part of it is inspired by R. Kelly. In his songs, he can have just a stream of amazing vocal hooks, like ten vocal melodies that just get stuck in your head so easily. That’s such a genius ability, to write vocal hooks. And the sound of his voice is so great.

Is it pointing out his absurdity?
Joe: The absurdity of it is a fantastic thing as well. The song comes from the fact that Alexis and myself used to really enjoy WWF wrestling when we were at school. We used to have a dinner lady that looked like Superfly Jimmy Snuka. A couple of days ago Alexis almost bought an action figure of the Iron Sheik. There was a genuine love for that stuff when we were kids. Kids love WWF, but also there’s a story behind the lyrics because Al’s been playing with LCD [Soundsystem] a lot of the time this year. Alexis received a text message from James Murphy saying, “You can’t have him back. I’ll wrestle you for him. And I’m bigger and trained.”

He is trained.
Joe: So Alexis had that in his mind when he was writing the lyrics to that song.

Have you seen him fight?
Al: He hasn’t fought anybody. He’s supposed to next year.

He spars with people though, doesn’t he?
Al: Oh, yeah. I’ve seen him do his jujitsu class. When he speaks about it to people, there’s always a moment when people just laugh. And then he’s like, “No, it’s actually true.”

He was having to get his weight down too, right?
Al: Yeah, yeah. He thinks he’s gonna do it next year. I’ve seen the people that are fighting in his weight class, and it looks like he’s got quite a bit of work to do. But that’s literally all he needs to do, get his weight down and get his jujitsu skills a little better.

I get the sense that you guys tend to hide musical references within your songs. Are there any moments you’d care to reveal?
Joe: There aren’t any references to any particular hip-hop songs.
Al: Well, you were saying that that moment in “Shake a Fist,” when it changes…
Joe: Oh, yeah, that’s actually true. There’s that moment in “Shake a Fist” where there’s that vocal sample, and then the beat changes. Part of the reason I did that was I was thinking about how halfway through “Get Your Freak On” Missy Elliott is like, “Quiet! Hush your mouth!” And then there’s that big bass line that hasn’t been there that just comes in halfway through the song. It’s such a fantastic pop music moment. I remember hearing that on a tiny little clock radio speaker when I was at university and just thinking it was the most amazing thing. Timbaland is one of the only hip-hop producers who would ever do that—a hip-hop track that changes halfway through. They’re always good. Like I’ve got an old MF Doom one called “Change the Beat.” He raps on like five different beats. Whenever someone does that in hip-hop it sounds wicked. That’s a kind of reference to that sort of thing. But it’s something that’s rarely done in hip-hop music. There’s a good one on Da Real World, that Missy Elliott one, where the beat changes and Eminem does a verse. So yeah, I guess there are a couple examples. It’s not something that people do very much in hip-hop, but it’s fantastic when they do do it.
“Bendable Poseable” has references from hip-hop music. Again, it owes a lot to the rhythmical brilliance of Timbaland. I do a kind of rappy bit in the middle of that. The main influence on that was more from new house music and trying to play with the swing of the beat and play with the groove, before the beat or after the beat, to make it kind of wobbly sounding. That partly comes from producers like Jay Dee, the way there’s a kind of wonkiness to the beat, which is a brilliant thing. Actually the drum programming on “Made in the Dark” is really a direct reference to Jay Dee, old Slum Village, the kind of snare and kick drum and hi-hat sounds he would have used.

Is everyone bringing in a hip-hop influence?
Joe: For some people, it’s much less.
Al: I think it’s mostly Joe. It’s something that I like, but I’m not as well versed as him.

Is there anything new you guys were listening to that influenced the sounds on the album?
Joe: It’s hard to find things that we all listen to because we have quite separate listening experiences often, quite diverse. But we went through a period of driving up to festivals in our van with the door open blazing out old Black Sabbath. Those big riffs are something we’ve put into this album like we’ve never done before.
Al: You can hear it very overtly on “Bendable Poseable.” It is a Sabbath cord.

Is that something you’ve done live also?
Al: Yeah. I forgot we used to play “Bendable Poseable” live. Yeah, you notice the crowd getting into it, even if it’s only for a second.

Like older heavy metal though, right?
Joe: Yeah, like heavy rock. One of the only other things we all agree on is this Parisian group Noze, who make techno pretty much but with a strong sense of humor and strong songs. That’s something we all love, and we’ve had experiences seeing them all together at festivals around the world and being really into that.

What song on the new record was the most difficult to complete?
Joe: “One Pure Thought” was quite difficult because it’s made up of all these different parts that really worked out well together in some ways. We had a lot of thinking about the structure, restructuring things. It started out as a long live recording, and we kind of edited parts out, overdubbed small bits, moved things, took the middle part and put a bit of it at the beginning.
Owen: I think that was the problem. There were so many good bits. It was tough to make some sort of conglomerate thing.
Joe: That song was written by all of us, so it has parts that were written by everyone, and sometimes that makes it less easy to put it together.

Did you find that writing as a full group is something you’d like to pursue more?
Joe: Yeah. I think so. It has more vitality, which I think is the main thing for me.
Al: You spend a lot of time playing in a group and shaping something. I think we will probably end up having more songs like “One Pure Thought.” Not that that’s a bad thing at all.
Owen: I suppose if it’s just a few people writing, it can be very quick, or if you rely on the tension it could be very focused. But with a group, it might be more difficult, but there’s also the sense of knowing that it’s right as well.

What song was the biggest creative leap for the group?
Al: I suppose “Ready for the Floor.” We’ve done all these interviews in the past few days, and I don’t find myself talking about that one. It’s something that I would have wanted to talk about. It’s probably the most overtly pop song that’s come out of the machine for a while.
Joe: It came about as a drum loop. I made some drums, made a bass line, started playing with this main synth sound and just tried to make something quite sparse, with less layers than we had had previously. The pattern and the synths are references to techno records, things like Audion, Matthew Dear. So it started off as these kind of loops, and I wrote the chords to the verse and the chorus. Once we had that much, I played that to Alexis, and he just wrote words for it pretty quickly. There were contributions from everyone in the group on that song. It was actually finished quite simply and quite painlessly.

Are you pushing that as a single?
Al: First single, yeah.

How does “Shake a Fist” work into that?
Joe: Kind of a teaser.

It would have been hard to work as a single.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a crazy tune. It was an exciting thing to give to people as the first taste, whet the appetite.
Owen: An appetizer. Cleanse the palate.
Al: Sometimes the appetizers are the best part of the meal, though.

I read you’ve also done a remix for Alicia Keys. What’s up with that?
Joe: We’ve done one. I don’t know if the record company liked it. It’s the single “No One.”

What’s the track like?
Joe: I wanted to take the Alicia Keys song and make the chords underneath her voice slightly more unusual, more interesting.
Al: Those are the chords from “No Woman, No Cry.” Is that the same one?
Joe: Yeah, yeah. I’ve started to think it’s best not to over-remix things. I didn’t want to turn it into something totally crazy. I wanted to make it a bit more like the Ashanti song, “Only You,” a big R&B tune that had this big, wicked, doom-laden, echo-y, distorted bass line, really a kind of epic thing. We put a big chord sequence like that behind Alicia Keys’s voice. I think it works. We just sort of reset the song. It’s still an R&B tune, but it’s something that’s more interesting to us.

Why Alicia Keys?
Joe: She asked us.

Oh, she actually requested it?
Joe: Yeah. It probably wasn’t her. But her A&R guy or something.

Did you find out how they heard of you guys?
Joe: I didn’t find out, but I’d like to find out how they knew about us.
Owen: Probably heard about us from Bob Dylan.
Joe: Yeah, Bob suggested us.