So when the day came, I went to the venue early and observed the Oxes like I was on safari. I watched them lounge around, so carefree, so peaceful, grazing on beer. Then Sanna turned up to take photographs and blew my cover by introducing me, which was awkward after I’d just been sitting near them, eavesdropping on their conversations for about an hour. It turned out neither of us were ready to do the interview yet – I didn’t have any questions, and they hadn’t prepared any answers. We decided that I should interview them while they were playing, which sounded like a good idea, because it gave me time to think of some insightful Q’s, eat some Nandos and play a gig. By the time Oxes took to the stage I was as ready as could be expected:

Nat (Oxes): Does anybody have any questions? Yes you, you have a question.

You guys are, what are you pushing forty or something? Have you got anything in place for pensions, things like that in the future? What are you gonna do when all this shit runs out?

Nat: That’s a very good question… Marc is the floor manager at a record store and is on the fast track to becoming manager. And Chris has a recording studio in his parent’s basement and is on a fast track to get it sound insulated from the bathroom. And I… have money from the German government for having a baby.

[They play another tune for a bit and move around a lot.]

Nat: Any questions? Any questions? Oh, oh you have a question, the one with the headphones and the field recorder.

Oh hey. How much of what you do is intentionally funny and how is much is totally by accident? Percentage? Ratio?
Nat: That’s a very good question. About…

Audience member: 70:30

Nat: 70:30.

Audience: Which way?

Nat: You know.

Audience member: 60:40!

Nat: 60:40 is the new Freebird, whoever said that.

Chris: We have a new high point in heckling, it’s the first time a ratio has ever been heckled, in the known world.

[There followed more questions throughout the gig, mostly from the audience, mostly irreverent and not worth recalling here. There was some talk of chewing gum and catsuits, but nothing very insightful. After they finished playing there was time for one last flourish of high-grade investigative journalism.]

According to Wikipedia, you guys are described as Math Rock. Are any of you any good at actual maths? What grades did you get at maths?
Nat: This has actually been something that we’ve been battling with a long time. The dictator when we said that, misinterpreted. We said methamphetamine and he abbreviated it as meth but he accidentally pressed ‘a’ instead of ‘e’.

Oh right.
We’re meth rock.

Thereafter followed a dance party choc-a-bloc with ironic party favourites courtesy of the drums guy, Chris. Nat and I decided that the interview had been pretty good but that maybe it was a little lacking in proper beefy news and facts, so resolved to follow up with a real exposé piece, conducted via gmail’s incredible trans-European communications facilities. After a slew of real life problems getting in the way here’s the grand result ‘SUP readers have unknowingly been waiting months for:

Did you enjoy that London show and did you manage to steal any mirror balls? We got about four.
Nat: Really? The club were setting them up when we showed up, I guess you saw that because you came early and stealthily hung out with us without telling us you were the interviewer, and O wanted to take some, but I didn’t have the time to case the joint, what with it being the first show and prepping everything.

How was ATP? I didn’t go and I didn’t read any reviews.
It was great. We were lucky enough to play Friday. Big festivals are always something I get nervous about, the rush, the usually bad sounding large stage, the tons of people that don’t care about our music; but we didn’t even have time to get nervous, we showed up and had just four hours before we played, and 15 minutes of setup time on stage with amps we’ve never used, absolutely no time to think about whether or not the show would go well, or even think about a set list really. We just tore through it. I read one bloggy review and it said that the guy’s friend had wished we played more of the catchy guitar riff stuff. I didn’t know we had any catchy ones.

A lot of bands seem to give up and disband and then five years later or whatever they ‘reform’ and the amount of fans they have seems to double. Do you ever think about giving up?
We’ve basically done exactly that without ever officially breaking up, just peppering the down time with a few one-week tours. I’m not going to pretend that there were no new releases between 2005 and 2011. Considering I’ve lived in a different country now, well since 2004, it doesn’t really matter whether we’re broken up or not. I think that’s the main reason we’re still together.

How do you explain your success?
Aside from the fact that we’re barely successful, I can begin to explain our ‘appeal’ by the fact that we are there to make people laugh and we don’t have any other persona besides what that requires. It’s refreshing to see that for a change for everyone, no matter if we play a squat or a freakfolk show or a metal show. Even if you don’t like the music, you can get into what we’re doing I think, even though these days what we do is old hat kind of. The 4th wall has been broken since 1999.

A lot of bands have totally cool stories about being on the road. What’s the best one you’ve heard?
Well, I’m tooting my own horn here, but one time Brian from 90DayMen was mackin’ while we were in the Vera at Gronigen, and so Chris and I decided to “cool him off” with a fire extinguisher, so we rushed into the room he was in and said something like, “Hey cool off” or some such, and sprayed the fire extinguisher, one of the powder kinds that is really loud, towards them. It wasn’t enough to spray him but the noise was certainly enough to ruin the mood. We went back into the room we found the extinguisher and I continued to spray it a few times. Andy from 90Day was there with us and saw one of the Vera staff and alerted us to how he was ‘looking bummed’ so we stopped. We went upstairs and were still laughing about it in our sleeping quarters when Brian ran in screaming, ‘You bastards! You bastards!’ Not even five minutes had passed, so we had truly ruined the mood. The next day it was a matter of giving the promoter 150 euros to refill the extinguisher before the boss of Vera found out, or else we’d be banned. Not that we ever played there again, we wish we did though.

Have you ever had any bad accidents, on tour or whatever? If you’ve not had any bad ones, tell us about two minor ones, or make one up.
It’s been more than 10 years since this happened, so I think I’m allowed to talk about it now. One time we were leaving Denver and headed east and it was a Sunday. We were starving so we stopped at a KFC in some small town off the freeway. Marc was excited that they had these weird popcorn chicken BBQ strips or something, so he was all about ordering that. He asked and they said, ‘Sorry we’re out of that” and he was like “DAMMIT!’ and walked into the bathroom. I started to order my food and heard this banging noise coming from the bathroom. The teen girl with a ponytail and a red KFC hat said, “What’s that noise?’ looking all spoiled. I very casually said, ‘Oh it’s just my friend. I think he’s pissed you guys didn’t have those chicken strips.’ Turns out he was punching the paper towel dispenser. She immediately said, “I’m calling the cops!” and picked up the cordless phone (this was 2001 so before the widespread mobile phone use) and I started to try and talk her out of that but saw Marc coming out of the bathroom so I was like ‘Marc, they’re calling the cops!’ And his face turned white as he stopped cold in his tracks and said ‘Let’s go!’ So we rushed out the door and got into our Chevy Astrovan and he pulled a manoeuvre to get out onto the road. Not even a block and the cops are behind us. He pulls over and the cops ask him to get out of the vehicle. Chris is in the back seat like, ‘Oh my god. You should take a picture.’ So I looked out the passenger window and saw in the mirror that they were handcuffing him. I rolled down the window and he looked at me and said ‘Uh guys, help?’
The police put him in their cruiser and I followed them in the van to the police station. Chris and I had to wait about 30 minutes in a small room with no one except possibly people looking at us from the other side of one-way mirrors as he got processed. We had a superball I had bought the day before so we started bouncing it around the room to entertain ourselves. We had enough merch money to pay for bail so we were able to leave as soon as they finished processing him. Something like six months later there was the chance that Marc would have to go ALL THE WAY back there from Baltimore to stand trial. He was able to talk to the judge on the phone and just pay a fine though, which included the damages to the paper towel dispenser.

According to your Wikipedia, you are practical jokers. Have you ever done a practical joke that went horribly wrong and resulted in death or injury or sadness, or just simply turned out not to be funny?
What was with asking us if we wrote our own wiki article? (NOTE: I don’t remember doing this but it’s the sort of thing I probably would ask so I’ll trust Nat’s memory here) Ok I’ll admit that I qualified a statement that said we were no longer any good by saying something about how we’ve just ‘changed’ but that’s it. As for backfires, gee well, the obvious one that backfired was the Arab on Radar fake split 10”, but everyone knows about that. I’d rather keep my mouth shut about that now. I wrote enough about that on the US Maple yahoogroups list to piss off a good amount of people, even though my intentions were the opposite.

Do you have any regrets? What are the best ones?
My personal regret is that I spent two years listening to nothing but nu-metal (2000-2001) in order to try see how it would affect my guitar playing and song writing. I became complacent and for years afterwards I still would find myself listening to the radio because it had become so tedious to try and think of what I wanted to listen to, I’d leave it up to the awful Baltimore radio stations. Moving to a small town in Italy cured me of that mostly. That also coincided with the advent of giant amounts of mp3s being available for free, and large capacity iPods.
More regrets: Not following through with our ‘pro tour’ in which we’d be all about pro equipment and being pro, but at a time when we were still playing DIY spaces and opening for larger bands. Chris would have his drum pads and drum gloves he’d hit on backstage, I’d have sheet music I’d study, Marc would practice scales and not talk to anyone, etc.
Another tour was to be the ‘awful tour’ in which we’d play only second rate cities all over the states, like east St. Louis or Valejo or whatever.

Which one of you has the most problems? Which one of you has the biggest single problem?
We all have problems. I probably have the most problems because of a fucked up childhood. The biggest single problem would be that of Chris’s though, with his lack of work ethic. He wouldn’t see it that way of course, but us other two that would pull his weight for years see it that way.

If one of you died tomorrow, how long would the other two be able to go on living?
It depends on who dies. If I die then we don’t have the income stream. If Chris dies then we don’t have the athletic regiment. If Marc dies then we’re musically fucked, since he’s the note genius.

For someone who has never listened to any of your records, is there a good one to start with or are they all just fairly consistent?
No idea. Probably our most recent EP? That I would say is our best, we all like it, it sounds really good. I don’t think they are consistent much at all, we had so much personal changes in between all of them. Maybe the first two are consistent. Not even though, from the first one to the second there were huge changes, including barely having time to write anything before the label had insisted it was time to record the new one.

You do a lot of talking on stage but never at the same time as playing music. Have you ever considered combining the two?
We did consider it, but each of us hated the others voices and none of us had anything to say lyrically. We’re not good with leitmotifs and metaphors.

I saw a film years ago where a criminal is discovered because of a tattoo he has, even though he is in disguise and has managed to evade the law for quite a long time. I never got any for this exact reason, and even though I don’t intend to do any serious crimes, life is fairly unpredictable. Do you have any tattoos and does this kind of thing worry you?
Yo I got tats. I gots me three. I’m well documented as the dude with these tats on my arms, so I know it would be pretty hard to evade the law, but this does not worry me. Next question.

Is it Oxes or OXES?
oxes

Oxes is a pretty cool band name that you don’t need to disambiguate to find on Wikipedia, but did you have any other potential names before settling for Oxes?
Challenger, Piles Better Than Shelves, Oxes Better Than Cars. But we all knew from the three choices that simply Oxes was the best and we never really seriously considered the other two names after our first brainstorm.
Sometimes band members can’t be constrained by the limits of their band mates and they go and do solo projects.

Does this apply to any of you?
All of us dude! Where you been? Is this just the part where you give me free reign to self-promote? Because I will. It wasn’t a question of limits for me or Marc, we just got sick of not making music in Oxes downtime. Chris really wanted to get out from the drum set, since he wasn’t even a drummer before this band started, so he started a rom-com group called Frenemies that he more recently stopped doing in favor of his recording studio business. I guess Marc’s new project, Microkingdom is not a solo project, but he is the only guitarist in it. It’s quite a stretch to call it jazz to someone who listens to jazz, but it’s also a stretch to not call it no-jazz. I have something I came up with just last summer, after years and years of trying out things with others and by myself. Something just clicked, I had accumulated a few synths and drum machines in Italy and Berlin for free or next to nothing – then one day my studio mate helped our landlord with his moving. In the basement was an Atari ST, which he bought way back in the day for music making but never really used it much. He offered it to my friend and he knew that it was for me (I have a bunch of Commodore 64s and a homemade synth made from them [the Midibox SID]) so I started exploring the possibilities, and within a day I had found my calling. Novo Line. I love it. Come see me play.

Do any of you have any other creative pursuits such as poetry or architecture or do you mainly just focus on trying to do music?
Me and Chris did video together for a while. It was called SikeTrike, named after a character in one of the first vids we did, in which my original tricycle from childhood was modified to have giant cartoon eyes above the handlebars, and it would come into a room at (in)appropriate moments to let someone know they had had it by saying “SIIIIIIIKE” and wheeling out of the frame. Those videos really started to suck so I stopped doing it with him, then in Italy I couldn’t find anyone to do it with, and here in Berlin everyone is too profit to do the kind of things I want to do. I’ve tried editing other peoples films/videos but I’ve found out the hard way that I don’t like editing for people that have ideas I don’t completely agree with, and until you continue to work with people that way for a long time you don’t get any ‘good’ jobs, unless you are working for TV, but my wife didn’t want to move to L.A. where five of my high school buddies are all editors. Also I wanted to avoid a job that required me staring at a screen so much. I focus solely on music right now, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time actually.

I sometimes feel that performing on stage is a completely ridiculous activity for egomaniacs. Do you ever feel like that and has it ever brought you to the brink of suicide?
Dude, all we do is make fun of the whole idea of performance as an activity of egomaniacs. You’ve hit the nail on the head, although inadvertently.

How much money have you made from being in this band? If it’s a positive amount, what have you spent it on? If it’s a negative amount, how do you plan on paying it back?
I think we’ve just about broke even, although my parents paid for the van we had for a while. If we had to pay for that then we’d be in the hole about five grand.

Do you try to appeal to the kids?
Just with t-shirt designs but I have a secret weapon: a younger sister-in-law that is a designer.

That was a pretty amazing shell suit you were wearing at that London gig, Nat. Do you ever worry that one day you’ll wear an outfit so loud it will drown out the music? Or is that the idea?
I didn’t consider that! That is a very good question. I learned the words ‘shell suit’ that week. I didn’t have that worry, not at all, but it is a mission to start finding something louder. I’m wearing it right now you know? It’s really comfortable. I want to find another one. It’s kind of a one-trick pony. I wore it all of ATP till mid-Sunday when I decided I better go back to the chalet and change, it was starting to feel gross on me. When i came back to the concert rooms all the security people were like “HEY MR COLORFUL, WHERES THE SHELL SUIT!?”

My parents occasionally ask me how my band is going but they’ve never mentioned the word ‘proud’ or anything even approaching it. What do you your parents think of all this stuff you get up to?
My mom got a kick out of the fact that we had a song called ”boss kitty”, which is the name of one of my cats growing up, but she only found that out because her sister sent her an article about us from the local paper. My parents have never EVER seen us or even listened to our records. I stopped giving copies to them in 2005. Chris’s parents really support everything he does. It’s almost perverse. Or at least envious.

Is there anything else you think we should know about (this is your opportunity to promote any charities or good causes you feel need more attention, or any upcoming releases)?
We have a few lost things that Friends Records is putting out that I’m excited about. Will Oldham and Bob Weston perform on a track. Marc’s Microkingdom should be checked out, Chris’s studio, Beat Babies, is up-and-coming and my project Novo Line should be checked out. I’m self-releasing one tape a week at the rate I’m going. Also everyone should learn the Alexander Technique but not become new age hippies. This used to be possible, back in the ’50s. I am not sure what happened, but I’m trying to go the Aldous Huxley route.

Please rate this interview out of ten then add five.
FIFTEEN only for the fact that you took six weeks to finally send me these follow up questions and then I took another six weeks to respond. But you had some video editing work, and I had a pinched nerve in my arm, plus a bunch of shows to prepare for, so this high rating will make the interview better. Let’s call it inflation.

When you meet someone you like and you find out they make art, you only hope that the art lives up to the person. I was super psyched when our love affair continued via email the next day and as promised, Gabby sent me a link to her first-ever self-released single “Droplet Affection”. Overtly neon splatter painted video aside, this girl’s voice sounds like a mature space angel. With house music permeating the pop cultural ether across the globe, Ursa Minor (Little Bear) lands on welcome ears with fun and freshness.

Do you often meet random people while out? Or was it special between us?
I like talking to strangers. I wouldn’t say I was overtly friendly though. I do tend to talk total nonsense and then judge pretty quickly whether I’m going to want to say anymore than about four words to someone. I have had a few occasions where I’ve said completely inappropriate things to terrible people & then spent the night hiding from them. Obviously I’m not referring to you. You’re awesome.

We literally met on the eve of your single launch or it was really close, right?
We met at the end of the week my first single was launched.

Was that your first single launch?
Yup. Ursa Minor (Little Bear) is the first project I started and “Droplet Affection” is the first single from that project.

How was it different to other music you’ve released?
I’ve had a few releases aside from Ursa Minor this year. I’ve collaborated on the most recent EP from Mikill Pane, who spent most of last year touring with Ed Sheeran, and written with a Manchester based collective called Murkage who’ve been touring with Chiddy Bang. Both are going to be massive this year. Urban sounds far removed from house now but when house first came out of ’80s Chicago it was urban music. I also feature on a track by Jozif that will be released through Cross Town Rebels this summer. The track is eery. Jozif’s music is very distinctive. We have similar views on trying to create something unique & beautiful so watch out for a few collabs coming from our direction.

What do you hope to do with your music? What do you hope happens?
I would like the freedom to be able to create beautiful things. I would also like a very large number of fans, a worldwide tour and a fan-made YouTube montage of me falling over on stage.

Do you think it’s getting harder or easier for artists these days to get fans / be successful, or are those things totally different?
I feel like we’re sort of in the middle of a transition where we’re half rating success on traditions like the charts and half disregarding them. I consider loads of bands successful who most of my friends haven’t heard of and probably never will, and I couldn’t name most of the acts in the charts at the moment but they’re in the charts so they are obviously successful. For me success is longevity. Gathering fans who fall in love with more than just the music.

Your voice has such an angelic quality to it – it’s so whispery and soft. What kind of effects do you put on it?
All my vocals are recorded on one track, in one take, and other than a bit of delay here and there, have no effects added. I have never used auto-tune. If I don’t get something right, I go back to the beginning and record the entire track again. This isn’t exactly efficient. It’s driven me half mad to be honest. I have to wait for days where I can sing the track perfectly in one take. I’m either on it, or I’m not. I’m a horrible perfectionist but auto-tune is not perfecting something, it is covering shit up. The only person who makes auto-tune look good is Rhianna and that’s because she’s a goddess.

Your production is super housey and sounds really good, especially loud! Who produces your tracks? And how do you write them? With someone? Are they each different?
All Ursa’s music is written by myself and the wonder that is Alex Morris. We’ve tried to create music that is all about feeling. Take the vocals on “Droplet” that you mentioned earlier, my delivery on that track is particularly delicate because of what I am singing about. It is about a love that reinstates your lost trust in the universe. The combination of the soft vocals with the swirling synths is supposed to make you feel like how that love feels. Without wanting to sound like a pretentious dick here, it’s pretty deep stuff.

Your video has a lot of neon. Did you think it was new rave when you first saw it? Are you trying to bring that back?!
I can see the New Rave association, but no. My band bought a load of glowsticks that were left over from Halloween and on special offer in the Tesco next to the studio. We’d been watching YouTube clips of people pouring UV paint down toilets so we cracked them open and wrote over surfaces in the dark. We were discussing the video for “Droplet” and it looked so cool we went from there.

And finally, what’s something that you’ve been listening to lately?
Deep Vocal House. Ular Gray is going to be big big this year.

Check out the video for “Droplet Affection”:

And the latest single “Out at Sea” in iTunes.

Nis Bysted spent seven years conceiving the subtleties of Thulebasen prior to releasing Guitar Wand (Escho, 2008). A classic bedroom recording, as he calls it, following which, one became three. A swelling owed to the talent of Felia Gram-Hanssen (drums) and Neils Kristian Eriksen (guitar). In early 2011, Gate 5 was released – the vinyl on Escho (co-owned by Nis) and the CD+DD on Tambourhinoceros.

I paid Nis a visit at the Escho headquarters in downtown Copenhagen. He arrived on a bicycle, in true local fashion. First things first, we went directly to the record storeroom, and I left with an arm-full of generously donated 7 and 12 inches, an assorted selection by Copenhagen’s finest, including Iceage’s New Brigade (Tambourhinoceros, 2010) recorded by Nis. The first pressing of Thulebasen’s Gate 5 (500 copies) had sold out, and there weren’t yet funds to press more. Much of the artwork dowering Escho record sleeves can be credited to Nis Bysted himself.

I joined Thulebasen later for sound check at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. I traveled there in a 3-wheeled Italian MEBEA with one of Nis’ friends. We wove in and out of the busiest, narrowest streets in the guts of Copenhagen, with Thulebasen’s gear in the back. Someone once said, after seeing Thulebasen live, it will make a whole lot more sense. I can say now, that prediction was spot on.

Are you all originally from Copenhagen? As an outsider, this city seems like a boiling pot for creative youngsters, and most people I have met here so far tell me they’ve flocked here from Julland or Fyn.
We were all born in Julland, which is the countryside.

How did you find each other?
I was a massive fan of Niels’ extremely good sludge metal band Kloak, and I asked him to play with me. I saw Felia play with her old group The Harpies, who were a strange rock trio with songs called ‘Moaning’ and ‘Drinking Wine’. I also asked her to play with me.

Thule comes from ancient geography, referring to an unknown land in the north. Do you feel isolated up here?
There is a ton of mythology from up there in Greenland, and Denmark has an odd and complicated history with it. Mainly, though, I thought that Thulebasen just sounded really cool. In Ancient Greek, Thule also supposedly means ‘the father’s place away’, which is a great reference to playing music I think. We don’t really feel isolated up here.

You’ve been touring Denmark and neighbouring shores (England, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Turkey and Ireland) virtually non-stop for the past three years. Do you have endless stores of energy?
We try to drink a lot of juice on the road!

Looks like you’ve played shows with some interesting people – Ariel Pink, Wavves, Charles Hayward (This Heat), Chimes and Bells, Kim Ki O, Threadpulls, Junglandacee and Alle Med Balloner Og Terrasser. Any tales to tell?
A big part of being in our band is the playing with people from other places and making new friends. Kim Ki O from Turkey, for instance, have been a great inspiration to us. They come from a culture that on the surface seems very different from ours, but we felt an immediate kinship with them. They invited us to play in Istanbul, and it was a very special trip.

Have you travelled much, outside of touring as a band? Danes seem fortunate with opportunities to travel abroad, and yet I rarely meet Danes who stay living abroad. Have you found a place yet that has an ideal way of living?
I love to visit other countries but Copenhagen has something that you don’t find anywhere else – it’s like a small village and a capital at the same time, which in my eyes is a very positive thing.

Who is the Mit Nye Band Supergroup?
The group was a mix of people who had never played instruments before and experienced musicians. We did a ten-inch and double LP on Escho, and played a lot, including a long summer tour of the US. It was psychedelic rock.

What was the intention of the sound on Gate 5? 
One of the things we were talking about was the George Michael sound, in the sense that his production is really specific and really hi-fi, and we wanted to make a record that sounded really specific and really hi-fi. We would really like to be hi-fi within our means, and always push our own sonic boundaries.

Escho was hailed by Artforum as “one of the coolest things around”.  I’ve recently become familiar with the label because of Iceage, You have the label with another guy also called Nis? Is that a common name?
Nis is not so common, but I know a lot of people called Nis. Escho is our label,  and also something like a platform to do all the stuff we like to do.

How did Escho start?
Together with my friends Nis, Anders and Andreas, we decided to start a label that would be as uncomplicated as possible. We had many friends who made fantastic music but never got to put it out, including ourselves. We also started putting on shows, which has been a great catalyst for meeting other beautiful musicians from around the world.

You have shows this month at Charlottenborg Kunsthal and Statens Museum of Kunst. Is this a new thing for bands like you to play at major art institutions? Is there lots of support from the government? 
We play in museums sometimes, it’s great to get the possibility to play as many different kinds of rooms as possible, because every room does something new to the music. It’s hard to say why Thulebasen gets invited to play those sort of places. Maybe it’s because Felia is a student at the Art Academy. As far as cultural support goes in Denmark, there has always been economic support available for those who know how to write an application.

For a performance at the State Museum Thulebasen we were asked write a piece inspired by a mid-18th Century painting of rural Denmark by Jørgen Sonne. A recorded version of this song is due out soon on a 12″.

Did you parents have good music taste as you were growing up and developing your own ideas about music?
The only thing I remember is that my dad gave all his LPs away when I was nine. I really wish he had those records now. He always talks about them. Growing up, all I can remember listening to was the Bruce Springsteen quadruple-cassette live box.

I went to Roskilde for the first time this year.  The lineup was very eclectic and worldly, compared to other festivals which are heavily genre or scene specific. I heard there was criticism for a lack of dance music this year. How is it to play Roskilde?
I’ve played Roskilde many times with different bands. This year was weird because of a storm, which was building all week and then came down like crazy on Saturday night. There was almost no dance music this year. Last year I saw Alice in Chains reunite, and that was really great.

I’ve heard Thulebasen referred to as “future rock”. What do you make of this?
I don’t really know what it means other than the future is always something to strive for, and rock is old. So maybe it’s a contradiction.

Brian (not sure who Brian is) offered to brief me on your background, but I decided not to take him up on that, just because no one knows anything about you. I kind of wanted to start at the beginning.
I grew up in a little suburb north of Atlanta and through getting into playing music with people there, got into garage rock, which was all we ever did back when we were teens.

What did you play? What was your first instrument?
It was a guitar. And then my brother tried to play drums but he got really bored with it so I taught myself drums. There was a piano in the house because my Grandma passed away and left us a piano, so I taught myself piano. So it ended up just kind of being do-it-yourself, uneducated music for a `while. Then trying to learn formally, and then I went to college in Boston and I was never really serious about music until I was up there and tried getting in and out of bands. Everything always ended up being either music I wasn’t interested in, or people who wanted to do business in a certain way that I wasn’t interested in at all. So I figured I would start trying to do things on my own.

What do you mean you weren’t interested in business?
Oh yeah, just hanging out with people who were control freaks or wanted to do music that was safe and mainstream. Whatever combination of pop music.

You don’t consider your music pop?
Oh, no no no. It is pop music. That’s all it is.

Right.
I draw on everything I’ve ever really listened to kind of all at once, and that’s all it is. And I think that’s how it becomes a blend of neon pop.

Guitar then drums then piano, or sort of all at once. How old were you when you picked up that guitar?
Twelve.

What kind of guitar?
An acoustic guitar. A piece of shit Ibanez.

Yeah, Ibanez make shitty acoustic guitars.
Fun though.

So you guys were playing garage rock. What were you listening to?
Let’s see. Everything I was listening to was filtered down from my dad or my sister. You know, my dad was like, ‘Check this out!’ And it was Let It Bleed (London Records US/Decca UK, 1969) or it was Pretenders II (Sire, 1983) or whatever various Steely Dan he was trying to get me into. And I really enjoyed it. I never went back to it though, on repeat. I would always repetitively listen to music my sister was filtering to me, which was some embarrassing stuff and some not so embarrassing stuff. She really had this thing for this band called Silverchair. Do you remember them?

I love Silverchair. Frogstomp (Murmur Records, 1995) is still is one of my favorite albums.
Frogstomp is so good. You know, just last week I bought myself a piano. It’s a Yamaha CP-70. Do you know what these are? Electric grands? Sat down. The first thing I played, I played a D, than a B minor, down to a G flat. And I realized it was the same chord progression from “Anna’s Song”, and I started singing it and I knew all the fucking lyrics. And the last time I heard that must have been like 2003 or something.

Which one is “Anna’s Song”?
[Sings] ‘Please die Anna for as long as you’re here.’ The hook is: (sings) “Open fire, on the means desired.”

Oh yeah, it’s one of the more ballad-like songs.
Yeah, yeah. (Points) That’s a black squirrel.

That’s what he’s good at for sure. Ballads.
Scary-ass ballads. But that, she was in and out of that music. Or punk stuff. She also listened to Jimmy Eat World. I was really into these short, sweet hooks that end of the day weren’t the same pictures that these guys back in the ’70s were doing. It was much more impressionistic. So that blended with my love of the Pretenders or Fleetwood Mac.

Is that how you were introduced into alternative culture, through your sister?
Actually, the answer would be yes, I do believe. Because the two bands that did it for me was Dad showing me Fleetwood Mac, Sister showing me The White Stripes. Crazy shameless pop mixed with jarring loud noise. Nothing special and nothing unique. Just people who are successful and good at what they do – really straight-forward about it. Lindsey Buckingham was extremely intriguing to me. I remember my parents bought me Rumors (Warner Bros., 1977). And then they bought me Tusk (Warner Bros., 1979). Tusk was this really confusing thing to me at first because my mom was like, ‘You gotta listen to this. You gotta listen to this track “Sister of the Moon.”’ It’s this six- or seven-minute jaunt where Stevie Nicks is just doing nothing hooky at all, nothing catchy at all. And this guitar line is fucking almost metal. It was a completely different machine than anything else I had heard before. I started playing with weirder noises because of this record. My parents bought me a delay pedal, so I started doing dive bombs.

Which one?
Just a Boss DD6. Nothing Special. Real run-of-the-mill, middle-class, ‘I-got-a-delay-pedal’-pedal.

How old were you when you got that one?
Oh, probably 15 or 16.

So you had an electric guitar by then.
Yeah. You know, I was just down in the basement with my brother, and I would just make him sit there and play the beat. I would mouth out the beat. And I would jam along with him. And I’d be like, ‘Don’t change! Don’t change the beat! I gotta play my song!’ So I guess at this point I was influenced pretty much by shameless, lame-ass pop. And what ended up happening was I went to school up in Boston.

What school?
Don’t put this in the fucking article. Berkeley. Please.

Why not? That’s amazing. You’re classically trained. I went to school for music for a little bit. No big deal.
I wouldn’t hold it against you. What it is, is Berkeley’s an interesting thing. You, me, a lot of our friends–did you go to school for photography or writing?

I did. I have a degree in English.
I don’t really know what that experience was like, or what it would have been like learning something like: ‘Okay. You’re going to take these classes, and we’re going to teach you how to express yourself better at writing.’ But change that and replace it with writing about music: ‘You’re going to take these classes for four years and we’re going to teach you to better express yourself through music and be successful with it.’ And if you really think about it, it was a really odd experience. It’s a really odd thing to try and set out and do. And at the end of the day I feel like what Berkeley really taught me to do best was to deal with people, to deal with different minds creatively more than any of the skills it gave me. What ended up coming out of the Berkeley experience, the positive experience that it gave me, was that I studied production engineering, which is a fancy way of saying recording. So I studied recording. So when your third summer comes around, you’re kind of expected to go out and get an internship. And I thought about it for a while and I emailed a few people. And then I had a crazy idea and thought, ‘OK, who’s my favorite producer?’ And at this point I had been shown the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV on the Radio and Telepathy and I was really in to Chris Cody’s work. So I just blindly sent him an email. I wrote, ‘Summer’s coming up and I’m looking for an internship. If you’d be down, I’d be down with not being paid, just let me work all the time, let me learn your stuff.’ That summer, two summers ago, 2010, I ended up coming to New York City and spending three and a half months working with him. We worked on the end of Eye Contact (4AD, 2011), which is Gang Gang Dance. We worked on mixing Givers’ new record. And Dye It Blonde. We did a month’s work with them. A Zola Jesus track called “Poor Animal”. And in the process this guy was just–you know, he’s an incredibly imaginative engineer, and watching him, I never asked questions. I decided somewhere I was just going to watch. And he doesn’t give a shit. He just pushes shit to the limit. When he’s mixing or when he’s producing, he’s just like whatever goes. You name something that you want to happen, he’ll figure out a way it will happen, he’ll make it happen. And watching him do that, it took the shameless pop music in my head and it was like, ‘Oh. You can make it sound ridiculous. You can add echoes and distortion on everything and crazy kicks and snares.’

[Walking into Obscura]

I think it was only that recently that there was an aesthetic seed planted in my as to what it was I want to do. (Looks at a weathered class photo) I love the fact it’s bleached. I love the fact people are smiling. I love the fact it’s 1912. What’s to smile about in 1912, I ask you.

Manager: Alcohol was not illegal yet.

Prohibition, or lack thereof. [Opens a box] Oh, an apothecary case. Thought it might be an Echoplex. There’s that place Evolution down in Soho. Don’t you guys think this place beats the shit out of it? [Kicked out for taking photos. Points to
window display] Is that what a bobcat looks like?

No. Hell no. Have you gone hunting?
I have gone hunting. My dad loves bird hunting.

Have you ever killed a bird?
Yeah. Yeah, when you pull the trigger, they die. They die man. Only a couple times.

I’m from Idaho. You’re not going to offend me. Have you killed anything else?
Nope. Just a couple men. What is this, a Nas interview? Do you guys happen to know where this bookstore is over here where you walk down a couple steps and it looks like something out of Harry Potter? I think it’s called East Village Books. They’ve got these bins of pictures in the back.

So Tusk, that was Lindsay Buckingham’s finest hour.
In a way. It’s riddled with engineering mistakes but that’s what makes it.

Like what?
Well, you know the record was, you know they were fighting and coked-out and rushed. And the label was messing around with funding, and what ended up happening was this thing that almost came off as a demo, with out-of-phase drums and tape edits all over the place that were really fucked up. But I really feel like that’s what makes it. So it’s almost this collage feeling to the album.

Impressionistic pop.
Did you ever listen to Tango in the Night (Warner Bros., 1987), their follow-up in the ’80s? See, production-wise, that’s Lindsay Buckingham’s finest hour. What a fucking fantastic-sounding album. Odd songs, though, if you’ve ever listened through it. Very strange and if you’re listening to things like Com Truise or you’re listening to a couple 4AD artists, Tango in the Night seems to be very relevant now and people don’t know it.

What 4AD artists?
Twin Shadow or some of Gang Gang Dance kind of echoes the production on Tango in the Night, which is this really kind of tropical feeling drum-machine stereo-delay odyssey through the jungle.

That’s an easy place for a lot of music to go these days. Where do you place your music, if you had to give it a location?
[Mumbling]

In space?
Yeah it would either be that or earth sometime around 4AD, no pun intended.

[In the bookstore, looking through old photographs]

What is he wearing! This must have been later Louie.
Who is that?

Louis Bellson, a big-band jazz drummer.
Oh yeah every loves him at the old Berk.

You play jazz?
No, I refused. Now I’m learning jazz on the piano, after the fact. I feel like it’s the most fun to play on the piano. You were asking where I’d place my music. I still haven’t come up with a good enough answer, but I think it would be somewhere in the abysmal ocean between the Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda galaxy only out there, somewhere, wherever Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain are hanging out at the age of 27, and they’re just shamelessly listening to Rumors over and over again. On PCP. More than this shameless pop odyssey, it’s supposed to be this exploration of when I write music or when I see or listen to music, it really comes down to aesthetics not as much as how they’re trying to sell it to you as much as the designs that it evokes in your imagination. So my mother is one of these ladies who’s really into holistics and it all started with her with yoga and stuff. In the last few years she’s been telling me about something that I feel a lot of people are slowly becoming more educated on, which is sacred geometry. It’s kind of the idea that nature, although chaotic, is made up of these remarkably symmetrical designs. Just the way things develop or just are naturally existing. And I feel like, when it comes to music, if you want to make something that actually speaks to people on a molecular level, maybe it’s worth getting into these symmetrical designs. So, when I make this music, I try to build the sounds in a symmetrical, mathematical way that creates these designs in my imagination that remind me of what my mother has shown me and I’ve read about. Do you guys want to go grab a beer, if you don’t mind?

I don’t really drink, but sure.
(Pointing at some graff) There’s some sacred architecture. Sacred architecture is just a prominent motif in the visual music culture right now. Pyramids and crosses and symmetry.

That’s definitely a small part of it. Have you ever seen Andreas Nilsson’s work? He does visuals behind bands. Mainly, did you ever see, The Knife DVD? That was Andreas. It’s so incredible. And a lot of it is these lines that just fill in and stack on each other and become these grand design of geometry. And I’m not totally sure but I’d say at least in part that’s influenced by actual sacred geometry.
You’re on a detox?

From booze yeah. Drugs is something else I wanted to ask you about, though. It seems like, you know, psychedelic, whatever.
I can talk to you about it. My experience with hard drugs is extremely limited. I’m okay with weed. The summer I was here was the one and only time I ever dropped acid. I did it one time and it felt life-changing. It felt really oddly serendipitous and cosmic and all that. Because here I was smack dab in the middle of this grand experience kind of finding myself and learning where to take myself next with this guy who’s coddling me creatively. And it’s like five in the morning and I’m sitting in the middle of Fifth Avenue on LSD. I was hanging out with a girl named Christiana Key who is the violin player in a band called Cult of Youth. Those are close friends of mine. Really awesome people. That was actually one of the records we did last summer. She gave me a hit of acid down at Max Fish on a Sweet Tart, didn’t tell me until I’d eaten it. Didn’t tell me until I’d fuckin’ eaten it. And she was like, ‘You just ate two hits of acid.’ And I had no idea what to expect, where it would go. I had only smoked pot and drank beer up until that point in my life. We ended up tripping balls. We walked across the Williamsburg Bridge with orange
grates. And they are doing this (fans hands in front of one another) just crossing over each other, becoming this starry thing. But the music itself is really not influenced by psychedelics as much as it is that one experience plus everything else that I’ve heard. I think what the bottom line is that the music that I listen to has been influenced by psychedelics or hard drugs and I really embrace it. Although a group like The Knife, I don’t know for sure at all, but those are clean-living Swedish artists. I don’t know if they do hard shit or not. The brother is techno guy though, so maybe he’s an ecstasy kind of dude.

The Knife is such a pervasive influence these days.
Yeah. I’m definitely one of the people you know, it was high school with all the pop then going up north and just being flooded with all this great art music, and that being added in and churned around. I think what I’m kind of obsessed with is just making it as simple as possible. Getting across this kind of grand design. I’m working on this song right now. (Points) This is down close to where we stated producing that summer. He used to work in a studio over at Avenue A and second, called DNA. That’s where we finished Gang Gang Dance’s record.

Love that record. What was it like to work on such big albums?
It was the greatest moments of my life to meet these people and to understand who these people that you romanticize in your mind and listen to on repeat, who they are as human beings. To some degree you make the realization that they’re just normal, but to another degree they can’t help who they are. It just leaks out of them, how creative and special they are. Who grabbed me the very first week was Lizzi from Gang Gang Dance. She would just sit there in the corner and smile, smile at everybody then giggle uncontrollably. And then one day we were setting up her steel drums, and I actually didn’t get to see her record it, the other assistant came in, I believe. There was something going on, a steel drum festival, and they’d asked some other artist in the area who was on the same level as Gang Gang for them to play steel drums, and they weren’t even steel drum players. It was hilarious. She was just bitching about it. It was so endearing. It was like, ‘Yes Lizzi, you should play steel drums on the universe’s song.’

It’s pretty much just you playing everything and doing everything on this record? Are you enjoying being a lone ranger? Do you prefer to be in control of everything?
I’ve never had an issue being a band, there’s something very surreal and yet very special spending such an unusual amount of time with three or four individuals.

I currently live in Worcester, I was born there and although I’ve spent most my time from the age of 18/19 trying to leave, I’ve found myself back where it all began. I help my girlfriend run a vintage clothes shop there, we own a house and have a cat. All very grown up and normal. The downside of living in Worcester is that it’s essentially a place where people start out and move on. Resulting in not a lot happening there.

I was lucky enough when I moved back to meet a few people that were into records and stuff, and because I like those things we were able to get together and jam a few ideas for songs I’d been writing at home. One of these guys had an 8-track. I recorded these jams and then the drummer moved away to go back to school. I had a few really rough mixes of this stuff and ending up giving a few of these to a guy who I knew had a little studio in this bar he runs. I used to put on shows there so I knew him a little.

He got back to me saying he really liked the songs but I should record something with him as it would sound better. So I just went in there with him and we hit it off. We just started getting together on a weekly basis and he even gave me a job.

So although I’m writing the music, it hasn’t been so lonely, he plays the drums and picks up the guitar or bass if he thinks he can make it better. It’s been cool to have a little recording project, because it makes me feel a way better musician than I actually am. Plus I find that normally in bands in the past you play the songs over and over at practice before you record them. With this it’s been all about having an instant recording process and that’s something I wanted to spend more time working on.

Why call this project VIRALS?
This will sound like something I’ve made up. but I honestly had a dream I was in a band called VIRALS, it was some cool-ass band like the New York Dolls or something, and I woke up and just remembered this cool dream. I thought, what were we called? Oh it was VIRALS.

I initially thought there must be a band called VIRALS, but couldn’t find anything. I think it sounds like an old punk band, plus it just made me think of old school punk record covers so I thought if I get to put something out at least the record will look good. I’m into that aesthetic.

Do you like plurals? Your last project was Lovvers.
Beatles not Beatle, Rolling Stones not stone, I’m not a fan of the Beach Boy. Though it’s really not something I’ve considered.

So with the video for your single “Magic Happens”. How did it come about getting Sexbeat’s Zac Ella’s old home movies of him doing magic tricks as a seven-year-old?
Well, SEXBEAT put this out and said they wanted to make a video, I said, “Cool make one without me in it.” Then I got sent the idea in written form, and said, “Cool go for it.” I watched it and thought “That’s a killer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sweater he’s got on…” cool video.

I thought “That’s a killer Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sweater he’s got on.”
Exactly.

It’s a really cheerful, sunshiny song. Is that what Worcester does to a man?
Not really, I’m just having a go at trying to write better songs. I think if I manage to write a really great tune then it’ll be a nice achievement. A nice song can have as much of an impact as really fast, abrasive song. I’ve always been into structure and have always tried to make something that makes sense in that way.

My location and lack of people to play with has meant I’m just doing stuff that solely interests me, a guilty pleasure where there’s no one to say, ‘Don’t do that you’ll look stupid.’

The songs we’ve heard so far from VIRALS are fun and bouncy, less vicious than some of the Lovvers material. Where are you channeling this from?
Again it’s solely channelled from this basic need I seem to have to play and write songs. Some self-righteous time where I can pretend I’m doing something decent. Most of the recordings have been done in the last 18 months. A time where I was going through some pretty shitty jobs and was pretty uncertain about what the future would hold for me. So if anything these songs provided a nice distraction for all the bullshit I was having to deal with on a daily basis.

Will VIRALS be less intense and frenetic than Lovvers? You did hundreds of gigs with them.
Hopefully, there will be gigs. It’s definitely time to play a gig as I feel like it has been a while. Previous bands have played lots and lots of shows – that could either be really fun or really depressing, and eventually that aspect of it will really get to you.

I know it has effected my view of playing too many shows. So hopefully this time around I can strike a decent balance.

What do you want to do with VIRALS?
I want it to be driven by others enthusiasm, not my endless obsession of trying to be somebody. The more people respond, the more I will make it my priority to release records, and play shows. I want it to be a positive experience that leads me many places.

I’ve currently got a few projects on the go, they’re not music related but they all deal with taking an idea and turning that it into the thing you’ll do for the long haul.

My main problem is I’ve yet to find something that I really enjoy that is on a par with playing music, unfortunately it’s not as easy to do these things as more than just a hobby. So I’ve always been searching for a way to make it happen.
Whether it be write music for film, for other people, session stuff, I’m really interested in exploring these avenues. I’m done with shitty 9-5 jobs, some of the things I’ve done are surreal. I would love to write a book about all the fucked up people I’ve met in these minimum wage holes.

When I’m doing this stuff I just stare at the clock thinking life is too short to fuck around, it’s all very frustrating. I’m sure there’s many that can relate to that.

So hopefully people will check it out and I can find a good balance. My end goal in life is doing something that I’m proud of, that stands up and allows me to live life without having to work those soul destroying jobs. A
Self-Sustaining Lifestyle.

Black Sabbath are one of the only bands in the world that needs no introduction. This particular interview is a 45 minute chat with perhaps the least appreciated founding member of the band. Bill was in Mythology with Tony Iommi before they formed what would be soon be called Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler in late ’60s Brum.

Bill brought a jazzy free vibe to the songs that would forever stamp his mark on those incredible ’70s albums. And between them the magical four-piece made unbeatable heavy music that will never be bettered. Bill’s input into these classic songs should not be underestimated. He sat back as the most relaxed member of the group but he penned a few killer tunes and sang well on a couple too.

Tony Iommi has (literally and metaphorically) worn the cross for Black Sabbath the longest – he’s kept the band going pretty much permanently across multiple line up changes and decades. But it is arguably Bill who has quietly held the torch for the original four piece line up the most. After Ozzy left the band in 1979 it seemed that Bill never really recovered or was able to accept different line-ups.

Whether this was the case or not, his drinking became a real problem for him and seriously affected his life on and off from that time to the late ’90s. Bill played on the killer first Dio fronted album Heaven and Hell (although says he doesn’t remember it) to various stints with the ’90s MK1 reformation tours both before and after he had a heart attack.

This interview took place long before the recently announced Sabbath reunion album and tour. Bill was warm, quick and very humble to speak too. It was a pretty emotional conversation for me. (And, as requested I did send him a pack of CDs by some of the best sons of Sabbath).

Black Sabbath have determined the course of my life, so it’s mind-blowing to talk to you. I’m really interested in the early days as a band. Your early work is pretty much all that matters when it comes to metal. Were your early influences blues music?

Bill: The influences were blues. In my case there was jazz. Tony also listened to jazz and one of his favourite guitar players was Django Reinhardt. Geezer and Ozzy liked blues and their tastes didn’t go back as far as Tony’s and mine did. As a child I was bought up on big band and swing. We all liked blues music and we all liked music that was somewhat different and we all liked to play loud. That was something that we were aware of, but playing really loud didn’t come till we’d been together for about a year. Within a couple of months of playing together we were already playing aggressively–that was the key to our passion right there.

That must have been around ’68 then. You were slowly dev-eloping an aggressive sound. Do you remember a certain point where you switched to this incredible dynamic that you found for the first album? Was there a key moment where you switched from a heavy blues band to the incredible sound you laid down on the first album?

Bill: I think the most significant happened when we wrote our first song together. It was at Tony’s house, in Park Lane, Aston. We wrote a song called “Wicked World”. It starts off with a very simple jazz feel, but it quickly goes into a ‘baam baam baaaaam bababababaam.’ As soon as those first notes came out, that was like a flat fifth right there, I think. We are all very attracted to dark notes–flat fifths or notes that are very, very powerful–that are often found in opera and Wagner or Beethoven. I know you’re a musician so you’ll know that the strength of a note can really determine the direction of a song.

The second example and probably the most well-known example was when we were rehearsing in Aston Community Centre and we went there one morning and Tony came up with the riff for “Black Sabbath” and we all fell in line. That was a major, major turning point. When we did that we were asking ourselves what the blazes we’d tapped in to. I know I came away feeling very, very secure in my soul. I knew that I’d tapped into something with the three other guys that was just killer. We were still incredibly poor at that point and down on our luck, but that was a real turning point right there.

That is still the ultimate heavy metal track for me. It’s just mind-blowing, the heaviness and power of it. I always say that to people when they ask me what my favorite track is. No one has come close to the first three or four albums you laid down. You obviously had tapped in to something very special, between the four of you. You were very much ahead of your time and you’re still changing people’s lives today.

Bill: Well thank you very much. I really appreciate your feedback and comments about the band. I agree with you. What that song has become, Marek, is our rallying cry. When everything else has turned to crap and we don’t know who we are anymore–and as time goes on and we lose each other a bit–whenever we play that song we look around at each other and we know that is our solidarity.

It must be an amazing feeling and experience to have that. You recorded that first album in 24 hours or something didn’t you? Do you remember that period? It’s such a perfect album.

Bill: I think we had about three days of studio time, but our circumstances were quite good. The band was very well rehearsed. We were already veterans of touring as that line up. We’d probably been playing together and touring for about two years. We’d been all over Europe, so we were a very tight unit by the time we went in to record that first album. The people around us told us they’d sorted us out making a record. We were used to things turning upside down and disappearing, but this actually came through and we actually did make a record. We went into the studio and did a set up. We put some mics up. We’d never been in a studio as Black Sabbath. I think the credit has to go, not only to the band, but the producers Tom Allen and Rodger Bain who really pulled it together. I think Geezer, in his eloquence, spoke the best of it when he said: ‘We came into the studio, then we walked out of the back door after a couple of days and just went back on the road.’ When I look back on that, and being a producer myself nowadays I just think we were madmen. To go into a studio and try to record this very raw and live stuff. Today that would be construed as a nightmare, but back then it was the real deal. It’s amazing in a production sense and the timing sense and the way we went about it, to come out with that album actually boggles me a bit. I’m still quite amazed.

You did a lot of touring back then. I heard the shows could be quite violent. Is that true?

Bill: The audiences were very rowdy. Only a couple of years before–and I’ll use Cream, who are a great band, as an example–the audiences for them were still very subdued. They were mainly listening and then would stand up and applaud. If you look at a Cream audience back then, there would be a couple of people getting their rocks off, but for the most part there would be a crowd intelligently listening to Cream, and rightly so. But by the time we were performing as Black Sabbath, the audiences were changing. Even the audiences that listened to Jimi Hendrix and major rock groups of the day had begun to change. Even our early audiences were very polite. It felt like playing in our living room. I remember the audiences changing in front of me. I remember that distinctly. The way they wore their clothes became different. We got a lot of leather jackets with studs. People’s hair changed. The whole look was just a sublime move. I think that was from a lot encouragement from us, and of course Ozzy. He wasn’t prepared to go into a room where people sat and applauded at the right place. We played loud and really aggressively. Ozzy refused to go on unless everybody got up. That’s where all the profanity with the audience started too. It was another turning point. I’d never seen another band do it. It was a crossover point. It was where the fire started. People got up and danced in such a restricted space. I think that’s why everybody started head banging, because there wasn’t enough room. It was just fucking unbelievable to watch. Everybody just rocked from their torsos upwards. It was nothing to do with the feet. It spread like wildfire all over England and Europe. Everybody was just rocking out, but in a completely different way than they had to Hendrix and Cream and our contemporaries of the day. It was quite the sight to see.

I don’t think anyone can argue that Sabbath were the band. You opened the doors for so many people and nobody can beat those albums you put out. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, metal kind of lost itself a bit, and I’m hoping it’s coming back now. People are looking back and understanding what you guys were all about. Did you feel that too? It must have been a huge loss when Ozzy left the band and it was a tragedy for metal. I don’t think metal really recovered from it. I’m not totally sure what I’m asking here, but how do you feel about heavy metal generally and the fractioning of the band in the late ‘70s?

Bill: I could understand why Oz was asked to leave, however it’s always been regrettable as far as I’m concerned. But I’m just one person in a four-person band. Behind the scenes and out of the public eye, there have been a lot of conversations and healing going on. There’s been time to make up–make amends and put your best foot forward. I was with Oz last week where he was picking up an award. That shows that we’re still a band, we’re still bandmates and still friends. I’ve tried to maintain friendships with all the guys. Just a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to Geezer and I haven’t spoken to Tony for a little while, but our conversations continue, we’re all still pretty open minded to each other. We’re all doing our own projects, but we’re not cut off from each other in any way. Also the reunion that we started about 10 years ago went very, very well. We’ve toured the world since 1999 as the original band. It was absolutely great. I loved it. I’d always hoped that the band could remain together and if anyone wanted to make their own albums or just take a break for a couple of years then they could, but that didn’t really happen with Black Sabbath. Oz was asked to leave. And what he’s gone on to do is phenomenal. He’s huge in the US and across the world. He’s a huge recording artist as well as the TV show and a couple of movies. He’s done incredibly well. All of us have done really well. We’re all really involved in music still. In fact that’s why I’m a bit groggy today. I was in the studio until really late last night finishing some mixes of some stuff I’m going to put out. Did I actually answer your question there?

Yeah, you did. Everything happens for a reason, and you’ve got those eight albums, which for some people are like a religious experience to listen to. Maybe you wouldn’t have surpassed them if Ozzy had stayed. Were you aware of any bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s that were following the concepts that you had in the early days? People like Saint Vitus and Trouble or Sleep?

Bill: In the ‘80s and for part of the ‘90s were really, really tough on me. That’s when my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction started. So for the most part I wasn’t really aware of any of the UK bands then. My nephew used to let me know which bands to look out for. I didn’t make any trips to England for a long time. It took me a few years to work out what was going on with me, and what it actually meant to be an addict. For me the lifesaver came in the form of Ozzy’s records. There was also a couple of songs that Tony did that I really liked. The saving grace for me was Metallica. I knew them from the beginning. Metallica for me was the life-saving force that came in and rescued all the bands that were flailing at the time. When I heard The Black Album (1991), I sat down and I played it and played it and played it. It was like listening to Sgt. Pepper’s (1967), which forever changed my life. I thought, ‘My god. Now we’re into something solid.’ Metallica really hit the spot with me. My biggest break into today came when I started listening to the gothic bands, and some grunge and bands that were a little bit rough around the edges. Today I think we’re in the most marvellous place with heavy metal. I’m just immersed in the amazement of the progress that has been made. Some of the guys and I had a bit of a tough time with the new bands, but there’s a lot of us older musicians who really love the new bands–it’s a bit like watching the grandkids. I hope I don’t sound big-headed, but I can tell what tree they originally came from. I actually get that same religious feeling you mentioned earlier when I hear some of these new bands. They’re doing amazing things. It takes me back to where we were in 1966.

I’d agree that Metallica definitely picked up your baton in 1983 and they and Black Sabbath are easily the best metal bands ever for me. It feels to me there are lots of good new bands who understand what you were about back in the ‘70s, and I think that the next decade is going to be really exciting for metal. I guess Geezer wrote a lot of your lyrics, but you had this power and intensity. Where did you pick that up from?

Bill: Part of it came from our predecessors. There were great bands in the ‘60s. A lot of bands were referencing flower power and peace. I want to make it clear that I’m not being negative about that whole movement, but we were from Aston and there wasn’t much of a hippie era going on there. At least 50 percent of our day was spent looking at the guy across the street to see if he was going to run over and kick you in the head. That was our reality. It was not someone running across the street to give us a flower. I think there was a lot of valuable things in the hippie–or counter-culture. But some of the ideals fell short. It was a great time in the ‘60s.

I guess things also got a bit darker in the ‘70s. You were just reflecting what was going on then.

Bill: Well, you’re right. That was a large part of it. When we went to play in Berlin in 1969, there was a wall up. That was a reality. The Russian forces in and around Berlin outnumbered the Allied forces 35 to one, with tanks. The Iron Curtain was a two-hour flight from London. We were reflecting on our times in Aston, and Aston back then was dog rough. We were talking about our reality.

There still is a sense of counter culture in there though– “Sweet Leaf” and “Children Of The Grave” and other anti-war songs.

Bill: Well, we were pissed off, you know? “Sweet Leaf” is a very aggressive song when we do it live. “Sweet Leaf” and “Iron Man” were the rallying points for all the young men coming back from Vietnam. And when I think about it– to be quite honest with you, Marek–I start to cry because life is precious and I can still see the audiences when we played those songs. All the vets were up the front, so all we could see were the vets. When those songs came on, they were trying to get out of their wheelchairs. They came to hear those songs. We’d give them our all. They were men that didn’t want to go to war. They were pushed into it and nobody thanked them when they came back.

Do you have any advice for any bands that are just starting out?

Bill: The first thing that any musician needs to have is self-honesty. That will take over when the musician is in 15 feet of snow in the middle of an ice storm in upstate New York and really wants to go home and have some of mum’s soup. You have to be honest about the music that you’re representing, because if you’re not, the music won’t hold you, the fame won’t hold you, whatever you want out of the fame won’t hold you safe in that upheaval. The storm could represent anything–being sick on the road or whatever. If you’ve got the passion for yourself and your bandmates then you may last the course.

Thanks so much for this interview. It’s been fantastic for me to talk to you. And thank you for the music that you’ve created. It’s still having a huge impact on generation after generation. Have a fantastic weekend. Thanks so much, Bill.

Bill: Before you go, I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. I hope I get to meet you. I’d really love for you to send me some CDs of your band. I would love to hear where you’re coming from, especially after hearing who your influences are for God’s sake! I’d love to hear what you’re doing. Please stay in touch. Give me a call whenever you like. We can connect up. Take care of yourself and stay strong. You mean a lot. You guys out there mean an awful lot.

You’ve played a few churches in London recently – most notably, St Stephen’s earlier in 2011 and St Giles In The Field just before Christmas – do you feel at home in a place with acoustics like that? Your music does suit that kind of setting.
I do. I don’t know what it is about churches. There’s definitely an atmosphere there and the sound is always really good. Every gig we’ve had in a church, we’ve really, really loved it. Maybe it’s the sound thing and the rows of wooden pews. And I guess the fact the audience feel they have to be quiet. It’s great for us as it feels like everyone’s paying attention. I love a good church gig.

Are you spiritual?
Well both my parents are Roman Catholic – my mum’s Italian and my dad’s Irish. They’re not over the top with it, but I was brought up going to Sunday School as a kid and stuff. I was obviously brought up with all that, but I’m not particularly religious in the sense of all the regulations, but I like to think there’s definitely something else. God knows what it is!

Well, literally. But I guess it’s good to do a few good shows in a church to get on their good side if something does exist.
That’s true – and it’s the end of the world isn’t it?

Yep – December 2012 is the end.
Well we’re alright for a bit. We should get a few more gigs in before then.

Would it be fair to compare you to Karen O and Cat Power and Lykke Li?
Oh that’s a nice mixture! Generally because they’re all very cool. I’ve been compared to quite a lot of different people, which I suppose is quite a good thing as people aren’t just telling me that I’m like one person. I suppose everyone in a way, and I guess it’s kind of an ego thing, finds that weird because you don’t like to think that you’re like someone else. You want to be an individual and the most original person in the world. But it’s great to be compared to people whose music I really enjoy. Especially someone like Karen O. I’ve not heard that one before. I guess the hair, definitely! I think she’s pretty amazing.

Would you say you were folk? Or as the Guardian so nicely put it, ‘Fucked up folk’?
I know right? That’s quite funny. It’s difficult, because I don’t know what we are. We don’t really think about it at all. We’re more like ‘this sounds alright – let’s do that.’ It did start off with my solo thing for years, which was very folky and acoustic. It definitely started out that way, but with me and Igor working together and developing things, it has all gone a bit more atmospheric and, I dunno, we’re just trying to experiment with what we’re doing.

People have mentioned that your lyrics are dark and depressing, but do you see them as a release of emotions – which is a positive thing. The Guardian, again, said ‘”Youth” plumbs Ian Curtis’ depths of bleakness’. I wasn’t expecting you to be so friendly!
I think it’s a relief that I’m actually friendly as I probably would be the most depressed person in the world. I enjoy really dark music. I love Joy Division and don’t think I can really write anything happy. I don’t know if that’s a conscious thing or I literally can’t. If I didn’t write songs, I think I’d be really weird [laughs]. I’d have a lot of shit that I just couldn’t get out. I’d have about 10 cats and just mutter away to myself and play the saw. It’s a release of emotion and I can just be rid of bad experiences. It is a bit like therapy where bad shit has happened but if you can put it down on paper and write about it and then sing it to people, then you’ll be alright. I dunno where I’m going with that!

The new EP – The Wild Youth (Communion Records, 2011) was recorded in Crouch End. You’re from North London – is that why?
I wish I was from there. I’m from proper North London. I’m in zone 9.

What, Amersham? That’s like not even in London. That’s a conveniently written press release.
[Laughing] I know! If I’m still in a zone then I’m from London. Igor is proper London. There’s not much good music from where I’m from. Actually, actually, Kyla La Grange and The Staves are both from the same areas as me. So, actually I lie – we’re pretty damn cool up there.

The Wild Youth EP has shown graduation in sound in terms of mass. There’s a lot more – electronic, booming drums etc. from, say, the DEMOS EP? Has Igor brought that influence in?
The way we work is that I will write the lyrics and acoustic guitar and then Igor and his crazy brain come along and he takes the song and works on it by himself and he comes up with the most amazing things. Then we work together and layer the vocals and guitars and stuff. We basically demoed everything that we eventually recorded in Crouch End and having someone like Ian Grimble (British Sea Power, Beth Orton) as our producer, we were then able to make the tinny sounds that we’d made in Igor’s room into this massive noise. The ideas were always there – we just needed the equipment and the knowledge of Ian to make them into a reality. It was great that Igor could get involved in the production side of things too; Ian was really open to listening to other people’s opinions.

Your vocals, especially live, are captivating, stretching people to the edges of their emotions – are you drained at the end of each performance? It feels you put a lot of yourself into it.
Kind of – not really drained. I mean after I’ve played I’m in a weird state. I need to have a cigarette and a big glass of wine. Now I’m with a band, I’m really excited. Before, when I was solo it was really heavy but now I get to share it with people. Even though it’s obviously not happy music and not that up-tempo, I’m excited by it. I especially like it when I’ve finished as I get ridiculously nervous. It is a release of nerves but you feel like you’ve achieved something.

The word ethereal is often used as a way to vaunt your music – would you concur?
It’s a little bit churchy and waily isn’t it? I’m kind of open to people saying what they think of the music. Ethereal has been used a lot but I do quite like that. I don’t ever really want to say what my music sounds like. I don’t think that’s what music is all about, I quite like people to listen to stuff and have their own opinion. It’s the same with lyrics – I don’t like explaining songs. Sometimes you go to a gig and the singer tells you when and why they wrote a song. I never do that – I think that ruins things. I want to judge for myself what something is about.

Tracklisting:

Blizzardo – Acid Trash Mix by SUPMAG

Blizzardo – You Don’t Know Jack by SUPMAG

They wear their references proudly on their sleeve: they have songs called “Jake Ryan” (the hunky love interest from John Hughes’ teen angst masterpiece, Sixteen Candles (1984)), “Veronica Sawyer” (Winona Ryder’s heroine in Heathers (1989), and a song in which a boy dressed as Teen Wolf goads a girl into drinking beer until she pukes) and “Brian Krakow” (Angela Chase’s nerdy best pal on My So-Called Life (1994-95)). Their first EP is called Youth (Moshi Moshi, 2010), and their debut album, Welcome to Condale (Moshi Moshi, 2011), is a concept album based around a fictional town in California, much like the mythical setting for all of John Hughes’ teen dramas, Shermer, Illinois.

And I could go on. Pages and pages could be devoted to Summer Camp’s grasp on the secret life of the American teenager (never mind that they were born and bred in the UK–but more on that later), but luckily, they have the songs to back up their obsession. Both Youth and Welcome to Condale are, like a lot of good pop nowadays, reminiscent of ’60s and ’80s pop, pulling their sound from both the Ronettes and the Psychedelic Furs. Elizabeth’s voice is constantly buoyed by Jeremy’s ultra-fuzzy guitars and synths. “Ghost Train” for example, bounces along on one of the catchier choruses in recent memory, in total contrast with Elizabeth desperately “trying to get through” to her man, aimlessly. Live, Summer Camp perform while a stream of found family photographs rotates on a screen behind them, creating scenarios full of holes and nameless extras in imaginary movies. The bands songs have a singing-into-your-hairbrush quality to them, but far from being as grating as that sounds, it adds a dimension of reality to the records. Perhaps the most engaging thing about Summer Camp is that they manage to pull this off without much, if any, irony–it’s not just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. In a way, you feel that Summer Camp truly do relate to the Jakes, Veronicas and Brians of the world.

I met up with Jeremy and Elizabeth in Williamsburg, the night after their first show in America as Summer Camp. (It should be noted that Jeremy is a solo musician in his own right, having released two albums on Transgressive Records and toured extensively.) I had no idea they were both super into Disneyland, but looking back on it, I totally should have known.

What exactly is your relationship with the films of John Hughes? In ‘SUP MAGAZINE 23 you guys did the letter to Ducky from Pretty in Pink (1986), so are you just lifelong fans or was it more a concept around the EP?
Elizabeth: Well, I will speak for myself and say that I am an intensely huge fan. (To Jeremy) I dunno, are you an intensely huge fan?
Jeremy: I’m not an intensely huge fan, but I’ve really enjoyed all the films of his that I’ve watched, and I think crucially, we were watching those films at a time when we were recording and writing the songs for the EP. That’s probably why so much of it leaked into the EP specifically.
Elizabeth: Yeah, but it wasn’t like, a concept thing.
Jeremy: I kind of think of it as like, a ‘context thing’, with the samples, and the pictures on the blog, and the artwork.
Elizabeth: When we were doing the EP, we were really into the idea of this American teenage experience. Both of us grew up as teenagers in England, so it’s something we’ve never experienced, but at the same time we’ve seen it in so many films. It seems to be this universe, this timeless experience that has been reproduced in every teen movie. It’s just really compelling, I think, from an outsider’s perspective.
Jeremy: It’s a fantasy. It’s as unrealistic as The Lord of the Rings or something. We’re perfectly aware that our experience through films bears no resemblance to what it’s actually like, and for us that makes it all the richer. We’re able to draw on stuff like John Hughes, Heathers and stuff like that. It just kind of makes it more real, in this sort of unrealistic sort of way. Wow, that makes no sense! (laughs)

I see what you mean. It’s like playing Dungeons and Dragons or something, only with teenagers and not mountain trolls.
Elizabeth: Yeah! And I think John Hughes has done the best job at representing those kind of teenage experiences, in this fictional world he cerated himself. Like how Sherman, IL isn’t a real place – I love that. The fact that it’s this place that all of these characters can intermingle was something we were really interested in, with the album as well as the EP.

You used a lot of film for your early videos as well, blond teens running around vacant lots and such. Where did you find it?
Jeremy: We actually didn’t make those videos, so we can look at them and say with complete objectivity that they’re the most amazing videos ever. It was really interesting, because looking back on it now, it seems really obvious, given the rest of what we do, to sort of cut up an amazing movie from the ’70s and set it to our music, but it wasn’t out idea. It was a good friend of ours named Paddy Power, who is a filmmaker in the UK. He just did it without even asking us, and send over the video for “Ghost Train”, and it was the perfect video for us. Then he did the same for “Round the Moon”, so those aren’t ones we can really take any credit for, but it did kind of just fit with our aesthetic perfectly.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and it was nice having someone who wasn’t us making the video, because I’m sure that if we tried to make it we would have done something really awful, like try and have us lip-synching to the camera, and like a train—
Jeremy: Wearing panda costumes.

In general, is film a medium that really inspires you? So much of what you guys do is heavily visual.
Elizabeth: Oh, yeah.
Jeremy: We both love film.
Elizabeth: Films are my life. I wanted to be an actress, so it’s something I’ve always been drawn to, and I wanted to be an actress mainly because I wanted to live in a film world (laughs). It kills me that when you see these things, they don’t actually exist, just constructs of people’s imaginations. My family’s obsessed with Disneyland and Disneyworld, and when I was a kid my parents would save up and we would all go. I’ve been to Disneyworld about 17 times. I loved the idea that you could have this world that you could go into and touch it, and you can see it and feel it, but it’s completely false. But it did kind of ruin things for me, like when I went to Africa, I got off the plane I was like “This is great, but it’s not the same at the Safari ride at Disneyworld!” There aren’t any lions coming to get you in the bushes. You can’t get a Mickey Mouse ice-cream.

You should just bring them with you, and be an ice-cream missionary. What was your favorite attraction at Disneyland?
Elizabeth: Well, the last time I went was when I was about 15, so I haven’t been for a while, but we’re going again next week, because Jeremy has never been—
Jeremy: Well, I’ve been to Disneyworld,not Disneyland.
Elizabeth: —with someone who is obsessed, like me. So I’m hoping to be like (makes childish, excited face), but it might not be the best.
Jeremy (in a slightly reprimanding tone): It’ll be amazing!
Elizabeth: I really love the Haunted House, and at Universal Studios they have this thing that’s based on The Twilight Zone, and it’s this whole hotel that’s done up like a 1930s mansion, and it has a lift that drops.
Jeremy: Amazing.
Elizabeth: Amazing.

So the American teenage experience is something you’re attracted to. This is your first time coming to America as a band, right?
Elizabeth: Yeah.

Did you have any expectations for how an American public would react to your interpretation of their culture?
Jeremy: We had very low expectations, which were surpassed to the utmost degree. We would have been really pleased had there been 30 people at the show. It’s our first time here, we haven’t earned anything yet. It was incredible that there was such a great turnout last night. People seemed really warm, people came up to us afterwards. It was absolutely amazing.
Elizabeth: There were things I hadn’t thought about, though. Because American culture was such a big influence, especially on the EP, I suddenly felt really self-conscious. In soundcheck when were were looking at all the slides, I was like, ‘This is really American. We are really representing our vision of what America is,’ and I suddenly got very, like, ‘Is that bad? Is this going to come across as a bit – not patronizing, but a bit condescending?’
Jeremy: Which we would never mean it to be, obviously.
Elizabeth: Also, I said… (trails off)
Jeremy: Ugh, it doesn’t matter.
Elizabeth: Yeah, it doesn’t matter (laughs).
Jeremy: No, actually, say it. Say it! This is how lame we are, that we obsessed over this.
Elizabeth: I said that I was wearing trainers like all the women from Jersey, but in Working Girl (1988), she’s from Staten Island, not New Jersey.

Someone heckled that after, actually. They were like, ‘STATEN ISLAND!’
Jeremy: Someone blogged about it last night. It was probably the same guy (laughs).
Elizabeth (groaning): Uuugghhhhh. But women from Jersey do it as well, right?

We have a phenomenon out here called Bridge and Tunnel, which basically means people from New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, et cetera who travel to Manhattan on the weekends. Since we were all on the Lower East Side, which has become prime Bridge and Tunnel stomping grounds over the last decade or so, I think everyone understood what you meant.
Elizabeth: Ok, so I didn’t really embarrass myself. (Mock seriously) It’s fine, I’m fine about it. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.

When you first started talking about Jersey, I thought you were going to go off about Jersey Shore.
Elizabeth: My friends absolutely adore it. I watched one episode and I didn’t really get it.

It’s kind of something that needs to sit with you for a while. It’s really an experiment in anthropology. They’re an entire, fully-formed subset of people that exist outside of any other facet of society.
Elizabeth: We have this thing in England called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which I haven’t seen, but I imagine is a similar kind of thing. It’s the Irish Gypsy community throw these really elaborate weddings, where the bride has this amazing dress that like, lights up and has mechanical butterflies that move on them and stuff.
Jeremy: It’s pretty amazing.
Elizabeth: But I did see these Irish Gypsies on This Morning talking about how awful it was, how they were taking this small faction of their culture and saying that that was how everyone was like.
Jeremy: If you’re trying to make entertainment out of a small racial community, and you focus on the people with the biggest personalities who are the most outrageous, the other people in that community are not going to like it. It sucks! I totally agree with them.
Elizabeth: Same! So I resolved never to watch it.

How moral of you!
Elizabeth: That’ll make them really think.
Jeremy: You’re really making a difference. You should tweet about it as well.

Anyway, back to last night’s show. How do you choose the perfect slideshow photo?
Jeremy: It’s kind of a bit of a trade secret, actually.

Oh, really.
Elizabeth: No, not really. He’s just trying to make it sound exciting.
Jeremy: The truth of it is probably far more boring.
Elizabeth: We basically have a huge collection, and it’s just like anything, the ones that you like, you keep. We just have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. But I was thinking about this as well, all of them are families, and I suddenly was like, ‘What if there’s someone in the crowd whose parents are on the screen?’ There’s no way of checking who the subjects are when we get a photo.

Near where I live there’s this thrift store called The Thing, and they have boxes and boxes of old pictures. but I always get really weirded out by those photos.
Elizabeth: It’s emotional.

I always try to judge if that person in the photo is still alive or not. You’re like, ‘This looks like it’s from the ’70s, but she looks 50…’
Elizabeth: Once I found a whole photo album of this woman in various poses. Some of them were quite risqué, but not in a bad way, just showing her stockings and posing on a car bonnet. But it was just a bit weird because I thought, if that’s someone’s grandma, and they saw those [on stage or in our artwork] they’d be like, ‘Granny Mae, what are you doing?’
Jeremy: We’re hoping eventually to ask people to send in their own family photos, and we could make a slideshow out of it for the tour. Although, my personal experience of asking people to send stuff in is that it might also be quite disturbing, and/or quite disappointing, so we’ll see.

Are you very nostalgic people?
Jeremy: I think that’s really true of the EP. All of the songs for the EP were written in the first month of our existence as a band, some were even written before we had officially decided to become a band. It’s quite naïve, it’s quite concerned with teenage manners, and we’re not teenagers anymore, so looking back at being a teenager is always going to involve a certain amount of nostalgia. And I don’t want to say that on the album that has completely dropped out, but some of the songs take a slightly different direction, and there’s definitely darker material on Welcome to Condale. We’re not particularly nostalgic people, but everyone likes a bit of nostalgia.
Elizabeth: I think we are, actually. Say that we had a great day, we’d be like, ‘Oh, let’s go back and do the things that we did on that great day,’ and then you get back there and you’re like, “Eh, it’s just not the same.’ When you find something new, then it’s really special. I think we’re nostalgic is a kind of, ‘you-can-never-go-home-again’ way. The stuff that we’re nostalgic for isn’t real, so when we’re being nostalgic, it’s not real. If that makes any sense.
Jeremy: Nostalgia is weird, because it’s very self-defeating. You’re saying, ‘Ah, wasn’t that great! Oh, I don’t have it anymore.’ Ultimately, it makes you feel quite sad, and that’s why it’s such a special emotion.