www.mioceneonline.co.uk

year	month	source
03	feb	skratch the surface

one of the UK's most intriguing and genuinely creative bands, miocene burst onto the scene a few years back with some critically acclaimed gigs and their debut EP refining the theory a collection of some brilliantly cutting metallic moments and atmospheric ambiance, its release combined with some steady gigging earned the band a good reputation and a collective of loyal fans.

the last couple of years have seen the release of a second EP cellular memory that showcased a more eclectic electronic influenced side to the band, mixing soundscapes with the more traditional song format and the band undertook a mammoth tour of the UK last february and

march. since then they've been locked away working on their first full length album, tasters from which have appeared on the bands web-site over the last couple of months.

STS caught up with frontman ben to find out the current lowdown in miocene land....

noz/STS: firstly how are things in the miocene camp at the moment, just generally?

ben - in all the important ways, awesome. we're tighter than we've ever been, writing better

music than we've ever written and kicking more ass than we'd ever hoped to kick. the details - like food, and money, and so on - can always be worked out if you believe in what you're doing to the exclusion of all else.

you're currently working on the album, do you see it as a sort of logical conclusion/next step from the 2 EP's, or has it been treated as something totally new in its own right?

no, it's an obvious progression from the two EPs. those two don't make much sense when they're put next to each other, unless you totally understand who we are and what we do; the album is going to tie the two into one amorphous blob. heh.

looking back at the time miocene has been a band thus far, and looking on any number of internet forums etc., its evident that miocene has a very intense/hardcore fanbase, and I'm often seeing quotes from some of your written essays, or posts you make yourself spread like wildfire. i was wondering if you ever get a little weirded out by it, or if its completely unexpected?

e.g.. lots of fans seem to hang on your every word/website update and you're often seen as some sort of antidote to a lot of the more manufactured/obvious music out there...but at the same time you're faced with an out of date case of beer in cleethorpes beechcomber to live off for a day!

heheh. yeah. we're the ultimate 'big in Japan' band, except we're not big in Japan. it doesn't matter. ultimately, bands have to choose between complete artistic control and independence on the one hand, and compromise and comfort on the other.

when you consider that most bands, even major label bands, end up working full-time jobs after their albums fail to sell millions, the choice is obvious: either leave a legacy and starve for a few years, or leave a couple of boring major label albums and a vague taste of disappointment in the mouths of those who liked you when there WAS something special about your music.

if people are a little crazed about the band, it's only because there's no other band out there walking it like they talk it in the same way. either that or they want to fuck alex. i think about half of our fanbase can be put into that category, actually. if we didn't have that fucker in the band we wouldn't sell shit. i think we need to get t-shirts with his face on 'em. Heh.

i've read that apart from a few bands such as sikTh, mahumodo etc., there's not much guitar music that excites you these days, and given the more left-field direction of the last EP, do you think you will still be comfortable performing heavier material live in the future, and can you see yourselves still playing tracks from "refining...." when the band resumes touring?

i think we have to. i'm not interested in alienating anyone, and even though I think our new material is much stronger than pretty much everything off "refining...", i want people who liked the first record to see the similarities and the differences between the it and the new album. otherwise, it'd make more sense to just become another band. not only that, but our album has guitar stuff on it which is much heavier, ridiculously heavier, than the first album; it's just being done with a much subtler stroke now.

miocene are very much an underground band (in my book at least!...) and you've gone on record as saying you've turned down a lot of money that was offered for varying things, I was wondering if you would be happy staying at the level of exposure you're at now once the album comes out?

exposure doesn't really bother me; i know enough about the industry to know that exposure doesn't equal stability, and i don't seek fame for it's own sake. i think word of mouth will be more important with this album, it's the kind of thing you'll play to your friends if you want them to hear something new, and ultimately i'd rather be in one of those bands where the music comes first than any other kind of band.

early last year there was the kerrang article where you made reference to ozzy and were slightly less than positive...a few people seemed to think it was some mad, bold statement, and although i found it funny seeing it, i personally felt its something i agreed with, and probably a hell of a lot other people did too....did you think yourselves you were really saying anything THAT controversial?

not really, it happens to be true. the guy never wrote his own lyrics, even for his solo stuff, and his position as the 'godfather of metal' today owes more to his wife and her clever PR mind than it does to any talent of ozzy. the guy is the christina agueliera of the metal world, except he can't sing.

fortunately, the osbournes came out and all the metalheads who purported to love him quickly disowned the fucker, so it turned out all right in the end. the only people who like ozzy now are lawyers with red nailpolish, little lapdogs and a highly developed sense of irony.

following the gig you did playing along with the 'pi' film, i understand you were making plans for another multi media project...any updates on this, or has it been sidelined due to the writing/recording of the album?!

sidelined, more due to money constraints than anything else. we've been creating a lot of stuff, backdrops, lighting shows, lots of digital visual stuff, but it's impossible to do a lot of that stuff on a budget and have it not look like dog shit we'll probably come out touring in the summer with a couple of strobes and backdrops and stuff, but nothing even close to what we wanted to do.

it's a shame, but i think the next tour we do after that one will be the one where we really begin to push the visuals. it's a process of collection; the next tour is about the new digital audio, the one after that about new visuals.

to give you an idea of what i mean, before the last tour we didn't even have amps that worked properly. like a said, a process of collection.

i've noticed you're pretty into anticon and similar type stuff, which is cool, i've personally found it to be some of the best listening i've had in the last couple of years (hemispheres, the no music, personal journals etc.) do you think artists like dose one, themselves etc. have had/will have any sort of influence on miocene's sound?

not directly, but I do feel a great deal of affinity with the whole anticon/underground hiphop movement. we fit in better there; the intelligence, the independence, the imagination, the experimentation, and let's be honest, the occasional ill-advised mouthing off - we have more in common with themselves than we do with lostprophets for sure, even down to the fact that they have to ask for places to stay after gigs.

actually. gotta come clean on this one. we were listening to cLOUDDEAD the other day and realizing that most of the anti con stuff, with a few exceptions, is in 4/4. i hate 4/4. we're writing a polyrhymic hiphop track to see if we can pull it off.

as a side note, hemispheres is one of the finest hiphop releases of the 90s. i can't believe that dose doesn't get more recognition. did you ever hear sage francis' makeshift patriot? the lyrics are up on www.ohhla.com, it's fucking amazing. there's some great anti con stuff in london playing soon, check it out if you get the chance.

given you feel there's not much exciting happening these days guitar wise, and the more left-field/experimental "art" side of miocene, once the albums out and the band is gigging, can you see miocene playing on more varied bills than in the past? or is it gonna be totally in the hands of the booking agents?

mainly in the hands of booking agents; we can say who we want to play with, but i don't imagine aphex twin will want some loudmouth fourpiece with a laptop supporting him. besides, i want to play with metal bands; it's my opinion that 95% of metal sucks at the moment and there are a lot of shitty bands who need to be blown off stage. heheh.

i'm aware "poisoning dionysus" has a kind of anti consumerism/corporations stance lyrically, what are the other lyrical themes on the album at this moment in time?

ethical integrity, self-image, propaganda.....and how much harder it is to see truth and beauty as you get older and smarter, because one of the previous three subjects gets in the way.... see, i'm finding myself getting suffocated by our entertainment culture, something not helped by the fact that i'm working within it.

the more i find out about how corrupt everything is, the more i realize that it's all part of the same problem. to me, buying nikes is endorsing child labour. to me, signing to a major record label is endorsing the exploitation of artists. to me, voting for either of the major parties is endorsing a system which was never designed to help us in the first place. to me, marching on a pro/anti war rally without being educated is being a hypocrite of the highest order.

information is endless and no-one has time for everything. so we ignore the important shit and focus on the details, because the details are something we have some control over. it's exactly the same shit all over. and trying to see beauty and love and truth through this distorting fisheye lens is one of the most horrible, demoralising things you can do, but it's the only thing you can do if you want to increase the sphere of your knowledge and yet remain human.

that's what the album is about. trying to retain an eye on the bigger picture when we're constantly distracted from thinking about anything other than ourselves.

so, uh, it's not a comedy record or anything, though i'm beginning to think maybe we need a number on there about pants, or something. jesus. i must be great fun at parties, huh? heheh.

i've read that the weekend you recorded "cellular..." was affected somewhat by the sept 11th events.....do you feel the album this time around has been affected by the current political unrest in anyway?

well, there's one song on there which starts out with the lyrics "bargain your freedom/flag mutates with every bulletin, as i duck and keep covered, the core enemy sleeps within".

i don't really want to be seen as a political band, but when the personal becomes the political it's impossible not to talk about it.

anything I've not mentioned that you would like to mention/talk about?!

not really, i think i'm done ranting for a while. heheh. thanks for putting up with me.

thanks a lot man, greatly appreciated!,

peace, -b.

check out www.miocene.org and www.mioceneonline.co.uk for mp3's of new tunes and to keep

up to date with one of the most promising and sound bands in the UK today!. .:noz