Doug: "His films are just so different to anyone else's, and each
one has at least one stunning image that haunts you forever.
Whether its Hombre laughing himself to death in Even Dwarfs Started Small;
the caravan of soldiers and slaves making their way down a mountain in Peru in Aguirre,
Wrath Of God; or the emaciated Dieter Dengler standing
on a rock looking out into the jungle in Rescue Dawn.
He has an excellent eye for backdrops, but he also has an
excellent eye for actors - who else would get a 42 year-old
to play the part of a teenager and actually make it work?
I have a soft spot for films that have great music too, and Herzog films always have stunning soundtracks,
particularly the ones by Popul Vuh. On top of all that, the man himself
is just a really interesting character, and there are so many
great stories about how he gets his films made. His attitude
to life is something that resonates with me, and I love his
reaction to getting shot during an interview, he said, "it happens."
I've noticed that your sound and influences are very Post Punk tinged. Do all
the band share a love of that period and how did you all get together
considering you seem to have pretty distinct influences?
Les: "When I was looking to get the band together I wanted to make music that
was as far removed from rock music as possible. I wanted to make edgier,
more atmospheric and darker music than I had done previously. I’m not
interested in guitar solos, or drum fills or growling rock vocals. It was difficult
as we formed in a town that is dominated by rock music and I kept getting
messages from singers who wanted to ape Oasis or Kasabian, or guitar
shredders into Dream Theater One guy sent me a tape of him singing Avril
Lavigne! (Can I have a copy. Nicky) So, it took a while to get the other guys on board but they had the
right sensibility and good ideas so its worked well. Sometimes they listen to
stuff I wouldn’t and vice versa. We all like Magazine, PIL, Television and
Cocteau Twins, plenty of other stuff too and not only late 70s stuff also."
Richey: "I think we all pretty much love that period. I think you can find our cohesion rooted in the love for a
handful of bands, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers, Joy Division/New Order, The Clash etc. We all have
our own individual tastes. We might not have the same opinion with each others individual tastes but you
have to respect them. It’s very important to have our own individual tastes and ideas. Things would just
be boring otherwise."
Tell us a bit more about the band. The ideas that you are trying to convey and
what influences outside of music do you have?
Les: "As a band we tend to do things our own way and always have a strong
opinion on what we want to do. We’ve changed our objective a bit over time.
At first it seemed exciting to be signed by a big record label but the realities of
that these days are not that exciting. Bands tend to get signed, release their
debut album, build up a mountain of debt then get dropped. I think its exciting
that we have complete control of our music and we will continue to release it
on the Internet and via Fire Exit Records too. We try to make music that will
mean something to those who listen. We realise that we’re not going to have
mass appeal or be particularly trendy but thats not important.
It's important to have a sense of humour about things too.
For me music is a big thing outside of the band as well. I record my own music
for my Tear Down The Lies! project and I’m about to start a course doing Sound Production soon.
I like Motor Racing, taking pictures and foreign beers too since your asking what I like outside the band."
Richey: "I’m interested in history and politics and what goes on in the world. I wanted to bring that into
the lyrics as I can’t stand music without some sort of substance. I couldn’t write any lyrics about love or
relationships. It’s a subject that’s been re-produced so many times. I’m not saying that to make it sound
like a redundant issue, it’s obviously not. It is one of the most important things to everyone. You can only
say the same thing so many times though and everything has been said before really. I always wanted to
look at different subjects and not be boring. There are songs about someone in a Siberian labour camp,
written from their perspective, songs about male transvestite prostitutes, songs about longing and being
accepted and the disposability of human life for example. But there also running themes throughout all
the songs to give some continuity and identity to the band. Visually, there has to be coherence to the
music and lyrics. It’s important to get an identity in the artwork and not just make it seem lazy with a
clichéd band picture or, to be honest, clichéd anything."
Doug: "Well I suppose there are things that stop me from coming up with chirpy bass lines.
I’m influenced by injustice, selfishness and idiocy.
A lot of things annoy me, from simple things like,
people walking onto a train as soon as the doors open even though people are trying to get off,
or the daily grammatical errors on the BBC News website;
to big things like the fact that people’s idea of a free democracy is having to choose between three centreright parties, who are all funded by the same corporations and all keep the company of the same billionaires.
One of the reasons I wanted to get into music was to try and change people’s perspectives
and to get them to educate themselves, something that my favourite bands did for me;
a grand and maybe even arrogant aim, but it’s something we strive towards.
In terms of the music, I just want us to try and take the bits of the past that we enjoy and put it back
together in novel ways, and perhaps encourage people to discover
the lesser-known bands that we gain influence from, like Killing Joke and The Chameleons."
What has the reception been like to the band so far and what do you hope to
achieve in the future?
Les: "I think a lot of people are unsure about how to take us, especially when
were playing live. We have a fairly unusual set-up with no live drums, we all
take turns to play the synth and sometimes there’s no guitar. We get all the old
boring stuff like ‘you need a drummer’ but I think we should embrace what
makes us different. If your expecting a rock n’roll band you probably won’t get
us anyway! We maybe don’t have a commercial appeal but it helps us in
having a distinctive sound. That's something thats allowed us to make fans in
some far off places. Also those who do like us tend to be very enthusiastic and
positive. For the future I hope the EP does well and I’m keen for us to get an album
done at some stage."
Richey: "This is a difficult one. There doesn’t seem too much grey area. You probably either love us or hate us/
don’t care. I’d be very worried if everybody loved us though. It would mean we had turned into Snow
Patrol or Keane and I’d rather die than do that. I’d be surprised if we ended up as a band championed by
the NME or something. We pretty much despise the whole modern NME package. And that’s only through
disappointment at what the music press and the music industry has become. I think I only ever wanted
to achieve a bit of respect for what we do. I always said that if I could make one person think more
openly and outside the parameters of the mainstream and what you are ALLOWED to think then it would
be a success. We have obviously achieved that. I don’t know if it is enough now though. I want it to be a
catalyst for changing people’s lives to be honest, in the same way a few bands have changed mine."
Doug: "Pretty disappointing, to be perfectly honest,
but that’s perhaps down to my own unrealistic expectations as much as anything.
I never expected us to be the darlings of the dance floor, but sometimes it feels like all people want
is something with a beat they can move their feet to and banal words that don’t tax their brain too much.
You see tripe like The Fratellis and the fucking Wombats doing well, and it’s frustrating, because we’re convinced that we’re producing music with far more substance that actually has worthwhile messages to convey, yet sometimes I feel we’d have trouble selling out a garden shed. In order to avoid just giving up, you almost have to tell yourself things like “well we wouldn’t want people like that to like us anyway!” which isn’t very helpful if you don’t want to come across as having a superiority complex.
Having said that, however, the applause we get at gigs usually seems to be genuine,
and the love of our very small core of fans is enough to convince us we’re not doing this for nothing.
In the future I would hope that more people will hear us, see that we’ve got a lot more to give than most bands, and put their trust in us to be a band worth supporting, as we're in this for reasons above and beyond the usual "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" standard.
I'd like us to produce truly innovative music, maybe something as stunning and truly ground-breaking
as Delirium Cordia by Fantômas, but with a different sound completely."
I have noticed that you embrace some political ideals in you influences and
music. Can you tell us more about some of these?
Richey: "I don’t know if it’s ‘ideals’. Idealism just purports to something unattainable. It would be disappointing
if we thought we couldn’t achieve real change. At the same time though, you have to see measurable
progress as a success. It goes with the territory of opening up people’s minds and making people realise
that even in our ‘free’ society we are just consumerist zombies really. It seems like a lot of people know
that, or claim to, but don’t know to what extent. And, I think capitalism has pacified everyone and made
people completely apathetic. It all comes from falling in love with the work of people of like Bertrand
Russell, Noam Chomsky and George Orwell who are massive life changing influences. To try and
condense their ideas into a song and make it coherent, poetic and poignant is the goal really. I’d say
there is an original punk mentality in the band. Times are different though and you have to try and find
different ways of articulating ideas. It’s all too easy for a couple of angry young men to go and thrash
their guitars around. Anyone can do that."
Doug: "Most of the things I read are political,
be it Noam Chomsky’s books, George Monbiot’s columns, or PrivateEye every fortnight;
I’ve also always favoured political lyricists like Richey Edwards, Joe Strummer and Chuck D.
So I’m very much aware of just how much of a joke it is to call our political system a “free democracy”, when in reality it’s just run by a select few middle-aged white men at the helm of media empires and big corporations.
Les: "We tend to have fairly different themes than what is considered
conventional. This is always something that adds a level of interest and
alongside this it's important to retain the emotional connection with the listener
as well."
How do you feel about the current state of the "Indie" scene - The NME and
the bands that they promote etc etc?
Les: "I think the word ‘Indie’ is as far removed from its original meaning as
could be possible! It tends to mean more mainstream guitar music and I tend
to just ignore the mainstream unless its forcibly rammed in my face. I mean
the Feeling didn’t bother me until they were played constantly on an advert. I
know the Kaiser Chiefs have a new album out but I haven’t heard it so I have
not been bothered by it yet!
There’s been a lot of great music recently,
the British Sea Power album was great and Electrelane were great when they were
around.
I can’t think of many bands around who we feel a real affinity with though."
Richey: "I don’t really have any time for it any more. There are more important things in life than having
meaningless, regurgitated and hyped bands who really don’t deserve anything. A lot of people are in a
scene because they think its ‘cool’. A lot of people are against that scene because they think that in turn
is also ‘cool’. But to be honest I think it’s just shit. I try to keep away from mainstream media because I
want to be able to make my own mind up about things. Stroszek would never be part of a scene I don’t
think. I can’t imagine a scene that would want us!"
Doug: "I've never had any time for the NME, it’s nothing but a glorified tabloid.
“State” is the right word to use,frankly.
The NME can’t be seen to stand still, so it’s always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing, and as a result it ends up hyping up any old pish just to try and prove its own relevance to the world.
I’d call it “The Sun” of music journalism,but that’s a bit unfair on The Sun.
The “Daily Star” of music journalism perhaps?
This obsession with lists and telling people who’s cool etc – all that stuff completely turns me off. But everyone knows this is what it does, and what it’s always done, and yet people continue to buy it?!
Just as tabloids are for people who don’t really want to read any news, the NME is for people who don’t actually want to know about forward-thinking music, and that is shown in the standard of bands it peddles.
The worst thing is, you now have TV programmes, like that awful one on Channel 4
looking for unsigned bands, that are just looking for even more of the same.
Of course, as with almost everything related to music these days, it's just an excuse for a mobile phone company to try and convince the "yoof of 2day" that their brand is the hippest, because look at all these cool bands they're associated with!
The indie scene itself though; there are a very small handful of bands who I have any time for, and these are
surrounded by a morass of posers, plagiarists and just plain dog turds… but in reality, it’s always been this way.
There is no Golden Era of modern music, because the amount of bands latching on to the current “sound” always
outnumbers the few truly innovative bands massively.
I remember growing up during Britpop, thinking it was awful
because I was being suffocated by the same few dreadful bands;
but when I look back I can see that there were a few gems after all.
Having said that, it does feel like musical and lyrical creativity is at an all time low at the moment, but
this is what happens when what is being passed off as “indie” music is in the mainstream.
Perhaps we can come to the rescue…?"
What are you views on the download age of music. Do you feel it helps or
hinders bands and what do you think about illegal downloading?
Les: "I personally think that the internet is very important for us.
With the last EP we sold cds to places like Canada, the USA, France, Germany, Australia etc so the
internet has broken down boundaries for us that would have not been possible otherwise.
Also you would not have heard of us without the internet!
Having our music available to download is another big step for us as it means anyone
around the globe can get our music easily.
The exciting aspect of the internet is that we can make a song up in Glasgow and it can be heard in Brighton,
Berlin or Michigan or other places.
It's more important for people to enjoy our music than it is for us to make a shit load of cash but
it's always nice to sell a CD.
I know of a guy who just rips the music from Myspace which is just sad really."
Richey: "It works both ways. It definitely helps a lot of bands. It also fragments the whole music industry so much
that you are just saturated with a lot of rubbish and everyone’s band can be heard by the click of a
button. Ive found some fantastic bands I wouldn’t have found without the internet. Ive also wasted
precious hours of my life listening to a lot of shit too though. I’m a traditionalist though in that I want the
experience of going into the shop and buying the CD or vinyl, taking it home, listening to it, admiring the
artwork, reading the lyrics and credits. Downloading has reduced everything’s meaning which just
epitomizes a lot of aspects of our modern society. In terms of illegal downloading, I’ve spent enough
money buying CDs that I don’t feel bad downloading the odd track here and there as it usually makes me
go and buy the album anyway. Independent and creative artists should be supported fully but I don’t
mind people illegally downloading anything originating from a manufactured boy band or X Factor as
they, nor the record company or anyone associated with creating the monstrosity, morally deserve the
financial gain for strangling real artistic potential being opened to the public."
Doug: "I’ve ranted at length about this countless times over the past few years to anyone that'll listen.
I despise illegal downloading.
I understand the argument for downloading a few tracks from an album to see if it's worth getting, and I
did that myself for a while in 2004.
It's no coincidence that during this time, I would rarely come out of a music shop with less than 10 CDs. But you can hear samples of most albums on amazon or myspace these days, so there's less
weight to that argument today.
I've got friends who are big music fans who now just download everything from Pirate
Bay, and I always voice my disapproval at them.
People try to justify it by saying record companies make massive
profits and charge extortionate prices for CDs, but they just pass the losses down to the artists so really all they're
doing is trying to excuse the fact they want something for nothing.
I think it's indicative of people's attitude today, that
we have a right to everything; "it's a privilege, not a right" seems to be a dead concept for most things. I think we're
getting to a point where people are going to expect albums for free, and I don't just mean bands like NIN or
Radiohead giving albums away - unsigned bands are generally having to give entire albums away these days,
because no one is prepared to pay for them.
That's fine, as long as people don't mind the death of albums as self-contained
pieces of art, and are content with a bunch of 1s and 0s with no artwork etc.
Personally, I'm not, and would much prefer to see more bands putting out absolute works of art like Tomahawk's Mit Gas.
This is why the music industry seems to be placing more and more emphasis on live music.
People may think that's a good thing, but it almost feels like albums are becoming mere promotional tools to get people along to the two money-spinning tours every band plays per year now.
Gigs are great, but it's albums that are a band's legacy, and they can be enjoyed by people years after the band has disappeared. Of course, it has to be kept in mind that I'm prone to over-analysis and worrying over nothing.
The Internet as a whole, however, has opened up lots of avenues for new bands.
This is good when it helps a worthwhile band achieve recognition, but it's also opened the floodgates for more pish bands than ever.
You go onto Myspace to try and find good new music, and you're overwhelmed by bands that sound the same or haven't taken enough time to properly refine their sound. The lies sold to you by Lily Allen and Myspace's marketing men is that a band can find a fan-base of over a hundred thousand by just putting a few home recordings online and people suddenly finding out about them, but it's just not true.
The few good bands you do find get forgotten about long before they've got anything to release, so I think it's now much more difficult to keep people's attentions than it may have been before the Internet.
However, we've had people from Canada, Germany, Norway and France ask us for CDs, and that wouldn't have happened without an online presence (and one of us just so happening to be a software
developer by trade... Ahem!) It's also much easier for people like yourselves to get in contact, and the whole DIY
ethos encouraged by the Internet is a good thing. I don't think signing for a record label needs to be an allencompassing goal anymore, or at least it won't be in the near future.
That's why we're quite content to branch out on our own."
Tell us a bit more about your latest ep that has just been released?
Les: "We had initially done versions of ‘Burning Libraries’ and ‘Dancing on the
Motorway’ with outside producers but they turned out poor and tinny sounding
and they seemed to miss the point completely. That's been a problem with us
since the start and the Demonstration EP did not sound as good as it should
have either. I had got myself a laptop with the relevant software so I decided it
was best to do myself. We decided to make sure that we took the time to make
sure we got the EP sounding exactly as we wanted, it had to sound bigger and
livelier and not have the demo-quality sound we had previously suffered from.
We spent a long time on the small details for example Richey dug out some
samples from 1984 which sounded great. There are some bits on the EP like
the looped feedback at the end of ‘Sound The Last Post’ or the trumpet sounds
on the end of ‘This Town Revisited’ that we would not have had if someone else
had produced it. Not that its perfect but its something we’re happy with and
can build from! The sound is more layered this time and it has a more
electronic feel than we’ve had before. The downside was that I got myself into
a bit of trouble for ignoring my wife with my headphones on whilst I obsessed
over sounds but I’ve long since been forgiven! I think we finally have some
recordings that fully represents us and hopefully other people will get it as well."
Richey: "It shows a few different sides to us I think. I don’t think we have songs that sound exactly the same, like
most bands. There’s a distinctive sound and theme running through the EP and it’s also probably a
statement of intent for the future too. The title ‘Manufacturing Consent’ is taken from one of the most
important publications of the past couple of decades and I strongly recommend everyone to read it. Any
politics in the EP don’t suffocate you, I don’t agree with doing that to people in an EP or album, and there
are personal subjects in there which people can relate to and find thought provoking. I think the songs
work well with each other."
Doug: "I think it's the best thing since... sliced bread.
Partridge quotes aside, hopefully the music on the EP does a good job of showcasing that we're not one-trick ponies; Burning Libraries and This Town, Revisited show off our electronic influences,
while Dancing On The Motorway is me trying to be Mr Funkmaster with Les doing a rare Stroszek guitar solo.
It finishes on Sound The Last Post, which starts gently before building up into a cacophony of distorted bass and guitar with Richey making an almighty racket on the keyboards.
There were other sounds we could have put on the EP, but we felt this was the best mix."
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Les: "If you don’t mind some links?"
www.stroszek.co.uk
www.myspace.com/stroszek
fexrecords@live.co.uk
www.myspace.com/fexrecords
Doug: "Many things, but it'll have to wait until I decide to go back to University to get a PhD in Mathematics."