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THE JEZABELS are back in town. They’ve been back and forth to the UK the past few years, gently nurturing their fanbase, supporting massive names including Garbage, Depeche Mode and The Pixies, and we always love catching up with them.

Electric on stage, they have been unfairly snubbed by the mainstream UK media who struggled to latch on to the fact that this is not only a cool band to see live, but that the loyalty in their fanbase is fierce whether its back at home in Australia or here in Manchester – and they have worked hard to earn that loyalty. While certain media types continue to play catch-up, the band have just brought out second album The Brink to follow their 2011 award-winner Prisoner.

Off the back of their LANEWAY FESTIVAL slots, they’re soaking up the new set list as they now perform to fans across the UK and Europe.

Here at Manchester’s Gorilla, there’s already a buzz in the air as Jezabels fans gather to embrace the new tracks and celebrate the classic ones too. The new London-recorded album is certainly of a different vibe to the first one – in Hayley Mary’s own words: “we think it’s a bit more of a positive, warm record” than their acclaimed debut.

Backstage, I get right down to brass tacks with lead singer Hayley Mary and guitarist Sam Lockwood, while drummer Nik Kaloper sound checks next door and keyboardist Heather gets ready for the show ahead. It’s nice to see them again, and as always they’re focused and friendly, with feet firmly on the ground.

* For report and photos of 25 February Manchester show, click HERE >>

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Hello again! One album further on…

SAM: One album into the future!

You got to the UK not that long ago and you’ve just done Nottingham…

SAM: Yeah, we were in Australia for Laneway Festival and we came over a couple weeks ago. This is basically the start of our album tour.

How did it go?

HAYLEY: Last night was good! It was a really great crowd for some reason – we weren’t expecting it because it’s Monday, beginning of the week…

SAM: The show was really fun, it went really well.

And how are you feeling about the new album? It has a different feel to the first one…

HAYLEY: Yeah, we’re definitely feeling good about it. The main thing we’ve been saying about it is we think it’s a bit more of a positive, warm record, it’s probably a little bit more upbeat – we wrote it purposely to make it easier to play live, so we’re looking forward to seeing if we’ve succeeded. And so far, it sounds good…

SAM: Yeah, last night went really well – we can play seven songs off the album now. With Prisoner, it took us many, many months to even get a couple of songs.

Are you going to be changing your set as you move through the tour?

SAM: Yeah. It’s just testing set lists and what works, because with new songs, you don’t know how they fit in with everything else…

It’s an exciting period though, because you can experiment and you’re probably very conscious of the audience reaction…

SAM: Well, putting six or seven new songs into the set list makes everything new – they make old songs seem new, so it’s just really nice. We got rid of songs we maybe played too much…

HAYLEY: Yeah, and every time we don’t do songs, people are like, “Why don’t you play that one?” And it’s like, “Well, we have a new record…”

Are you happy with the response to the new set so far?

SAM: Yeah! It’s awesome, we’re stoked. Even last night with the show – it was a really great crowd. The last time we played Nottingham we were in a really small room. Last night it was a bigger venue, The Rescue Rooms, and the room was full It just felt like people were really psyched about everything. We’re a very malleable band with our emotions, so if people are excited, we get really excited – it’s kind of an exchange.

HAYLEY: Yeah, if they’re not excited, we get sad…

Aw no! What do you do on stage if you ever feel the crowd’s not getting into it?

SAM: You just have to try to get through it, but it’s so much easier if they’re into it.

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing the new set.

SAM: Yeah, it should be interesting!

HAYLEY: We’ll see how it goes! I just don’t know what’s going to happen out there…

And, what would you say you’d hope to happen with the album and the tour?

SAM: I hope it goes well.

HAYLEY: Nothing in particular, but I just hope that it goes well and that people like it. I hope we don’t lose money, but other than that I just really would like to make people happy!

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You recorded The Brink in London – I found it quite funny when I discovered you chose London, considering last time I met you, you were quite frustrated with how the UK press were receiving you here…

HAYLEY: Oh, we still are!

SAM: Yeah, we kind of thought about that, like, “Why aren’t we going somewhere like Germany or Canada where they love us?” Yeah, maybe we’re masochists…

HAYLEY: I think we like to be berated and put down… We like being the underdog. You don’t want to be somewhere where they love you and think you’re great, because you’d just get complacent…

But, what if everything just switched with this tour – if the UK critics now suddenly embraced you, would that feel a bit odd?

HAYLEY: We’d probably be like, “Oh yeah, now you like us…!”

SAM: After we did a Depeche Mode and a Pixies tour, we felt that it kind of repositioned us in a way. With a band, people need to put you somewhere to fit you into the landscape. With us, it’s kind of weird because our music is not generally pop – it’s not generally anything. In Australia, we’re Australian so everyone’s generally supportive, but when you go somewhere else, you feel you need to have a story…

HAYLEY: We’ve got a lot of things which make us really unmarketable to the London market. But one thing we noticed is London is separate to the rest of the country – we really like touring the rest of the country. I love London too, but it’s just that the music critics there seem to have a war against optimism.

You’re too happy?!

HAYLEY: But, we’re not, even! We just wrote happy music…

SAM: We’re not even that happy…

Maybe it’s a bit cliquey in London – it can be tough, because there’s quite a lot of bandwagoning among the mainstream music media there…

SAM: Exactly. Especially if you’re making music that doesn’t have a genre or a trend…

HAYLEY: … or if it’s not in the movement that they think is cool at the moment…

So, you say you repositioned yourself – did you go into the new album conscious of wanting to achieve that?

HAYLEY: I don’t think it was conscious…

SAM: I mean we wanted to do certain things like make things better for live play, but that’s all, really. I mean, choosing your producer is really instrumental, and with Dan’s (Dan Grech-Marguerat) work with The Kooks, The Vaccines and Scissor Sisters, you can sort of get a general picture of what he’s going to do, so I guess that’s one thing we could have understood. That’s a big thing that made the album sound like it is.

HAYLEY: But a lot of it is circumstance. We didn’t move to London because the critics hate us there or anything – we went there because we had personal relationships that meant it was easier to be there than anywhere else at that time.

So, did you develop an affection for the city?

SAM: I love London – it’s amazing.

HAYLEY: Totally! It’s London! You can’t really top the experience of living there.

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The last time we met was your memorable show with GARBAGE at the Manchester Academy almost 2 years back. Since then, we’ve seen Pussy Riot jailed, which brought together a lot of female musicians and promoted female visibility in music, politics… Things do seem to be evolving in the industry a bit…

HAYLEY: Well, the biggest example we’ve experienced was Laneway Festival actually – it was all headlined by female-fronted acts: Lorde, Haim, us, Chvrches, Cloud Control, Daughter, lots of bands not just with female members but female-fronted, or all-female bands like Savages. The biggest thing that struck me wasn’t that they were ‘allowed’ to be on there, but that the festival didn’t mind heaps of female-fronted bands in a row headlining the festival.

That’s quite a shift isn’t it, when you look at festival trends…

HAYLEY: Yeah, because normally festivals avoid it…

SAM: Yeah, and it was the most successful festival in Australia over summer for that genre. So, I think times are changing. I guess there was never a problem with doing that anyway, but it was great to see that it occurred and nobody even talked about it, really. They were just like, “This is great!”

HAYLEY: Well, people said it was a good thing, but no one was like “Ah!” I guess people used to be afraid that if you have that many female acts in a row, the audience would be like, “Oh, enough, enough!” or something. We’ve even been worried about that before – I remember worrying that if we get two female-fronted support bands, people might get sick of the female vocals. But then I’m like, “No they don’t! What are you talking about?” It’s just this old fear that people have.

Maybe audiences are adjusting now to seeing a band as a band. I mean HAIM are loved by a lot of people, they’re not restricted to only female fans or male fans…

SAM: You know, they’re just a good rock band. Gender is a secondary thing with them.

HAYLEY: And the fact is that a lot of female-fronted bands are the cool bands at the moment and are doing a lot of cool stuff.

And SAVAGES – a London band. Your impression of them?

SAM: I really, really like them, they’re an amazing band.

HAYLEY: They’re really good. It’s very cool in London for a reason. I find it a little bit elitist for my liking, but I think they’re amazing at what they do. There’s a kind of genius to having a really set vision and knowing what you’re about. It’s really coherent.

SAM: They’re really good musicians. It’s really arty and really serious. I just find the music a bit too angular – but it’s just a music thing. I like folky country stuff…

Things do seem to be changing a bit for female-led bands. It’s great timing maybe in terms of you bringing out an album now and seeing how the UK receives you in that sense. Also, the industry seems to be having to focus less on the nationality of bands…

HAYLEY: I think that’s true. I think there’s still a little bit of a stigma in London about being Australian, and particularly about being big in Australia, but that’s just a certain kind of press. Everywhere else, they’re just like, “Ah, you’re Australian” or they don’t even comment.

SAM: It’s a bit like the female thing…

HAYLEY: Yeah, it’s like, “Why would you even think about it…?”

SAM: Yeah, there are so many bands. Australian bands including small ones are playing around the world. It seems flights are cheaper and labels are really keen to interact with international bands. Back before the age of the Internet, labels wouldn’t invest in a band from overseas, because they were worried how they can get them into the UK and do tours, play and do press. But now you can be in Australia and do interviews. It’s great…

The Internet has been a real game-changer…

SAM: Yeah, it’s just totally opened everything up…

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On Sunday 1st of December, SHATTERJAPAN caught up with Toronto’s electro group AUSTRA backstage at HOSTESS CLUB WEEKENDER festival in Tokyo.

Pretty wrecked, having arrived just hours earlier from their show in Hong Kong, the current foursome (sisters Sari and Romy Lightman, who are taking time out to focus on their own project TASSEOMANCY, are due to reunite with Austra for the band’s final show of the tour in Bangkok) are found chilling out at the table in their room behind the stage of the Yebisu Garden Hall.

Katie Stelmanis, Maya Postepski, Dorian Wolf and Ryan Wonsiak have just wrapped up their set, opening up Day 2 of the festival, and are unwinding with drinks and plates of food from the buffet, muttering about how the meals provided are decidedly un-Japanese. After a brief chat about other bands on the festival’s lineup, some recommendations on where to visit in Tokyo, and teaching Katie how to explain her shellfish allergy in Japanese, we got to talking about their current tour and their thoughts on Tokyo.

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Welcome to Japan! How has your Asia tour been going so far?

DORIAN: Well this is only our second date in Asia, but so far so good! We were in Hong Kong a couple of days ago, and yeah that was a great show. We just recently got over our jet lag.

KATIE: I’m not over it, I’m still jet lagged. Our big Asia tour! We were supposed to co-headline a couple more shows after this but the co-headliner dropped out, we’ve cancelled shows. So yeah, we just decided it’d be great to plan our tour around five days in Tokyo!

How did you find your performance this afternoon? How did a Japanese crowd compare to what you’re more used to?

MAYA: Well, they were quite quiet, and respectful – that’s how I read it. So, it’s a bit different because we just finished a big European tour, and a big North American tour previous to that, where the audiences are like mental, and usually drunk or crazy – Dorian was just saying about our show in Dublin…

DORIAN: Yeah we played a show in Dublin, and everyone there was wasted, like eight hundred people… Even in the quiet moments during the song, we would quiet down and we could hear people yelling at each other, it was like a party constantly. When we finished the show, the promoter came backstage and was so proud, he was like, “Don’t you just love the Dublin crowd!? They’re so attentive to you guys, they listened to everything!” And we were like, “Really? Are you serious??” Anyway they were “remarkably attentive” as an audience that night, but yeah…

MAYA: So, compared to that, Japanese people seem really… I like it! I think it’s a cool way to watch a concert.

DORIAN: Yeah, I think it was good for a Sunday afternoon at 1pm, very appropriate for a crowd to be like that. They did seem to be very interested.

And how was the Hong Kong show? Quite a different setup to this one…

KATIE: It was nice, it was outside!

DORIAN: Yeah, it was outside so you could see the crazy skyline.

RYAN: Like right in the central area of the city, it was very beautiful.

You’re currently playing as a four-piece instead of six, how is that feeling?

KATIE: Well, we’ve been playing as a four-piece now for about six months, so we’re pretty used to it at this point. The twins are coming out to our last show of the year in Thailand, because they used to live there, so even though they’re not touring with us any more, it’s kind of special for them to be a part of that show.

DORIAN: Actually though, we’ve been touring with others sometimes too, like we brought a trombone player across Canada with us, and we also had a flautist play a couple of shows with us in Berlin, and then another flute player and saxophone player join us for a couple of weeks also in Europe, so yeah it’s a changing lineup in general.

In the UK, for some of your shows you had a sort of Asian-themed backdrop, but you didn’t use it here…

KATIE: We brought it! We have it…

MAYA: They didn’t have the right pole for it, so we brought it all over the place but unfortunately it didn’t work out today. We didn’t get to use it in Hong Kong either, it was also a different pole…

DORIAN: We brought this beautiful backdrop on our Asian tour and can’t even use it!

KATIE: I sleep with it as my blanket, that’s why I brought it – I wrap myself in it.

You guys now have five days free in Tokyo, what are you most looking forward to doing?

EVERYONE: Eating!

RYAN: Fashion.

MAYA: I also want to do karaoke!

KATIE: To be honest, I’m not really excited by the idea of doing karaoke in a private room.

RYAN: Oh, you want to be on stage?

KATIE: I’d like to be on stage! What’s the point of doing karaoke for like three people?

RYAN: It’s for us!

MAYA: We can get drunk and make fun of you.

KATIE: Yeah, but it’s so much better when it’s in front of like a hundred people.

DORIAN: Yeah, but you’re one of those people that does karaoke and actually impresses people.

MAYA: I’d like to go chill in that spa in Haneda!

…Hakone.

MAYA: Why do I keep calling it Haneda? What’s Haneda?

…It’s an airport.

MAYA: Oh yeah, I’ll go to the airport – cool!

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With regards to women in music, do you feel like circumstances have gotten better in recent years?

KATIE: I don’t know. It’s difficult to say whether or not anything’s improved. I think it’s just an entirely different landscape for women, it’s just always going to be a different experience than a man in the music industry. What I see right now is that there’s a major popularity of having female solo projects – it seems like that’s a way that people really kind of identify with women. For a long time, it kind of felt like there wasn’t much happening in the way of bands… Popstars are so tied to the visual, and a character in a way. I found that there was a real lack of female musicians that didn’t have to be tied to some kind of character in order to be noticed, and so that was always kind of a big problem for me. But, I think even this year it’s getting better and better. I think the band Haim is a great example of a female group that is pretty much known for their technical musical abilities over anything else, and they’re like topping the charts all over the world, so I think that they’re a really big triumph for women in music.

MAYA: I mean it’s always getting better, but it’s a difficult industry, like many other industries, to be a woman. You know it’s weird when you look at festivals and the lineups are practically all men. It’s still a reality that unfortunately for some reason, it’s not just that women aren’t playing music, that we’re not interested or not good at music, it’s just kind of a dude’s world. I’m glad that we are a band that can function and survive, and there are other bands like Haim and tonnes of other awesome bands that are making it happen. It’s weird when you actually look at statistics…

KATIE: Because the reality is there are a lot of successful female-fronted bands right now, but relative to the amount of successful bands in the world, it’s probably less than ten percent.

MAYA: It’s weird when I hear these questions – we still have to talk about it in this way, like, “Oh you’re a woman drummer… you’re a woman musician…” It’s still a category on its own, and because I guess it’s just still not normal. It’s hard because I don’t have a definite answer like how I feel about it, but yeah it’s weird.

How is the electro scene in Toronto at the moment?

RYAN: We’re never in Toronto…

KATIE: Yeah, we don’t know. I loved instrumental electronic music for a really long time and didn’t really think that there was any sort of scene in Toronto. Then after touring, I sort of started meeting all these artists who were like, “Oh, I’m from Toronto!” And I’m like, “Really, you live here?!”

MAYA: Yeah, there are also a lot of electronic bands in Toronto that are really popular, like obviously Crystal Castles… We toured with a band called Diana, they were on our tour in North American and for some of Europe, and they’re doing really, really well, and they’re electronic. So, there’re lots of cool bands coming out of Toronto that are under the electronic umbrella. I’m happy that’s happening, because growing up there was nothing besides folky, indie music, so now it’s really flipped and everyone’s on the electronic scene.

DORIAN: I’m just trying to think of other bands in Toronto that are making it big…

RYAN: There’s a good underground scene in Toronto, there’s a lot of house, a lot of dubstep, a lot of techno… So many parties every day of the week I’d say.

KATIE: Ryan’s the only one who knows about it. I feel like you’re the only one that knows about it because you’re not from Toronto, you came to Toronto and were like, “Where’s the dance party?” and you looked for it. I never would’ve known about it, ever. I feel like you experience a city differently when you move there and you’re like, “I need to figure out what’s going on!”

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You released your second album Olympia earlier this year, and it has a very different vibe to the previous one – how do you think it’s been received so far?

KATIE: I think it’s been good. I think with our first album, we kind of went from zero to real band, and it felt like a really big surge in popularity. It didn’t feel like that with this album. I think now we’re a band, we’ve established ourselves, and this is an album that is one of the hundreds we will make.

MAYA: Yeah, I guess when you’re a fresh face, everyone points their attention at you, but then when you’ve kind of established your name a little bit, it’s like, “Oh, there’s another Austra album out – cool… Well, there’s also this awesome new person!!” So it’s fine, I’m happy with it. At first, we weren’t sure if people liked it, but now as we’ve been touring a lot more, I’ve been seeing a lot more people singing the songs and I think it just took a little time for people to get into it, because it’s a bit of a different album. Listening to it takes a bit more time maybe, you know, it’s not like a hit Top 40 album.

KATIE: It’s an introspective album.

Where are you heading from this point? Have you already started working on material for a third album?

MAYA: Yeah, we’re always working – you don’t just stop and say, “I’m not working now.” We all constantly do our own work and it just interweaves itself into Austra eventually – all of us just keep working on our private stuff. We’re going to try and take a little bit of a holiday after Thailand, but then into the New Year, I definitely see us working a lot on new stuff.

How do you feel the Internet has affected the rise of electronic music?

KATIE: I think that electronic music has become much more popular because it’s kind of like punk music, in a sense – anyone with a computer can make it, it’s so accessible, and there’re so many success stories of people just using GarageBand and selling hundreds of thousands of records. It’s kind of cool that basically anyone has an entire studio at their fingertips now and I think that has a lot to do with electronic music increasing. It’s also just that cities are changing – in most cities in North America now, you can’t really afford to be in a band and have a job, but you can afford to make music on your computer. Being in a band is so expensive, but if you can make music on your computer, you have everything yourself.

MAYA: Yeah, I mean it’s cheap, it’s fast, and you can virtually start with no experience. If you know how to go on YouTube, Google “How to use Ableton,” and you have the time and the patience to teach yourself, it’s awesome. It’s like, I’m not going to go and learn how to play the clarinet by watching YouTube, but you can do that with computer programs.

KATIE: It’s cool, it’s created this open playing field because there isn’t really any ‘right way’ to use Ableton or GarageBand or ProTools, like there’s no one correct way – everyone kind of interprets it and figures it out in their own way. Right now, there’s so much really interesting music that’s happening just because people are kind of discovering it from a completely outsider perspective.

DORIAN: It’s really fun to tour with bands and find out how they use Ableton, because everybody uses Ableton, every band we tour with has a backing track of some sort, and they all use it differently! Every single person I’ve talked to, and that’s really cool, like weird tricks and things like that.

MAYA: I think also at the same time though, there’s something to be said about the negative aspects of it. There’re awesome bands that are coming out that have taught themselves from nothing and they’re excellent, but then there’s so much oversaturation of not-that-great music. So I think that what I’d like to see in the next 10-15 years is a change of some kind of taste avenue. I just think there’s so much bad music out there right now.

DORIAN: What are you saying? We need to eliminate it?

MAYA: No, no, no… but you couldn’t just be in a band 30-40 years ago!

KATIE: Yes you could! Do you know how many bad bands there are in the world? As long as there’s good music, there’s going to be bad music. Every single musical genre is oversaturated with bad music.

DORIAN: I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to forget about the bad ones.

KATIE: Yeah, that’s what happens – the good ones withstand time and the bad ones don’t.

MAYA: Yeah, but you know what I mean, like everyone can be a photographer now with iPhones…

KATIE: Yeah, but only the good ones stand out.

MAYA: Yeah! I guess I’m just like… I don’t know…

DORIAN: I don’t know, maybe that’s a valid point – do we look at more crappy pictures in our lives than people 50 years ago? We have more access to them now.

KATIE: How many people in the ‘50s and ‘60s wanted to be musicians and just walked around with an acoustic guitar wanting to be the next Bob Dylan. Think about how many of those people then were probably hundreds of thousands and everyone was just like, “I hate this instrument.”

DORIAN: I know, but we just spent the past 20 minutes talking about why electronic music in Toronto is so huge now, and it’s because of the ease of recording music. Well, everyone back then had an acoustic guitar and a microphone that costs a hundred dollars…

KATIE: But that’s electronic music versus non-electronic music.

MAYA: I just wanted to flip it! Because I think it’s great that people have access to this resource, but then as a result of that you get a lot of garbage – that’s all I wanted to say.

DORIAN: I want all the garbage to be eliminated too! I don’t know how to do it, but…

KATIE: You can’t call anything ‘garbage’!

MAYA: I’m just saying there’s more saturation.

KATIE: How much music in the world do you think was called ‘garbage’ at one point and became like ‘revolutionary.’ I would never ever in a million years want to annihilate the ‘garbage’ music from the world, because I think it’s hugely influential for the landscape of music in general.

DORIAN: Well that’s very Canadian of you… but I don’t like ‘garbage’ music.

KATIE: You guys sound like such assholes! You do!

MAYA: He said that! Not me! I was just trying to flip the argument, I wasn’t doing like a ‘God’ thing where it’s like, “This is good and this is bad.” I was just saying in general it’s more saturated – period. It’s just your opinion that there is no such thing as ‘garbage’ music.

KATIE: This is why we don’t do interviews all together.

DORIAN: I appreciate a healthy argument.

MAYA: Dorian used to be on the debate team, so don’t do interviews with him.

DORIAN: Excuse me but this is my creative outlet – I like to express myself and I don’t think it’s appropriate that you annihilate my creative opinion.

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Many know AMANDA PALMER as one half of iconic duo THE DRESDEN DOLLS. And many across the world now know Ms. Palmer as the artist who took our breath away at her recent TED talk where she talked passionately about the importance of artists asking for help. She’s an engaging artist and an engaging human being. And this is why she is much loved.

Amanda Palmer is touring with The Grand Theft Orchestra and is about to hit Manchester’s Ritz and London’s Roundhouse among other venues across the UK and she’s also doing Glastonbury this year. Nothing is going to stop the Palmer whirlwind from spreading her industry-savvy gospel and holding the odd ninja gig here and there. A firm believer in the power of the individual as well as the power of the supportive community, with a fabulously intimate relationship with her audience, Amanda remains an essential voice in the increasingly distorted arts industry – a calm voice of reason and guidance in turbulent times.

In addition to legions of adoring fans, she has her fair share of critics and takes any comments gracefully on the chin. Her historical Kickstarter campaign that exceeded an incredible 1 million pounds to fund her latest album “Theatre Is Evil” was followed by controversy over non-payment of volunteer musicians – a heated issue which was eventually resolved. Controversy or not, the campaign set the bar for artists in terms of appealing to fans for voluntary funding.

We catch up with Amanda ahead of her UK dates and we find that she’s more than ready to get up close and personal with her people.

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You’ve talked recently in a Guardian article about the struggles you had as a child, fitting in, being in a family where you felt isolated. Can you talk a little bit more about that isolation? It seems that it may have led you to discover other things in life…

Well, I think it’s really typical for people with artistic temperaments to feel either alienated or isolated as kids, especially if you’re not in an incredibly artistic environment, because things can feel as though they just don’t make sense. And it was always my dream as a kid, as a teenager, to wind up as an adult living in an artistic environment. I didn’t want to be like my parents, I didn’t want to be like most of the people in the town I grew up in, where there was very little art and culture. So, I was really drawn to the city and I was really drawn to the idea of artistic communities. I was fascinated and obsessed with the 20s and the 60s and art movements and Weimar and cabaret any historical depictions of scenes where there was a real artistic hotbed that I was really drawn to. And I think that’s pretty typical of most artists.

Do you remember the moment when you realized you were maybe really different from people around? Was there any moment where you felt “This is going to be exciting” or did you just feel “Oh no, this is tough…”?

I had one moment that was a turning point, and it was literally a seismic sea change in my life. It was the night before 8th grade, so I would have been 13. And I had spent my childhood and most of 6th and 7th grade just desperately trying to fit in, desperately trying to belong and impress the popular kids – I was imitating their behaviour and my sister in a bid to find acceptance: shopping at the mall, matching my hair scrunchie with my socks, and stuff like that. And I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “This really isn’t working and it’s a no-win situation.”

And I sort of decided overnight to reject everything that I’d be trying to align with. So I went, overnight, from being a kid who was trying to fit in to being the kid who was loudly separating themselves. I dyed all my clothes black, bitched about all the kids I was hanging out with that I didn’t like, rejected my sister and her way of life, and went down a very committed path of being punk rock and ‘other.’ I was always a weird kid, but I finally decided just to embrace it, instead of fight it.

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I saw of course the recent TED talk you did that has done really well online. The point you make about artists asking for help made some people, even artists, feel very uncomfortable, it seems – and there’s been some backlash to the speech. But how do you feel about the arts community in terms of how it’s embracing or rejecting what you stand for?

Well, the majority of the art community stand in recognition of the fact that the system is changing. And we don’t necessarily know what direction it is headed in. But, we’re starting to sense some of the new guidelines, because money and distribution and digital sharing and the factors that are just chaotically shifting right now mean that pretty much every discipline is redefining itself. And the way forward isn’t necessarily going to be crowdfunding per se, but there is a universal truth in that if the machine or the machinery behind traditional distribution systems like publishing or labels really is going to collapse and something else is going to take its place, artists can either proactively align with it and control it or they can just bitch and moan about the fact that it’s not the 80s anymore.

And the talk about asking wasn’t even really supposed to be a solution or a roadmap to some golden age and magic bullet of how arts will be funded and how all artists will be okay, but it was more a discussion of, as artists and as people, why we are so afraid to ask for help, and what does that mean about our culture right now that we’re afraid to ask for help.

I wrote that talk specifically aimed at musicians who I had discussions with who told me they were really impressed by my attitude and by my Kickstarter but they felt like they were unable to ask for help because it was too shameful, or they felt too embarrassed, or they felt too inadequate, or they felt too privileged, or they felt something that was blocking their ability to just ask for help. That talk was really meant for them, but then it wound up resonating more universally, which was surprising to me, but it also brought up some interesting questions about what is happening in culture right now that it resonates so much with people.

We’re living in quite unsettling times… just seeing the way that so many artists are afraid to engage say with the Pussy Riot cause or who are engaging with social issues but only in a detached manner. From your perspective, where are we at right now with the link between society, politics and music? Do you think it could get better? Do you think musicians need to be better networked, be more open about these links?

I think there’s a lot of fear right now. And I think especially in the States, the way it’s manifesting is squishing out in all sorts of odd shapes. Just seeing what’s happening politically, right now, last night, just the kind of deep divides that are happening between the desire to stay staunchly conservatively in the past and those trying to evolve the agenda – it’s frightening.

I was at an event in New York a couple of weeks ago and was really excited to meet a couple of the girls from Pussy Riot which was fantastic, and one of them was a Dresden Dolls fan, so I was deliriously happy! But you look at the situation that they’re in and you look at the statistics of their culture’s take on that situation, and some of the things happening in the States right now, even just around the topic of crowdfunding – I’m finding myself astonished that people in America are following an agenda that is so fear-driven, that is so conservative, even the people who are identifying as liberal.

But, in my opinion, it always comes down to fear. And when you’re living in a decline, when the economy is frightening, the environment is frightening, the ability to actually make ends meet is a challenging reality – it’s just traditionally what happens. People become afraid, and as soon as you start working from a place of fear, everything goes down the drain – arts, culture, the progression of politics – everything suffers, because people refuse to take risks and then you get the snowball effect of all of those things meeting each other.

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I was talking to a Manchester musician yesterday and we were agreeing that now is actually the time for all groups who have been undermined in the arts industry to get together now, that it’s important for people to network globally now, to tour and remain open, to learn how to network and understand their evolving industry and the world around them. With your tour coming up, are you feeling very pumped to see how people respond to you now in these difficult socio-economic times?

One reason that I love touring and that I think it’s so important to constantly go and physically connect, is that as I tour, it’s not just about my band getting on stage and people buying a ticket and seeing our show – it’s about the community that gathers around that show. You know, being able to look around The Roundhouse and see 3000 people and feel that you’re not alone, and feel that there are others who aren’t working from a place of fear and don’t have a negative agenda and believe in art and truth and messiness, and the things that we spend hours and hours discussing on the Internet – and discussing things on the Internet is one thing and actually getting together and being with that community in person is another – that’s really important.

People need to remember that a connection can be a connection, but a connection in person can supercede all value. And I love that people use my shows to find each other, and to feel not alone and to find their community and make new friends, and it’s a communion of sorts in an era where religion has gone crazy and none of us really trust it – this is kind of our replacement. We follow bands and singer-songwriters and artists, not just because we love their work, but because when we go to a show, it’s akin to going to church. We want to be with our congregation and we want to be with the artist themselves.

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What words of advice, or words of comfort, do you have for artists out there who admire what you do, and also admire other musicians who are working to make the music industry more open, more diverse?

I would say don’t forget that it’s not a competition, and that you need to help each other! I think one of the things that can really destroy the fabric of a community, especially the music community, is bands and artists feeling that there isn’t enough pie to go around and if someone else is succeeding it means that they’re failing, and it’s just not true – and that attitude kind of weakens the ecosystem. So you need to help and support your fellow artists and give them a lift up if they need it and applaud their success if they bypass you. Remember that acting competitively weakens the artistic ecosystem – you need to act cooperatively.

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Minnesota’s SICK OF SARAH lead singer ABISHA UHL is back in Japan. Considering it to be her first home, she lived there until she was 18, spending a lot of that time on military bases.

The five-piece band that brought Abisha to fame started out in 2005 and things have been busy since then, having produced 2 LPs, including their 2011 album “2205” shrewdly released through BitTorrent, achieving platinum-equivalent status. The band is known for stage-blasting performances, Abisha often seen crowdsurfing into the crowds. She loves the human contact with her fans and is one of those rare people who will spend real time with them, even joining them for a spot of sightseeing.

We met up with Sick of Sarah last year in London when they supported LA band UH HUH HER at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. A fine old time was had backstage and SoS went on to blow the headliner right off the stage. (READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH SICK OF SARAH HERE)

Almost one year on, we meet up with Abisha in Shibuya, Tokyo for a photo shoot (SEE OUR FULL PHOTO GALLERY HERE) and to talk music, touring and Japan. We settle ourselves into a cheap izakaya with edamame and “samurai sake” before getting down to business.

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Welcome back to Japan! How long since you were last here?

I want to say about 3 years ago. I was visiting my parents in Okinawa and then I came to Tokyo to do a radio interview with Tokyo FM.

So, you grew up in Okinawa before moving to the States in your late teens. For people who don’t know, what are the differences between growing up in Okinawa compared to say Tokyo?

So, the difference between Okinawa and Tokyo is Okinawa has a very islander kind of lifestyle, it’s a lot more chilled and laid back, as opposed to Tokyo where it’s way more high energy, lots of people going places constantly – there are a lot more people – that’s the biggest difference. I really liked the islander style – it’s so laid back and I’m still like that. Tokyo is probably a little too much for me… I mean I love it, it’s like a party here, which is also fun.

What are some of your favourite things about Japan?

I love everything about Japan! I definitely consider Japan my first home, and I’m always going to consider it my first home, just because I feel more at home here than I do in the States. I like the people, I love the food and the vibe – people are so friendly and so down to earth, you can leave your bike somewhere and not have to lock it up, you don’t have to worry about people stealing your shit – it’s really cool.

As a band you’ve never toured Japan, is that something you’re looking into?

We would absolutely love to tour here. It’s just so expensive to do that, so that’s one of our dilemmas. But yeah we want to tour Japan – it’d be crazy! I would love to come over here with HUNTER VALENTINE or GIRL IN A COMA – bands that we’ve toured with in the States, because you kind of get this ladykiller tour thing that we’ve got going on, and we’ve done it all over the US and Canada. But, yeah I’m sure there are groups over here we’d love to play with – GROUP A would be the number 1 band we would want to tour with here!

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When did you start getting into music?

I started playing the drums when I was about 11 or 12. I played the drums for a couple of years, then as soon as I picked up a guitar when I was 13, I stopped playing drums and focused all my attention on writing. I started writing right away – I had a knack for it. Both of my brothers were musicians, so I really looked up to them and that’s what’s really got me inspired to play music.

I just grew into it and my brother was very encouraging, and that really made me happy. I wanted to be like my brothers – I was like, “They’re so cool!” so that was definitely a reason I continued doing it.

How long after you moved to the States did you form Sick of Sarah?

Well I moved there when I was 18 and I formed the band when I was 23, so I kind of lived a little bit, did some college, dropped out… I was 25 when we actually got discovered. We did this showcase that we really didn’t want to do because it was like 500 dollars to be in this showcase. They really wanted us to be in it, but we were like, “We’re not gonna pay 500 bucks to be in this show!” Then, they ended up just putting us in it anyway because they really wanted us to play it, and there was a guy from Hollywood Records who really liked us and told his friend to watch us. Then we were flown out to LA to record a five-track demo, which is really bad looking back at it now, but that’s how we got our manager. He then formed an independent record label, and 2 albums later this is where we’re at.

We’re now working on our third album, we’ve travelled all over the world, we’ve toured with THE BANGLES, we’ve made good friends with HUNTER VALENTINE, we’re friends with HEART, we’ve opened up for JOAN JETT – we’ve done a lot of really cool things and played with a lot of really cool bands… GOD-DES AND SHE, GIRL IN A COMA… It’s been a great ride and we’re still on it, so it’s fun!

How do you feel about being a female lead singer in an industry dominated by males? Do you find you’re treated differently?

I don’t feel like I’ve had any weird experiences and I don’t feel like I’ve ever been treated differently, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. I’ve played with guy bands and sometimes they’ll kind of brush us off, but then they’ll watch us play and and they’re like, “Ok, you guys are good!” I’ve noticed, I guess, that we get treated differently, no matter who’s watching, but then after they hear you play, you gain more respect. I think you’ll get that whether or not you’re a female or a male though.

And how do you feel about the state of the music scene for women in the industry? Do all-female bands get as much exposure?

I would think that, exposure-wise, it’s almost harder if you’re in a guy band, because the music industry is just saturated with guy bands. So if you’re in a female band, people might take more notice because it’s not as common to have that – there are fewer female musicians than male musicians, so it might actually be more of an advantage. I’ve always heard female musicians kind of get the brush off though.

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What was the deal with the BitTorrent re-release of your album “2205” in 2011?

Yeah, we released our music to BitTorrent – they liked our music and they asked us if we wanted to do this, so they were basically like, “We’re going to release your record for free on BitTorrent” and we broke the charts as far as downloaded records. Like we had over 1.5 million downloads of the record, so that was a great thing – it was awesome.

Amazing! So where is Sick of Sarah musically at the moment? Can we expect a new release soon?

Yes, we’ll be releasing a new album. We have all our songs demoed up and now it’s just a matter of kind of working out the kinks. We’re going to record at the end of summer, so it should be released before 2014.

Have you guys picked a title yet?

It’s going to be called “Abisha Rules!” No, we haven’t thought of a name yet, we’ll see… But I am thinking that “Abisha Rules” would be a fantastic name! Or “Abisha’s Awesome” or “Abisha’s Ichiban.” I’m going to talk to the girls about it – I hope they’re down with it? Probably not…

Any crazy stories from your last tours?

It was really cute in London – we ran into some girls at a Chipotle or something, and the girls literally dropped all their food when they saw us. That was really funny! There’s some crazy shit, people are funny and they’re aggressive, and we get a bunch of cool presents. And marriage proposals are fun – I think I’m engaged to at least a few hundred girls right now, and maybe like two guys. Oh bras, yeah, we get bras thrown on stage, which is fun. We got a really big pair of panties one time, and a huge bra! People drop their pants and take off their panties, which is a little strange. I’m like, “Uh… you might need that!”

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SHATTERJAPAN met up with Darren Williams, aka British producer and DJ STAR SLINGER, in the offices of major entertainment company Yoshimoto Kogyo in Shinjuku. After waiting in the massive cement hall with the rest of the press for 20 minutes, I was lead into a tiny conference room where a very tired-looking Darren was waiting, and after a quick chat about the best places to go shopping in Tokyo we discussed touring, Japan and the state of the music industry.

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First of all, welcome to Japan! Is it your first time here?

Yeah, it’s my first time in Japan, second time in Asia – the first time was Singapore, I went there just before I went to Australia. I prefer Japan a lot more – it’s got more of an identity. I just think it’s more vibrant, but at the same time it’s quite welcoming, the food’s amazing, the architecture’s nuts, it’s just like a massive metropolis, so it’s good!

You arrived in Tokyo on Wednesday – have you had a chance to see the city?

So far, I’ve been doing a lot of press. Yesterday, I did like 8 interviews, coz I’ve got this album coming out soon, and then today the same thing. Also last night, I did a live stream in a department store, Parco, at 2.5D studios – it’s hidden away. I wish it’d been recorded, but it was just a live stream. I think only 1000 people tuned in, but that’s quite a lot.

I wish I’d known about it! So you’re supporting Gold Panda on this current tour – how did you guys meet?

I’ve known GOLD PANDA for a while – we have the same manager and I remixed his track “Marriage” a couple of years back, so we’ve seen each other a lot since then. He needed a support act to take with him and I just said, “Yeah, I’m keen!” I’m just here for the Japan leg of the tour because I’ve never been before – seemed like a good opportunity. It’s good to be here, for sure.

When is the new album coming out?

The new album should be out in the UK this summer, and in the US… maybe Japan, depending on what the label want to do here – I have to ask them…

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How did you get into music in the first place?

By being around it. I guess it depends what sort of music, but I think I got most of it from the radio, even the dancier stuff. I would hear it on late night radio, like Pete Tong’s Essential Selection. There were a lot of dance DJs on UK radio, so thank you to the BBC for exposing me at a young age!

What were you doing before your music took off?

I was working in an art house cinema when I got spotted by my manager, and I had to give that up because I was playing so many shows and eventually made a living out of this. I’d just finished my degree in music technology. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I wasn’t doing this. I’d probably still be at the art house watching films every day, getting paid really badly for it.

As a producer and DJ, what does your work involve?

It’s hard to explain what a producer does. “Producer” can be quite a broad term, but I think it’s someone who can make a track from scratch. A lot of people claim to be producers. And some producers don’t play instruments, but most of us – the hip hop guys – play instruments. So we are musicians in our own right, but we also record and know how to structure a song. Rick Rubin would have session musicians, the same with Mark Ronson, but I’m sure he can play one or two instruments…

What’s the process of remixing for bands?

If you do it without permission, it’s a bit of a rogue thing – I still do that if I like a song – but for the most part now, I do official remixes where they contact me. Now I’m actively getting requests each week and it’s quite cool. I don’t say yes to everything and obviously we work out fees, but sometimes I do favours so it’s quite an open thing. I just do what I want and sometimes remix for money.

So, how did the Childish Gambino remix come about?

CHILDISH GAMBINO followed me on Twitter and posted something on his blog about one of my tunes – he said something like “It’s so dope, I wanna kiss it.” I thought it was cool because this dude was a big hipster at the time and wrote for “30 Rock” so it was a big deal for me. I even met the guy recently in Chicago and warmed up for him – I got to meet him and say thank you… he’s so cool.

What stands out as your favourite show to have played?

In terms of crazy and silly good, it was Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York. I think 800 people turned up which isn’t that many, but it looked really big and a hundred people got up from the crowd and got on the stage – it was insane. There’s a video on YouTube of everyone on stage dancing, some of them pretty badly. They were dancing around me, and this is when I used to use an MPD for live performances so I’m just there hoping nobody knocks my equipment over. It went really well, I’ll always remember that show.

Last year you toured the US with Shlohmo – how do you know him?

I know SHLOHMO just because I was a fan and I asked him to come on tour with me, and he said yes! We met him at the airport… we hadn’t even met before that point. This is the great thing about music – when you’re a fan of someone, you can curate your own tour. If you’re headlining, it’s like a dream because you can take who you want on tour with you. You spend a lot of time in the van together and get to know each other.

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How do you feel about the Manchester music scene?

The Manchester scene is not so much a scene as a few cliques – a few club nights that are doing their own thing. Like HOYA:HOYA has two great DJs working for them: Krystal Klear and Illum Sphere. Also, we have a lot of people rolling through from everywhere, because from September until New Year we have the huge warehouse event THE WAREHOUSE PROJECT. The lineup seems to change every year so it’s a different vibe each time, and the artists are always A-listers so you do see quite a lot of big names rolling through.

Who played the last Warehouse Project you went to?

The last one I went to had a lot of older people like Basement Jaxx and Todd Edwards in the smaller rooms, then Madeon in the big room, and lots of big EDM stuff. That’s a good thing I think. There are three different rooms so you can see whoever you want, but I spent my time in the small room.

So, tell me about Jet Jam, the club night that you organise…

JET JAM is something I kind of started by accident. I met some people in Slovenia, at my second ever show in Europe – they were both visual artists and booked me to play a party they were throwing and playing visuals at. I made friends with them and came back to meet them just for a mini-holiday. We all love travelling so we wanted a party we could throw anywhere we go. So far we’ve done five Jet Jams so far in Lubiana, Seattle, New York, LA and London, but we plan on doing more this summer. And I’ve released two mix tapes to promote Jet Jam parties.

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What is the best thing about what you do?

It’s quite simple and obvious, but the best thing is you make a living doing what you enjoy. But because I can be grumpy just like anybody else, I have to stop a minute and think about how good my life is, how amazing it is that I can travel and it doesn’t seem like a big deal anymore – coming to Japan for work didn’t seem like a big deal and I’m just really thankful.

How do you think the music industry is doing, with the collapse of major labels and saturation of Internet artists?

I think it’s definitely suffering a little bit, but it’s just changing. There’s so much new stuff that people are obsessed with, like iTunes and Spotify, and I’m no different – I’m obsessed with technology so I listen to it – but it’s pretty sad for physical sales. But the truth of the matter is people still want to see live music.

For a few years, your music was available online for free – is that still the case?

There was a link to it on my website but not anymore, because people have been buying it and I’ve been making a decent income just from being on iTunes. But, you can still get it for free and I’m not taking that down. I put some of the later stuff on labels, but you don’t get as much money from that because they have to cover costs. So before you get signed to a label, I think it’s good as a producer to put out your own music, put it on iTunes via a distribution service like Tunecore. You don’t need a label to be on iTunes now, so you should do that. I think you get the majority of the royalties – you get like 70% of each track. I think I sold 200,000 on iTunes, which is good.

So what other advice do you have for budding DJs and producers?

Just put out as much music as you can to gain attention, because essentially you’d be lying if you said you didn’t want attention – you want to seek it. I watched a documentary on a guy, a photographer, who’s only just becoming popular and he’s now 80 or so. He doesn’t regret it, but I would totally regret it. He let his flat become cluttered with paintings and someone discovered it. I think he was also the first colour photographer, so he had photos and negatives up to the ceiling. I would totally go mental with that lifestyle. Don’t become old and jaded and forget what you wanted – I think you should definitely go for everything while you can.

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SHATTERJAPAN catches up with Derwin of GOLD PANDA in Shinjuku at the Tokyo offices of major entertainment company YOSHIMOTO KOGYO. Our interview is held in a small conference room, and upon entering I’m met by a table littered with empty packets of (fittingly) Panda Pocky and Calbee snacks. Derwin is seated behind, unassuming and smiling, and apologizing for having his laptop on the table to keep in touch with his girlfriend. After a quick chat about shopping in Harajuku, we get down to the business of life in Japan, anime and electronic music.

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Welcome back to Tokyo! How does it feel to be here again?

It’s always good to be back! I just feel like I don’t see enough of Japan when I’m here though. I always just see Shibuya – it’s good, but I end up just drinking.

You used to live here – when was that?

I don’t even remember the exact date now, but it was maybe 2004. I came here on a working holiday, but couldn’t really find anything that I wanted to do so ended up teaching English – I did “eikaiwa” companies and stuff… I don’t know anything about English, I was just teaching to fund my travels, but then I didn’t travel so it just went towards funding “izakayas” (traditional Japanese pubs) and that was it really. When I went back to the UK, I went to university in London and studied Japanese – I did it completely the wrong way around.

I live in Berlin now, so I’ve been trying to learn German. I made an effort for a while taking classes, because I thought it’d be really easy after Japanese, that I’d just pick it up, but I think as you get older you have to really sit down and study. Because I had such an interest in Japan, I had a desire to learn the language, but with German I don’t have any, other than to help me with my daily life.

What spurred your love of Japan in the first place?

Ah, that was manga, well anime – “AKIRA” mainly. That was the main thing for a lot of people I think, especially in the UK, because we only had about four films for ages, like “AKIRA” and “FIST OF THE NORTH STAR.” I can’t remember what the other ones were. That was all there was, and I wanted to find out more. I must’ve been 12 when I saw “Akira” – I was like, “Why aren’t all cartoons like this?!” I was watching “Dogtanion.”

Has your time in Japan influenced you?

Yeah, it’s definitely influenced me musically – the atmosphere and certain sounds have definitely come out in my music as a result of being in Japan.

I don’t know about personality-wise. It’s probably harder to see that now. I think when I was here for a year, I got annoyed that people sometimes weren’t straight with me, that they didn’t say what they were really thinking – whether they actually wanted to have a beer with me or if they were just being polite. But, I eventually found out who my friends were. It was difficult. Especially let’s say 10 years ago, it was – and it still is maybe – a novelty to be a foreigner or to have a gaijin friend. It can be quite weird for some people.

Would you ever consider coming back to Japan to live and operate from here?

Yeah! I wouldn’t mind. I’ve never been to Kyushu – I should really go. I’d like to do maybe 6 months or something – that would be cool – and not do shows, just come here to do something else, travel around and see places that I’ve wanted to see but have never seen.

But for touring, it would be so difficult… I don’t think I could live here for a long period of time, because there are so many shows and opportunities to do shows in Europe. Here, no-one’s going to pay for a flight for me from Tokyo or Osaka. Whereas if I’m based in Berlin, it’s easier for me to just go and do Italy or Switzerland on a Friday or Saturday night and be home by Sunday morning.

Touring is a priority because it’s the only way for me to make money. I’m not forced to do it, I could get a job I guess, but you do expose new people to your music all the time by doing it, and yeah that’s my main source of income. I do make money from selling music and it being played on radio stations around the world or whatever, but it’s not enough to live on. Maybe like 20 years ago, I would’ve made a lot more, but not now.

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How did you get into music in the first place?

My uncle was making music – he was a producer – and when I was 15, he gave me an Atari and a sampler that had 10 seconds of sample time. I was really into hip hop, so I started sampling my dad’s records with no idea what I was doing. Then I got more and more into it. I had friends who were really into hip hop, and they’d buy all the rare funk records that were basically responsible for a lot of hip hop in the 90s. I couldn’t afford any of those records, so I just went to thrift stores and charity shops and bought used records, really bad stuff. But in turn, I found my own way of making music, using samples that were less obvious and more treated, I guess, with equipment.

Yeah it just went on from there, really. I never had the confidence to send music to anyone or send demos out, and then I was saved by Myspace. You could just upload your music to the Internet, and you could kind of create your own page for people to see. I don’t know what would’ve happened otherwise. I can definitely thank my Myspace page for my current state, because that’s how I was contacted by management and labels.

There was definitely a Myspace golden age where labels were like, “We don’t have to go through demos anymore, we’ll just go online! If they’ve got loads of views, it’s like guaranteed success.” I think Myspace had its time but now it’s gone. I mean there’s SoundCloud and Bandcamp, but I think labels are less interested because people can generate money now themselves. Labels want to generate money for you and take a percentage.

How do you feel about the state of the music industry now, particularly with the dominance of the Internet?

The Internet is like its own worst enemy in a way. Everyone loves it until they want to make some money from it and find out they can’t. It doesn’t devalue music, but there’s so much out there, it’s hard to know where you should be listening or putting your money if you need to. I don’t know, I don’t buy digital music, and I don’t download it for free either, so I guess I’m not really in the argument.

I buy vinyl, like old records, to sample and make music, but I also enjoy records – I’ve always loved buying vinyl, so now I’ve got an excuse to buy more vinyl, to make more music, and at the same time I can buy new records by people I like. I’m just terrible with digital music because I was into physical copies so much. Maybe if I was 10 years younger, I’d just have everything on a hard drive but I like to have something physical – I still buy VHS.

How has the UK industry changed since you were getting established?

There are definitely more people in hoodies pressing buttons on stage and not doing much, which I’m partly responsible for. I think I got lucky because it was at a point where electronic music became popular again, because rock music and bands got boring in the UK, so I was definitely lucky there. I think UK dance music is super interesting and has really good stuff, but unfortunately with the Internet, there’s another 200 versions of Burial every week which you have to sift through, so that’s not so good. But there’s always someone doing something interesting that attempts to push dance music as a whole in a certain direction – I think we can be proud of that.

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You’ve been touring pretty extensively recently, how’s that been going?

Good, I’ve just done New Zealand and Australia, Singapore on the way here. I guess you can’t really call it one big tour, because I’ve not been going from one place to another – I get to go home in the middle for a week or so. But it does end up pretty much feeling like you’re doing it all the time because there are so many weekend shows. So if you fly out on a Thursday morning, then you play Friday, Saturday and you’re back on Sunday, every week. If you tour a country like America you have to stay there a whole month… it gets pretty knackering.

Any specific challenges or highlights?

Melbourne was good. There are highlights and low points all the time, and they happen so often that you tend to forget or it just gets mashed into one memory. Mexico was pretty bad, the show was great but it was my first show with a new setup, and everyone’s like, “Oh, we’ve got this show for you in Mexico, so just go there and practise.” I get there, and it’s like 4000 people in a field, and it was just a mess because I hadn’t practiced properly. But also at the same time, I was able to find out what the problems were and go on with it. My live set’s forever changing, so I’m never set with just one setup – there are always new machines.

A particular high point? Playing on a beach to 50 people in the Philippines in an electrical storm with water coming down… and then playing in Detroit on a massive stage in front of like 7000 people at a festival called Movement, and you can see Canada across the water from the stage.

I prefer smaller gigs, like 200-500 capacity. Anything more, especially anything over 1000 gets lost, I think, because I’m not an artist that has a huge visual element, so I can’t rely on that to entertain people, and if the venue’s too big, people can’t see what you’re doing and in turn they think that the music should be almost like a DJ set, like really solid and danceable – it’s hard to show people that you’re playing live and not DJing. There are all these factors that affect it, so I prefer smaller gigs where it’s a bit more intimate, where people can see me and I’m at a similar level. I don’t like being on a big stage above people.

“Quitters Raga” is one of your most popular tracks. Did you have any idea that it was going to be so big? And did you produce it any differently from the others?

I solely used a laptop to make that track, which I never did before and haven’t done since, and so it’s made in a certain way that it’s just impossible to play live. The only way I do that track is just playing off the laptop. I’ve kind of given up on trying to make it live. But yeah, I had no idea it was going to be on every blog ever. Actually, in terms of success, “You” from the album afterwards was a hundred times bigger for me than “Quitter’s Raga,” which is lucky because I don’t own the sample in “Quitter’s Raga.” That’s why it’s kind of an underground thing. I never want to do the same track twice – I’ve never made a similar track and I don’t think I ever will. There are elements of it I actually do want to repeat, but I don’t want to do the same track again.

You’ve got new album “Half of Where you Live” coming out, when can we expect that?

I think it’s 5 June in Japan and 10 June in England. It’s being announced on 15 April with a lead track called Brazil. There’s another album I’m releasing here which is a collection of tracks “In Sequence” which basically all came out in America and the UK, but it’s hard to get in Japan because it’s vinyl, so we compiled it and released it here on CD, because they’re keen on CDs here.

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Do you have any message of advice for upcoming producers and DJs?

Yes. Spend time perfecting what you’re doing before you go out and start doing it. Definitely! And think about what you’re doing, think about the music you’re making in terms of whether that’s the music you really want to do or if it’s just the music that’s popular at the moment. I think a lot of people make the mistake of putting their foot in something that they’re not really that much into, or they won’t be into in a few years. Especially with the whole post-dubstep future garage thing, I think people are so excited that they can make music at home on a computer, they’re not sure if they’re really into it or they really want to do it.

Oh and pick a good name – not a shit one like Gold Panda! I just put an animal and a colour together, and Gold Panda was the one that stuck. It worked out though, people like it more than I do, and I can’t change it now.

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MÉLANIE PAIN, known for her many vocal ventures with trendy new wave collective NOUVELLE VAGUE, is a French singer-songwriter in her own right, who now follows up her debut album “My Name” with her new “Just A Girl” EP, in anticipation of her upcoming second album “Bye Bye Manchester” due to arrive in September. The EP includes the brilliantly synthy chanson “7 ou 8 fois” which we discover is about overcoming fear of failure and not giving up, and of course the poppy “Just a Girl.”

Mélanie chose Manchester as her muse for her second album, spending 2 months in the city to gather inspiration for her writing. She has a deep affection for the city and its musical history, and has earned the respect and loyalty of many a Mancunian gig-goer.

Her live performances on this tour are backed by a drummer Julien Boyé and guitarist Guillaume Zeller. Singing in French and English works to her benefit as her husky-yet-silky vocals complement the two languages, and she demonstrates superlative showmanship skills as she gets the UK crowds engaged and wanting more at the end of her set. She has a natural allure and confidence on the stage, but there’s nothing remotely diva about her slick persona, and she’s great with the fans who she loves connecting with.

Today, we meet backstage at Leeds Brudenell Social Club. Clambering past the pool tables which have been tidied away in the Games Room to make way for her makeshift stage (she’s been bizarrely moved from the larger room, due to a certain Ms. Orton’s booking issue and sudden emergence on the night), I arrive to the sight of a mini table-tennis setup (they tour with it to relieve backstage boredom) and a footy match projected onto the wall. The atmosphere is very laid back, the band are more than accommodating, and Mélanie is utterly charming and ready to get down to brass tacks, including talk about her music, the industry and her love of Japanese food. Take it away, Mlle Pain…

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Where in France did you grow up?

I was born in the North of France and lived in Normandy for 10 years. And then I moved to the South where I spent another 10 years, then moved to Paris.

So, where is “home” for you?

Nowhere, really… but I feel France is my country. I never go back to Normandy where I was born – I have no more family there, so it doesn’t even mean anything to me. I did all my studies in Aix-en-Provence, so that’s the more active period of my life…

And you studied Political Science back then. Although you’re doing very different things now, I assume that there are some overlaps and you’re still pretty passionate about social issues?

Yeah! I’m really interested in all the communication aspects of it. Music is communication. I was really into all the semantics and all the fields of study, power of words and everything in politics. I find it really interesting in the live shows how I communicate to people. I need to be very natural, but it has to pull the audience in. It’s a bit of diplomacy – you don’t want to be too much in their face, you don’t want to be too distant, so it’s interesting.

So, your studies were useful to your career?

Yeah, for sure!

I have to ask this, as Margaret Thatcher has just passed: Nobody talks much in the UK these days about France or what France thinks of Britain, but just from your perspective and studies, what did you learn about that side of British politics and that era?

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff about what she did in the Falklands, the economic stuff. But for us, she was a bit like Reagan – they were the two characters. For us at the time, we were on the ‘right’ side of politics, but we were moving to the ‘left’ and you could really feel the change. It felt like England was stuck on the ‘right’ economic side of things.

You’ve mentioned that you’re an ‘accidental’ musician, but what’s your creative process?

It’s finding something like this (plays a drumbeat on her portable Casio synth) then adding the bass (bass line enters) – I need a beat and a bass line, and often start with a vocal melody, then try and move together the rest. I usually start with melody and lyrics, then work on the chords and the instruments, but it’s not easy for me. Musicians know which chords are going to sound good, but I’m there trying everything and “I guess this one!”

And your English is so good – where did you learn it?

I was learning English the whole time, from the time I was 12 until I finished Political Sciences, and I had lots of stuff to do in English. Also, touring with Nouvelle Vague really improved my English – I was touring a lot with them and English was the common language.

When you’re composing, do you write in both languages, or are there things you can express in one language better than in the other?

Yeah. I used to know when I’d start a song if it was going to be in English or in French. And it’s a bit weird now because it’s all kind of confused – I thought I understood why this song is in English and this song is in French but now it’s all messed up. I always thought that, for me, French is very intense, with deep meanings, very personal, and English for me is like I can groove more, I can really work on different aspects, do pop songs just about the sound of the words, backed in the rhythm.

English is like another instrument for you, I guess…

Yeah, exactly! But it’s not like this in French because it doesn’t really sound very good, so you have to really work on your lyrics, make them work with the music, and the meaning is really important for me, because it’s mine. My English is good, but I can’t say things in hundreds of ways – I have an idea, I write it down and it’s like, “Sounds good…” In French, it’s like, “Okay, I have an idea and there’s 10 ways I can express this!” I still need both languages, because even in the live shows, it’s good to go through a sad song in French and then go to a very fresh, pop English one.

Now, the inevitable question of what it’s like being a solo artist compared to being in a band – have you noticed different pressures involved?

I think Nouvelle Vague is a bit special because it’s not a band – it’s really a concept and collective, so you come and you go. There are two producers and you bring everything with you, your ideas and stuff, but it’s not really your band. They ask you how you want to do this and you say “yes” or “no” – there’s no pressure. So for me, Nouvelle Vague is really cool because I’ve got all the pleasure to go on tour and sing amazing songs and all the new wave classics, and you don’t have the pressure to think, “Why am I here?” When I do my solo stuff, it’s more like I have an ambition, I have an idea of where I want to be on stage and what I want my album to sound like. Nouvelle Vague is a really pure holiday – I go, I sing and it’s good!

And the solo stuff is more personal, right? It’s stuff you’ve worked on yourself for a long time…

Yeah, it’s my story, and I feel more in control of what I’m doing – I know exactly every choice and I know why, so it’s really more rewarding.

You have an EP coming out now and a second album later in the year – do you find that the more you write, the more your style transitions?

Well, for me, it’s really the beginning of me as a writer, as a composer – I’m really excited because I really like what I’m doing now, but I have no idea how I’m going to evolve. I am very happy with this album, it’s really a new step for me compared to the first album, and the sound is really what I want. A lot of stuff is taken directly from my demos that I did with this little keyboard, and we just added real drums and everything on top of it. But it was really about the sound – I think you can hear it tonight as well – it’s really coherent and personal. I’m a big, big fan of all these kind of ‘toy’ sounds.

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You did Manchester last night – how was that?

It was really good! It was really emotional, because it means a lot to me to begin the tour in Manchester and remember all this time I spent there, writing the songs, and now coming back, delivering the songs. I was amazed, people were very quiet – I know English crowds and I usually get myself ready to have a very noisy, drinking crowd! But the show last night was really quiet and really good fun.

So, it was quite intimate – tonight’s venue might be a bit rowdier…

Yeah, might get the drunk people tonight!

You wrote your second album in Manchester – how long were you there for?

It was like 2 months, but I went back to Paris a few times, because I have a baby boy and I was trying to get my baby and boyfriend over.

So, you spent most of your time on your own?

Yeah, I really had to have some time by myself, because I really didn’t know if I was able to write anything good. I became a singer a little bit by accident and I kind of decided that I really wanted to write my own stuff. I’m not a musician – it’s really hard for me – and when I’m in Paris, it’s impossible to have this space to just focus and work on a song for 5 days.

People often underestimate the musical impact of the late 70s and 80s in Manchester – electronics and a lot of experimentation. Now it’s kind of coming back and you’re inputting those sounds. A lot of people appreciate that because that era kind of ended too quickly. Are you feeling connected to that era, especially having spent time in Manchester?

I can really imagine the first synthesizer, or like when Depeche Mode got their first one, when Martin Gore was just discovering a new synth with all these sounds and all the possibility. It’s amazing, and it’s really about sound – it’s not about the way you play it. It’s not like a guitar, it’s really about the deepness of the sound or the delay, the echo, the reverb and the texture. And yeah, I feel connected because I think, on my little small level, I was really interested to just discover that and create from this and not just from the amazing playing of a guitar.

Talking about overseas travel, you toured in Asia with Nouvelle Vague – and you went to Japan?

I went to Tokyo, yeah!

What do you remember about it?

I remember I just wanted to go back! The food was so good! I remember the kind of craziness in the streets. I felt like everyone was going somewhere with a very specific purpose. It was so weird with all of those personalities – you’d cross a gothic person then someone completely different – it’s so crazy! We were really jetlagged, but I remember we were thinking, “Oh! What’s that?!” It was very different – high speed, high personality people – at least in Tokyo.

Do you remember the gig and the atmosphere at all?

Well the gig was a bit special because it was a showcase – it was not really in a proper venue.

It’s funny, because the producer (for Nouvelle Vague) called me one day and said, “Okay, I heard that you sang for your friend, and I really want you to sing on my new project.” I came to the studio for the first time, and he said, “Okay, this is the mic, here are the headphones – it’s a small project called Nouvelle Vague and it’s gonna sell a few records in Japan, because they follow this.” And it was actually the only country where Nouvelle Vague didn’t get anything! It’s weird, because he was saying, “Yeah, nobody will be interested in Europe, but maybe Japan will like it…” and he was a bit wrong about that!

Maybe it was the era? These days, there’s a bit of a trend for 80s synth music over there. And you know what it’s like in Japan, when they get into something, they go completely crazy for it, so things could be different now…

I hope so, I hope so!

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Do you think that now is a good time for female solo artists? It seems to be in the UK at the moment, but maybe only for certain styles of music…

It’s not a good time in France – in France, it’s a good time for male artists at the moment! Because for maybe 10 years in France, there have been so many female singers getting really big. But, it’s good in England?

Yeah, there are lots of female solo artists coming up, doing mostly singer-songwriter pop or folk – it’s a lot blander than say in the 80s, but at least they’re visible to an extent. We’re in a period where female artists are embraced but only in certain ‘safe’ areas. Being a female artist, did you notice any difference in how you were treated over the years?

I didn’t really see a difference, but I was always very lucky, because Nouvelle Vague was kind of a collective of lots of female singers, and people were coming to the shows who could really identify with this – you know, lots of female singers onstage with a very feminine way of doing covers – so it was always easy for me, because people associate Nouvelle Vague with women. And I have the same kind of vibe for my solo project – it’s very feminine, and I try to be very natural and spontaneous and not really try and invent anything.

So what’s going on in France that women are not coming up as solo artists?

I think it’s just a media issue. There were so many new female singers over the last 10 years – like a lot – and they only had one name, like ‘Camille.’ And you’ve got the media thinking, “That was the new generation of girls, and it’s over now – now it’s the new generation of male singers.” It’s really interesting – I had a talk with a radio plugger and he was like, “It’s a bad time for you…”

I suppose in a way your connection to the UK is a good thing – you’ve benefited from moving around…

Well, the great thing with Nouvelle Vague is that I have access to a lot of markets – my album is already out in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany… Not so many French artists who are indie, like me, and small, get access to all of those countries.

Do you feel that you’ve learned a lot through your experience with Nouvelle Vague about how the industry works and the networks?

Yes, it’s about the networks. It’s a lot of touring, so I meet all these people with Nouvelle Vague, and they remember me – I’ll see them a few times and they say, “Okay, I want to sign your solo stuff because I like it!”

And they trust you because they already know you…

And I trust them, so it’s really easy. But really today, the industry is… (laughs) it’s really ‘despair’ – the big labels, everyone doesn’t know what to do…

This is globally speaking?

Yeah, I’m talking about the music industry. I think a lot of big labels with big money have completely lost it – they don’t have a clue what’s going to happen and how they’re going to work it out. I see stories of them spending so much on studios and stuff, and old fashioned kind of media – they don’t do anything on the web and I find it completely crazy.

There’s a big resistance by the established labels…

They don’t know what to do! I feel like I see them, and I talk to them and they’re just completely stuck – they’re paralysed, they’re scared of losing the power, the money and everything.

And yet, from what I hear, the big labels are losing their money, their control over the artists…

Of course! And I think they’re so scared of losing money that they just don’t do anything, They’re like, “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck…” And you’ve got all these small labels that are fighting and they don’t have any money, but they have ideas – I’ll have a meeting with them and they say, “Yeah, I’ve really listened to that and it makes me feel like this.”

So, at least the independents are paying attention to what artists can do. Do you feel like independent labels are the way to go?

Well, for me it’s the way to go, anyway – I’m not a commercial project, I feel like I’m really more indie, so an indie label is perfect. I’m so glad I’ve signed with Fierce Panda in England – really glad. And I signed with the same kind of label in Germany and in France as well, and it’s really good – it’s people I like to talk to, and step by step it’s hard, but I’m here, in Leeds, and I have a new album coming out, so it’s good!

A lot of artists I’ve talked to recently say the same thing – they feel more comfortable with a small team, because you can talk to them about any issues, and you don’t feel isolated. But, as a solo singer, is there ever a moment where you feel on your own, like you wish you had that collective to turn to? How do you handle that?

I really have these feelings a lot… but at the same time, it’s really good to be by yourself and just find the resources. Like, okay it’s hard, but you’re just going to do it because you have to do it – no-one can do it better than you, anyway! This feeling is good and makes you really go forward.

And you chose to have a long period away from your family at one point. Not a lot of artists spend time alone these days – it requires a real commitment and understanding of what you want to achieve, a certain bravery…

Well, I made some hard choices, like I really had a really good job, having a lot more money than I do now. Before I became a singer, I had a job in Paris – I’d probably be richer now. I did the first show with Nouvelle Vague and felt so much on stage like, “Oh my god, I’m here! It’s here, it’s now! It’s like nothing else matters now…” so I made the choice to just quit my job and go for the risk and an adventure. And I do it now as well – I’m investing a lot on all those tours and my family and everything.

But I’m very lucky because my partner is also a musician, so he understands and really helps me. I go, and when I come back he’s going on tour for 3 weeks, so it’s really balanced. But I think it’s really hard when you don’t have a partner who can really help you do that. He really pushes me like, “Yes, go to Manchester!” and he doesn’t make me feel guilty – he’ll say, “Yes, this is great!”

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I’m impressed with your positive approach – it would be so easy in between your work with Nouvelle Vague to take breaks, but you’re actually making concrete time to do your solo work. What keeps you going? And do you ever have moments of doubt?

Well, I don’t really have those moments. I really know that I’m here because that’s what I love to do – write songs and then go on tour with those songs. It’s really what I want to do – play all those songs live and share them with people. And every gig is different, every city is different… I’ve got this really big chance with Nouvelle Vague – one minute I’m in Bali to play an amazing show in an amazing resort, where we go for one week to have a holiday and do a show, but then we go on tour in Eastern Europe in a really crappy tour bus. It really makes me feel like it’s always surprising and always challenging for me: “Okay, yes this is very easy, great!” then “Okay, this is very hard, good.” Life is a challenge and it’s interesting.

What advice would you give to people who are in the same position as you were when you made that leap to leave your job and go on tour?

I think you really have to try. And my new album “Bye Bye Manchester” is all about this – all the songs on there are about this feeling that you’re going to try something six, seven or eight times, you’re about to change, about to leave, about to do it, but one day you do it and that’s the important moment. Even if you never change anything in your life, you have to keep trying. And what I learned is to be very patient, and wait for the right moment and the decision will be made for you. You just have to feel it, and it’s going to come when it’s time.

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2012 Juno award nominee and Polaris Music Prize shortlister LINDI ORTEGA is back in Manchester to promote her new album “Cigarettes & Truckstops” and to warm our winter hearts.

In the cosy climes of the Soup Kitchen café, I meet with Lindi and her guitarist Tom Juhas as they take a short break from their hectic tour schedule to enjoy some food and much-needed R&R. Apologizing on behalf of Manchester for the chilly weather, the duo wave away the apology with “This is nothing!” compared with Toronto temperatures.

Signed to independent label Last Gang Records, Lindi Ortega is in an exciting period of her career. Shortly after making the move to country music heaven and haven Nashville, Tennessee, to absorb herself in the history and culture of the unique musical universe, she impressively earned herself an appearance in ABC’s hit TV show NASHVILLE. In person, she’s a positively interesting mix of Toronto edge and Nashville smoothness, while demonstrating a sharp awareness of her industry and the various mechanisms and niches that exist within. A fantastic example of bravery in pushing boundaries in her own career, she’s an inspiring figure with a great story to tell. All aboard the Ortega train! It’s full steam ahead…

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Growing up, did you always know that country music was what you wanted to play?

Yeah, it was kind of a path that I followed because I was drawn to all things “Southern” and country & western. I loved cowboys and I loved western movies – one of my favourite movies growing up was “Gone with the Wind.” I think it came from my mum, because when I was growing up she had a big crush on Kris Kristofferson, and I remember watching Dolly Parton’s TV show with her – Dolly Parton had a variety show where she’d host different artists. So, that seed was planted in my mind and it just grew… the older I got the more drawn to the genre I was.

A lot of it had to do with the lyrical content which I found resonated with me – I found outlaw country so interesting, with people writing about murder ballads and things you just don’t hear much of. Maybe it’s starting to come back again, but just when I was growing up and making music, you didn’t hear murder ballads on the radio – people weren’t talking about that kind of stuff, and if they were it was Eminem and he was getting lambasted in the press…

The irony of the fact is that country music can get away with that kind of commentary, whereas the pop industry has had to clean itself up…

Yeah, isn’t that strange? It’s so weird that it’s happened like that…

So, how did this inspire your own lyrics?

I thought that taking on that fictitious world – that dark underground world – was really interesting. I remember listening to Delia’s Gone and Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash and just being completely blown away by the lyrics and what he was writing about, and I thought it would be so cool to write murder ballads from a female perspective, because I didn’t know a whole lot of people who were doing that at the time.

People are often quite surprised by your lyrics – they’re quite ironic and you don’t hold back when you want to comment on something or tell a story…

Yeah, I kind of do a strange thing where I do have songs that are outright dark, but I also have songs that are tongue in cheek and taking the rip out of clichés. What’s really funny is when people look at and review literally those ones I’ve actually written as ridiculous fun songs – I just want to write to them and say, “This totally went over your head!” But people will take what they take out of it.

So, you moved to Nashville in 2011 – I get the impression that you don’t hold back when it comes to your love for music…

No, music’s always been the one thing that’s pushed me in directions I probably never would have gone, had music not existed in my life. So, yeah I took that plunge – leaving my country to go to a new country, a new city, not knowing anybody. But my reason for going to Nashville is because it’s the country music Mecca – there’s so much history there. It wasn’t enough for me to just read about the history – I wanted to be there to absorb the history. I was reading a lot of biographies at the time: Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline… and all of them had passed through Nashville at some point, because that was the place to go, the place to “make it.”

And how do you feel the country scene has evolved since those days?

Country music is a lot different now than it was back then. It’s just a different world – I would say it’s more “pop” than anything else, and it’s very driven by the formulaic machine that’s happening.

The stuff that I do, which is really drawn from the old-timey country and outlaw country, isn’t even regarded as “country” any more – it’s regarded as “alternative country” even though it stems from the roots of the genre. I don’t know when that switch happened, but I know that there are a lot of artists out there who are underground because they just don’t have the chance to get on the same platform as Taylor Swift or Carrie Underwood or that kind of big pop star, but they’re there, they exist, and they’re making incredible music which has great vintage style and still pays tribute but has a little bit of a modern edge to it. Some of them are recording analogue, some are doing live off the floor, paying tribute to those old Sun Studios type recordings. It’s just nice to see that that is not completely dead, that it’s not a dying art, but it just doesn’t have the same platform as the big time. And I’m hoping that that will change, just the way Mumford & Sons has brought roots music to the forefront and it seems to have more of a level playing field these days – hopefully it’ll happen the same way in country music.

So, you like to keep some healthy distance from the more commercial aspects of the country music scene?

I don’t deal at all with the “machine” of Nashville and that whole Music Row turning-out-of-hits – I’m not part of that scene at all. It’s not really the kind of music I’m interested in making, I’m not interested in listening to it, and I have no desire to be affiliated with it at all. Sure, I might make a few extra dollars if I decided to go that way, but music has never been about money for me, ever. I don’t think I could be doing it this long, waiting for my million dollar cheque to arrive in the mail. It’s a labour of love and I’ve always done it for those reasons – I’ve always written from the heart and followed what feels natural for me. And luckily my label allows me to do that. It wasn’t about “making it” in Nashville – it was about learning the history and it was about inspiration, and it still is that for me. I find it very inspiring and it’s nice to be where the history is.

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Nashville has a very rich culture, but has quite a different energy from other big entertainment cities like LA, New York…

Yeah, and it’s quite a different pace of life for me in Nashville versus Toronto, because Toronto is like a concrete jungle – there are buildings everywhere, there’s a lot of hustle bustle, there’s a lot going on all the time… Whereas Nashville is a big city but it’s laid back, it has a small town feel, you can stroll along the streets, and it’s nice to come back from a hectic tour to hang out there. The food’s great and there’s a lot of great music, and if you’re interested in finding blues, honkytonk or bluegrass, there’s so much of that happening all the time – the talent is mind-blowing. For example, there are a bunch of 70 year old guys who are amazing finger pickers, and it’s really, really humbling to be able to stumble into that. So I think it’s a good place for me to be now and to learn.

Toronto is another one of those places with a great music scene – but I guess not necessarily your music scene…

Yeah, not my music scene… There is a music scene there – indie-rock does really well and singer-songwritery stuff does alright, but for me there was just no place to go. There was like one venue that catered to the kind of music that I did, but you can only play that same venue so many times, and it’s a small industry – it’s a big country with a small industry, and once you’ve sort of met everybody and shook everyone’s hand it’s like, “Where do I go from here? I could stay here and make myself a big name in Toronto if I want to, keep pushing and pounding the pavements in Toronto…” But I felt like that wasn’t enough for me, I needed to go to the places that inspire me – the South. I love Wyoming, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee of course where I moved to – those places all call to me, and I can’t really explain what it is about them, but when I’m there I feel like, “This is where I’m meant to be.”

Let’s talk about your appearance in hit TV show “NASHVILLE.” I’d say it’s a pretty important show for the music industry. It’s so good at showing how rich that music scene is, the real struggles faced by artists in different areas of the industry, and of course we get to see some of the more disturbing business elements…

Yeah, I mean all of this is based on a degree of truth of what goes on in the industry. The show is about two duelling pop diva country artists, but then there is also this subplot of indie musicians who try to make it, so it really does try to encompass the whole way it works, which is really interesting. It was really great to be part of it, because I had just moved to the city when I got to be in the show. And it was very cool to watch the first few episodes, not only to hear my songs on it (“The Day You Die,” “Little Lie” and “Murder of Crows”), but to see the places that I’ve grown to love, all the little venues that they show: The Bluebird Café, The 5 Spot…

So these are genuine locations?

Yeah, genuine locations!

That’s really exciting for people watching the show from outside Nashville – they’re really seeing that world as it is…

Yeah, the opening scenes for the credits that roll in, that’s the scene I see whenever I fly into Nashville, or when you’re driving in from a long tour – I’ve grown to feel an affection for it…

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Would you say that it’s important for musicians and writers to retain a certain amount of independence in their work?

I can’t speak for everybody on that, but for me it was a very good move to side with an independent label. I’ve done the whole major label thing, and I don’t think my story is unique because I feel like a lot of people have gone through the major label and then got dropped from the major label. At that point, you can choose to duck out of business if you want, or figure out a way to survive. And I was lucky that my manager who runs Last Gang Records offered me the opportunity to put me on his label. The way he sold it to me was, “You don’t have to go through 10 middle men to talk to me – you can just pick up the phone to call me.” That’s been true since I’ve signed with him, and it’s been true ever since. He’s there, you know… and that’s important. I mean, when I was on a major label, I was a “backburner artist” but when I’m on this indie label, I’m a priority. And I would rather be a priority than to stay a backburner artist just so I can say, “Hey, I’m on this big label.”

Has that made a difference in terms of feeling comfortable and being able to focus on the music?

Yeah! You know what? I feel like it’s more of a family, and that’s kind of how I operate with most people that I work with. I mean, it is the music business, and I understand how I’m affiliated and I fit into it, and what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to build things. But at the same time, maintaining close connections to people and working with good people and nice people who get my goals is important to me – and my goals are very modest really at the end of the day: I just want to pay my rent, continue to do what I do, and I don’t have a desire to sell out giant arenas… I’m not interested in being the next Lady Gaga. I just want to do what I’m doing – play shows and have people come and see me perform, and keep releasing music, because that’s what I love to do.

So yeah, being on an indie label is good for me, it works for me. If you’re a young band, if you’re like One Direction or something, then I’d say that a major label’s maybe the right place for you. It depends what kind of music you want to do, and it depends how much control you want to have over what you do. I like being the one the ideas come from. Everything I do musically from the aesthetics, the look, the videos, is always born of my ideas so I can stand by them with conviction, and there’s not someone telling me how to dress, how to act, how to look, how to be – I don’t think I could do that anyway…

And you’ve got some great role-models in your industry – people who aren’t familiar with country music may (wrongly) assume that women don’t have a high profile in that world, but actually Dolly Parton is such an inspiration…

Dolly Parton is one of the most respected businesswomen in country music. She used to make jokes that people would think she was a dumb blonde because she is a character – she’s buxom and blonde, but she’s also a very smart woman, who’s made tonnes of money and has been very, very successful. Yeah, I think it’s important to stick to your guns and be a strong woman, and hopefully that’s what I’m doing and that’s what comes across.

So would that be your message of advice to other artists?

Yeah – Stick to your guns, and be strong!

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Brian King (vocals/guitar) and Dave Prowse (vocals/drums) of Vancouver band JAPANDROIDS have had their fair share of ups and downs in their career, but catching up with them now in 2013, they’re riding a massive high, and what better city than Tokyo in which to talk hard work and the mysteries of success.

The dark, dungeon-like lounge area of music venue Shibuya WWW serves as the setting for the interview, the three of us seated around a tiny circular table covered with an assortment of Japanese beverages. When I arrived, the guys were filling in interview questionnaires with questions the likes of “If you could be an animal, what would you be?” so seemed more than a little relieved to start chatting with me instead. After a brief discussion about the best cities to visit in Australia, we move on to their current Asia tour.

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So first, I just want to say “Welcome to Tokyo!” – What have you been up to so far?

DAVE PROWSE: Eating and drinking mostly, walking around a lot. We flew from Seoul to Tokyo two days ago, so we’ve basically had one evening and one full day. We’re staying in a hotel in Shibuya, so we’ve been mostly hanging around in Shibuya, eating lots of delicious food, drinking shochu and sake.

And this isn’t your first time in Japan, is it?

DAVE: No, we played Fuji Rock back in July, on the same day that Radiohead played, in the Red Marquee at noon. This will be our first club show in Tokyo. Fuji Rock is a pretty different world altogether, so it’ll be fun to play a packed little club.

BRIAN KING: Fuji Rock was a really fun experience, but as Dave was saying, it was really different from playing in a club at night. When you play at noon on Sunday at a festival, everyone’s just kind of waking up and sort of hungover from the night before, and it’s outside and really hot. So it’ll be a really different experience to play tonight.

Yeah, there are a lot of people very excited to see you play tonight – There are a group of girls waiting outside by the door trying to peek in…

DAVE: Whoa, send ’em in! Just joking…

So, did you have much chance to check Japan out last time?

DAVE: We were here for four or five days, so I think we got a little taste of it. Some of that time, we were just up at the festival – you could kind of be anywhere when you’re at a music festival – but I think we had three nights in Tokyo and got to see a fair amount. For me, Japan is probably one of the most foreign and unique places I’ve ever been in my entire life. On this tour, we’ve played quite a few other parts of Asia – we played Hong Kong, Taipei, two shows in Korea, Singapore, and then also all those shows in Australia and New Zealand. But even within Asia, I feel like Japan is a really unique place, so it’s been super exciting to get to come here. We’re getting a small snippet of what it’s like, but even just in Tokyo, I think you could spend a year constantly discovering new parts of it. We’ve still only been here a few days total in the last year, so there’s a lot more to see.

You’ve just finished your Korean dates – how was that?

DAVE: It was awesome! Before this whole tour, our only venture into Asia was Fuji Rock. On this tour, we’ve played a lot of places for the first time and all the shows have gone really well, but our two shows in Korea (in Busan and Seoul) were particularly stand-out shows, where the crowds were really great both nights. It was a pretty big surprise for both of us to see how receptive everyone was there. There are a lot of expats in Korea, especially Canadians and Americans.

So, any particularly memorable shows on the tour so far?

BRIAN: Well, from the recent past, Laneway Sydney was a really good show for us. The crowd was really good, everything just kind of came together, so that really stands out in my memory from this tour as a really memorable show. There are so many factors that go into making a show good, both for the band and for the audience. No matter how much we try, it’s very rare that all of the factors align in a really positive way. There’s usually something that doesn’t go quite right, or something that you wish was different, but that show was one where I left the stage thinking pretty much everything went right that night, and it felt awesome.

DAVE: Yeah, I think that was the best show we’ve had on this tour. In terms of everything aligning, it sounded good, we played well and the crowd was great. Those are the three big things. Wherever we play, there are a fair amount of people who know about our band and are really excited to see us, and when you get that kind of a response, whether that’s 20 people or 200 or 2000, it’s just a pretty magical thing. There are highlights, and certainly Sydney was the one where everything aligned in the best way on this tour so far, but at the same time, I think every show is a really fun show. Every show we play has something memorable about it and, especially at this point, we’re not playing a lot of duds.

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How did you both get into music? And how did that lead to Japandroids?

DAVE: We met at the University of Victoria. Brian had been playing guitar for a while before that, but I hadn’t played drums. I started playing drums in University basically because I wanted to play in bands – it was a pretty conscious decision when I was about nineteen. I’d played a bunch of other instruments as a kid, but I’d never played in bands before and I figured that playing drums was my quickest route to playing in bands, because everyone always needs a drummer – there are never enough drummers to go around, it seems.

I started seeing a lot of local music in Victoria and was increasingly becoming obsessed with music in my first few years of university. Seeing local bands really inspired me to start playing in bands. It was an important moment for me to realise that being in bands and making music wasn’t something necessarily reserved for famous people and big shot bands who live in New York or Hollywood, but that it was something that normal people like me could do, and if you just worked at it and were passionate about it, you could make something worth listening to. Specifically, there was one show I saw by Dan Boeckner’s band Atlas Strategic at this place called Thursday’s in Victoria. Dan later went on to play in Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, and Divine Fits, etc. I’d never heard his band before and just arbitrarily went. Dan’s band was the local opener for this touring band called Mice Parade who I ended up not really giving a shit about because I saw Atlas Strategic and thought they were by far the better band of the two. That show basically changed my life. Brian has a different story…

BRIAN: Yeah, I’m just trying to think… I was interested in music from when I was really young. I started listening to music and going to shows, and I learned how to play guitar when I was quite young, like elementary school – it’s just something that I always liked, but it never occurred to me that I could actually do it. I was from a small town where that was not really a reality – there were no local bands and that wasn’t something that people did. When I got to school, like Dave, I got more interested in the local music community and this idea of regular people being in bands as opposed to just “rockstars.” When we finished school, there was a group of us that had this plan to start bands together. Between us, we had about five or six bands all going in Vancouver at the same time when I first moved there. Then after a while, we were the last band standing and we just kept going – and now, it’s eight years later.

There are a lot of great Canadian bands, but it seems difficult for them to get known overseas. Do you think it’s getting easier?

DAVE: I think so. Before bands like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene really blew up, I think it was a bit of a dirty word to say you were a band from Canada. And there’s a very insular music scene in Canada – a lot of bands became very popular within Canada but were totally unknown even in the United States, let alone the rest of the world. Nowadays, at least in the realm of indie rock, I think a lot of people from abroad are very interested in what’s going on in Canada – maybe not Vancouver as much, but certainly Montreal and Toronto. When bands say they’re from those cities, people’s ears prick up a little bit and it makes them kind of curious about the band, in the same way that when I was younger, if I heard about a band from San Francisco or New York, I’d think, “Oh, they must be good.”

BRIAN: You know, there’s a “British” sound, but there’s no “Canadian” sound. I think that as time goes on, and more and more artists from different music genres start to become popular and it just happens that they’re from Canada, the less and less it actually matters that they’re from Canada – what matters is whether you’re good. No-one cares that Grimes is from Canada – she’s just really popular because the record’s really awesome. And, no one cares that Drake is Canadian – he’s just really popular because of the music. Drake and Crystal Castles and Fucked Up are all from Toronto and really successful, but they don’t sound anything like one another. It’s the Internet age, and where you’re from is becoming less important than whether or not you’re good.

There was a time ten years ago when if you were from Brooklyn, people would pay attention to you and what you sounded like, regardless of whether you were good or not. There was a sort of mini-version of that in Montreal in the mid-00s, because all of a sudden it seemed that there were all these bands coming out of Montreal that had a similar sound – all indie rock bands with guitar that appealed to a lot of people and had this certain sound. I feel like that’s disappeared, and now it’s opened the doors to anyone. There are all kinds of really great Canadian bands coming up and getting talked about, and they don’t sound anything like each other – if you didn’t know they were Canadian, you would never know. Dirty Beaches is playing in Tokyo tonight as well – he’s Canadian.

Yeah a few weeks ago Crystal Castles played in Tokyo, and next month Grimes will be here…

DAVE: Oh really? Canadian invasion!

BRIAN: It’s funny, because being Canadian is the one thing those bands have in common – musically, they’re all playing a totally different thing. I think it just doesn’t matter so much anymore. The fact that the population is smaller means that there will never be as many Canadian bands as there are American or European bands, but I think it’s about the same thing – if it’s good, then it’s good and it’s gonna happen.

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So, tell me about the band name – did you plan to have this connection to Japan?

DAVE: Not really, it was just something that I thought sounded cool. We certainly didn’t have any aspirations to play in Japan at that time. We were just trying to play shows in Vancouver, maybe tour a bit in Canada, maybe in the US. I don’t think either of us had any idea of how far we’d end up going with this band, so to a large extent the band name was more a formality just so we could start playing shows in Vancouver, so we had something to write on the posters.

You’re now touring the world, but how did you manage in the early stages with the ups and downs of getting the band established?

DAVE: We were both pretty frustrated. I think in retrospect we probably both feel as though we should have left Vancouver earlier, and it probably would have been easier to have achieved some success with our band if we didn’t live in Vancouver – it’s pretty isolated. I think that’s changed to some extent as time’s gone on – people are looking to Vancouver a bit more as a place where bands come from – but certainly when we were starting, it wasn’t really a place where bands existed. We did everything ourselves for a long time and we were achieving some degree of success, but we were definitely pretty frustrated with what felt like a lack of progress. And it led to the band basically breaking up before anything really happened for us. The big reason that we decided to stick around later was that, after we decided it didn’t seem like the band was going anywhere, people started pretty arbitrarily picking up on our band just because of one show in one place at one time – and that was a little spark that started this whole buzz.

Which show was that?

DAVE: It was a tiny show at a place called Friendship Cove in Montreal, at a festival called Pop Montreal, which is kind of like a SXSW-type deal – multi-venue, all in the same city, lots of different small shows. We played at this art space called Friendship Cove to like nobody, but it turned out that one person who was there was a guy named Greg Ipp who’s now a good friend of ours and who used to run a record label called Unfamiliar Records – that’s the label that first put out our 2009 album Post-Nothing (This debut LP was subsequently re-released by Polyvinyl Record Co.). A guy named Stu Berman who writes for magazines also saw us there and really liked our show, so he started writing about us in Toronto. He was kind of the person who got our record to Pitchfork. So those two things pretty gigantic things happened at the same show and changed the fate of our band.

BRIAN: It was like the perfect storm of things. I mean, famous magazines see bands play all the time, so it’s not only that. It’s like a perfect combination of all the events coming together, because it’s also a lot of hard work, a lot of determination and resilience – all those clichéd things but it’s totally true. And then it’s also a bit of luck on top of all that. It was just this perfect combination of us being in the right place at the right time, playing the way we did with the songs we had at the time, with the right people, and everything just kept unfolding from there. I mean, I like to think that the reason people wrote about us in those early days is because the songs were good and we performed them really well, like they didn’t have much of a choice but to write about us. It could have been totally different – we could have just played kind of shitty that night and them be like, “Meh, these guys suck,” so having them in the same room wouldn’t have meant anything. It’s a really hard thing to explain how other bands could do it or how it even happened to us, because you can’t plan it, or we would have planned it a lot sooner. It just sort of happened accidentally.

DAVE: Yeah, and like I said, hardly anybody was there, so it would have been very easy to just be like, “Well, this is gonna suck, let’s get this over with and get the fuck out of here.” It was basically just bands, a few other friends of friends and then those guys. Luckily for us, we play every show like it’s our last, whether it’s ten people, a hundred people, or a thousand people there. We took it very seriously, even though there was nobody there.

One of your most popular tracks is The House That Heaven Built” and it’s also the only one to have an official music video. Where and when was that shot, and can we expect more?

BRIAN: It was shot over the course of a week. Someone came on tour with us for a week on the East Coast of the States and Canada, so it’s kind of… six shows? – Toronto, Montreal, Boston, two shows in New York, and Washington DC.

DAVE: I think that was the only kind of music video we would make. It took us a long time to bother making a music video. The reason we did that one was that it felt a bit more genuine. There was some trepidation in doing it, but I’m glad we did it, just so we have that document of a very specific time for our band.

BRIAN: I think we never fully understood how much people who like the band would like the music video, and the people who like our band really liked it – they like to have that visual association with the band. And so, after seeing the reception to the video, it kind of changed our minds a little bit about the idea of using music videos as a whole – not that I want to run off and start making crazy music videos tomorrow, but more just the idea that we managed to find a way to do it where we were happy with it and our audience was really happy with it. I think it would be a cool thing to keep doing, if you could find ways to keep doing work you and your audience are happy with. Now that I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the reaction to it, it makes me lament being so staunchly against doing it for so long.

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Finally, with all these new experiences, what words of advice would you now give to upcoming musicians?

BRIAN: It’s a hard question to answer actually, because on the one hand I feel like I have nothing to say, and on the other hand I feel like I have a million things to say. I mean, probably just the old classic clichéd thing of lots of hard work… When you tour a lot and you meet other bands that have found some kind of success, like say you play Laneway where you’re travelling with all these other bands and all of these bands have more or less achieved the same thing you did – they’ve all made it to a point that they’re on Laneway for example, they all have records out and have record labels, people know who they are and they’ve found some kind of success (some more than others, but still to the point that they get invited to play a travelling festival) – one thing you can guarantee is that everyone works really hard to get to where they are, and very few people fall into it accidentally. Most people have all worked really hard for a really long time to get to where they are.

Watching other bands perform at that festival, I was thinking that what all these different people – no matter what kind of music they play or what their differences are – have in common is that it’s taken a lot for them to get there, and by no means was any of it easy. We played with people that are like us, who have been doing it for a long time, some much longer than us, and it took lots of hard work, lots of grinding, typically more than one album, typically lots of touring. You get to know some of these bands and you’re like, “Wow, I realise that before you played in this band, you played in three other bands, you’ve been making music for 12 or 13 years and that’s how long it took you to get here.” Other bands have been working at it for ten plus years but are only now beginning to have some kind of recognition, but they stuck with it because they wanted it that badly. They kept on doing it, and when they hit a hurdle, instead of letting it stop them, they just found a way to overcome it.

The longer you do this, the more you realise that that’s the one thing almost everyone – nine out of ten people – has in common. It’s the long history of lots and lots of hard work, dedication and resilience. I think that’s the best advice you can give – that if you really love it and you really believe in it, you just have to work hard and keep doing it no matter what, and eventually you’ll get somewhere. Maybe you won’t become the biggest band in the world, but you’ll get somewhere.

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Leeds band Officers aren’t your average guitar and synths group. They have a big swirling sound that verges on the symphonic, and would be right at home behind an edgy indie movie. The band is also fiercely independent, releasing their music through their own Original Wall of Death label, with all the packaging designed, often in limited editions, by Stuart Semple. Music icon Gary Numan was so impressed with their music that he has had the band touring with him as the opening act, as well as recording with the band. We caught up the main forces behind the band, Jamie Baker (guitar) and Matt Southall (vocals and keyboard), before their show at London’s famed Forum in Kentish Town.

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How did you guys meet?
Matt: It’s quite strange because I lived across the road from Jamie, but we didn’t speak for about six months. We just used to glare at each other from across the street. One day my car broke down outside the house, and Jamie just strutted past with a smirk on his face and I remember thinking, “All right. Cheers. Thanks for your help.” A couple of months later we happened to speak through a mutual friend in the pub, and I asked Jamie to join my band, without even hearing him play, cos we got on so well. It kind of went from there.

Jamie: It was odd, because at first you asked me if I could sing.

Matt: Because I didn’t want to sing.

Jamie: We were talking about this the other day and Matt said we’ve been using the term singer by proxy, but it wasn’t really. In my eyes, from meeting, I could always see the potential that was there, not just via a voice, because you started putting stuff down on demos, but the attitude and the way a front man should look, which is something I’d never really had being in previous bands before. You used to see your favourite bands and think there was a brilliant front man, or he looks the part, and not only that he could sing. But often it was one or the other; they were either a really good singer, or they looked good but were shit.

Matt: And I can’t do either.

Jamie: But he’s always been like that, with that self-deprecating attitude, which is quite nice really, but I could always see the potential, but it was hard to push him to do it, at first.

Matt: It was weird because one minute I was singing on demos, then three months later we were playing for Alan McGee’s club night, with him watching us, then a month after that we played to 6000 people at the Coronet in London. Then I thought to myself, I’m actually a singer now, which was quite strange.

So, did the band take off quite quickly? Or was it a ten-year overnight success?
Matt: Early on we got a lot of attention from working with Jagz Kooner, whose just remixed a track we’ve done with Gary Numan. He was a big hero of mine when he was in Sabres of Paradise. Jamie struck up that relationship with him, so he was a big supporter of us, which obviously gained us a lot of interest, both industry wise and from his peers, such as Eddy Temple-Morris and loads of other people. So early on we had a lot of heat on us.

Jamie: We removed ourselves from that situation because, like Matt said, it happened so quickly. When we first started, we started putting demos together, which was around the MySpace boom, and we messaged Alan McGee on MySpace and said, “Listen to these tunes” and he said to come and play his club night. At that time we hadn’t even got a live set together, let alone a band, or even ever hired a van to travel to London to play a gig. We’d never really done it, we’d just done stuff locally. All of a sudden we had something to deliver, but we hadn’t even time to write anything that we thought was of worth, really. So we had to remove ourselves, and a lot of people said, “What the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that?” We could have taken a very different path, but if we had we wouldn’t be writing the quality of material that we are now, because we wouldn’t still be around because it would have been a flash in the pan kind of thing, which we never wanted to do. We wanted to build it slowly and foster those kind of relationships and…

Matt: …work with people that we care about, who respect us and who we respect back, rather than someone who is looking at the clock and being paid by the hour.

Jamie: We’re not doing it because a PR company said, “This’ll be a good hook up for you guys to do.” Or a record company that’s got another act on the label and thinks they’ll put these two bands on tour because they’ll sell more albums for our label. It’s never been about that. It takes longer when you do everything yourself, which is what we do. We put everything out through our own label. Matt produces everything. I look after the social networking, the visual and management side of things. We cross over at the point where it needs it, and finish each other’s jobs off. We’ve each got our thing that we do, but we can’t do it without each other.

Matt: It’s a real good relationship. I’m really lucky creatively in that I can pretty much say, “There” and Jamie will accept it and put a guitar part on, and that’s the song. It works quite well because we’ve both been in bands before. Since bands started they’ve always had the issues of creative problems, but Jamie’s good with the visual side of things, and it’s great that he gets involved with that with his friend Stuart Semple, who we’ve done the artwork collaboration with, and we’re going to continue to work with. It’s a really healthy way of working, and it creates a great product at the end of it because it’s all made completely in-house by myself, with Jamie and Stuart doing the artwork. We’ve got Tim and Dave Bascombe to mix the records, because it was a bit out of my depth at that point, in delivering a really good mix.

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Your sound is very rich so it’s going to need a lot of work for it to come out how you want it to.
Matt: It’s very symphonic, in terms of lots of layers and loops, and very precise in terms of how things work with each other. If one’s out, the other might sound a bit odd. I’m sometimes guilty of overloading parts, where Tim and Dave made those parts sit in more than I could do – “You don’t need that in there, it’ll sound better if it comes in there.” That’s great and it’s real healthy, and those guys were fantastic and they did it for… compared to the fees that they usually get, it was ridiculous, and they did it out of love for the music, which was great.

Technology has come to a point where it is much easier for people to do it for themselves.
Matt: It does, but I think that with technology being so cheap, it has created a lot of bad music.

Not only bad music, but also bad movies, bad design…
Matt: Everyone thinks they can buy a Mac and Logic, and they’re a producer. Sometimes it’s not the case. However, 15 years ago, our band wouldn’t have been able to exist the way we do things. On the live sets it would be very different. We’d probably have to have ten people doing the job our synth player does with some sequencers, plus what I play live on the keyboard, and certainly the guitar chains that Jamie has, it’s about 16-17 effects. It’s quite intense.

Jamie: It’s quite in-depth now. We spent a lot of time on it. Being the kind of geeks that we are, sitting in our room.

Your music is very cinematic. Would you like to get into film scoring?
Jamie: Last night we were talking about something I’m trying to put the feelers out for at the moment, doing music for an animation is something we’ve both wanted to do for quite a while, and scoring for soundtracks, we’d definitely love to move into that kind of world. We find it quite easy to do that kind of thing. I don’t mean it arrogantly, it’s just that if you enjoy doing it, you get lost in it. Because of the way we write, the way Matt writes and I come up with the parts, it is always inspired by visual references, which is why we have such a strong relationship with Stuart, so I think it would transcend very well on to film soundtracks, animation and a lot of the stuff we have online that I’ve put together via our favourite movies, footage and art projects. I’ve got in touch with people online and said, “Do you mind if I use this footage to put together a video for ourselves?” Editing in that way gives a different element to what we create. It’s definitely something we’d like to get into.

Matt: When I first started I had an Akai S20 sampler, a Tascam tape machine and a Korg Electribe. That’s how I started off making electronic music, because I used to be a drummer. Because I had a bad hand, I had to stop playing the drums so I had to find something that I loved. Bladerunner was always a film I’d loved, and that’s how I got into it, starting off scoring very simple symphonic pieces, and that’s been a big influence on the sound of the band. I can’t play any instrument well, only to a standard that is suitable for a recording, but enough to write a tune with. That’s how the sound of the band evolved, in that it was very loopy because that’s how I worked. I’d play something once on my guitar and loop it, rather than having to try and play it. It’s actually worked out very well, and back from all those years ago that’s how the sound evolved.

Jamie: It was definitely a really good learning curve for me as well because I’d come from the background of, you learn to play the guitar and there’s all this theory that goes with it. All these virtuoso guitarists, but if you weren’t as good as them then you weren’t a guitarist, whereas the way we started to write, it was impossible for me to play like that. I had to learn to play in a completely different way, which again was using all the techniques, which I’d been told was the wrong way of doing things – making the guitar sound like a synth. That was really good for me, it improved me because I was doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing, and that’s formed the way we do things now.

How did you end up touring with Gary Numan?
Jamie: Eddy Temple-Morris, the XFM DJ and a long-time supporter of ours, invited us to co-host one of his shows. We were having a bit of a sound clash; he’d hit us with a tune and we’d have to hit him back with one. Matt dropped Melt, the Ade Fenton remix, and Eddy said, “Wow. Gary Numan. I haven’t heard that track for ages. I think he’d really love your album.” So I said, make sure you get it to Gary. Within five minutes, a few people online had started Tweeting about it with the hashtag #getittogary. So a bit of a campaign started, and Eddy did put it across, and Gary came back and quite liked it. Actually he corrected me the other day and told me off. He said, “I didn’t say I liked it, I said I absolutely loved it and it was the best album I’d heard all year.” He said the other night that the track we recently wrote with him, he told us it was his favourite song ever, or one of his favourite songs ever, which is crazy. That’s how the relationship started. He invited us along on tour, which has been great for us. It’s been brilliant. Not just because the shows have been great, but the atmosphere between band and crew is a really nice family atmosphere. It’s going to be really sad when it finishes.

Those guys have been around for ages, so they’ve nothing to prove and don’t need to really come over with attitude.
Matt: True. And Gary’s an absolutely lovely man, and his wife Gemma is absolutely amazing. She makes us feel so welcome and at ease. She comes to all the shows. She’s always Tweeting about how much she’s looking forward to seeing us. It’s been great.

Jamie: It has been odd, in a good way, because, like you say, they’ve nothing to prove, there isn’t that kind of competition element you get with some bands. You speak to some band members with other acts you’re touring with, and they’ll say, “Caught your set”, and you’ll know they didn’t because they’ve been in the dressing room all night. The venues we’ve been playing, Gary and the band’s been coming out onto the balconies, and you look up and see them all getting into it. They genuinely want you to do well, which is a lovely thing to have because you don’t get it often in this industry. Gary’s put his neck out quite a bit. He could have had anyone from any record label who could have paid him any money to promote them to his audience, but it was genuinely for the love of it, and mutual respect. In the industry climate that we’re in, it takes some balls to do that.

Matt: It sums up his ethos, which is very similar to ours in terms of being an independent record company and being self-sufficient. He really likes that in us. He’s Gary Numan, he’s untouchable. He’s an amazing man and we’re at the very start of our career and he obviously wants to help us and steer us along the right path.

Do you like touring?
Matt: Love this tour.

Jamie: Because we look at in a completely different way from when we first started out, it’s been an absolute blast, and it’s going to be quite sad to see it finish. It’s been work, but it’s been enjoyable work. We could have ruined it for ourselves if we’d gone out and hammered it every night.

But that’s part of being professional.
Matt: Five years ago I’d drink a litre of vodka before going on stage. Now I don’t have any.

Jamie: The difference is people come up to you at the end of the show and say how great it was, and you remember how great it was the next day.

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Everything seems to be going great for you at the moment. Do you feel lucky to be where you are?
Jamie: We do feel lucky, because we know luck is in it, but part of me feels like we deserve it as well because we know how much work we’ve put into it. Everyone that’s doing it is because it is part of a relationship that we’ve got with these people. There’s a lot of emotional attachment to what we do. We’re not just some kids writing tunes that we want to put out and sell, it’s more than that to us. We do feel lucky, but at the same time, we’ve created it all ourselves, and we’ve worked damn hard to do it. We’re comfortable where we are, and we’d like it to grow even more.

In this web-obsessed world, there is surprisingly little to be found about you except your own pages on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Soundcloud, MySpace etc.
Jamie: That was always intentional. There’s so many bands out there and it’s oversaturated with, “We’re the greatest band in the world”…

Matt: To us it was, let’s direct our fans and a few likeminded people to a few places where they can see us.

Jamie: It’s there, and there’s something there for you if you want it.

Do you rely mostly on word of mouth?
Matt: This is the first time we’ve toured this record. The record was finished 18 months ago, and it’s taken us this long to get everything together. Something always comes from something, so we’re looking to take it as far as we can, but we wanted to keep things very simple for people, although they will always find thousands of articles on officers, of an army orientation, rather than the band. The profiles growing, so that’s great.

Jamie: It will grow, and it is one of those things where, because we’re self sufficient and we are just starting, we made a decision quite a while ago that we don’t need to chase a label. I think, when you’re younger and you’re inexperienced and a bit naive, from all the stories you read you think the way to become successful is to get a record deal, get an advance, become rich and that’s it. That’s not the way any more.

They’ve clearly been reading the wrong stories because if you do that you’ll be paying the record company for the rest of your life.
Jamie: When you’re younger, and you see these idols and you don’t even know what it’s like. As soon as we made the decision that it wasn’t about making the money, that’s not the end game. If we do, that would be absolutely brilliant. But if we can sustain ourselves making a living doing what we love doing. What we’re doing now, no one can ever take that away. We own it, and everything we make we put back into it to sustain what we think’s worthwhile and what people like. We can do that forever. We don’t need a record company to give us 150 grand to do it. We can do the record on a couple of grand. I don’t know if you’ve seen the stuff we did with the book sets with Stuart Semple. They’re a fantastic product, aesthetically pleasing and interactive. The person that buys it gets a really great insight into the creative process. You’re not going to get that from buying an album from HMV or downloading it, so we’ll always be doing that kind of thing.

You do need to do that now, so that people get a package that is something unique. The whole art of sleeve design has almost disappeared, but it can still be done in interesting ways, even with CDs.
Jamie: That’s one of the things we wanted to do with Petals, the track we’ve done with Gary. We could have quite easily put it out as a download, we wouldn’t have had to pay anything to do that, there would have been no overheads, and we know everyone would have downloaded it on this tour. But we didn’t. We restricted it to one hundred really special, limited edition copies. One track on three CDs, with information on how you can donate to a really important charity called CALM. We knew we could get press to raise awareness for this charity, and we knew that’s what it was for. Gary’s fans and our fans now have this really limited, special thing. There’s only a hundred copies in the world, there won’t ever be a repressing of that package. That’s something that’s really nice, and if I was a collector that is something I would love to have. We made it, we did it all and it’s there and they get a bit of the work we put in, for being a fan.

Do younger people coming into the industry need to look at why and how they are doing it?
Matt: There’s still an old school going around, and there’s a new school of people who are working in the industry, and the old school is panicking and struggling to catch up with all these new ways of doing things. As a young man, like Jamie was saying, we’ve both had record deals in the past that have gone belly up almost instantly. Having wasted six months of your life waiting for something to happen, there should be a lot more awareness that it’s not about that. You need to keep the band unit strong. The main thing is to get a core unit together. Know how it works. You need to know what to expect as well. Our management, Angus, has been great with us over the years; helping us, working with us, educating us and arguing with us about how to do it, or how not to do it. It’s a very volatile industry and it does ruin people’s lives because they get a taste of success or something, and spend the rest of their lives wishing, whatever. I think that if you do it all yourself it’s more organic and you can do what you want. It just depends at what scale you want to do it and what you’re trying to achieve.

Jamie: You’ve got to manage your expectations. If you think that because you’re in a band that you’re going to live that dream, get signed and make loads of money, you need to check in with yourself, and realise that happens to very, very few people. Even though the Internet has been great at giving people the tools to do things themselves, there’s so many more people doing it now, so the chances are even less. As a result of that there is even less money in the industry so there are less chances of being picked up. I remember when we first started, we were offered record deals and went to record company offices; Warner Brothers, Parlophone that have offices full of people, press departments, marketing departments. Now there are four or five people working in these companies. So you can see that everyone has had to scale it back, but like Matt said, you have to have a specific goal. There’s a lot of people out there that will help and give you advice, and help you get there…

Matt: You just need to build those relationships, with respect, and making a good product, and having a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve. If those people feel the same they’re going to help you because they’ll want to be part of it with you.

Jamie: Find out where the communities are, because they’re already established. There’s no point in becoming a rockabilly band and setting up in a rockabilly community because there’s already one there. Go there and find those people. There’s no point setting up a forum to do with guitar pedals, because there’s loads of them. Go and speak to the people in the places where these relationships are already taking place, and build your connections there. That’s how we did it. All the connections we’ve got are longstanding connections. We meet new people all the time, who are in to what we do, but the core of it is people who have similar outlooks, similar ways of working, who we met very early on. There’s a trust element. They’ve stuck with us and we’ve stuck with them. It’s like the relationship we have with Jagz, you have a period of time, like when we did the single with Jagz and you’ve finished working and that relationship doesn’t peter out, but you don’t see each other every day or every week, but you still keep in touch. Then, like now, as soon as you’re ready to do something again, they’re always there because you’ve got that trust with them. They know you can trust them and they know you’ll be there for them.

There’s a lot of musicians who have made a shitload of money over the years, do you think they should be setting up mentoring schemes for young talent so they don’t have to rely on the corporate side of the industry?
Jamie: I think it would be great because they are the real people. There are a lot of people that do it already. Jagz for one.

Matt: I think that’s the role of a producer now, in a lot of ways. To be a producer you need to have a lot of money and a lot of time to go and find these bands, and you’ve pretty much got to present a finished product. That’s certainly what Jagz and Tim Holmes did with us. They schooled us in the way of business, in the way of synthesis, in all sorts of different ways. If I could go back 15 years and do a course on music and law and music law and music management, and I wanted to be a musician, if someone had told me I needed to do that to be a musician, rather than be blasé, you’ll never be a musician. You just think. I’ll go and buy loads of guitars and loads of amps, and go and get a coke habit. There should be some kind of scheme, but, financially, is the government interested in the arts that much?

Not so much the government, but musicians that have more money than they know what to do with, to put something back into the industry.
Jamie: I see what you’re saying, but the people who have made a lot of money in the industry are coming towards the end of their careers. With the industry as it is now and has been for the past 10 or 15 years, it’s awfully hard to change culture or change a person if they’ve got their lot and feel they’ve worked hard. There are some good people, like what George Martin’s done in the past. I know he’s given a lot of advice to producers and people like that. There is a lot of information out there, but you’ve got to go looking for it: Musicians Union, PRS (Performing Rights Society), there are a lot of people that will give the advice. I do agree, some of the musicians and artists that have made millions of pounds should be investing in that. There are a few that do and a few that don’t. I think the people that are around now, our current peers, do what they can because they know it’s going to benefit them if they mentor someone who becomes successful. It’s such an unpredictable industry.

Where do you see yourselves going from here? Or do you just want to carry on as you are?
Jamie: We just want to carry on doing the best things that we can, for as long as we can. No one can take it away from us, so we’ll just keep doing it. We’re going to do our own tour, I think.

Matt: The second record is looking very strong, and a lot of the work is done on that already.

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