PENNY BROADHURST & THE MAFFICKERS

Penny Broadhurst interviews Lou and Andy of Lamb around the release of the What Sound? album. Lou Rhodes is now a successful solo artist.

Why was Gabriel the first single?

For some reason it just seemed the obvious choice. I think it's really such a...song, do you know what I mean? It sounds odd me saying it. It's one of those songs that kind of wrote itself. A lot of the songs seem to do that. It's like, I just have an idea and then it just takes on its own lifeforce. Gabriel was one of those. It just felt right.

Do you believe in angels?

In a sense, yes I do. Not in the Biblical sense, but human beings are more than just lumps of flesh that walk around, let's put it that way. There's a lot more going on. Gabriel is actually just written about a unconditional love you might feel for someone. Just knowing that a particular human being is in the world and suppose that's like them being an angel, in a way. It's like their presence is in everything you do even if they're not anywhere near you. I don't know why I called it angel Gabriel, it wasn't linked in with anything like the Nativity play or whathaveyou. I just had a word, that was what came, that was the chorus. That's what happened. It wrote itself - not my fault!

Are you religious?

I'm a Buddhist. But, I don't know why, I'm drawn to the Old Testament. My sons are called Reuben and Solomon...people keep asking me if I'm Jewish. I was brought up a Catholic, I went to a Catholic school so the influence is still in there somewhere. And also, there's something about that kind of crossover between religious fervour and romantic love. That really does it for me, you know. A lot of my favourite songs and poetry are in that sort of ballpark.

Does Buddhism inform your writing at all?

I suppose in a subtle way it does. I practise Zen Buddhism. I know there are a lot of different forms. It's a very simple form, there's nothing cosmic or airy fairy about it. It's very...this is what it is. Living in the present time, that's the main thing. It's just about being, as opposed to rushing round like an idiot all the time. And I have a real tendency to rush around like an idiot doing things. It's really important for me, to ground me. Taking time, when I can, to ground myself. I think that does inform what I do. The song Just Is on the album is very much inspired by that, I wrote coming back from a Zen retreat. It's about a way of being and that's bound to have an effect on what I do.

As a band, do you think you write "songs" or "tracks"?

I think songs have always been my priority but we lost that priority when we wrote Fear Of Fours and they were more like tracks. I've really come back to the song for this album. Also Andy has changed his relationship to songs as well, because he came from an instrumental dance background and wasn't really into vocals at all. I don't think he really got what songs were about in a way, just thought the voice was another instrument. But he's recently really got into it. He's got a lot of vocal-based music in his record collection these days, or a lot more.

A journalist said to us a while ago the songs are stronger than ever and I think that's true of this album. Mainly because the songs have been given more space. I think we've both grown up and it's more rounded as an album, the songs complement each other in different ways.

Is this the album you've felt most satisfied with?

Yeah, I think so, yeah definitely. I've got to have confidence in my conviction!

What brought you back now, as a band?

It's just when we got the album finished, really, and I had a baby in June and the plan was that I would have a couple of months off...but it didn't work out that way. It was pretty quickly back into working. We are quite slow with the album. The timing has really been about that.

What do you think of the current musical climate, then?

It's a bit all over the place really isn't it?

Very fragmented.

Completely! Now more than ever there's no movement, as in a single movement, in music. It seems a bit aimless, in a lot of ways. It isn't always a bad thing. I mean, a while ago when trip-hop was the big thing it was really boring when people were trying to club us in with a certain genre and now there isn't really a genre to put us in with, so I quite like that, in a way. I think Lamb have always been working towards being defined as Lamb and nothing else. That's what we've always felt. We never fell completely into a genre anyway, or a scene. We never tried to do that. You really had to make a leap of logic to get us to fit in anywhere. I think we are quite insular.

Is there anything that particularly grabs you at the moment?

At the moment..I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I don't tend to buy a lot of new music. I do like the Hefner (the electronic Hefner, not the indie ones) album. It's pretty out there beats-wise, which I really like. The bits I've heard...I've not listened to the whole album but I really like it. I'm pretty old skool in what I listen to.

But one of the things I really like is the pirate stations. It's a sore point with me and Andy but I do actually like a lot of UK Garage. The sort of dirtier side of it, not the commercial side. Not Craig David! But when you listen to a lot of pirate radio there's some dirty, really cheeky stuff out there and I really like that. I don't have the time or the inclination to go round record shops...I always get amnesia as soon as I walk through the door of a record shop - "What am I in here to buy?" That's what it is! As soon as I walk in, I forget what I want.

What's it like being a working mum?

It's complete and utter chaos! If you had a fly-on-the-wall "here is my life" you would laugh. I'm still part-breastfeeding the baby, which is a bit hectic. We did a gig in London, a sort of showcase gig, I was going to have the baby taxied across town so I could feed him before the gig but it didn't work out that way. It's just a bit loud..and we've got to go somewhere later today and I have to take both the kids because the childcare didn't work out. It's a bit mad.

I've always been very structural in my life - "I want things like this and this and this" and I used to be able to partition things off neatly in my life but now it's all a bit of a free-for-all and I just have to go with the flow at all times. It's a very important lesson that I've learned. If you've got a schedule, kids just blow it anyway. You can guarantee that they'll completely ruin anything you had in mind. That's possibly why I had them in the first place...

Do the kids know and like what you do?

Well, the baby's a bit young...but the older boy, when people come round he puts on the promo and stuff. But it's usually ousted from the CD deck by his nursery rhymes CD.

Do you write songs for them?

Alien on the second album was written when Reuben was a baby so I made that for him. And I've got a little song that I sing to Solomon as well. A sort of lullaby. It's all a bit too stupid...release it with the kids doing backing vocals!. It'd probably be a hit with a dance beat behind it...er no.

Who are the remixers on the new album?

Ah yeah....we've got...I've got that amnesia again! We've got a really good Tom Middleton remix of What Sound? on the Gabriel release. We've had a Si Begg remix of Gabriel...I've not heard his SI Futures album actually, I've just heard the odd track. He's pretty dark but he has a sense of humour, I like that. Dark with a twist. His mix is really wicked. It's mad, it goes hands-in-the-air house in the middle, the twist is quite interesting. Hefner did a mix as well. And then the record company got a bit of a clubby mix, which we're humouring really.

Have you still got a problem with them doing that sort of thing?

Well...yeah. It's just one of those things that the record company have a thing about getting on radio. You would think that a song like Gabriel would get placed on radio, but it seems that radio gets narrower and narrower in what it will play, apart from on the specialist shows. So the record company were angling to get more commercial mixes to play on the radio.

Did you fight that?

We went "No, no, no!" all along the way...and then we said "Alright then" in the end. We do try, but we have to humour them. We do most of the time keep control of what we're doing. We've got a good back catalogue of mixes, that's what people recognise us for, so it would be a shame to blow that with a Todd Terry mix or something. We don't need to buy credibility!

Would you release a remix album?

We're thinking of it actually, yeah. What we find is our albums are quite difficult to have as atmosphere music, our albums are quite complex. Much more albums you would listen to rather than have on in the background when your mates are round. Our remixes are much more that kind of thing, it'd be really good. We could endorse a remix album, be played everywhere. And it'd be really nice, because a lot of our mixes didn't make it onto releases. I don't think Photek's mix of Alien made it out, for example. There are few remixes hanging around that haven't seen the light of day.

PART 2 - ANDY

So, remixes and chillout albums...

We're on a glut of Ibiza albums this year. They've just about discovered us. Mainly, it was Gorecki, used a lot. I've never been to Ibiza. I really like the first two Cafe del Mar albums, I thought they were amazing, so when we got offered the del Mar thing I got getting all reminscent and was thinking, "What if they do another one as wicked as that?" but...that Chilled Ibiza, have you heard that one? I actually like that one, I think that's actually been put together with some love. That's wicked. There's some really dodgy ones out there as well, of course. We usually get requests for all these compilations and when people choose our stuff it's generally being done quite well. The Rebirth Of Cool 6, I still love listening to that and that's got about 6 really really good tracks on it and the number of people who said they got into us through that album...It really does bring people into our sound.

How far would you go to become more accessible?

You know when you listen to a good Lamb moment and you get chicken skin and shivers down your spine and all that? No matter how rich or whatever you could offer me materialistically, THAT'S the reason I do it and nothing materialistically would dilute that kind of feeling. That's what it's all about. We just do our stuff; and yes we're signed to a major label, but we have a shitload of control and a lot of other artists don't get that. We've got to keep being ourselves and not really think about it too much. Not "let's do this because X, Y and Z will buy it". As long as we're not being shafted up the arse by the likes of Todd Terry with grooving stomping ground remixes, we keep being abstract and we choose all of our remixes - to the chagrin of the label, really.

I hear you've been fighting with them over that...

Oh yeah! We say to them "Oh, that's a great idea!", or "If we try this instead," or even send them lists of who we want so they think it's their idea... If you can make them think it's their idea, that's the trick behind it.

Are they wanting you to chart?

We owe them an absolute fortune and I'd love to make that money back, but we're also a calling card for them so when they're signing other bands they can say "Oh yeah, and we've got Lamb" and bands say "Oh cool." So we're sort of kind of a trophy band for them, which isn't great for us but it gives us more creative say on the final thing. We choose the producers, we record it all at our studio, we put it out with the artwork. When we first got signed we were doing it all ourselves and we said "Look, we'll sign to you, but this is how we work." It's amazing that six years on it's still happening.

Did it scare you when a lot of bands got dropped?

Yeah, it was freaky. Not just bands either, it was people. We'd get a phone call in the morning asking us to come over and do some stuff and then they'd call back in the afternoon and tell us they'd lost their jobs. Actually in the label, got moved on. So we got a load of new people who were a bit more businesslike than the last lot. What can you do, really? Our music's not commercial as such. I'm not scared. If we got dropped we'd get another deal and have a blank slate and it would just be different. I wouldn't worry about it, that's like chucking energy into a black hole. We could do it on our own label and sell it over the internet, and we're probably at the level where we could do that and not tour. Touring a band is hugely expensive and most bands are completely under the thumb of the label and trying to get tour support. We could probably afford not to because we've done it enough for our fees to cover it, but a lot of new bands still need major labels for that reason.

How do you feel about playing live and touring?

I love it. We just spent two years writing the album and then we get to play it live and see how people really react to it. It's instantaneous and our live show is full of energy, power and emotion.

What's new for 2001's live experience?

We've got a guitar player now who's wicked, and we've got a very intimate album, so we're wondering how we can bring that level of intimacy to the show. One of the things we're doing is two shows at smaller venues rather than one at a bigger venue, and we've also got tiny lipstick video cameras all over the equipment and gear and some of the musos. So we've got half of Lou's face blown up onto a projection screen or just my hand operating machinery. Bring that really magnified intimacy to it.

Would you release that as a video?

At some point we're going to do a live video, yeah. A full live thing

Are you into the Internet?

Yeah I use it every day to check my emails, I surf occasionally...I don't surf as much as I use email, but I think radio in the UK is shocking so I get clips off the Internet and get recommendations from people I trust. It's a way of listening to music and finding good new stuff.

What new music are you into?

All kinds of stuff. I just got the new Laurent Garnier album, he's going to do a remix for us, and the Herbert live show is wicked. Just fucking around with stuff all the time, it's really creative. The Zero 7 album is beautiful but they haven't really got that worked out live yet. And guitar-y bands... people like deUS and the PJ Harvey album is wicked, Radiohead...I listen to everything from Slipknot to Madonna. Slipknot's occasional listening but I used to be well into rock music, I like stuff that gets people to jump around. Dance music's all a bit cool. When you get into a moshpit, there's something quite powerful about that.

Would you remix one of those rock acts?

I did a remix for Placebo when they did Special K. I made it like, what I think it would be like on Special K. A bit whacked out for them.

Would you do anything in the metal field?

I'd love to remix Slayer, they've got a new album and I'd love to do a Slayer mix. That's kind of old skool really, isn't it? I think it would have to be under a pseudonym or something. But I remember when I liked Slayer when I was sixteen, you either liked dance music or you liked guitar music. Dance music kids are getting into guitar music and vice versa now so it's getting less divisive.

Lou said you were getting more into vocal-based music...

I've been a bit of a brat, really. Sort of "I only like new music and if it's not from XYZ then I'm not listening to it." And I've just realised that I've been blinkering myself out really to the power of songs and what they can make you do and the vocal section of my CD rack has grown. It's a listening experience really and buzzing on both instrumental and vocal stuff rather than just one.

I did these workshops that were all on self-expression and one of things on it was vocal stuff. We did this thing where you open the door that goes outside and you sing something to the world. And I was shit scared! I've been in a signed band for six years and I am absolutely petrified of singing out of this door. I do it and it's not as bad as I think and I am loving it, absolutely loving it. I'm buzzing on the fact don't need to plug anything in, I don't need new software or an engineer, I just need to open my mouth and there it is. Since then I think I've been singing more and because of that I've been listening more to hear how other singers do it which I think has fuelled the whole thing more. I wouldn't do acapella because I think the voice needs something to bounce against.

What level of financial success do you want?

Enough to pay the record company everything we owe them. And enough so we can pay a chef to come on tour with us and cook us decent food and a yoga teacher so we can do yoga and relax. If we could do that, I'd be very happy.