the blog @ dagmarsieglinde.com

Sunday, February 4, 2007, 05:42 PM ( 7280 views ) - Interviews - Posted by Administrator
Britain’s White Rose Movement is one of the top British bands to have visited the States this decade. Two members of the five-piece, guitarist Jasper Milton and singer/guitarist Finn Vine, talked with me before their show in Seattle in early May.
Q: Do you like making videos of your songs? Is it fun?
Finn: In a way it is - in another way it’s always a bit of a risk -
(there’s an interruption as the band learns they will get to their next show date in Chicago)
Finn: Someone brings you a treatment and it’s really hard when you read the treatment and not to look at it and think this looks really corny or, . . . we really enjoyed doing the Alsation video (or I did personally).
Jasper: Yeah it seemed like there was more a structural idea of what was going on.
Q: How did you pick Paul Epworth as your producer?
Finn: He did sound for us at a club night that he was kind of affiliated with - that was three years before he started producing. He did sound for us and the gig went really, like, tits up and everything went wrong and he ended having a fighting match.
Jasper: Not with you.
Finn: No.
Jasper: With the promoter.
Finn: He saw something in it [the show] and said he’d like to make a point of coming up to us afterwards. I thought that was really special.
Jasper: And then we didn’t see him for two years. We tried recording with a couple of producers and it wasn’t working out. We were in the studio with a producer and it was all going horribly wrong and we bumped into him - he was working downstairs with a band called Maximo Park. I hadn’t realized he had become a producer. I gave him a cd of what were doing and we did one track with him which was Love Is A Number and from then on in it just clicked really, just jelled.
Q: It’s a question you probably hate and difficult to answer - describe your sound - it has so many elements of music that I love, like disco and 80s music.
Jasper: It’s got an element of 80s and some of the beats are quite disco but it’s also got some of the bands we love from the 90s like My Bloody Valentine and stuff like that going on in it. I think it’s quite diverse it’s not just sort of influenced by the 80s - I think it’s influenced by the 90s - it’s a 21st century record. It’s a mixture of a lot of different things. But yeah, like you said, it’s really hard to ask a band to describe its sound (Jasper laughs and I agree). Invariably we get 80s references and lazy journalists say we sound like A Flock of Seagulls but I don’t see the reference myself.
Finn: It’s just not true.
Q: Who writes the music and lyrics?
Finn: Me and Jasper write the lyrics and we usually write the beginning sparks of a song as well but more and more we’re doing stuff in a rehearse room situation and working on grooves and it can start from anything like a circular phrase or a riff -
Jasper: Or it can start from a bass line. . . every one’s writing music to a certain extent but me and Finn are the major song writers in the band.
Q: Reports are the entire band besides keyboardist Taxxi grew up together in Norfolk in what has been called a commune. Is this true?
Finn: It wasn’t really a commune. It was just like -
Jasper: it wasn’t really a commune by the time we were living there really. It did start out as a commune. It was a broken idea(l) of a commune. I don’t know, by the time it had hit the 80s a lot of the people who had moved out there in the 60s and 70s had fallen out and fences had gone up -
Finn: It wasn’t idealist in that way. It was just lots of young waifs and strays living there and getting blitzed and playing music and stuff, and doing bits of art and photography.
Jasper: I think as kids you had a free run, that was thing - the kids were kind out of control, which is great for kids - just do what you want -
Finn: there was no discipline.
Q: So you were able to take up music?
Jasper: Yeah, no sound restrictions or anything like that.
Q: What’s the story behind your song Deborah Carne?
Jasper: It was about something I read in the papers in England that happened a while back. It was basically a school kid - her boyfriend had a one night stand with another girl and she decided to get revenge [with her mates] and took her out and set her on fire. It was pretty nasty. Just one of those stories you read and you’re just absolutely fucking horrified, you know, that somehow children . . . barely teenagers could do that to each other. It kind of touched on that whole . . . way people seemed to have become, especially with computer games - separated from the reality of the harm that you can inflict on each other and they’re playing these games where they go around and blast each other and it’s not real. I suppose it’s kind of like -
Finn: the social repercussions of having a Prime Minister who’s up for going to war and is a real war monger and his policies -
Jasper: I guess to a certain extent if he’s at the top of the ladder . . . he’s setting the example at the top . . . and blasting away innocent people, then that kind of thing just goes down. I don’t know, I just found it a horrific scenario. It’s a touchy subject - writing about something that’s obviously personal and painful to that family.
Q: Finn, how did you start singing? It’s a very flexible voice.
Finn: I’ve always sung - not in a professional way or in a vocational way. I just always loved singing, even as a kid.
Jasper: I think there’s a whole bit to his voice that’s not even on this record yet that’s really good as well. Maybe you hear it on the secret track on the album. It’s called Luna Park.
Q: How about Pig Heil Jam?
Jasper: I can’t believe how many people have referred to that as a yelp.
Finn: I associate yelps with puppies. I don’t know how I feel about being called a puppy. Puppies are nice, soft and cuddly. And open to abuse.
Q: How’s America? Is this your first trip here?
Finn: Second. This is more extensive than the first one - we only did like four or five shows the first time we came over. We love it.
Jasper: It’s been great, we love it.
Finn: Especially at the moment because it’s not like we’re going everywhere in the States - it’s not that extensive - it’s quite leisurely, the pace we’re doing it. It’s more like a kind of holiday really. Going to lots of different places.
Jasper: Like a holiday but there’s some really long drives in between. It’s not all like a holiday but -
Finn: for me it is. It’s nice looking out the window and seeing different sights.
Jasper: Yeah it’s a beautiful country. It’s a fucked up beautiful country but . . . From day one we’ve always wanted to get out here. A lot of our heroes in music are from here and it’s great to be here. Coachella was amazing.
Finn: Amazing. Two to three thousand people, and they’re all packed into this tent - people who had turned up to see us and it was really encouraging.
Jasper: And that’s pretty much myspace really because we’ve got nothing out over here at all. People seemed to know our songs in the audience.
Q: What’s the strangest thing on your rider?
Finn: It’s pretty thin over here. We’re lucky if we get a bit of fruit. We usually get some piss water beer and that’s about it.
Jasper: There’s nothing unusual on our rider. We just try to get some vodka and red bull. Especially if you’ve had a long trip you need something to pep you up a bit. Nothing that exciting. We’re on a shoe-string [budget]. We haven’t got a record out here at the moment.
Q: When does the cd come out here?
Jasper: We’re negotiating with [American] labels cause we’re signed to an independent in England. Everything that we do, and all the gigs that we do are purely by word of mouth. [Through myspace] we’ve picked up a lot of American fans. We came out here and did SXSW and the Troubador in L.A., which was full. They told us no one dances at the Troubador, and then they all started dancing.


<< <Back | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Next> >>