Releases/
 |
New single
MELANCHOLY SKY
8 Jan 2012
|
 |
New album
THE SINGLES
6 Feb 2012 |
..................................
Live dates/
..................................
Latest updates/
Disco Dec 21
Video May 28
Gigo Nov 01
Press Apr 03
Pictures Jul 08
Bootleg May 04
..................................
Our Myspace/
..................................
Official site
Official forum
Official Myspace
.................................. |
|
| Date |
February 18 |
| Type |
Interview |
| Source |
Word magazine |
| Title |
pop dominatrix Alison Goldfrapp |
| Country |
UK |
| Journalist/Photographer |
Sylvia Patterson |
| Pix |
 |
| Text |
What possessed pop dominatrix Alison Goldfrapp to venture into "surreal folk and owls"?
Alison Goldfrapp has tried everything to give up smoking - acupuncture, sheer will, hypnotherapy, the lot. Sidling back into a room from an outdoor balcony having just puffed a handmade "rollie", the snouts are clearly still winning. "I did hypnotherapy last week, again," she laments. "And the guy made me so fucking tense I smoked about ten fags when I left. And drank nearly a whole bottle of wine to myself. And then the next day I felt really, really depressed. He messed with my fucking head, I reckon. Fucking cowboys..."
Alison Goldfrapp, approximately 39, swears like a cabbie, smokes like a convict and sings like a fluttering skylark. Two-and-a-half years since Goldfrapp's third album, Supernature, redefined thundering glam-pop disco art, four years since their live spectaculars took animalistic burlesque to the MTV masses (stags' heads and tails on dancers - an "equestrian" theme merrily pinched by Madonna, who found herself renamed "Oldfrapp") and the incorrigible electro duo (Alison and producer/musician Will Gregory) confound all expectation with Seventh Tree, a fourth album of beguiling, winsome pastoral folk. No longer, seemingly, will Alison Goldfrapp be perv-pop's very own Marlene Dietrich, whip-cracking through a Berlin S&M disco-dungeon in 1976 as but by the Brothers Grimm. Live, certainly, there's a new plan afoot. "Harps, she announces, cheerily. "Well, a harp. Somebody's always telling us we haven't got enough money. But I'd love to have fucking loads of them. In white gowns! But it's probably gonna be one and I'll be making the costume. A white sheet with a hole cut in it. Like Rentaghost? That's kind of how it works."
Perched at a circular table in a tiny chintzy room in private members club The Union in Soho, a firewood-scented candle fuming in the middle, she finally resembles the woman in Goldfrapp's photographs. Almost. Where, normally, she's dressed like an Oxfam-bothering art student in shades and no makeup, today there's a hint of mascara round those huge, shade-less, crystalline blue eyes, corkscrew curls pinned into coils that intermittently fall down ("that's what happens, it goes all limp"), wearing a plain green Vivienne Westwood jumper and an enormous grey scarf swathed round her neck, indoors.
A self-styled "English eccentric", Alison has always taken the scenic route - from Hampshire '70s convent schoolgirl who hung out with "borstal boys" to London '80s squat-living experimental singer berserk on narcotic oblivion ("I wasted many years), to London '90s art-school curiosity (she milked a cow while yodelling as part of her degree), becoming a renowned avant-garde session vocalist via trip-hop hobo Tricky before meeting Will Gregory in 1999. Seventh Tree was created in a Somerset cottage in 2007 (where Goldfrapp have lived and recorded since 2004), spending the previous two years touring the increasingly Frapp-possessed planet.
It's lunchtime and Alison's having a small glass of dry white wine and a Welsh rarebit.
You've made a highly unexpected album - a psychedelic '60s folk album. Are you being wilfully perverse?
There probably is a little bit of perversion there, I would say. It was fantastic fun playing Supernature live - a11 those big, stomping numbers - but towards the end it was so relentless, in your face, that it was really nice to just be in a room with one instrument and a voice. We wanted to try and create an atmosphere and we talked a lot about '70s American films mixed with a slightly surreal English folk tradition, slightly... Wicker Man folk. I love a bit of Britt Ekland, naked, slapping on the walls. Films like fairytales, where they're about ordinary people - but there's this underlying weirdness going on. I 1ike that.
I hear you're intending to wear an owl costume for the next tour. And there'll be Morris dancers, scantily clad, cavorting round a maypole.
I think I was still on a Britt Ekland thing there. How can we combine a bit of good old-fashioned British sex and girls and a bit of pagan? And I love owls, I think they're beautiful. But I don't know if we'll do that or not. It could look like a Carry On film. Or Benny Hill. But it's more smocks than stilettos this time. Comfortable shoes (cackles). I'm sure there'll be people going, "What the fucking hell do you think you're doing?"
How are you going to square your magnificent persona as a sexual deviant and dominatrix with folk music and owls? You might have to come out from behind the facade.
I have thought about this. I must say, I wasn't very comfortable with that image sometimes. I felt like I'd invented this image that I couldn't sustain. Mainly when I'd turn up at a party and no one would take the slightest bit of notice of me and then someone would say "that's Alison Goldfrapp" and they'd step back in horror. At the realisation I am actually only five-foot-two and I'm not & dominatrix and I sound like Sybil from Fawlty Towers. We did a show in New York and had an after-party and I came out in these crazy shoes I'd just bought which I thought were fantastic - patent leather insane things, massive, sculptural. And after ten minutes my feet started hurting and I thought, "I can't keep this up, actually. Fuck it, I'm just gonna take 'em off." And then this guy came up to me and went, (flamboyant New Yorker) "Oh my gaahd, you're so small are you deformed?" So that's the kind of reactions I get. And I just thought, "Yeah I am. I'm really short. And I've had too many glasses of vodka. I'm not what you thought I was. Hey ho."
Has the Madonna thing followed you around the world? You being The Cool Madonna; her being Oldfrapp; her pinching all your animalistic ideas...
It has a bit, yeah, but it doesn't bother me at all. It's quite funny and there's a part of it that's very flattering and she's... I try not to think about it.
I'm told you met her and she fell on her knees and said you were the most talented person in the history of the universe.
I did meet her. And she definitely didn't say that. She shook my hand and was very sweet and said, 'I really love what you do", which was very nice. And I won't comment any more!
Back in the Black Cherry days (2003) you told me she was "the Margaret Thatcher of Pop".
Fuck, did I say that? I don't know. Madonna's... whatever. I'm not gonna say any more. Don't make me say any more!
Looking at you today, you look more like the "you" in photos than you've ever looked before.
I think I do look a bit more like me (laughs ruefully). You're right. Maybe I'm coming out of me own closet! Maybe I'm a bit more comfortable with myself Um. I dunno. I had a bit of a rough time in my personal life the last couple of years. During the tour. I don't wanna go into detail about it but I was having a relationship. And when I got back from tour and the relationship thing [ended], I wanted to get back a bit more with me. I'd kind of forgotten where me was. It was a pretty screwed up relationship which really broke my fucking heart, to be honest. Makes me feel quite choked thinking about it actually (blows hard through cheeks). And when something like that happens it brings up everything - work, your relationships with everybody, friends, family, age as well, being female, kids, all those things. And you have to check where you are with yourself and what you're doing and why you're doing it. Priorities. Thinking about what makes you feel good, what makes you feel sane, the things that really matter. What's the new main priority? Me! And knowing that feeling good about me means feeling good about what I do creatively and how I live and actually having a life.
I'm moving back to London. Because I wanna be near my friends. When I came back off this tour I remember not opening my suitcase for ages. You're so enveloped in making this thing work and when you stop it's suddenly, "Fuck, why am I feeling unhappy? Everything's hunky dory but somehow I feel really empty and crap?" Y'know, things came to me later than some people. I was in my early thirties when Goldfrapp started happening and that's all I'd thought about, work. You think, "If I stop for a second it's all gonna collapse", because it took me so long, skint for years, and now I'm doing it and I'm so lucky. And then you go dome at night and you're on your own. That goes for anybody. When your career's your whole life, and I love what I do, but you do have to get a fucking balance. Anybody who's made their career their thing, there comes a point where you think, "Fuck, er, right, now what?"
How's your optimism, romantically, for the future?
I think anything's possible. Who knows, I might end up on my own for the rest of my life. (Long pause) I don't think so. I'd like to share it with someone, definitely, but it's got to be the right person. I've had enough... destruction. To last me for quite a while. So I'm protecting myself, at the moment. But I'm eternally optimistic and romantic. And no one can fuck that up. Well, don't let anyone fuck it up, anyway. And everything's repairable. (Theatrically) Life is a constant journey of repairs! If it's not your car, it's your roof. If it's not your house, it's your heart. It's true, though, innit? I was thinking that yesterday. The floor's flooded and I was thinking, "Fucking hell, another thing I've got to repair." D'youknowhatImean? |
|
|
|
|
;)
;)
