Little Boots Interview

It isn't the despairing screams of a million unemployed graduates. It isn't the crispy crackle of a credit crunch, nor even the icy blast of a financial freeze. The sound of 2009 is synthesisers and sequencers; it is a Blackpool accent and diminutive footwear. It is Victoria Hesketh aka Little Boots and she is the future of pop.

The death throws of bad guitar pop are still echoing through the charts, but in the coming months the electro-pop revivalists will smash the big time in a big way. Lady Gaga, La Roux and Passion Pit are just a few artists whose stars are set to shine. Little Boots though, has been picked ahead of all of them. She's been hyped for a while now and this month she came top of the BBC Sound of 2009. An industry wide poll of tastemakers that last year tipped Adele and Duffy for the top.

Little Boots is a small northern lass with frighteningly blonde hair and an ethereal amount of glittery mascara. With classical training from the age of four, she's been making music for years. She built a fan base on the internet through posting videos of herself playing covers on her Tenorion, an instrument made of light. It sounds perhaps more exciting than it actually is, the Tenorion is simply a sequencer with an LED panel on the front that visualises sounds. It seems though, like an original way of making music, so I began by asking Little Boots how if affected the way she produces music. I'm immediately met with a look of tiring exasperation, she's clearly been asked it before, and I sense a hint of dismay as if people think her sound revolves around this gimmick. "I don't use it to write and I don't use it in the studio, the internal sounds aren't very good so you might as well use a good sequencer on the computer in the studio. So it doesn't really affect the way I make music, but they way we play it live is completely affected by it. It's kind of the brain of it. We programme and upload all our samples and basslines and things like that. It's really great for live shows because it's really visual, with electronic music it's difficult to play it live."

About a year ago Little Boots wrote a song, Stuck on Repeat, that she originally intended for Kylie to sing. A demo was given to Joe Goddard (Hot Chip's superproducer) by a friend of a friend, much to her embarrassment "it was shit, I recorded it on a terrible mic on to Garage Band." Yet he loved the song and worked on an improved version, "the idea of it was already there, he just expanded all the themes and made it a lot more exciting." Stuck on Repeat is undeniably infectious, it was rinsed on dance floors across the country last year. The 7-minute extended mix is a beautiful piece of electro-pop. The instrumental introduction builds elegantly, you're hooked on that beat and you only realise you were desperate for the hook when it arrives (perfectly on time) fully two minutes into the track. This contrasts with the fairly derivative radio edit, where the hook is unceremoniously dumped on you barely 15 seconds into the song. The radio edit is an inferior song, but it is a more accessible sound, and when the aim of the game is to sell as many records as possible, pop demands accessibility. Yet music that's made to sell can mean a watered down sound only appealing to the lowest common denominator, with accessibility, to my mind, often equating to inferiority. Little Boots though couldn't disagree more, "the more people that can connect with it the better. I think if you write a good song then hopefully it will connect with all people across the board." Perhaps this is the point then, that is what pop music is about, regardless, Little Boots clearly saw through my bullshit. "I'm not into just doing some like, cooler thing that'll sell like 100 records to a bunch of scenesters in London. I don't care! I'm from Blackpool, I wanna be sold in Woolworths [nb. interview was conducted before the catastrophic demise of a national institution] on the seafront you know? I want my little brother to go in the shop down the road and be able to buy my CD."

With the choruses to Stuck on Repeat, Meddle and Every Little Earthquake all jostling for attention in my brain, I was determined to investigate the idea of catchiness. I wanted to know if catchiness itself was something Little Boots aimed for? "I dunno, I try and write hooks. I like hooks. I mean what's a song without a chorus? I dunno it's just a load of noise innit? I just love choruses. I love big choruses and beautiful melodies that everyone wants to get involved with. The crazy frog is catchy but it's a fucking annoying sound. It's not really about catchiness for me it's more about like classic, like, great choruses. If you can write a chorus that's really catchy but doesn't get annoying. You know those kind of songs that you can put on 20 times and you're not annoyed and you still think they're bloody great? That's normally a sign of a pretty good pop song."

Pop itself is increasingly difficult to define, with a hyphen being spliced between that word and every conceivable genre. Music that is resolutely not pop usually strays in to the realm of the weird. I had always thought that to make an abstract album that remains interesting is a difficult thing to do. Once again Little Boots debased my assumptions. "Pop music really challenges me, it's so much harder than being weird. It's pretty easy to make cool albums or weird albums. You can lock yourself away for a bit and be weird. It's not that hard. It's much harder to write Michael Jackson – Thriller, with an album of number ones."

People who know much more than I do keep telling me that the music Girls Aloud put out is innovative and brilliant. For the record Little Boots thinks "all their tracks sound the same, even though they're all pretty fucking good." My problem with Girls Aloud, and with so many similarly throwaway popstars, is that they don't make their music. They're just the branding that is stamped on what is apparently quite exciting pop music. With their matching dresses and contrasting hairstyles, they represent what I see, however pretentiously, as the anti-thesis of proper music, a total lack of artistic integrity. Little Boots makes music that is sometimes brilliant and often fairly tepid, but she is entirely her own person and her own brand. She doesn't have pop's most powerful voice, but she writes her own songs. Music that is made by people who fully own their sound, that is the kind of pop I can get behind. In response to a question on whether she feels pressured to look or act a certain way she just kind of shrugged, "not really, I just do what I want, I don't really think about it. I suppose girls are kind of pressurised to look sexy or whatever. I mean to be honest I'd rather look sexy than not sexy. But I just like what I like so I wear what I like, which just tends to be crystals and fancy stuff and glittery dresses and that's just what I like. It's not because I think I should try and be something that I'm not or anything like that. I just do what I want, the minute someone tries to tell what to do I just say no."

Nigel Slater - Interview

Nigel Slater belongs in a tiny group of people who are truly beloved, unique and irreplacable (other members include Stephen Fry and David Attenbrough). In a huge simmering vat of food writers, only one is perfectly seasoned. His charming descriptions of food and his serious yet simple recipes effortlessly convey what Real Food is about; pleasure.

In his autobiography, Toast, Nigel describes a childhood remembered through food. From an early age he displayed an aptitude for cooking that, as the book details, often went unnoticed. “I really wanted to be a chef, I wanted the checked trousers and the big hat.” So after four years studying food tech, he went to work as a chef. Anyone who’s worked in kitchens knows they are often quite unpleasant environments. Gordon Ramsay, Britain’s most famous (and for some reason actually popular) chef, is a crude, profane and violent bully. Nigel in contrast, is thoughtful, friendly and incredibly nice, he doesn’t seem like someone who would enjoy the professional kitchen environment. “I was lucky. I worked in small places where there were only three or four cooks. It was at first an enjoyable experience, I liked the people I was cooking with. When I tried to move to a larger, I suppose a more high powered environment, then I really lost my way.” Professional kitchens are often fairly scary and overtly, aggressively masculine places. “It was very aggressive. Also very laddish, very boysy, very sexist, which I didn’t enjoy. But also I think I was out of my depth from a professional point of view, because there’s a difference between cooking, which I was doing previously and which I absolutely love doing, and getting very smart high-powered food out to a restaurant that’s very busy, it’s totally different.”
To the relief of cooks everywhere, Nigel soon made the move from cook to writer. He began testing recipes for a new food magazine, A La Carte, after his editor liked what he was writing in his testing notes, he wrote a few pieces for the magazine. “Then I heard on the grapevine that British Marie Claire was launching and I just wanted those pages, I loved French Marie Claire and I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do.” Even though he was completely unknown, they decided to take him on. What followed was, to the delight of cooks everywhere, ten published books and numerous magazine and newspaper columns.
Lot’s of Nigel’s book titles use the word “Real.” He’s written Real Food, Real Cooking, Real Fast Food and more. It’s a simple yet powerful description of his cooking. Using simple techniques and good quality ingredients is part of it, but he revels in writing about the joy of cooking. “I want people to understand the pleasure that there is in cooking. I’ve always felt, even when I was a kid, that making something for somebody, putting it in front of them, eating it with them or watching them eat it. I think it’s a huge huge pleasure, what it does to your sense of wellbeing to actually make a meal for someone is such a life-enriching process.” Nigel doesn’t just find pleasure in the finished dish, he always writes of the excitement and enjoyment in the entire process of making a meal. The greedy licking of fingers as you feverishly peel mangoes, the smell of garlic filling the kitchen. Unlike the clinical and cold writing of some better known chefs, Nigel’s focus on the pleasure of cooking makes his writing unfailingly pleasurable to read.

The UK’s food culture has transformed in the past decade. The souffle has risen quite spectacularly, to the point that now, not only are there hundreds of food writers, but the qualification of being married to a chef is enough to net you an eight book deal. With limited shelf-space, the marketable chefs are promoted, while the the others sit at the back of the cupboard like a jar of forgotten yet delicious apple chutney. I wondered how Nigel felt about this cornucopia of food writers? “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, the harm is, I suppose, when somebody hasn’t done their homework and they publish recipes that aren’t workable or they’re not tested. You do see a few where you wonder where they’ve come from, or should I say you actually know where they’ve come from. There’s a lot of people who don’t quite understand about copyright.”
One inescapable element of UK food culture, however fringe, is that gastronomic search for perfection. The quest for culinary ecastasy, spearheaded by pioneering gastronaut Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck. This is the use of foams, water baths and mystical alchemy to distil the very essence of flavour. The contrast with Nigel’s lack of fussiness is obvious, how does he feel about this gastronomic revolution? “It certainly is interesting and I don’t have a problem with it if people enjoy that sort of eating, and to a certain extent I suppose I do. The fact that I haven’t been to The Fat Duck probably says an awful lot. But it is very interesting it really is, and whilst I would never put it down, it’s just not something that interests me. I much prefer just sitting round the table with people eating something delicious. Rather than taking it to pieces and analysing every last detail of it. But if you’re in the pursuit of some sort of restaurant perfection, which I think Heston is, then fine all power to you.”
One of the delights of Nigel’s writing, particularly his columns, is the conversational style they’re in. It invites replies and correspondence, something he recieves in abundance. I wanted to know if he ever tries the recipes people sends him. “Sometimes, and sometimes they’re very delicious. Or they will offer an idea about something I’ve made, they make it but then they go off piste and say no I did this or I did that.” Does he try the adaptations? “Sometimes, it depends what it is, last Sunday I’d done a recipe for fig tarts in The Observer, by 1:00pm somebody had sent me a photograph of the tart they’d made, but they’d made just one big one instead of lots of little ones, and I thought yeah that’s a very nice idea.”
More than just being a great writer, Nigel is a fantastic cook. His recipes don’t just make you excited about cooking, they taste wonderful. From his absolutely extraordinary ‘Lentils with Cream and Ginger’ (Real Cooking) to the sublime ‘Stove Top Dauphinoise with Pancetta and Rocket,’ (Real Food), he is a fabulously talented cook. I asked him what he thought makes some people truly great cooks. “I do believe some people are natural cooks, you’d be amazed at the number of people who will read a cookbook or a magazine, they’ll look at a recipe and they’ll think ooh yeah I’ll have a go, then they close the magazine and they’ll make it. They just cook, it’s part of their DNA. They know when something’s going to work, they know how much of something to put in, they perhaps haven’t even been taught to cook.” It’s innate? “Yeah. Sometimes I look at people and I just think I bet you’re a great cook. You can just tell, other people need to be told every last detail, and the scary thing is, people follow your recipe to the letter and that is slightly worrying, when you say cook something for 25 minutes - and everybody’s ovens are different - they take it out after 25 mins and it’s still raw and they think the recipe doesn’t work.”

As our conversation drew to a close, I felt priveliged and honoured. Nigel Slater is more than just a national treasure, he is everything that is good about cooking. He makes cooking fun and pleasurable, not by shouting at you or ramming his message down your throat. Through exqusite recipes, thoughtful prose and empassioned greed, he defines everything that I love about cooking. Before letting him go I had to ask him what he was cooking that evening. “Pork chops with red chard,” he replied, something I’ll buy from the market as soon as I can, because frankly, anything that’s good enough for Nigel Slater, is good enough for me.

Benga and Skream - Interview

To borrow a phrase from the Matrix's Oracle, dubstep is a bit like being in love. No one needs to tell you this is dubstep. You just know it through and through. The love metaphor is particularly apt, because hearing dubstep for the first time on a proper sound system, is a lot like falling in love. Metaphors seem to be the only adequate way of conveying the rush of exhilaration felt when the first wave of dubstep crashes on to you. The most accurate comparison is that of coming up for the first time on ecstasy, even though you're completely sober. As the bass rattles your ribs you find your knees bending, with that low centre of gravity you begin to bounce. The beat rolls through your entire body and with a rush of realisation you're simultaneously incredibly excited by this new sound and pining for all those lost years of your life that you weren't listening to dubstep.

It can't be described, it needs to be felt, but nonetheless there are elements of dubstep that are at the least recurring themes. Vocals are rare, tracks usually have a 140bpm, big wobbly bass lines and a syncopated (often 2-step) drum pattern. Yet this is still a relatively young genre which is always pushing the boundaries of its own definition. Producers bring in samples from a plethora of places and other musical genres. The variety is particularly impressive, given the relatively microscopic roots of the genre.
The sound grew out of a mish-mash of Grime, Garage and Dub. Yet the scene itself grew out of one small area of South London, one record store, one club night and a small number of talented individuals. There are a number of names who can be credited for creating and growing the genre in its early days, Kode9, Mala, Coki, Loefah and Hatcha among a few others. No list though, would be complete without two of the most prodigiously talented producers out there, Benga and Skream (Beni Uthman and Oliver Jones respectively). Both are just 21 and both have been involved in the scene since its inception. Even if you've never heard of dubstep, it's practically guaranteed you will have heard their two biggest tracks. Skream's Midnight Request Line came out in 2005 and is considered one of the most recognisable dubstep hits, as well as a pivotal moment in dubstep history. It opened up new ideas for producers, and the tempo change in the middle is seen as particularly important. Benga's collaboration with Coki in early 2008 produced the electronic anthem Night. If you've been to a club in the past eight months then you've probably heard it. I talked to both of them about the genre, its future and their place in it.
Dubstep is relatively unusual, in that it is now undeniably international, with people all over the world producing music, yet there is still that small group of pioneers who people look to and who are so much more visible than other producers. I wondered if they saw themselves as still part of the movement or just as producers making some tunes. Benga does want to "move it forward," and he added caveats only I suspect through modesty, "I'm not saying I'm some dubstep captain, I'm just saying that I do see things and think, right we've got to try and push it in this direction or that direction. We should get into this or get out of that. I'll sometimes occasionally say we need to do this or we need to do that, but it's not like I'm some leader of it." He thinks he couldn't keep dubstep afloat single handedly, "there is more of this movement thing where everyone's doing their own thing and we all play each other's music and it all helps." Skream situates himself in the middle "There is movement and then there's just people making tunes. I've been involved in the scene since I was 13 so I would say I'm someone who's tried to push it forward, I don't just make tracks. I can only speak for myself though, I'm just writing." This is no longer an embryonic genre, perhaps it doesn't need to be pushed. "The scene's developed, a lot of the hard work's done, for me I'm just looking at building myself as a producer." Skream has been labelled, to his chagrin, the ambassador of dubstep. It is a fairly accurate description of how important he is to the scene, but he eschews the title, " I don't really like that term though, it's a bit wankerish, but it wasn't like I really carried it all on my own, there's a number of people like obviously Benga, Digital Mystikz and Kode9. "
Benga and Skream, along with another producer called Artwork, have for a while now, been performing intermittently as Magnetic Man, in what is a live dubstep act. There are no MCs just the three of them with their laptops. Each attempted to explain what exactly this live dubstep act is about. Benga tried first, "We have three laptops, and um we basically do live remixing." What is your role as an individual? "Well it's kind of hard to explain." Do you all have different roles? "No, basically it's like, thee laptops all midi-linked and it's live editing and live mixing." I resolved to go see the act before I understood it, deciding the failure in comprehension was entirely my own ignorance. I asked Benga how it was different from the crowd. "You hear the same song when a DJ plays it, but when it's live you hear it differently, things are mute, basslines are on their own, drums are on their own at certain times." It all sounds very exciting, perhaps more involving for the crowd than a DJ set, but it's a different experience for the producers, as Skream said, "You're just standing there, you're not moving as much as when you do a DJ set, you're still like moving your head or whatever. It's fucking wicked, but sometimes I miss that energy of when you're jumping around and you're grabbing and looking for tunes."
I'd read that Skream has 1500 tunes he's currently working on, this out of date figure pales in comparison to the current number, roughly 8000 (I waited an extra ten minutes as his PC counted them all). "I'm not saying they're all finished, but they're all ideas and you just do it. You start something then you get another idea so you start something else then you get another idea, then you go back and finish two off then you get another three ideas out of one track." How long could it take to produce one track? "I can do two in a day. It depends, if you've got all the elements there. It just works. Things start coming easily, you automatically just hear something and go, fuck me that goes there! You're mind just starts working automatically. You almost know what's coming out." Skream has been known for really pushing the boundaries of dubstep, I was interested to see whether he’d thought about producing anything of a completely different genre. “I’ve been doing some work with Jamie T. It’s completely different to dubstep, 150bpm, 808 drums with him playing the bass.”
Skream’s work with Jamie T sounds exciting, but there is always that danger we’ll see the genre diluted as it gets a taste of commerical success. “I wouldn’t sell myself out, if I was just gonna do it for the money and not think that I could get something out of it then I probably wouldn’t do it.” Yet once the sound gets out in to the wild it is a far harder beast to tame. The international scene is growing exponentially, North America in particular. "The scene over there at the moment is like London was in like 2005/2006, where it's still new to a lot of people." Canada as well, Skream played Shambhala (the best festival in the world, see below) for the second year running this summer. "Shambhala was fucking wicked man, and the actual DJ set was one of my favourite sets I've ever played as well."
There are dangers of such growth though. At the moment a small number of people are, as Benga puts it, “pushing the cause. If you Google dubstep you see a few faces a lot more than others.” Inevitably there will be people who take the sound and corrupt it. There is a new Britney track, “Freakshow,” that has an omnipresent bass wobble. Perhaps a signifier of worse things to come. Dubstep is the anti-thesis of modern pop music; never about image, style or sales and only ever about the music. As long as these pioneers keep pushing the boundaries, this tremendous new sound will continue to evolve and excite.

Magnetic Man are playing at Scala on the 9th October.

noah and the whale interview

first published 19th february 2008

If there is a folk revival happening in London, then Noah and the Whale, must surely be its emerging stars. With a couple of singles out and an album on the way, their support is growing as their sound evolves. I met them at the ICA, halfway through the Young and Lost Club’s (their label) first ever tour.
The band consists of five youngsters. Guitarist and lead vocalist Charlie Fink writes the music. A good-looking fella with a mass of dark curly hair, he's crafted a stage melancholy that seems to vanish when he's not performing. Charlie's brother Doug is the band's drummer, with the physique of an athlete he looks suspiciously like a young Willem Dafoe. Tom Hobden is the fiddler, a quiet and somewhat reserved chap. Laura Marling, her solo career currently on a stratospheric rise, sings and plays various percussion in the band, whilst Urby Whale plays bass as well as a cacophony of other instruments including the xylophone and harmonica.
I ask the band whether their group has a leader. A room of fingers all point at me, I fleetingly think they want me to join and lead them, after weighing up the pros and cons I realise they're pointing at Charlie who is standing next to me. Urby isn’t sure about the question, "Leader's a weird word. Focal point I think is better, Charlie's the man where it all starts." Laura reiterates this point. "If Charlie left it wouldn't be Noah and the Whale." In answer to this Urby comes up with an exquisite pun, "No, it'd be Laura Marling and the Whalers." With his ever-present hat and jovial grin, Urby is an articulate chap. Perhaps the best way to describe him is as someone with whom you know it would be truly spectacular fun to get drunk with. I had developed a theory that Urby was the creative centre of the band. This was based on little more than the fact that people who wear constantly wear trilbys are invariably creative and interesting. However, Urby himself as well as the entire rest of the band assure me that it is Charlie who is at the heart of the music they make. He’s an undeniably gifted writer and producer. He produced Laura's album, which is getting the plaudits it deserves, and he composes Noah and the Whale's music. This is a man who understands how to build complex musical structures. He’s also got a razor-sharp wit. A nice oozy camembert backstage, as well as a few throwaway comments, betray Charlie’s love for cheese. It would probably be a few years away but I hope he doesn't retreat to the country and morph into this generation's Alex James.
There are a significant number of artists in this country, as well as in the US, who are producing folk music. There has been an undeniable resurgence, if not in terms of a quantifiable increase in output, then at the very least as an influence on contemporary mainstream artists. It is far more acceptable now, for the lead singer of a rock band to occassionaly strum away on a 12 string acoustic. In my eternal quest for (yet constant struggle with) definition, I can reel off a list of different sub-genres and offshoots. There’s anti-folk, folktronica, indie-folk, folk punk, folk metal, glam-folk and plenty more. With all these people producing music, there are those commentators that would group them into certain genres. Do these groups exist? Is any “movement” merely the construction of a media eager to pin down and define? “I think it is basically a construct, it's a media thing. Having said that there are a lot of people playing similar kinds of music, but I don't know any of them.” It remains the case that a number of musicians with similar sounds are playing with and supporting each other. Although perhaps to define something as a movement their must be a marriage of individual action with collective intent. “I don't know, I think bracketing bands into groups demeans the music.. Each person’s individual ideas within that creative thing are much more important than the concept. That's not saying we don't think there's a lot of good people in that scene.”
One active proponent and star of the current anti-folk movement in London is Emmy the Great. Her songs combine comedic whimsy with an often very frank and honest pain. She used to play with Noah and the Whale but is no longer with the band. I had read a vicious internet rumour that Emmy was kicked out of the band. When I raised this question wih them, laughs erupt edfrom around the room, "Emmy's a very busy girl. She played music, we played music and she played with us, then she went to do her own thing." So is it a lie? "There was never a formalised thing saying she's got to play with Noah and the Whale. She was never under contract." I realized too late that cunning politicans they aren't, but no one had fully answered the question! However, I didn't sense a real amount of animosity and perhaps it's best if that story simply enters into anti-folk-lore.
Brilliant folk songs have been cropping up with alarming regularity on adverts for everything from mobile phones to cars. Think Joanna Newsom for Orange, Devendra Banhart for T-Mobile and a myriad of other similarly unpleasant examples. The plastering of beautiful music over some cack-handed corporate attempt to sell things, is, I feel, a horrible and jarring juxtaposition. The music that Noah and the Whale have released so far often has had a happy and uplifting texture to it and would probably be ideal for selling a whole host of different products. I wonder aloud how long it will be until a Noah and the Whale song is played in some advert. When the reply comes, "that's a very topical question," I get a little worried. "To be honest, I personally feel pretty nihilistic about that kind of thing. Not if it's a product we don't like, but if it was for cheese or cinemas or something." Urby suggests Ben and Jerry's. "Yeah, we wouldn't promote smoking or McDonalds but otherwise… I don't take adverts into account when I write music, so I just don't care really."
It felt wrong to ask a question about Laura Marling's solo career, even if it was in relation to the band as a whole, but she is selling a lot of records so it became an inevitable point to raise. Having spoken to Laura a week earlier, I was disappointed to see that the intervening period as a basically famous person hadn't lead to outrageous demands for champagne fountains, beluga caviar and bowls of exclusively blue Smarties. Like Dizzee with Roll Deep would Laura be bringing the band on her wave of success? "They're on their own wave of success." It's fascinating to see how the band deal with Laura's identity as a solo artist. A number of people in the crowd were excitedly chattering as they saw Laura appear on stage that night, perhaps unsure if she would actually be appearing. She though, is extremely unwilling to use this occasion to promote her own music. She says she wants the two to be seperate. There were clearly a number of people who were there at least in part to see Laura, when Charlie mentioned her album being out that day they raised an almighty cheer.
"I think we get classified differently by the media just because Laura's a solo artist and we're a band.” This may be true, although in fairness this could be because of the greater difficulty in interviewing a roomful of people rather than one individual. There is a real difference though, when trying to quantify an individual artist as compared to a band. A solo artist is literally one voice, one point of view and one person’s ideas. Yet with a band, even with the afore mentioned “focal point,” it’s more difficult to ascertain where the creative energy and inspiration comes from. The mass of discussions, compromises and executive decisions cannot be examined to be understood. Urby sums this conundrum up quite nicely. “Band's a different word to solo artist. It's two words.”
Noah and the Whale have had two singles pressed already. The first was “Five Years Time,” it provided a nice introduction to the band. Particularly the video, which helpfully names each band member. The song itself is an undeniably happy number. , the ukulele strumming giving it a certain bounce. The lovely chorus of “love love love, wherever you go” and some chirpy whistling put Noah and the Whale on the radar of a number of UK folk fans. The b-side “Jocasta” was less jolly but had a higher tempo. Doug’s urgent drumming on the frame of the drum is an interesting device he’s used a few times to good effect.
Their single out now is “2 Bodies 1 Heart.” It is a slower more ambient sound to their other work and just edges the right side of sentimental. It is somewhat overshadowed by the excellent “Rocks and Daggers.” A genuine crowd pleaser that has people clapping and singing along. It’s a nice track to see live as it allows fiddler Tom to show off his talents and the vocal harmonies come together beautifully.
The video to “2 Bodies 1 Heart” (and “Five Years Time”) was directed by James Copeman. The latter is a hilarious montage of the band as athletes. From the colours of the outfits to the angles and the actual cuts, if Wes Anderson directed music videos, this is precisely what they would look like.
Having recorded their album, I asked how similar it is to their previous output. “It's different from the singles. It's the texture. Some of it's very sparse, with sounds we'd never used before.” A video on youtube gives a tour of their studio. This is anything but lo-fi. Room after room of a plethora of instruments gives the impression of a more than complex recording process. “We’ve used a lot of distortion which links in with the grunge thing.” Kind of like post rock? To which Charlie suggests the magnificent, “post-grunge-folk.”
They reckon that the gig that night was the largest they’d ever headlined. With awareness growing and some sell out nights already it seems their future success is all but assured. How far do they think they’ll go? Charlie smiled sarcastically, “Heard of a little band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers? That's pretty much where we're headed.”
As partB’s exploration of success last week demonstrated, it’s a hard thing to define. “The thing about success is that you're never gonna have a constant goal.
I've don't think there's anyone who's had one goal, achieved it and then thought oh brilliant.” At this point Laura momentarily assumes the role of interviewer, “Wasn't your one goal to support this band called Thanksgiving, who no one's ever heard of anyway? Then you did it last year.” Charlie responds, “Yeah there was like 20 people. It’s true, our biggest ambition was to support Thanksgiving, then we did it and everything since has been downhill.”
Like any real artist, their goal isn’t this ill-defined notion of success. “to be honest, you write music completely independently of any goal you might have. You'll try and create the best thing you can create. Then once that's been done, you think, now what are my ambitions with it. But those ambitions are kind of, "who cares" ambitions, the creative ambitions are much more important.”

Noah and the Whale’s single “2 Bodies 1 Heart” is out now Young and Lost Club

a lass who can really sing - Laura Marling Interview

first published - 12th February 2008

I can’t tell whether she is being modest or she honestly doesn’t understand how popular she will be. I assure Laura Marling that this time next year she will have sold a boat-load of records and, for better or for worse, she will be really, really famous. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
Yet she must be aware of the following that is snowballing around the country. Perhaps when she first started seriously playing music a few years ago, she wouldn’t have expected it, but in the past six months her music has changed. Her fan base, having established itself will only continue to grow.
To those unfamiliar with her songs, she plays what could be described as folk music. Genre can constrain a musician but it does make it easier to describe, “I would call it folk for want of a better word, it's not really folk is it? I don't want it to be whiny bitchy girl music so…”
Her songs range from the hauntingly depressing to the strangely uplifting. Most have a prominent acoustic guitar with various layered percussion instruments. The one astonishing constant is her voice; a sound of such power and subtelty that it must be heard live to be believed. Her music is connecting with a growing number of people, she is going to be huge. I wonder if she wants that, “I'm not sure really. I was thinking about this today, I never wanted to be played on daytime Radio One. I never wanted that.” A bold statement from an up and coming act on a major label. This clearly isn’t her playing up to us, the alternative music press, mostly probably because she read partB for the first time last week. These seem to be the sentiments of a genuine musician. In an age where fame is craved, and success measured by how many magazine covers you’re on, it is nice to meet someone who will be wildly popular but simply wants to make her music. “I could certainly play in front of a hundred people for the rest of my life.”
So if it’s not coming from her, where does the pressure to be conventionally successfull come from? “It's not just the major label. It’s what people expect. People think that you want to be on daytime Radio One. People think you want to be famous. You feel that pressure to perform, that if you're not on daytime Radio One then you're not a success, but I don't want that!” Some could construe this as ungrateful, assuming that everyone on Radio One wants to be there. “When you first get started and people are making an effort to find out who you are that's really fun. You feel really appreciated as people come and look for your records. When you're on Radio One, snobby as it may sound, you're just being given to people.” Or even sold to people, “Yeah yeah exactly. I’m not gonna lie it can be pretty soul crushing. But you have no choice. They pick it up. You don't have to push yourself. Luckily I haven't been given to anyone yet.” It is only a matter of time though.
As her popularity grows she is starting to see that side of the musicians life that they leave out in the brochure. The endless promotion and plugging of your work. “I've never wanted to be interviewed by someone who doesn't know who I am and didn't want the interview that much, only it's their job. I've always been very selective with interviews.”
By the time you read this interview I suspect daytime Radio One listeners will be more than familiar with Laura Marling, although perhaps not with this beautiful philosophy, “At the end of the day who gives a fuck about what anybody else thinks?”
It would be easy to take what she says with a pinch of salt. The fact is quite a few of the songs she has made are quite radio-friendly. Although to be fair most of those songs were written much earlier in her career and she rejects a few of them now. At an in-store Laura did last week there were a lot of fifteen year old girls. A significant proportion were called Emily and a fair few asked her why she didn’t play “New Romantic” anymore. ‘New Romantic’ is a song that could have really pushed Laura Marling into the big time. It was a rather twee and fluffy acoustic number that was not bad but was hardly the most progressive folk music. I raised the topic of another of her old songs that long-time fans may look kindly upon, “London Town.” “It’s rubbish,” she tells me, I protest but she repeats herself, “Come on, I wrote that when I was fourteen, it’s rubbish.” I’m a little taken aback by such a brutal condemnation of her work but concede the ground. The truth is her early work was far from the finished article, but it demonstrated two things; she had an exquisite voice and a gift for poetry. She needed something else to propel her music to the next level, that something came in the form of one Charlie Fink.
Those that don’t take Laura seriously would do well to listen to Noah and the Whale. They are a grunge-folk band in which she plays and sings, although she doesn’t write for them. Their music has little danger of being played on Radio One any time soon. Arguably more optimistic than Laura’s music, Noah and the Whale with their complex array of ukulele, guitar, drums and other layered precussion produce a magnificent sound. Currently on indie label Young and Lost Club, they have recorded an album and are right now touring the UK. The single Five Years Time is out now and it is their happiest (if not their best) song. Laura describes Charlie as “incredibly talented”, and it isn’t that difficult to tell how much influence he’s had on her music. “Six months ago I'd never tried to put anything around my music. Then Charlie came in because I wanted him to produce it. We sat down and he said tell me what you want and I'll try and help you do it.” The melding of their formidable talents has resulted in something really rather special. After recording her four track EP My Manic and I, she went on to record her album, Alas I Cannot Swim, which is out now.
Alas I Cannot Swim is a phenomenal album. “Ghosts”, the first single is the opening number. It is beautifully subtle and hauntingly sad, every bar demands total attention from you. The other stand out track is “Cross Your Fingers”, a rather lovely but kind of bleak song. The one complaint I have with the album is that most of the tracks are played at a slower tempo than when she plays live. A speedier count would not have gone amiss, particularly on title track “Alas I Cannot Swim.”
The album is immediately trying to do something different and not just with its musical content. There are two versions available, one is a limited editon “Song Box.” It’s a big box which contains little mementos for each of the songs. They were designed by Laura wth artwork by Andrew Mockett. It looks quite similar to Joanna Newsom’s first album The Milk-Eyed Mender. There’s a board game, a little booklet with all the lyrics in, postcards and other delightful trinkets. It also contains a code to get a free ticket to the “Song Box tour.”
The idea for the Song Box was Laura’s. “My Dad was a sound engineer so I can’t stand downloads.” The cynic would probably put it that they’re simply trying to make more money. Whilst it is true this is an attempt to “scrape back people buying CDs,” it’s more about having a physical product. In terms of the mementos in the song box it is about “doing something special for people buying the album.”
Downloading is obviously seen as a problem by many people in the music industry. “It's weird because if I'd come in to this five years ago, this wouldn't be a problem.” Yet there are some interesting things happening to try and claw back those sales. The Song Box is one of them, in particular the idea of gig tickets is significant. It seems likely in the future a greater proportion of money will be made by live performances. Radiohead’s releasing of In Rainbows online in a pay-what-you-want format was a fantastic example of one way the industry could go. “That was a fucking cool idea, but they had the support of a record label for a good few albums. Fuckin’ well done to them though. Also they made more money out of the box that they sold.” ­
Laura gained a small degree of fame and notereity in October during a gig at the Soho Revue Bar. After being asked to leave the venue due to her being under 18, she performed an impromptu busking session. Her live performances, whilst not all as surprising as that, do defy expectations. There is no escaping the fact that she is quite a small person. With beautiful delicate features she refuses to wear make up on stage. Thus after a brief and unassuming intro to the crowd, when she unleashes her extraordinary voice upon them there is a certain air of disbelief that such a softly powerful sound is coming from such a diminuitive figure.
The 29th of January marked her first CD release. Previously the only format on which people could buy her music was vinyl. So even if she may disapprove, a significant number of fans have discovered Laura Marling on the internet. Youtube has become a wonderful way to discover music that artists don’t neccesarily have on their Myspace or on any peer to peer networks. This can only have helped Laura because the work done on her videos has been very impressive. James Copeman has worked closely with Laura on her videos. The video for her single Ghosts is particulary interesting. It features what looks like stop motion animation. I ask if she is involved with the videos much, “I wish I were. I just I have no vision like that. I’m completely useless at the visual things.” Yet Laura is basically obsessed with film. I ask her if Cloverfield is any good and I’m met with a scornfully patronising grimace any art school graduate would be proud of. Surely someone so interested in film should be part of the music video making process. “I'd like to, I just don't know enough. That's something I'm really interested in, something I wish I'd been offered at school. I might go on a film studies course.” So this leads me nicely on to the question of what Laura Marling’s going to do next.
First up she has the Song Box tour. The London date is on March the 6th at the Union Chapel but you need to buy the Song Box to get a ticket. She’s touring simultaneously with Noah and the Whale on their Young and Lost Club tour. I balk at the idea of her doing two tours at the same time. “I had this gig with them [Noah and the Whale] and it was meant to be my last gig with them but I couldn't really deal with that”
Having recieved a bass guitar for her birthday she’s already formed a punk band with Charlie Fink. A lot of commentators have mentioned the influence her dad had on her musical tastes, playing her various Neil Young records. However little lip service has been paid to how her Mum’s tastes affected hers. She says her mum is a huge punk fan and Laura adores punk. Although the one piece of music their band The 4Qs has recorded is “about as far from punk as you can get.”
She doesn’t yet know what direction her next album will go in. “That’s another thing that genre does, it confines you. I like the idea of doing something completely different on my next album... maybe plug-in.” There’d be more than one person shouting “Judas” on any future electric tour I reckon. Although with an electric guitar and a proper fuck-you attitude perhaps Laura would morph into this generation’s Debbie Harry.
The comparisons to her contemporaries made by some commentators range from the innaccurate to the frankly absurd. The only common denominator she can see is that rare quality of being female. At my suggestion of it being a London accent she swiftly reminds me that she doesn’t have a London accent but a Reading one. Of course the difference has nothing to do with accent nor indeed gender. “Honestly if anyone's actually heard my music I can safely say they won't seriously think that.”
Laura Marling is on top of a wave about to break. To ride it she will have to work hard and paddle furiously, to stay standing she must perform a remarkable feat of balance. Success is a must because alas, she cannot swim.

Alas I Cannot Swim is out now on EMI.