I wouldn’t describe it as apocalyptic; it’s sort of the same music, you know it’s loud and abrasive but at the same time enveloping and melodic I guess. They’re both things we’re interested in, and we kind of tend to marry with ease, I think they’re both important because they’re the things that excite us about our music.
The band started in Bristol, when we studied there, and I think the scene there, I regard it as extremely fertile, and it’s very interesting. I don’t think we have an affinity with it or any kind of lineage. I mean I suppose I tend to think that we’re kind of locationless actually, we’re both ready to live anywhere and we have and I guess it follows that our music doesn’t follow any location.
Street Horssing. Working with John Cummings (Mogwai) was incredible. We though he’d be able to bring something to the table, having heard his band a few times (laugh), but yeah it was great he completely understood what we were trying to do. When he was actually mixing the record there was actually very little communication between us and him. We were trusting the mixing with him at the time and once in a while he’d turn around and go what do you think of this and we’d be like yeah that’s great. And this just continued for five days or so until we had an amazing record at the end.
Bob Weston worked in Chicago, while we were working in London, so communication was always going to be difficult, but I remember we gave him like guide lines, and we said this is what we want, now you realise it. And again the communication was minimal and he was able to do a great job on it.
When we were first signed to ATP, and we were thinking about studios and producers and we instantly thought The Castle Of Doom, Mogwai’s studio so it was then quick to follow that we decided we wanted John to do the recording.
We just finished our Norht American tour with them Mogwai, two weeks ago and we’re about to play some UK dates with them next week. After we played a few shows it just struck me how much of a kind of great bonding of the two bands in terms of the live show. I thought it was a real treat though, I loved seeing Mogwai every night.
We said from November onwards we’d concentrate on writing and give the live shows a back seat, but when we were offered to go to Australia we couldn’t really turn that down.
It’d be difficult to describe in terms of sonic things I guess because we’re constantly using new equipment, our set up is just perpetually changing, so the only really underlying element of our music is us and I guess we try and be embracing with our music, that’s what excites me.
It’s not musical texture that makes it embracing; I guess the key is to have our personalities inherent in the music. So I mean in that respect, the new instrumentation provides with the impetus to do that.
