Folkin' Around

A cloaked man punches a woman in the face while a naked guy reaches to look up her dress

I am highly amused by old English folk music.

 The lyrics of this folk song tell of a man fixated on a woman, then it tells of a fox being chased by hounds into a churchyard where it disrupts a Protestant wedding by upsetting a parson. Then the singer starts talking about respecting the military and finally he freely admits that the song has no meaning. All of this is interwoven with references to his fixation on a woman named Nancy. WTF?




This song was written in Elizabethan times. In case you can't guess from the revolting lyrics, Watkin's ale means semen. The song tells of how women who partake of too much, become old and ugly before their years. It's kind of the nearest thing they had to those chlamydia adverts we see on tv nowadays.

We Fell To Earth

FREE MP3: We Fell To Earth - Lights Out


So what the deal with the name? are you aliens or angels?

Richard: Do we have a choice?

You could be meteorites I suppose.

Richard: That’d be alright, you wanna make a mark don’t ya?

Nice big crater yeah. So is there any meaning behind the name then?

Richard: The man who fell to earth was around in both our lives at the time we were thinking of names and it was suggested.

I wouldn’t have thought Bowie was a major influence?

Richard: He’s certainly an inspiration, but not a major influence at this stage.
Wendy: There are some sounds of some Bowie records that we are inspired by.

You both love of krautrock, How do you respond to people who see you as more trip-hop than kraut rock?

Richard: Half time beats with double time percussion is something massive attack have done in the past but they are not the originators of that sound. Because we have female vocals people say we’re like Portishead or because there’s a half speed beat they say it’s like Massive attack. Sometimes it’s quite ambiguous. We’re not uncomfortable with those comparisons.
Wendy: Doesn’t trip hop rely on samples? That’s the difference, I think. We don’t use samples.

Do you think you think your experience working with bands like UNKLE and QOTSA has contributed to the fact that WFTE have gained so much attention so quickly? Or is it more to do with being played on TV programs like Gossip girl and CSI NY?

Richard: We haven’t been to America yet, but because of the fact we were used on Gossip girl, numb3rs, prisoner and CSI, we get an amazing amount of hits we get on a daily basis. The fact people respond that way is a blessing. It’s great to have that and be able to anticipate going there to play; it’s going to be interesting.
The sync thing is different here. There’s all these shows that sync a lot of interesting British music but most of them seem to be in America at the moment.

Are there any TV programs you wouldn’t like to be associated with?

Richard: I don’t watch TV. Neither does Wendy. We don’t need it. There’s a certain point where a line has to be drawn with TV programs and adverts. We’ll make that decision when it arises. But up to now we’ve been happy with what our music been used for, it’s great kids are finding out about us.

Why did you choose to base yourselves in grey old England, rather than California where you seem to have many ties?

Wendy: I’ve visited England twice before and I really liked it and I know several English people in the states and I get on really well with them. So when Rich called me about doing some work I said “shall I come over there?” And when it started going really well in the studio it got to the point where I had to be there all the time. We had already started working here and Rich has a great studio.
Richard: My studio was also an important factor. These facilities make it possible for us to actually do something. Over the years I’ve accumulated a bunch of stuff so it’s cheap for us to be in the studio everyday and just experiment with stuff.
Wendy: It’d be nice to go to the desert someday and do some writing. I found the idea of coming here really inspiring because it’s new and different to what I’m used to. There is so much going on in the music scene its exciting so I decided to come here.

I read that you guys have been influenced by the desert landscape, is the grey sky and ancient architecture of London also an influence?

Wendy: Yes. Those things you mentioned illicit a certain feeling which must come out in the music somehow because those feelings can manipulate your creativity. It must be a hybrid of what was going on there and what happens here.
What experiences from your day to day lives are incorporated into what you create and how you perform?
Rich: Everything really. It’s interesting how and when things come out as well. Really chance meetings with other human beings which are completely random but have a kind of important impact on your life. Just one meeting can change the course of how you do things in the future.

What is it about the current musical climate that you think has resulted in the kraut rock revival?

Wendy: I think it’s definitely begun.
Rich: It seems like it’s been going awhile. Bands like the horrors have been influenced by it and it’s exciting to feel like there are other bands we could play with and their fans will be really into our music and vice versa. All these bands coming together, it creates, I don’t wanna say scene, but its cool when different bands can share fans. If there had only been one rock and roll band then rock and roll wouldn’t be as big as it is today. It takes a few things coming together to take things beyond a certain level.
The new flaming lips record, which we’ve been lucky enough to hear, it’s kind of proto-punk but the rhythm section is kind of more constant…
W: repetitive, hypnotic.
R: It has kraut elements.

Like Neu?

Richard: Neu! Has the super straight beat. It’s like that but they are more offbeat. That record, I have no idea how they made it, but it sounds like they were jamming for fucking hours.
W: It’s unbelievable
R: It’s mind blowing, its so improvised but just sounds like the best fucking jam since can.
The kraut rock revival could be seen as part of a more vague resurgence of psychedelic music in general. It’s interesting that people are looking for music that makes you zone out.
W: without trying to sound too hippy dippy, I think a few people with really good taste in music have got hung up on the kraut thing recently and it just sends out a wave through the artistic community. Eveyone’s picking up on it and thank God, because it’s really good and intelligent and inspiring and has this hypnotic quality that gives you a break. Like a nice break from the chaos of everything that’s been going on in the world for the last year or two.(sigh) It’s kind if meditative, all these hypnotic grooves and stuff. I’m so happy about it.
R: Bands like Faust, Neu! Can and any others we can mention, they need as many props and as many mentions as they can get for the rest of time basically.

Yeah, even the sex pistols said that kraut rock was an influence.

Wendy: And P.I.L right?
Rich: And even pieces of Joy Division, you know the early stuff.
Wendy: It’s just like really simple, soulful, repetitive grooves with really small deviations from time to time.
Rich: That’s the hypnotic element, you can just get lost in its great that were back to that point in time.

There are ancient disciplines in many cultures such as Australian aborigines or Native Americans where they chant and induce a meditative mental state without the use of drugs.

Rich: We could get really deep here.
Wendy: You can get onto a level of stillness from the repetitive sounds. It’s a good place to be. It helps to quiet the mind.

It’s good that there is music that can have that almost spiritual effect.

Wendy: It’s like spirituality sneaking around the back way.

There seems to have been a significant change in the world of electronic music. In the past few years it’s moved from the energetic dance element to more introspective and perhaps less easily accessible psychedelic music. Do you think this element has always been there lying dormant?

Rich: I think there have always been pockets of everything. There are cycles in music when things become popular again and sometimes artists add something new to the cycle.

What do you want to add to the cycle?

Rich: First and foremost – ourselves. We want to communicate with people at a level which will inspire them to create something else and take it even further.

Tonight at the garage – what routines do you have in preparation for you performance?


Wendy: I like to put on Jefferson Airplane and sing along with Grace Slick.
Rich: I’ve learnt most of the words now haven’t I?
Wendy: yeah! Poor Rich, he’s forced to deal with it.
Don’t you like Jefferson Airplane?
Rich: Yeah I do but I can’t sing along with the force she does. It’s fun though; we’ll probably end up doing it live.
Wendy: Yeah, I want to.

How do you expect the listener to react to your music?


Wendy: maybe to get them in the moment, to make them aware that they are in the room with us. Usually, people come and they stand there and they don’t leave and they watch. They just watch and they don’t talk. I appreciate that. It’s cool. I know what’s it like, when I go to a show and I might be a bit bored, how I react. We get cheers in between songs and the other night there was one guy who was really having a good time, with his hands in the air and he may have been on another planet but that was cool. After all the work we put into it, it feels really good. We didn’t know what to expect, live. We were concerned with just pulling it off and making all the sounds happen. We’d never played together but when we played there it was like the icing on the cake to see people react to what we’re doing.
Rich: You never know what to expect. We’ve been building this over time.
Wendy: We just take things one step at a time and one song at a time. Just trying to create something that the both of us were satisfied with first, we’re kinda selfish that way. We had a feeling that we wanted to create, it’s very rewarding when you put it out there and see people like it.

Going back to your cultural influences, how do you think your very different backgrounds affect the different ways you approach music?

R: we come from polar opposites in a way. Wendy comes from the rock end of the spectrum whereas I’ve gone from djing and looping beats to learning to play guitar and singing. We meet in a place where it’s like Wendy has to play some cool guitar parts to impress me and I come in with the synth stuff, she calls this Simon says. We challenge each other and we have to keep each other excited about the opposite end of the spectrum. Sometimes we have to go beyond what feels natural.
W: we have to compromise but also push each other’s boundaries. We have to ask can we go beyond that? It’s painful at times.

Does it get quite heated in rehearsals?

W: uuuuuuuurm…yeah.
R; yeah definitely
W: we’ve had our moments in the studio but I’m so glad we persevere. When I met Rich I felt like it opened a doorway. Before, I had been doing the same thing for quite awhile. He pushes me and I’m doing things I didn’t know I had in me. I really appreciate that I always want to have that.
R: That works both ways.
W: I don’t know how solo artists can go and make all these records. My hats off to them but I would get bored I would be like I’m gonna go and do underwater basket-weaving now because I’ve done the same thing 8 times. With we fell to earth I’m constantly being pushed in new directions.

So that’s where Bowie comes into it then? The constant reinventions?

R: It’s funny you mention him because we were both listening to the low record and it has a spirit which is unbelievable. He’s given kraut his salute at an amazing time in his career. So yeah, he has helped us out along the way.
W: He’s been like a spiritual guide for us with the creation of this record.

He’s your guardian angel

Magic Mushrooms

I took these photos of magic mushrooms growing in my Mum's garden a couple of years ago. The mouse was sitting nearby. I don't like mice so my initial reaction was to stomp on it, but I didn't. I don't know what he was doing there nor why he wasn't afraid of me. It's possible he was a drug user and had lost his natural fear of man. If I ever encounter that mouse again, I will teach it to fear man.

Tonstartssbandht

New York seems to have become a bottomless pit, from which an endless precession of awesome lo-fi bands emerge. The most recent of these to draw my attention is Tonstartssbandht. My ex put me on to them and if you watch this video I think you will agree, they are a bit special.




Tonstartssbandht are based between Montreal and New York. Is it tricky working together over long distances? How do you go about it?

EDWIN: We have to record most of our songs during summer holidays in either mtl or NYC, or when we visit family in Orlando. Most of the rock songs were recorded as a duo in Montreal in the summertime. During the year we are writing stuff by ourselves and emailing developing projects back and forth... we are always sharing ideas and making endless lists of songs to cover that we never get around to. A couple songs were made entirely by one guy, but I won't say which. It's usually a full on collaboration, started form one guy's idea.
ANDY: Lots of emails. Many songs are written and recorded entirely by one of the guys, and only later, when we're visiting each other or at home will we "flesh them out" if at all. Because we've been living away from each other essentially since the band started two years ago, working on music takes a real precedence when we are together (hence alot of our work will come in short bursts during visits (NYC, mtl), at home in Orlando, or on holiday (Toronto, Berlin).


Does the fact you are brothers aid the creative process or can it be a
hindrance?

EDWIN: It's the best thing about the process. I have so much fun with this band because it's almost automatically stress free, and it accomplishes exactly what I hope to get done in music. Andy is one of my favorite musicians. We share so much of the same mental references for music. We grew up listening to almost the exact sounds for 20 years. We share deep bonds to a billion bands, albums, songs and very specific sounds. I can reference something very abstractly, that I might not even be able to articulate well enough for me to understand, and Andy can very often pick up on exactly what I'm going for sonically. We just share an old and familiar connection, which is great for collaboration.
ANDY: I think I know Edwin better than anyone else because he is my brother, and we are very great friends who share an interest in writing music. that in itself should assist any creative process. even beyond that though, i do think there is a closely shared memory of influences from our family life; aural ideas and sonic play with our dad, and a special history of images, media, and environmental experiences from our mom, who does design work.


Why did you choose to leave sunny Florida?

EDWIN: I left Orlando to go to school in NYC. I had been planning to move there since I was 5 so it was inevitable. That was the best decision I've made so far.... but I did love growing up in Florida. And nostalgia for that lost Florida lifestyle has inspired many of our songs. We're very proud to be from the Sunshine State. Florida is a wild place!
ANDY: i enjoyed growing up Orlando a great deal. i still think that its an extremely fascinating place, just like the rest of the Floridian peninsula. but we spent every summer of our lives doing long road trips across the country, cuz our parents dig road tripping, and when we traveled being away, sensing myself in a new space, felt awesome. When i was choosing a school, Quebec seemed a good mix of familiar and foreign. Moving really really fucking far away from Florida has had mad ups and super downs, but its an experience I do not regret. I still get a very deep personal satisfaction from saying to myself "Whoa, what? i live in Canada now?"

The vocal harmonies on songs like Preston “great ass” imfat are incredibly stirring. Where did you learn to make sounds like that?

EDWIN: Andy is the man behind most of that song. It was his demo to begin with.... But I can tell you that the style of that song is more like Andy's old solo recordings from middle school, which are beautiful and intricate and folky. It's probably just stuff he picked up in choir as a kid and from being the musical sponge that he is.
ANDY: The Orlando Deanery Boy Choir. We toured the UK in 1999, and i still trace near-conscious memories, visions and dreams to my experiences from that trip. all those unreal, ornate houses of worship, ancient fortresses, crumbling cemeteries, and the wholly un-Floridian landscape has been a fantastic influence on every creative work I've ever realized.


Is there a conscious decision to balance the weird psychedelic elements of your sound with the more conventional pop or anthemic (in the case of midnight cobras) sounds?

EDWIN:There is a conscious decision to keep our recordings and live shows balanced between the sample and beat based choral pop stuff ("hard pop","psychedelic") and the guitar-and-drums balls out rock. We love both of these sides of our music and performance equally and don't want to have to give up one to appease a specific crowd. The audience has always been open to both sides, which is awesome. thanks guys.
ANDY: Its a conscious practice in so far as
1) "Psychedelic elements" are essentially technical FX and gear that tend to turn sounds into awesome (see Spacemen 3, Blues Control, Angus Maclise, etc)
2) But there is a point, in applying technical psychedelia, where you can't hear the melody that is haunting you and which you want to haunt others, so...
3) You use as much psychedelia as you care to get that "awesome" and then find a ground where awesome exists alongside the melodic vision you have.

Are you concerned that your music could be viewed simply as a part of the already bloated lo-fi music scene, rather than as music in its own
right?

EDWIN: I'm never sure what to call our music either, so I can handle the lo-fi tag to an extent. I wouldn't scold someone for having trouble finding the right term. And it's not an incorrect description either... We've been forced to learn recording as we go for years, so it's not often the highest quality. I can't claim to be a sound engineer.
On the other hand, it would suck if people avoided listening to our stuff cause they heard it's 'lo-fi'. I think it has more to offer than what the label presupposes. "Andy Summers" is on it's own.
ANDY: People as a group will call it whatever's convenient, myself included. I'm okay with that. what I'm interested in is the personal experiences individuals have with our songs and our live shows. "Black Country made me cry...", "Every time I come see you guys play, I get so excited that I have to pee..." "Your music harkens back to a pre-bicameral mind, when memories and ideas were ghosts and gods." It'd be difficult for groups of us to speak easily and quickly about all the bands we love if personal meanings came out like that. So I'll take those as they come and let stylistic labels stick as they will. I really don't follow music news outside of me, my friends, and local gossip anyways, so I've no reason not to be content with being considered part of a lo-fi wave.


Some bloggers have compared your music to science fiction film
soundtracks. Is this a reasonable comparison? If so what sci-fi films
or other things for that matter have inspired you?

EDWIN: That's rad, I like those bloggers then. If any sci-fi film has inspired me it would be Bladerunner. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Vangelis did the music, and we're big Vangelis fans. L.A. is so fucking big in that movie. "Memories of Green" is a heartbreaker.
ANDY: I have always craved sci-fi depictions of unreal spaces and cities. Bladerunner, Brazil, Stalker, Akira, all present foreign lands where I have been able to replicate that high that still gives me hallucinations from roadtrips across the US, the UK, and Japan. The "I, this person, am somewhere else" drug. The visions of Tokyo in Akira and other, even non-sci-fi, films are present in alot of the work i do with Ed. I think he dreams as often as I do of living in an enormous ocean of contiguous human settlement and awe-inspiring infrastructure with a familiar and foreign culture, to give us that ungrounded, fresh high that contributes so much to creative visions.

Dead Snow - Film review

With their black leather jackets and death’s head badges, there’s no denying that the Nazis looked kind of cool, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are a symbol of all that is wrong with humanity and a cinematic villain that audiences love to hate. That may explain why three Nazi killing splatter fests are being released this summer; Iron Sky, Inglorious Basterds and from Norway the ridiculous Nazi zombie flick, Dead snow. Set in the desolate mountain regions of Norway, a snow sports holiday goes horribly wrong for a group of young friends when they encounter an army of undead Nazis from WWII.

This film is a composite of cheesy horror clichés. But the film is conscious of its own predictability and features a character named Erland, a zombie film fanatic who points out the obvious plot technique of opening a film with a group of friends heading to a remote cabin. Even going so far as to name drop the movies that writer and director Tommy Wirkola felt it necessary to plagiarise. The character is later disemboweled shortly after a bizarre toilet sex scene, thus fulfilling the tired conventions of a genre that desperately requires creative innovation to remain relevant.

The only original aspect of this horror film is the inclusion of Nazis, but watching the film one can’t help but wonder at the meaning of it all. Are the Nazis rising from the dead a metaphor for a revival of right wing politics that needs once more to be put to death? Or is it simply that Nazis are the only human villains who it is acceptable to depict being torn asunder by chainsaws and machine guns? Whatever the reasoning behind the ludicrous plot, it has more holes than a bullet ridden zombie corpse. The Nazi resurrection is attributed to the fact that the group of youths find some stolen Nazi gold. Kind of a curse of the Mummie’s tomb deal. Personally, I always find the nuclear radiation or voodoo magic explanations of zombism easier to swallow.

Those who want nothing more than a blood soaked, brain splattered orgy of violence peppered with a few cheap jokes will be thrilled. The cinematography and building of suspense is at times more mature and intense than the infantile plot warrants. The bleak, featureless, snow covered peaks of Norway provide a superbly atmospheric setting for a horror film, and Wirkola knows how to get the best from the landscape. But breathtaking imagery cannot excuse a plot this lazy, or such brief and shallow characterisation. I find myself caring less and less for the fate of the two dimensional Nordic youths as they are killed off one by one until ultimately I just wish I was watching Evil Dead instead.

Review - Shrooms

I was optimistic about this film, as I thought it could be a big step forward for Irish cinema, alas, it is not. The producers wisely tried to engage the American market by funding a film about a group of travelling American teens. This is another of those teen slasher horror flicks from a genre that should have died in the eighties, a sure thing for the box office, perhaps, but it isn’t real horror, and it isn’t even any good.

They make the best of what appears to be a very low budget by shooting in some very atmospheric locations, with some interesting shots, and a well paced introduction but the characters are the same boring stereotypes I’ve seen a million times before, the jock, the slut, the blonde catholic girl with psychic inclinations. They are led by an English guy to some woods in the Irish countryside, where they pick and eat magic mushrooms, and learn that the woods are haunted by the ghosts of some catholic monks who ate some special mushrooms with black nipples which give them psychic power and immortality. Plausible? No. Entertaining? No.

The idea of a horror film based on hallucinations come to life intrigued me, but this was just a thinly veiled attack at Catholicism, containing some very negative portrayals of rural Irish communities. The monsters are essentially just men in black cloaks, so clichéd I nearly fell asleep. The special effects for the hallucination scenes feature some interesting blurring effects, but nothing that spectacular. The speeded up frame rate used in films like ‘The Ring’ was effective in the first few films I saw it used in, but it is tedious to see it used over and over in the numerous scenes in which the blonde catholic girl has psychic fits. The film ends with a twist that is obvious to anyone who has the ability to maintain concentration on something so mundane. I love horror, and psychedelic cinema, I thought this could be a brilliant union of the two genres, I was wrong. Avoid this film.