Interview at Hop and Grape, Saturday 30th January, support to Madder Rose.
Arranger: John @ BAd MOOn

Bic: (Looking at the single) That's the promo for 'I Am The Sun'. That's with the Overseer remix and the Jaz Coleman mix. The EP has actually got the Overseer remix on it as well 'cause we think it's that good. And then there's two other tracks on it as well.

Wendy: How did you go down with Mansun fans? (Just back from a support tour)

Bic: Pretty well actually. I was quite surprised. Well I didn't think they'd like us really 'cause they're very young. But it seemed to go down really well. Which is great. It's great for us. It's good fun as well, playing to a thousand people a night who've never heard us and winning them over. They seemed to dig us.

Wendy: Do you think it was inevitable that Levitation were going to blow themselves apart?

Bic: Looking back, probably, yes. Yes.

Wendy: Were the roots of what you're doing now all there in Levitation?

Bic: I wouldn't say so myself. Obviously, us being three members of that band, there's got to be some hangover. But I think it's quite different. Obviously there's a different singer and the dynamic's different because it's a three piece, there's no keyboards and our bent is slightly different to some of the stuff that Levitation were doing. We've had a lot of Levitation fans coming along who like it but I don't know if that says anything.

Wendy: The album's lined up and ready to go? (Bic/Laurence - April) Are you proud of it?

Bic: Yeah. Actually we were talking about this the other day. I think this is the first thing we've all done together that we really like, where you don't have to cough over the bad bits when you play it to people. Quickly, fast forward this track! (Laurence - There's very few 'wince' moments!) It's really difficult because you make an album and then you instantly hate it 'cause of everything that went into it. And it's like, 'Oh my God!' and sometimes you can't even listen to it but this one... Having said that, I haven't listened to it for a while. But last time I did, I was taken aback.

Laurence: I haven't listened to it for a while but I'm really enjoying doing that. Stuff that you know really well, that you've been involved with. I played the Beach Boys' 'Smile' album and I hadn't heard it for about 18 months and it blew me away. It's also a familiarity thing, you know exactly what's going to come next. It's part of the human condition, the reward of music.

Bic: Basically the way we write is, we get in a room, just turn everything up to welding volume and just see what happens and leave a cassette running. It's just all on cassette. And then later on we filter the cassettes down to the best bits and then we live with those for a while and then we go, 'Right, we'll try that one next time we go in', and you start writing songs around those as the basic thing.

Laurence: Dave organised the rehearsal which we went to. That first day of the rehearsal was very strange 'cause it was in the same room that we used to rehearse in with Levitation and it was like a week had passed but...

Bic: Then there were three!

Laurence: And on that day we wrote Graceadelica. It was literally three days at Sunday School. We didn't have any money. Dave had a bit of money, he actually paid for those first few rehearsals.

Bic: 'Cos we were totally broke. (Laurence - We were absolutely, totally, skint) Yeah, we did those three days and just thought, well, let's not rush into this, let's do two days a week and we actually managed to find somewhere, 'cause we couldn't afford it, we managed to find this little basement down in East London that was great.

Laurence: We're sort of learning how to do this whole gigging thing again. Certainly none of us have played in a three piece before. (Bic - I did many years ago) So it's very, very different. It's a new sort of discipline to learn. All the songs were written and ready to gig, but we decided to record first. All music is recorded live. There is a few drum edits and that's it but everything else was put down; that was the whole plan. So we did see each other in the studio.

Bic: The whole idea of the album is we wanted something that sounds like what we do. And so we wanted to do something that was live. And the album IS what we do. I mean, we might not do that in the future, but it was a great experience to get there and play live and hear it coming back off the tape. We really didn't want do stuff where things were programmed. Everything we do is all hands-on, so every night is going to be different, to a certain extent. When you get to a certain level people start talking to you about,'Oh you get midi guitar effects...' and I sort of glaze over because that's about the LAST thing I wanna to do. Every night, you press a button, you might as well have someone to do it for you. Which is what Mansun do. I mean, fine that's what they want to do. But we didn't want to do that, we wanted to have full control over what we do and full control for experimenting with it.

Person comes in from venue.

Laurence: Are there many people up there?

Person: There's four people arguing about whether to come in or not.

Wendy: There's no excuse. It's Saturday night. It's Manchester. It's not as if you're competing with the Manics.

Laurence: Faithless are there. I think there's going to be about twenty people up there and we'll know fifteen of them. So enjoy it.

Wendy: We went to The Roadhouse to see Muse and there were 23 of us.

Bic: Muse are REALLY good. I heard them on the radio the other day.

Laurence: Who? Muse?

Bic: I forgot to tell you. I turned on the radio and it was Steve Lamacq and he was going, 'I got a lot of faxes about this record by this band Muse and I'm going to play it again now'. And it was GREAT.

Wendy: Really high, he goes really high.

Bic: YEAH. But it goes all over the place that track. Brilliant.

Wendy: They're a three piece.

Bic: ARE THEY! 'Cause the sounds are brilliant. The guitar stuff was great. Where are they from, Muse, then?

Wendy: Cornwall or Somerset, I think.

Laurence: Really? West country.

Bic: 'Cause it's very rarely I instantly like a band that I haven't heard and that came on and half way across I thought, 'This is fucking great'.

Wendy: Well we'd heard that one track on the radio..

Bic: Is it just a single?

Mike: No, there's a 5 track...

Bic: (to Laurence) You'll like it I think.

Wendy: It's a privately produced thing but they've just signed to Maverick.

Laurence: Madonna's label. Hmmm... Muse? M.U.S.E.?

Bic: Yeah. They're good. They ARE good.

Wendy: But that track Steve Lamacq's been playing, isn't it quite lyrical?

Bic: Yes. A really good tune. But it went all over the place as well. It didn't do what you expected it to.

Wendy: They're a lot harder live. We took a friend of ours down and he'd got a really bad head and he said, 'What are they like?' and we said.. (Bic - They're really mellow!) Yeah we did. And they came on and they just flattened us against the back wall. And we kept going up to him and saying, 'I'm sorry about your head, Paul.'

Bic: So they're really good live? I'll have to check them out.

Mike: He's got a voice like Frank Ifield.

Bic: I can't remember the track offhand but I really like it.

And on that note, sweetnesses, we bid farewell to Dark Star. Long may they burn in rock's bright firmament. Incidentally, there were more than twenty people there, though not a lot more! Dark Star contrive to make most bands look as if they're just playing at it. Sheer awesome power. Strap yourself in and hear the phosphor burn.

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