year	month	source
05	mar	sound devastation

 

 

 

Anyone frequenting the band's message board over the last couple of years would realize that that Miocene are big fans of the US alt-hiphop scene... artists such as Beans, Aesop Rock, Buck 65, Sage Francis and the Anticon collective... To what extent does this influence the band's writing together? Hip-hop being a genre where lyricism is of great importance, are there any artists that you would cite as a source of lyrical inspiration?

I did really like that whole scene for a while - there were some amazing records released around that time. Around the time of the first cLOUDDEAD album, Deep Puddle Dynamics, Hemispheres by Doseone, Personal Journals by Sage, Tragic Epilogue by Anti Pop Consortium - and thanks to a friend who did me a tape, Sebutones too - it felt utterly fresh and new. The new cLOUDDEAD album doesn't.

Even though I love a lot of the albums, I actually hate a lot of the music released on that label - even the best of it is so loop based and static. Even Boom Bip with a live band is entirely shackled to the hiphop aesthetic of going over and over and over the same loops with no progression or movement. Sometimes that's the point - a few of

Sixtoos' records have a huge sense of poise and restraint because of it; but for a lot of other records it just comes over as boring. It's a fine line.

Reading an interview with DOT:ALT magazine from a couple of years ago, there were suggestions that you guys were going to attempt to write an odd-meter hip hop number; a track not confined to usual 4-4 boom-bap style that hiphop rarely, if ever, strays from. Is this something we can expect to hear on the album?

We did end up writing that tune but I made the mistake of letting Graham program the beats on his own; I ended up trying to write lyrics over a track that never once repeated itself, at double time, with glitches all the way through and half of the beats running backwards. I managed it but there was so much constraint with regards to the syllable count, line for line; it ended up making very little sense.

That would've been OK but to remain true to the spirit of hiphop, the track must stand or fall on the lyrics - you should be able to listen to an acapella of a hiphop tune and get 80% of what the track is about. So I wrote a spoken word piece, recorded the vocals to a click track and got Graham to program over the top of it. He came up with this quasi-industrial soundscape kind of thing and we mixed it and put it on the album. It's definitely not straight 4/4, but neither is it obstructively complicated. It's one of my favourites.

A couple of years ago, the alt-hiphop scene seemed fresh and new. Now the scene isn't quite as exciting right now maybe. To what extent would you agree with that? Which, if any, hiphop artists are rocking your world right now? In particular, are there any UK hiphop artists, such as the Machanical Insects collective or Roots Manoeuvre that you rate?

There's a lot of grime on the pirate stations in London at the moment, which is kind of cool. I'm not a big fan of the gangsta stuff, nor am I particularly enamoured of the whole Eminem-influenced, vaguely punky lyricism. It definitely contains the seeds of something new though. I think within a few years at least parts of it will begin to move away from guntalk and we'll start to see our own Aesop Rocks, our own Saul Williams, our own metaphysical emcees who approach the whole game with a more slanted perspective. When that happens the UK hiphop scene will genuinely become more interesting than it currently is. Even the best emcees - Task Force and Kalashnakov and so on - are still using very American-sounding beats and that really counts against them in my opinion.

Soon things will really start to pick up; it reminds me of how dnb was in the early 90s, street music with no other outlet, evolving from week to week to week, throwing up new permutations and combinations. When the LTJ Bukem of the Grime world shows up (i.e. someone who takes the street formula, planes off the rough edges, and makes it shiny and palettable for the masses) he or she is going to make a fucking mint.

And no I'm not talking about Dizzee Rascal!

Prior to entering the studio to record the new album, the band played a gig at The Camden Monarch where they showcased seven new songs. Those lucky enough to have attended the gig or to have heard the live recording of it, will know that the new tracks expanded upon the diverse range of influences shown on the Cellular memory.

Notably, a couple of the tracks featured some fantastic drum 'n' bass style breaks from Leo, jazzy piano courtesy of Ben, and vintage synth sounds from both Ben and guitarist Graham. Electronica is clearly another genre that the band are fans of. Are there any tracks on the new album that a purely electronic-based? How much of the album will the band be able to play live?

We'll be able to play it all live. When we released Cellular Memory we wrote the thing in the studio - we just made the sounds and didn't even consider how we were making them - and then tried to translate that into a live context. It just just doesn't work. We'd have needed about £20,000 worth of equipment, a string quartet and a time machine to have done it well.

We've changed our whole approach - learned how to produce from the ground-up, learned how to program, with a digital-meets-analogue live performance in mind. We wrote this album from the ground up, programming everything on a standard computer so that we could take it out and still be a live band. All we need is a laptop, a copy of Reaktor and some custom home made realtime quantising, audio ramping ensembles and we're set.

You don't have a laptop we could, uh, borrow, do you?

When the band toured last, just prior to the release of Cellular Memory, some audiences were lucky enough to be treated to a rendition of "Katie Sierra" from the aforementioned EP. Are there any plans to play any other tracks from the EP in the live environment? It would be great to hear either "The Harpie And The Preacher" or "Tradition..."…?

I'd really like to play Tradition, but it's the same problem as mentioned above - Graham got the swirling cello-type sound by sticking an electro acoustic guitar through a bass amp and letting the bass feedback 'play' the strings. We blew every speaker in that bass amp recording the song - to get the same sound each night would be very expensive. Perhaps when we're rich enough to be throwing transvestives out of hotel windows.

I understand that a remix CD is due to appear at some point. Can you tell us a bit about it, in particular who we can we expect you to be collaborating with? Will the remix CD be an official Calculated Risk release, or something the band puts together itself?

Depends how good it is. I'm putting it together; I have to keep quiet about who exactly is involved in the remix venture for the moment, but it's really exciting for us. If I can I'd like to just release it for free onto the internet but it really depends who's involved and how much of my soul they demand. There's also going to be a sample-pack going up on the website, which leaves it open for anyone who wants to be involved to do a mix - that way if someone comes up with something really special we can release it for them and hopefully generate them a bit of publicity. I'd very much like to get Calculated Risk involved in it - Martin Charger makes fucked up noisescape stuff that would really work well - but right now my focus is on this album and making it work in its own context.

Recently, you’ve revealed that indeed the album isn’t going to be released on Calculated Risk, but a ‘bastard cousin’ label of CR. Could you, if possible, go into more detail into quite why this has happened?

We went over-budget by about £8,000. This was a contractual wangle that means the record still comes out, instead of getting dusty on some shelf somewhere. Ironically enough, once it's out there the CDs will still probably just get dusty on shelves - but, don't you see, it'll be getting dusty on the shelves of bored white people, and that's what capitalism is all about.

Miocene, in 2005, isn’t the most marketable product in the music industry to say the least! Obviously this isn’t a concern to you, was the object of the record to just create music you really identified with and enjoyed/loved?

There are certainly some tracks that are incredibly different; ‘A Message From Our Sponsers’, ‘The Fall’, ‘Mysogyny Vs The Common Rule of Misconception’ and ‘I Ain’t Got No Roots’ sound like they could be from totally different groups of musicians. However, the album certainly flows well, how do you believe you’ve achieved this?

Thanks, but I can't answer the question - I don't even know if it does flow well.

I've been living these songs for three years and I've become utterly blind to everything about them - their merits, their failings, whichever. The one thing I can say is that they've all gone through a fairly rigorous testing procedure where we get beagles stoned and play them the tracks through specially-shaped 'doggie' headphones - if more than 50% of subjects keel over then it stays on the album.

We just wanted to write something that didn't patronise the listener and didn't bore us to death. I hate it when bands do the genre-tourist thing - "this is our blues song, this is our rock song, this is our metal song" and shit - but I also hate it when bands are scared to give free reign to their influences.

I don't know one technically proficient band who don't want to push the boundaries of their genre to begin with, and then, later, step entirely outside them - but only a very few of them actually go out there and do it.

Music has become so much more fragmented now, we don't have subcultures in the traditional sense and bands aren't using this to their advantage; they box themselves into smaller and smaller corners, trying to take over the one niche that no-one else has, and their styles become stunted and weak because there are only so many things you can say within that box.

I want to release this album to see if it works. I think people are smart enough to appreciate differing styles. I fucking hope they are.

The recording process has certainly been long, as was the writing process to say the least. Do you believe Miocene have truly begun to sound like Miocene?

You’ve commented before you wanted to release something that you weren’t sick of 6 months down the line. Did the writing process make you look hard at what you wanted to be and what you wanted to achieve sonically?

The album sounds like a band that have really, finally, found themselves. Looking way into the future could you predict perhaps a shorter writing process for a second album or are all four of you too perfectionist for that?!

There'll definitely be a shorter writing process for the next album. At least half of the time it's taken us to write this has been finding tools which work for and with us. Now we've found them we just need to keep writing songs then deconstructing them in the computer.

We'll never ever be satisfied with anything we make, ever. We agonise over every note and every beat, every time change, every key change, every change of mood and sonic landscape.

It's because when we first started out, we were lucky if we had an amp that worked between us, so we were happy just to perform without it going horribly wrong. When we got back from the last few tours we realised that we had working equipment and a place to write whenever we wanted, and so we had to make a decision - either churn out some more of the same shit and go to America on the strength of it, or actually delve into what it is that we want to put out there as music, and re-evaluate everything. To try to take whatever germ it is about our music that we like, and turn it into something bigger.

We constructed a lot on this album but we deconstructed a lot more. That process of deconstruction is what really took the time - ascertaining and evaluating what it is that we consider to be music that's worth listening to and worth standing by as a part of who we are.

We’ve had a look at two easily identifiable genres that have influenced you – Alt Hip Hop and Electronica. The other obvious one, which your early career as Miocene seems to truly stem is that of Metal.

It’s an interesting paradox within the music, with the other influencing creating something ‘heavy’ sonically, but with true moments of ambience and socially aware and uplifting lyrics.

Why do you as artists believe some brutality is needed in the music? Is the metal now to be found as an extenuation of these messages now, disbelief perhaps: the refrain of ‘Just say Yes’ on the opening track of the album for example?

I don't really understand the question... There's nothing inherently wrong with any genre or style of music per se, it just seems to us that metal is lazier and more disgusting than most other genres and styles. It just seems to be that you have two choices - ride the coat-tails of the Nu-Metal Funeral Procession (still!) and hope that by the time you hit 35, you too could earn a living pandering to the angst of white middle class teen virgins, or buy the DEP/Converge back catalogue and hope no-one else has them. It's fucking boring either way.

Still, what a week for music, eh? Fred Durst humiliated further thanks to those T-Mobile phone hackers; Blink 182 split, Korn split; I even heard a rumour (dear g*d let it be true) that Evanescence are breaking up.

I have news: Father Xmas exists and he got my letter.

Although there are still some fans of the material on ‘Refining the Theory’ it seems from the message board that most of the people who populate that are of the ilk that are in love with ‘Cellular Memory’ and the demoed material for the album.

Do you ever see Miocene playing the old material again – would it be desirable or do you think you’ve moved too far away from say ‘9mm and Rising’?

I still like those songs and I like what they respresent, but whenever it comes to playing old songs we just feel like we have better stuff to play now; if I was in the audience I wouldn't want to hear anything but the best we have to offer at the time and that generally means the newer stuff. It'd probably be different if our songs weren't all so bastard long.

Lyrics are obviously important to you, but also titles of the songs. Some of the songs that many new with long standing names have changed just before the album has come out. As late as Valentines Day people were still calling ‘A Message From Our Sponsers’, ‘Devil’s Halo’. Why did you feel the need for that? Many of the titles have an epic feel, or are extremely intriguing, carrying on strong messages – ‘i) Youth ii) Zenith iii) Harvest iv) Dissolution’ being epic and ‘Apologetic Submissives’ having a social message perhaps? Why are song titles so important to Miocene and maybe even bands in general do you think? Is there a name for the album yet?

Working titles, especially ours, suck. Ours usually sound like Friends episodes: "The One On The Wall", "The One with the DnB at the End", "The One Note One".

'Apologetic Submissives' refers to a band, a really good band, who made a shitty album and knew it. That was how they presented their music when they came to play it to us: apologetically, submissively. It seems appropriate to dedicate a track almost entirely made up of sequenced feedback to them.

Oh, and here's an exclusive: the album is called “A Perfect Life With A View Of The Swamp”. Could be worse.

How was it working with Harvey Birrell? He worked on the Cellular Memory EP didn’t he? Do you think he’s captured the sound of Miocene well? Are you happy with the final mixes and masters? How involved were you in that side of the process?

You reported that you were re-recording or setting some tracks to click: was that your decision or did Harvey suggest it? How strong an influence did he have on the material in terms of getting it down and onto CD?

How free did the band and him experiment whilst in the studio? Or was it just a matter of getting down the material you wanted?

It would definitely be a different sounding record if we hadn't worked with Harvey. From his methods of mic'ing to his ability to shape his studio to exactly what we wanted, I've got to say I can't think of any other producer who could've made this album.

It was our call to re-record the live tracks and it was the right decision to make - the record is much stronger as a result of it. Everything electronic on the record was programmed at Alienistic studios by Graham and myself - we're the ones to blame.

How many tracks approximately have you disgarded in the writing process? ‘NeuNeuOne’ from the live Camden gig has disappeared, as has ‘Deus Ex Machina’. Did these ever get recorded? Will they ever see the light of day on CD or maybe in the live arena?

Are there any still being worked on for perhaps the future, or has everything been dropped apart from album material, so you can focus the tour on that exclusively?

We recorded NeuNeuOne but it really sucked. It was just muso nonsense - interesting if you like polyrhythms and key/timing wankery, but it had nothing else to offer.

Deus is just very old and we're much better at writing songs with that kind of epic, progressive dynamic now. I might try to turn NeuNeuOne into something, but the live bootlegs of Deus is the last anyone'll hear of that one. There was so much shit that got left behind - originally we were going to do a double album as a bit of a prog 'fuck you', but then we realised that it would be a better album if we just took all the best stuff and put it on one disc.

Miocene, to the best of knowledge, have been always interested in the visual side to the performance. Not just the live band, but video and pictures, lighting effects, etc…

I understand a video for ‘Autopia’ is in the works? What can we expect from that? Have you, as a band created it, or have you worked alongside others?

How much have you been involved in that creative process? What can we expect from the album tour?

We're really concentrating on the live side of things. There won't be any fancy schmanzy lighting effects or anything from the tour, we'll just be happy to get to the end of a song without fucking it up. There are some hellishly complicated moments and syncing one live-based hellishly complicated part, with another, sequencer-based hellishly complicated part, is just....well, without wishing to labour the phrase, hellishly complicated.

The album tour will be about a week long, and we'll be going out with the wondeful Threemovements. I cannot wait. We've been quiet for too long...