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Home > Discography >
Gay&Night Magazine - http://www.sprk.nl/index.php?title=my_goldfrapp_interview
   
   
 

Release : January 16
Country : Sprk/Serge Leblon
Label : The Netherlands
Cat.no : interview
Format : 16/01/08
Tracklist : Yesterday I got a chance to interview Goldfrapp about their excellent new album Seventh Tree, which will be out on February 25th. The text below is my first draft of the interview. It will be published in edited form in the March edition of Gay&Night Magazine, which is distributed for free in virtually all gay bars and club in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Feel free to link to this URL if you want to link to the interview. Do not copy the text onto other sites etc. Thanks and enjoy.


First of all, congratulations on your new album, I truly think it’s the best you’ve ever done.
Alison: Uhuh.

It surprised me to see the change in style from your previous album Supernature to Seventh Tree. Last time you drastically changed your style, it was right after the first album and I think you said you did it because you wanted to dance on stage a bit more…
Alison:[laughs]

So what prompted the change in style this time around?
Alison: I think it was… Oh gosh, a few things, really. I think this album has been brewing for a while. I think we sort of knew that we might do something like this. We’d already talked about the ideas and stuff. So it wasn’t a complete surprise. I think that when we were touring Supernature, it was fantastic fun to have things that were really pumping, loud, and people with their hands in the air, that was all really good fun. But I think we felt like there wasn’t much space in the music, that it needed more breathing space. It felt like everything was filled up, you know? And then also, I think we wanted to do something that felt a little bit more intimate, a bit more human. It was just bloody nice, being in a room, playing a piano, voice, maybe one other instrument… There was just something really nice about doing that. Very satisfying.

It seems like this time around you took a bit longer to create something new, were there any musical directions that you looked into, but eventually steered away from?
Alison: I don’t think we really did take longer, I think somebody else just said that. [laughs] We didn’t finish touring until September 2006. So it was only a couple of months where we didn’t really do very much. We started the album in January of 2007. At the beginning of the album we did feel it was probably going to take longer, because we wanted to do something completely different. And therefore we thought we’d have to relax and accept that it might take a little bit longer. And we went down some roads that didn’t work, but we accepted that, and it’s ok. Because it was really good doing that, wasn’t it? It was quite… What’s the word?
Will: Well, this was the first time we had a chance to really do that.
Alison: We really felt that, if we’re going to do something different, we’ve really got to chill out and not feel the pressure of the record company to finish another album. You need that time to play around and try ideas out. We did do quite a few tracks that were quite up-tempo, but we just thought our hearts weren’t in it. It didn’t strike a chord with us.

How did the label react to the change in style?
Alison: They were amazingly supportive, actually. We were slightly worried – in fact, we were more than slightly worried. We thought ‘oh my god, they are going to tell us to fuck off and start all over again’. [laughs] But they didn’t do that at all. They were really supportive and very enthusiastic and encouraging.

The album was leaked onto the internet months before its release. What was your reaction to that?
Alison: I was really sad about it. Ummm… Yeah, Will?
Will: We’ve been talking about this quite a lot today. It’s something that seems to be happening, which we’d better avoid, really. There are two things about it. One thing is that there’s a date that you want to release your record on, which is kind of like ‘hey, party! This is what it actually is, surprise surprise!’
Alison: [laughs]
Will: So any release before that seems to deflate that. But also, the quality of what people listen to on downloads is very low, so that’s disappointing too.
Alison: And after all your hard work you might not actually be able to go on holiday, because no one has bought your album, they’ve just downloaded it.
Will: Yeah, there is the financial side of it.

Do you think there’s a possibility the leak may have pulled in a new audience? That people might have gotten to hear it who otherwise wouldn’t have?
Alison: Yeah, who knows.
Will: It’s not all bad, exactly. There might be a positive side to it. And it would have been worse if it would have leaked onto the internet and nobody would have downloaded it!
Alison: [laughs]

Has the work dynamic between the two of you changed over the years?
Will: No, not at all. It’s one of the things that hasn’t changed, I would say. It’s very consistent.

It seems like you were really inspired by sort of sixties flower-power kind of music. The album is kind of psychedelic, definitely an album for spring. What kind of music did you listen to, to draw inspiration from?
Will: Well, it’s funny, because when you say that, [I’d love to answer] ‘yeah, we were!’ but we actually went to listen to some of it, ‘cause we were thinking we should listen to some phychedelia. It was actually very hard to find anything that was relevant, it was quite a bit of a shock. There’s a lovely track by Nick Drake called River Man and there are a few other things like that, but not much of the electric psychedelia, you know. I mean, Hendrix is psychedelia, isn’t he? So, in a way, we had to invent our on vision of what flower-power psychedelia was.

Seventh Tree sounds like it was recorded in a little house in the middle of a forest, with just barely having electricity and running water. When you’re in this secluded environment, making music, what do you do when you’re not recording? I can’t imagine you making music 24 hours a day. Do you cook? I’ve seen you bake a cake on TV once…
Alison: That was awful, so awful! I got persuaded to do that, and it was one of those things where I thought ‘what the fuck am I doing?’. Anyway… I like hanging out with my friends. What do you do in your spare time, Will?
Will: Yeah, I don’t know… I’ve got a little boy now, and so he’s quite a thing. He’s a year old now. So he’s a handful, there’s quite a lot of ‘him’ going on. Which is nice.

Do you bring your families in as well, when you’re creating the music?
Will: No, no. Definitely not. [they both laugh]

You’re always so spot-on in terms of styling. A lot of the imagery for the new album includes owls, pierrots and clowns. Where does your inspiration come from?
Alison: I’m not really sure! They’re just images that I’ve liked for a long time. We spoke a lot about clowns, I’m not sure why, and pierrots. They are things I’ve always been interested in. They’ve been used a lot in art. I suppose they are images and themes that are very much a part of our culture and have been for a long time. And there are things and visuals that appear whilst working on the music. I don’t know…
When we were making the music we were talking a lot about films that have inspired us, and I think light seemed very important. And I think one of the reasons why we wanted to do all the photos outside, is to get a warmth to the whole thing. To get the feeling that the sun was there, and we’re outside… Little things like that: light, and I supposed the image of the owl has been there since childhood. It represents something that is kind of secure, but also a bit mysterious. And also the fact that there was an owl outside every night where we were recording, and there’s an owl outside my house as well. These little quite abstract things from childhood, or something you’ve seen in a film creep in and grow and morph into other things.

There’s a lot of stuff happening at EMI right now, with 2000 people being layed off and some budget changes and acts leaving. What do you think about that?
Alison: Yeah, a lot of people are very worried about their jobs, and what’s gonna happen. There’s a lot of stuff in the paper about Robbie Williams, [not wanting to make music for EMI anymore].
Will: Robbie Williams got a huge advance, though. And he hasn’t really, necessarily… I don’t know, the writing has been on the wall for a while, hasn’t it? EMI were bought a year ago or so, so it has been expected that something was going to happen. I just think it’s the times we live in as well, it’s not specific to EMI. People aren’t buying as many records, it’s 25% down. So something has got to give.

Do you think you’ll be making records anyway? Perhaps by releasing music online, instead of having a big record company behind you that handles promotion and marketing?
Alison: Yeah, there are aspects of that which are good. I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it in any great detail. But I think we probably will have to start thinking about it in a bit more detail, ‘cause I think we’re going to have to prepare ourselves for changes, you know, to sustain any kind of life.

Do you prefer creating music, or do you prefer going out on the road and performing it live?
Will: Well, you know… The hardest, but also the most rewarding and stimulating part is the writing of the music. Certainly watching an audience listening to your music and enjoying it, is also very gratifying. But it’s a bit like patting yourself on the back, it’s not the real meat and potatoes of what you’re doing. And that is trying to make something that you like, that also hangs together, and makes some kind of sense.

You’ll be playing in Holland again in April, at the Motel Mozaïque festival. Do you have any ideas on your live setup?
Will:Well, yeah, we need to work this out! I think we’re going to have two more people in the band, because it would be nice to be as live as possible. And to do some of this new material we need more plucky-stringy things.


Are you planning to do a whole orchestra thing again, like on the Felt Mountain tour?
Alison: Well, we didn’t have an orchestra when we toured Felt Mountain, we had a few strings on it, like 4. Maybe we had a few more on the concert DVD?
Will: No, we only had 4.
Alison: But that’s something we are quite excited about, because we are going to, hopefully, almost definitely, cross fingers, I always feel like if I’ll say it, maybe I’ll jinx it, is use an orchestra for some of the gigs. So that’s really exciting. I think generally we’re starting off quite small, very simple. Just a band and some lights. Also, our record company is not giving us any money, so that’s a bit of a downer. But as the year goes on, we’re hoping that the show will grow a little bit and we can have a little bit more fun with it. And maybe have some dancing or some bigger lights, hopefully.

For the live shows, since you’ve mentioned it’s going to be a bit more acoustic, are you planning on re-inventing some of the older, more electronic material?
Will: Some of that is going to have to happen, yeah. But we don’t know. I mean we will do some stuff from all our previous albums. It’s just going to be a case of looking and the old and the new, fitting them together, seeing how it works in a shape, and just trying it out, really. But at this stage, we don’t know.

You’re so well known for your live performance, can we expect a live DVD from your last tour? Was anything filmed?
Will: Well, it was a shame… They filmed it very early on, and then there was a lack of communication between everybody, really. And then we did another set of shows that were recorded, but weren’t filmed.
Alison: And they were really good. We had done I don’t know how many gigs by that time, and of course they were great, everything was great, we looked great, sounded much better, and yet, they didn’t want to put any money into filming, because they had spent it all on one of the first gigs. It takes a while to get into the pace of it, and technically for things to settle down, and to [get a sense of] what it is that you need and don’t need, what looks good and what doesn’t look good. It’s very hard for it to be instantly fabulous.

So you’re not happy with the material that was shot, basically?
Alison: Oh, God… I mean, some of it is alright. But I look like some fucking old tranny… Sorry, don’t repeat that. I had too much make-up on, too much heel going on… It was just too much, you know what I mean. Please don’t put ‘old tranny’ in the article, I don’t want to offend anyone.

Well, it’s a good quote, but I’ll sleep on it.
Alison: [laughs hysterically]
Note : My Goldfrapp interview
 
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