Butcher Boy's "React Or Die" Track By Track

Glaswegian act Butcher Boy came to our attention in 2007, with the release of their first album "Profit in Your Poetry".



It was a real treat, a excellently realised indie folk pop album, full of literate, heartfelt lyrics about wistful memories: it’s tender, organically produced sound drew favourable comparisons in my own mind: "Think early Belle and Sebastian haunted by a real past, the precise poetic pop of the Smiths tinged with a heavy Glaswegian sensibility. Think the tunes of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions matched to the intimacy of Arab Strap, most of all think wonderfully dark pop music, for nights out or those long dark midnights spent alone by your turntable, reading the inlay, and submersing yourself in the sound."

They followed this up with the single "18th Emergency" later that year, a stately ballad it was like being allowed to read someone's secret diary entry, each line consumed with poetic heart tugging imagery that conjures up moments in time, lovers lost and real kitchen sink drama.

Their new album "React or Die" is preceded by a single "Carve a Pattern" which you can download here(from the folks at Stereogum):

Butcher Boy- Carve A Pattern

It reflects a progression a more buffed up, musically expressive sound that still bares the emotional brevity, and bittersweet vocals at the heart of Butcher Boy. We caught up with their lead singer/lyricist John Blain Hunt (who is also the famed DJ behind the National Pop League nights) for an exclusive insight into each of the tracks that make up their second work "React Or Die."



Butcher Boy's "React Or Die" Track By Track



WHEN I'M ASLEEP

I wrote the main melody one Sunday night after watching The Dream Life of Angels on BBC2. Rue des Cascades by Yann Tiersen is over the closing credits, and the film has an incredibly savage and sad ending. I could barely speak the day after watching it. The final frame is still and calm
but it is heaving with regret. It's like a sob caught in your chest, grief.

Originally, the song was a duet with a completely different vocal melody but when Maya joined the band I went back to it and worked on a stronger cello line, something to suit Maya's style of playing which is very confident and strident. The rest of the song fell into place around the cello. I watched
The Dream Life of Angels again and I re-wrote the lyrics to read like a nursery rhyme.

Basil plays ten mandolin tracks on three mandolins at the end. Brian, the engineer, said that the last "I never feel..." was a Leo Sayer moment, which I'm quite proud of.

I love playing this live - it breathes and it feels very powerful.

CARVE A PATTERN

I bought a rattly old piano in 2003 and I came up with the melody for "Carve A Pattern" the day I got it - I don't think I ever wrote anything else on that piano. Butcher Boy aren't really a band for jamming but we used to rehearse this song a lot, just because it was such good fun to play. I've
got a ten-minute long recording of us playing it in my old front room and by the end of the song we were hamming it up so much it's like the finale of a Broadway musical.

This was always going to be the most pop song on the record - I wanted it to be really sharp and snappy. The last chord originally rang out for twenty seconds, like A Day In The Life, and there are lots of little nods to different songs I love in it. Brian said that the backing vocals in the chorus are like Satellite Of Love but I think they're more like Mr Sandman
by the Chordettes. They're both odd and unsettling songs though; either one is good enough for me.

YOU'RE ONLY CRYING FOR YOURSELF

I distinctly remember humming the melody for this one afternoon while we were recording our first record. There seemed to a big leap between the verse and the chorus melodies and I originally thought it could be a call
and response song.

This song was pieced together in the studio much more than the others. We ended up trying to lighten it a lot, as it had ended up sounding very ominous and serious. We swapped from upright piano to Rhodes and chopped out a lot of the strings.

I used to see a man busking on saxophone around Glasgow a lot and, for a while, I harboured a fantasy I would ask him in to play some chops and then open up with a solo at the end. We never did it, but I maintain it would've worked! We had a whistle signalling the end section too, which was meant to
be a little nod to Felicity but we decided to cut it.

We used Brian's Moog for the end section - the overall feel of the song was meant to be like Del Shannon's Runaway and we were trying to get close to that high organ sound.

ANYTHING OTHER THAN KIND

This was, mostly, a really old song I wrote at the end of 1998 called Sugar Shock, but we changed a lot of the arrangement and the vocal melody and lyrics are different.

I wrote it when I was living in Sheffield. I had the attic room and you could see for thirty miles out of the window - it was really magical. I used to write songs on an old keyboard called an ARP Quartet - it was very limited and unreliable but had a really beautiful, gentle piano tone. Everything came out sounding like it was recorded in the woods.

I wrote the words to this sitting in Queens Park. The music is very gentle and so I wanted to unsteady it a little. I'm happy that it can read as a piece of prose - it sits beside "There Is No-One Who Can Tell You Where You've Been" from our first record.

Alison plays piano strings on this, and Alison, Basil and I wrote the oboe part together one Sunday morning... the song really needed an oboe! It sounds like woodcuts to me, and ink, and a very heavy sky.

THIS KISS WILL MARRY US

We were going to call the album this - it's like an unwritten Burns poem.

This is another old song - I recorded a version of it at Ca Va in 2001 along with I Know Who You Could Be (which was on Profit In Your Poetry) and two songs we¹ve not released yet called Juicy Fruit and Mouchette. Again, the ARP was a key part in writing it - originally, the little piano riff
repeated over and over again. I recorded the first demo on Halloween 2001 and I've got lovely memories of that.

We recorded the sea sounds at Irvine beach on New Year's Day, 2008 - we got about 15 minutes worth, inciting the seagulls with a goat's cheese tart. I also wanted to get the sounds of sails slapping against masts but, strangely, all the boats were out of the harbour that day.

The introduction to This Kiss Will Marry Us was originally another old song- one I'd forgotten about and found going through cassettes when I was moving house. I used to catalogue the songs I wrote but this one had no title or date - I think it was from the same times as When I'm Asleep though, when I was trying to write sea shanties on melodica.

Alison plays the piano strings again, and the Rhodes too... I wanted it have the feeling of uneasiness you get from the gentler songs on the Assault On Precinct 13 soundtrack, which are warm and incredibly cold and detached at the same time. That's how the song feels to me - being aware of the structure and purpose of emotion but not knowing how it works at all.

A BETTER GHOST

Musically this was, by far, the easiest song to write for the record - the whole song fell into place in about five minutes. I was watching the 2007 Scottish Cup Final in the house with my pal Iain at the time, and we'd got sandwiches and coffee and cake from a place called Espresso, which is one of
my favourite places to eat. I was probably feeling pretty happy and satisfied.

The lyric to this one is my favourite on the record - I wanted to use the phrase "a better ghost" for ages but couldn't exactly work out what it would mean. It came eventually though... I remember reading that birds can flock
and fly in formation because they have magnets in their bones. I don't know if that's true or not but I liked the idea.

We made a video for this song with our pals Keith and Allison. There is a real feeling of tenderness between them in the video which I really love. The song tries to be tender, but stoic too.

CLOCKWORK

I can barely play piano and Alison and I more or less got here by trial and error and me humming everything. There is a chord change in the instrumental section that's consciously All Of My Heart by ABC and the general feel I was hoping for was Vince Guaraldi.

This is definitely the most complicated song for us to play! Findlay is an incredible drummer - we're constantly in awe of how quickly he can pick things up, interpret them, and then make them entirely his own. We ended up with a samba current all the way through this, blocks, congas... I was playing a guitar rhythm I'd cribbed off the Miracles and Basil is playing this really beautiful, bluesy little riff... It's on our agenda now to learn how to actually play it together.

The cornet players from Kings Park Brass Band play on the second half of this song - when we'd completed the instrumental I couldn't quite believe we'd come up with it all.

WHY I LIKE BABIES

This is another old song - I wrote it in the summer of 2000. It's changed a little musically since then, but oddly for me the lyrics are pretty much intact. I like the line "I watch with tired eyes as you seduce yourself" -that's the mood for the song.

As a band we were actually playing this before much of the material for our first record was finished, but we struggled to get it to hang together properly. We tweaked the drums though - it's got a little stutter and roll from The Train From Kansas City by the Shangri Las in there now - and it suddenly worked.

Originally, the song started with guitar and vocals but we worked on a different introduction... We wanted it to sound like the Carpenters. Basil's guitar makes it more Candy Says... and we managed to get some use out of the studio Mellotron in the middle eight.

We gave the clock we used at the end of this song to Ulla, who did all the artwork for the record.

SUNDAY BELLS

I wrote this, as Sparks, in about 1999 in a batch of about six songs in two weeks. Originally it was a real rant - I couldn't get the words out fast enough. We started working on it again when we were on tour in October 2007 and actually got round to sound checking it a few times.

I rewrote the words last summer. I always found the sound of Sunday Bells quite ominous - they remind me of being little and having the quilt pulled up to my eyes.

Basil's guitar reminds me of Don't Fear The Reaper; the Hammond reminds me of I Will Die With My Head In Flames; Findlay's drumming is as precise as disco and we put in a deliberate little nod to Blue Monday going into the
last verse.

REACT OR DIE

Again, this song was written and pretty much ready before "Profit In Your Poetry" but I wanted to save it for a second album.

The song started out as a poem I'd written about a Diane Arbus photograph. It was of a couple of married kids in Washington Park Square in New York...
They were babies, but furious and utterly defiant to the camera. The poem was more about how I imagined that type of person.

I wrote it when I was on holiday in Philadelphia in 2005. I had a rare moment on that holiday - it was Halloween and I was walking. It was warm, I was just off the campus at Penn University. It was about 4pm and the sun had started to drop and suddenly the angle of the light and the shadows on the building opposite was perfect. It was so beautiful and still and it literally felt I had spent my whole life waiting for that moment. And it felt like the end of something... it's not explicitly connected, but because I was working on this song at the time, this song reminds me of that moment. It's apt that it's the last song on the record.

When the brass band come in it's meant to sound like the lights of miners' hard hats appearing over the hill. Alison arranged that little piece and it brings a lump to my throat.
I really enjoy songs that are less than two minutes long.

React Or Die is out in the UK on the 6th of April 09 viasmashing indie/club imprint How Does It Feel To Be Loved? The album comes with a 16 page booklet and liner notes by John Blain Hunt. Here's a tracklist:

"A Better Ghost" will be the second single, out 23/03/09.
Orginally published here:
http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/content/content_detail.php?id=3149&type=Features

Orphans & Vandals- Mysterious Skin

Orphans and Vandals are an epic indie/folk poetic five piece from London. With a bit of luck, this year they could take over your airways. Led by the ridiculously talented singer/guitarist Al Joshua and song writing partner bassist Raven, with Francesca and Quinta on strings, percussion and glockenspiel, and Gabi on drums, the band are adept at painting vivid string augmented worlds influenced by their disconnection, confusion, of their experiences in modern life, J G Ballard and The Velvet Underground, the brutal inner lives at the heart of their London home and their journeys to Paris. Their finest moment so far is the emotionally exhausting epic ten minute symphony Mysterious Skin, which is stupendous and life affirming cinematic instrumentation that rises and falls like the wild tide, below Al's sprawling stream of consciousness. It pierces your heart and calls to mind the seedy urban poetry of Lou Reed, the sexual ambiguity of Rimbaud, and the half spoken/half sung working class humanism of Jarvis Cocker, moving from intricate emotional details to the huge foreboding underbelly of the city, back to a stranger's bed (a boy or a girl? Who knows.) toward a literal sexual climax, into sky scraping chanted refrains, propelling rambunctious rhythm sections, huge stirring violins musical saw, and harmonium, flailing to a cacophony.Orphans and Vandals create romantic music of the street; harsh, dangerous, melancholic yet heartbreakingly euphoric all at the same time. It has the ability to transport you into a scene of deep personal introspection and back out into the universal within a few literary couplets. They are seeking to add a whiff of realism, emotion and humanity to modern rock music in 2009, which would be a special feat indeed. Orphans and Vandals will release their debut album in April 09.

KASMs Interview

Fearsome self styled "Shriekbeat" act KASMs are London-based Rachel Mary Callaghan, Gemma Fleet, Scott R. Walker and Rory Brattwell. All four members have been other bands: Rachel was the singer in spazzcore band Sin o the East, along with Rory on guitar; Gemma was in London based grunge-pop band Wolfie; Scott was in an ethnic/improv band called Aum Sahib and Rory was in quite a few bands, the most well known being short-lived NME favorites Test Icicles.

During their first year together they have played in New York, Paris, Berlin, Milan and toured the UK with contemporaries Televised Crimewave. They signed to Trouble Records (birthplace of acts such as Crystal Castles) in April 2008 with their first two singles 'Taxidermy' (which sold out all 2000 copies, touching number 12 in the charts) and the primal suggestions of recent single 'Bone You' convinced us that KASMS were a band to be reckoned with, At one moment grasping at the juddering Halloween punk of The Cramps, and allying it to the progressive aggression of Sonic Youth and shaking you out of your stupor.

GIITTV's Bill Cummings and Fliss Collier caught up with KASMs hypnotic front-woman Rachel Mary Callaghan who has been accused of making "assaults on photographers and members of the audience" (The Guardian, January 2009) for a chat about life in one of Britain's most propulsive new noisy bands.

Hello, how are you today?

Hey, I'm great thanks. Had a really long lay in.

Why the name KASMs?

Because we are deep maan, well we were gonna call ourselves VOM, which is not so deep but we had an argument about that and we half heartedly agreed to call ourselves Kasms.

Who plays in Kasms and what do they do?

Gemma Fleet plays bass, Rachel Callaghan on vocals/noises, Rory Brattwell on drums/guitar and Scott Walker on guitar/drums (not at the same time).

You met each other at a gig; do you recommend this as a place to find musical accomplices? Or are internet band classifieds a better route?


I never really understood the classified ad thing, I only ever see ads like: "band with upcoming gigs requires guitarist influence include: Slayer, REM, Oasis and Stone Temple Pilots." I don't see the attraction to join that band. I think you are much better off starting a band with friends who you have a similar music taste to, regardless of their musical ability.

What makes Kasms different proposition from other acts you may have been a part of?

Kasms is a lot more natural to other bands that we have been in. There is not one person writing the songs and a big masterplan, we all go into a room and make a big racket and it just works itself out. We have a pretty relaxed approach to the way we write our stuff.

What gives you the impetus to go so wild on stage?

They lock me in a dark box and the only time I see the outside world is for gigs so I get a bit excited and like to make the most of it.

So far I believe you've been recording your work live, what do you think this brings to the recordings? And do you tire like us of over produced music that's had the guts removed from it?


That’s the reason why we tried to keep it as live as possible, we wanted our record to be a document of how we are and how we sound live. All bands first records should be like this. Spending two months getting every instrument take perfect then taking the song to pieces and jigsawing it back together and finishing it off with a slab of auto-tuned vocals doesn't make a very exciting listening experience in our opinion.


There's a few good noisy new bands about at the moment - any favourites?

Male Bonding, Not Cool, Health, The Pharoahs, Cold Pumas, HTRK. The list could go on, there seems to be a lot of good bands at the moment (all with
varying degrees of noisyness) it makes a nice change.

What do you make of this so called 'Goth' revival people are tagging onto you and various other new acts?

Its not really something we want to be a part of, our music has certain dark elements but I would never call us a goth band. When we started out playing gigs we tended to play with a lot of the same bands each week, bands which they now say are part of this gothic/ darkwave movement or whatever you want to call it. Out of all of those bands there are probably only one or two which you could call 'gothic'. We definitely like goth and it's not insulting to be described as gothic but we don't sound anything like the Sisters of Mercy.

Are there enough women in music right now? Does/ should gender matter?

I think there is a hell of a lot of women in music today and gender is really not an issue these days. Obviously woman in bands will always struggle with pervy old dudes trying take photos up their skirt but I don't see any reason why girls can't make music and as far as I can see there's nothing holding them back these days.

Is music a healthy occupation these days – what things would you like to change to make things better for the artist?


Haha I don't know if the word health would spring to mind. If anything my health deteriorates with each gig, I counted 7 bruises on my leg the other day after a gig. Obviously if you are looking to make a lot of money then a career in music is probably not your best bet. It’s a shame that no one buys records anymore but on the upside at least the majority of people will be making it for the love of it and not for the cash.

Are you ambitious to express yourselves and get yourselves heard, or to sell loads of records? Or maybe both at the same time eh? It might be nice.


We want as many people as possible to hear our music, that’s what we made it for. If we sell anything on the way that’s a bonus!

So you've got this new single out 'Bone You' it's really primal, it grabs you round the throat from its first bar, was that your intention? Is there a sexual inspiration behind the track? Or Have I completely misread that if so I’m currently blushing?

I guess the sexual connotations are obvious, Kasms is a very primal sounding band, we like that you noticed that. If it was any more primal we'd have to get a gorilla on timpanis!



How far along are you with the album? When can we expect it to be released?

DONE! It's called 'Spayed' and its gonna be out April 27th on Trouble Records.

Many Thanks

KASMs release their much anticipated debut album 'SPAYED' through Trouble Records on May 4th.

See KASMs live:
March
14th Reading Oakford (Plan B night)
28th London 93ft East
April
16th Nottingham Radar
17th Winchester Railway
24/5th London Camden Crawl

http://www.myspace.com/kasms

Orginally published here:
http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/content/content_detail.php?id=3130&type=Interviews

AKIRA THE DON VS STREETFIGHTER

GIITTV's Bill Cummings spoke exclusively to ace Welsh rapper/remixer Akira The Don(born Adam Narkiewicz).

His second album 'The Life Equation" is released later this year, which he promises is 'a massive pop record - massive and pop like New Order, or Meatloaf, or The Supremes'In advance he's put together an exclusive free track to celebrate the release of Street Fighter 4.

Appropriately named 'Street Fighter', another idiosyncratic joint from the magician of samples, featuring three rappers skitting on Childhood fights it's a grimey slice of old school hip-hop containing mashed up sound bites from the classic 90s arcade title.

If you ever played Street Fighter back in the day, at home on your SNES or in a grubby seafront arcade, this is going to be a big nostalgia trip - check it out here:

http://www.akirathedon.com/2009/02/music-akira-the-don-ft-big-narstie-littles-lickle-p-streetfighter-i-will-f-u-up/


Why the love for Streetfighter? What's your favourite character?


Street Fighter was the second beat em up I ever played. the first was some Karate Kid thing, which pretty much Sucked Balls... So discovering Street Fighter, and the Spectrum version adapted for the Sam Coupe at that, was something of a revelation. It was all animey-ey, like Ulyses and those cartoons that were on at the time that I loved. It was just dope... And for some worrying reason (probably the same one for which I gravitated towards Voldo in Soul Calibur), I was big on Dhalsim. He was just the sickest thing. Levitating and punching you in the balls from six feet and shit.

So how did the Streetfighter track come about? Did they approach you or did you always hanker after remixing the sound effects on the game?

They got in touch to see if I fancied getting my hands on the sound effects and parts and stuff, and I totally did. Weirdly (or not, depending on how much faith you have in Idea Space, or Collective Consciousness, or whatever you call it), I'd been doing a bunch of computer game themed/sampling stuff for a rapper called Pixel, and I'd wanted to get the Street Fighter parts for a while. The music was this brilliant, epic, pop stuff, totally synthetic but still warm. I was always drawn to that sort of thing.

What was the lyrical set up?I heard you took inspiration from school yard fights?

Yeah, exactly. Littles, Narstie and Lickle P were round, listening to music and chopping up bags of weed with my hairdressing scissors, and we got to talking about all the fights we got into at school, and that became the song.


Tell us about the rappers that appear on the track?

Well, there's Big Narstie from Brixtol, who I've been making music with since 2004. He's brilliant, a very funny, very genuine, very talented guy. We've just finished recording his debut album here at Don Studios. It's a beautiful, tragic, horrific future-pop record, which I believe he's titling An Exceedingly Good Cake.

Littles is a good friend of mine, and a dope emcee. We've made a lot of music together these past few years... I recorded both his mixtapes here. He's been on tag for about 5 months and has to be home for 7, but we've still made a load of music regardless. he gets on with stuff, whatever. He's ace. Lickle P is a mate of his, we only met recently. He's part of Juelz Santana's Skull Gang thing. I love his voice, it sounds double tracked when it isn't.

How about the new album when is that due to drop now?I heard you lost a hard drive?

I lost three hard drives in a week! 6 years of work! Dead to dodgy electrics and poverty! I am ZenNinja-fied though so I didn't even swear. I just made new stuff. The album wasn't too affected anyway, cos its all on Stephen Hague's machines, and he's old school so he backs everything up fifteen times and ships one drive off to California to be locked in a wine cellar and that sort of thing.

Anyway, the record is awesome, thanks for asking. Its called The Life Equation. I wanted to make a massive pop record - massive and pop like New Order, or Meatloaf, or The Supremes, and we've more than achieved that. Its being mixed right now, by the aforementioned Dr Hague, and I'm working on the mixtape that comes before it, which is called The Omega Sanction. That drops in March.

Could you give us a direct link to the track?

Here ya go. AKIRA THE DON FEAT BIG NARSTIE, LITTLES AND LICKLE P- STREETFIGHTER
We're doing a remix competition for the thing - I've upped all the Street Fighter sounds and effects and the acapella on my site, for people to play with. I am excited to hear what people come up with, cos my peoples' stuff is always awesome.

Good luck and thanks

Thank you brother!

Akira The Don releases his new album "The Life Equation" later this year(its preceeded by the mixtape in March).

Street Fighter 4's released on 20th February

Orginally published here:

http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/content/content_detail.php?id=3113&type=Interviews