BLACK LIPS Interview for FAULT MAGAZINE
FAULT: Tell us about your new album 200millionthousand.
Joe: It’s probably more similar to our older stuff. We’re going back to our roots a little bit, it’s more psychedelic than ‘Good Bad Not Evil’
FAULT: Who or what inspires you?
Cole: Old, undiscovered sounds, like the early 1900’s. I was at a CD store and I found a CD of Alistair Crowley, he’s just playing music it’s just really cool to take inspiration from that because it’s so different from what’s going on today. He’s just like casting spells and stuff on CD.
Joe: I would say if you’re going to get inspired from anything it’s best to get it from the source. That’s why we don’t take much influence from modern rock because they have already taking that from something else and something else. So we try and go back and take it from the source, that’s where you find the best sounds.
FAULT: How do you feel you have grown as a band?
Joe: We spend more time with eachother than anyone else. I don’t think there is anyway I could know these guys better than I already do. I probably know them better then their own mums.
FAULT: What are you working on at the moment?
Joe: We just finished recording with our good friends The King Khan & BBQ Show and we’ve just finished a ten song album with this super group called
The All Mighty Defenders. I really hope we can start recording our new album by Autumn.
FAULT: What are you currently listening to?
Cole: Our friend gave us a CD of all old 60’s acetates that haven’t been released, I can’t even name all of the bands there’s so many, one was called The Creation. Not the British Creation.
Joe: Vivian Girls and Crystal Castles.
Cole: I’ve just bought this CD by this gospel group The Sensational Nightingales, it’s really awesome, it’s like 50’s music.
FAULT: What is your proudest moment?
Joe: The New York Times giving us an accolade.
Cole: Performing on The Conan O’Brian show, he picks up pretty good music, so I was pretty proud to be on his show.
FAULT: What is the strangest thing that’s happened to Black Lips?
Joe: We became some what successful.
FAULT: Who is your favourite artist?
Cole: Kenneth Anger, he’s a cool film maker but he incorporates a lot of good music into his films.
FAULT: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Joe: Keep it simple, stupid.
FAULT: What inspired you to take a career in music?
Cole: We didn’t go into it trying to make a career out of it, we just did it for fun and it manifested itself into a career.
FAULT: Who do you think is overrated?
Joe: Vampire Weekend
Cole: Klaxons.
FAULT: What pisses you off?
Joe: When business people don’t respect us, they don’t respect what we have to say.
FAULT: What are you looking forward to?
Joe: Next year should be good, I’m pretty sure next year will be better.
FAULT: Where do you see yourself in a year’s time?
Joe: Eventually I’m hoping to reach a point where I can stop looking forward to the future all the time, start enjoying the present and then when I get really old I can look back on the past and enjoy all the things that I’ve done. But as for right now my eyes are set on the future, so I’m always going to look forward to that.
FAULT: Do you have any heroes?
Cole: Yeah, I do I’m trying to think who they are…Oh yeah! Jack Johnson, he was this boxer from America.
FAULT: What is your FAULT?
Joe: We got kicked out on India because of Cole, which was his FAULT!
Cole: Yeah, that was my fault.
Joe: nah I’m kidding. I can be a little to harsh on people, I can be a little too stern sometimes, that’s my fault.
FAULT MAGAZINE and Bryan Adams
FAULT MAGAZINE catch up with Bryan Adams and his life as a photographer
FAULT Magazine and Alison Mosshart
FAULT Magazine’s featured Artist: photo by Sophie Jarry
FAULT: How are you feeling today?
Alison Mosshart: I just woke up. Stress, whiplash… needs more coffee.
FAULT: How many cigarettes have you smoked today?
Alison Mosshart: 4
FAULT: Who is your favourite Band: past/present?
Alison Mosshart: Spank rock, David Bowie, child ballads
FAULT: Who is your favourite Artist/photographer: past/present?
Alison Mosshart: Juergen teller Chris Shaw Kenneth Cappello Jamie Hince
FAULT: Who do you fancy?
Alison Mosshart: Best left unsaid
FAULT: What have you got on your feet?
Alison Mosshart: Gold Dior Homme boots…falling apart
FAULT: What is your poison?
Alison Mosshart: Poison.
FAULT: How many people have you slept with in the last month?
Alison Mosshart: None
FAULT: What couldn’t you live without?
Alison Mosshart: Fern, my beautiful black German Sheppard friend
FAULT: If you weren’t in a musician, what would you be?
Alison Mosshart: I’d like to have a go at being a spy… or some kind of detective. I’ve Discovered a real knack for super sleuthing… That or round up everyone i can find who’s into “the secret” and torture them with bad vibes.
FAULT Magazine and Yannis Philippakis-FOALS
FAULT Magazine’s features artist
Yannis FOALS
FAULT: What is your proudest moment as a band?
Yannis: There have been a lot of things where we have exceeded our expectations even getting signed is something we felt good about for a long time, playing certain shows like Glastonbury on The Other Stage that was great! We’ve just been asked to work with a classical composer called Steve Wright who we love. Getting my Mum off my back is probably my proudest moment. I remember my whole family thought I was going off the rails and when you can turn around and show them something that gets them off your back, that’s a pretty good feeling. I was a university studying English Lit and we all dropped out, it’s a big risk but we’re young and we can always go back. I wouldn’t be happy if I was working in the city.
FAULT: What do you have to offer that other bands don’t?
Yannis: A better bad attitude, I guess we sound a bit different to a lot of other British bands or I think we’re a band that will hopefully make different, exciting records. I don’t really think about it like that, I just do it it’s like a compulsion, its addiction
FAULT: Do try to sound different?
Yannis: I don’t know how unique we sound maybe that’s because I know what we rip off! We used to listen to weird, unheard of records just to be cool, in Oxford a lot of our friends were older and they were listening to strange American bands and classical music so when we were fifth teen we used to go over there and smoke pot, where as everyone else our age would be listening to radio music.
FAULT: Do you like new Music?
Yannis: Yeah, I like a band from Brooklyn called Telepathe I like Wild Beasts there cool!
Hopefully their coming on tour with us… I also like Holy Fuck.
FAULT: How would you describe your music?
Yannis: Retardo rock, or retard pop. It’s meant to make you dance so maybe its dance music, it’s meant to be quite violent and punk in some way, basically its’ alternative rock music.
FAULT: What are you excited about?
Yannis: I’m excited about making another record, I think the more that we tour the more we yearn to be in the studio. The weird thing about touring is that it’s quite hard to create stuff.
When you’re signed to a record label everything changes. When we were 16-17 we were always writing new stuff, so to have stop doing that for a year and play the same thing…I think that‘s why a lot of bands find it hard to do a second record because for 18 years or however long you have been working a certain way you’re then forced to adapt to somebody’s business and it’s very un-artistic. So I’m really looking forward to stop touring and get in the studio and creating something really fucking weird and that doesn’t sound like anything else at the moment. We always set out to be a progressive band, so we’re not going to write anymore songs that sound like Hummer or Cassius not because we don’t like them just because we want to evolve. As much as I don’t want to get flack, I would much rather feel that we did something that was moving forward rather then make a record just to save our arses, at then end of the day it you do get dropped big fucking deal!
FAULT: What is the weirdest experience you have had since being with FOALS?
Yannis: There have been a lot of weird experiences…Japan was intense they really love Jack out there because he’s ginger so he got all the glory. It was bizarre we got loads of presents everywhere we went. We got kaleidoscopes, boxer shorts actual watercolour pictures of all of us. There are a lot of drugged related stories that we shouldn’t really go in to.
FAULT: What or who made you to start a band
Yannis: Well my family have family are quite musical so they always encouraged me, the first band that made me want to start smoking and grow my hair was probably Nirvana. I think I was about 12 when I was given their first CD and I just became totally obsessed, it made me want to stop being nice to my teachers stop playing sport and just start ruining my life it’s awesome and I haven’t turned back, it’s great! Self destruction!
FAULT: What is the best thing about being in FOALS?
Yannis: That I get to self destruct for a living and create something out it. It’s cool!
FAULT: Do you have a favourite photographer/artist
Yannis: I really like William Eggleston in terms of photography he’s my favourite, and terms of artists I really like Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele. I always read books and played music I remember all the art kids were really cool.
FAULT: If you weren’t on FOALS what would you be doing?
Yannis: Probably Gardening.
Photo: Steph Geoghegan and Nina Geoghegan
FAULT Magazine and Wild Beasts
FAULT Magazine’s featured artist
Wild Beasts
FAULT: Where did the name Wild Beasts come from?
Hayden: Fauvism, the artist movement in France, when I was at school not much really went in but one of the things that stuck in my mind was fauvism. They were breaking away from the norm and doing things that were quite forward thinking and they got branded for being outrageous.
Tom: I think that is quite nice that Wild Beasts is quite a derogatory term as well.
Hayden: It works on different levels because we knew we were just four boring white boys from a small country town and there wasn’t anything too lamorous about us, we had that raw, uncultured element and it’s sort of coming back round because from what we gather and what we read about ourselves people are either very into us or very anti.
Tom: Obviously we care about music and we try to be original but at the same time we are kind of writing pop songs and its amazing how much people can be alienated by it.
Hayden: It’s like Fauves, at the end of the day it was just oils on a canvas it wasn’t anything different. Our music isn’t made to sell it’s made to listen to.
FAULT: What inspired you to start the band?
Hayden: Personally, I was always a bit of a sucker for the lifestyle.
Tom: When you live in a small country town you think it’s this wonderful, glamorous lifestyle and when you come to make your album your life doesn’t change that much. Not having much to go to, not too many outlets of…lets say expression you attach yourself to music and you empathise with it if you’re a certain way inclined, then pretty soon you start to think that you would quite like to make it. It’s always less acceptable then if you in a place with a shit hot music scene.
Hayden: There’s always an element of being outside the main scenes if something unworthy got hyped up, from the outside you look at it and say “why are people into this?” You always think I could do better and I think every band must think that or every bad band doesn’t think that!
FAULT: What are your influences?
Hayden: When we started spending a lot of time in London we were just so amazed by the opportunities that kids have.
Tom: And how everyone has the space to be themselves and work out what they like because there are so many places you can go and everyone wants a piece of you, it’s incredible.
Hayden: There’s never that acceptance in Kendal that you get here in London.
Tom: It’s not a stifling place at all, it’s just the nature of being away from things, you get everything second hand and you’re never in the thick of it you’re always looking to other places and that in itself is quite influential. For instance if you’re writing about a break up if you do it in the moment it will always be raw but then you look back and think oh Jesus, like a diary entry. Where as if you leave it a while it will make more sense later so it’s the same sort of thing, I think it makes more sense now we have gone through the process in our head.
FAULT: What are you listening to at the moment?
Hayden: We listen to a lot of CD’s that we are given,
Tom: Anything minimal techno I’m into at the moment.
FAULT: Favourite Wild Beasts Song
Hayden: I don’t know, I suppose when you make a song and start playing it to people it doesn’t belong to you anymore…
Tom: Our new stuff is probably the most exciting, that’s obviously a very selfish thing to say because nobody’s heard it.
FAULT: Favourite song of all time?
Tom: Well it changes all the time, Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams not the Corrs version but that’s not my all time favourite.
Hayden: Inner city Blues Marvin Gaye is pretty perfect.
Tom: Yeah, that’s pretty good!
FAULT: What is Wild Beasts goal?
Hayden: We want to be massive, sell loads of records and be huge!
Tom: Just to keep going.
Hayden: To basically make a second record. It’s like the grass is always greener if we would have thought 2 years we would have been in this position we would have thought shit! You’d grab it but now we’re here it’s like what’s next? And the more you learn how to control it and do it how you want to do it. We’re still learning there are defiantly elements we want to build up on
FAULT: What’s the best advice you have ever been given
Hayden: Don’t listen to advice. With what we’re doing and what other bands are doing everyone’s their own expert, never shy way from an opinion and someone telling you how you think you should do it, so choose who you listen to… It’s always the people that aren’t in bands that give you advice and have no idea what they are talking about…
TOM’S FIRE Questions:
Black/White:
Tom: Black, always darkness, mystique, the night, secrets. So many tropes.
New York/London:
Tom: London, because National Express don’t run to New York
Casino/Goodfellas:
Tom: “Casino”, for the opening scene with the fountain pen.
Love/Sex:
Tom: You can’t untwine the two really, but Love, if I was pressed.
Hotdogs/Burgers:
Tom: Burgers, but fish is the dish.
Drink/Drugs:
Tom: Drink. It’s an issue for me.
Big/Small:
Tom: Small. Intricate, I like to call it.
CD/Vinyl:
Tom: Vinyl for the fetishist, but I only ever buy CD’s it seems.
Marlboro lights/Lucky Strike:
Tom: Marlboro Lights, but I’ve kicked the habit for this day.
Myspace/Facebook:
Tom: Myspace, but it’s nice that facebook is no longer a locked and sealed ivory tower for Shipwrecked contestants.
Blonde/Brunette:
Tom: Brunette at a pinch, but really, on another day, who knows?
Giving/Receiving:
Tom: Giving! Any mug can receive. Receiving is also giving if you do it properly mind.
Bardot/Monroe:
Tom: Bardot, personally, though I’m a little young and poor for them.
Morning/Night:
Tom: One day I hope to be a morning man, but the wee hours sparkle right now.
Top/Bottom:
Tom: Bottom, the underdog. Everything is cyclical.
Tarintino/Scorsese:
Tom: Tarantino, I haven’t forgiven Scorsese for “The Last Waltz”. Though neither is flawless, and I know NOWT about film in real terms.
Wayfarers/Aviators:
Tom: NEVER sunglasses. Have you looked out of the window? Wayfarers if pressed, but I’m happier with a hat.
Tea/Coffee:
Tom: Every ounce of air I cut is dedicated to the continued existence of black coffee.
Photos: Steph Geoghegan and Nina Geoghegan
FAULT Magazine Loves The Hours
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhIxvQSB7H0
Amazing song from the Album Black Hole by The Hours
Photo: Steph Geoghegan and Nina Geoghegan
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