My phonebook is paltry. The most famous person in it is one of the Redneck Manifesto and, well, James Ford from Simian Mobile Disco. James’ little black book, on the other hand, is of Golden Pages proportion. We didn’t tap his phone as we’d have liked to, but I’m pretty sure the following soundbites are accurate:
“Hello Beth Ditto. Yes, of course you can come into the studio. I’ll slot you in between Gruff Rhys and the Klaxons on Saturday.”
“Andre? Andre 3000? Don’t think so, mate. We’re pretty snowed under. Try again next week.”
“Queen Elizabeth wants to be on our album?!”
SMD’s second album, Temporary Pleasure, features a plethora of indie and electronica’s finest acts offering H1N1-catchy vocals over the already abundant electronic hooks laid down by Ford and his bandmate, Jas Shaw. As easy as it is to judge the album by its sparkling guestlist, the centrepiece is, most importantly, SMD’s cosmically-minded productions. With at least a handful of singles bigger than Godzilla on growth hormones, we started Mr. Ford off at the most appropriate location.
You’re just back from Japan, right?
Yeah, we got back yesterday. Japan’s always an amazing place to play. We played at the Fujirock festival and the crowd were mental. When they get into it, they really get into it. Along with Glastonbury it’s the gig we look most forward to playing
Speaking of Glasto, somebody told me a story from the festival about five years ago where Norman Cook decided to play an impromptu set. He rolled up in a tank with decks built in, completely off his face, and just start lashing out Fatboy Slim songs. Which sounds like a line from [current single] Audacity of Huge. If SMD become global dance megastars with this album what embarrasingly massive things can we expect you to do?
A tank’s pretty good. Weirdly, when I went to Glastonbury last time the Super Furry Animals also spent their entire marketing budget on a massive tank. You’ve really made it if you’ve got a tank.
We talked to Chris Cunningham in this issue, and he was talking about taking his whole audiovisual show on the road for Electric Picnic that you’re both playing over here next month. Judging by your videos you guys spend a lot of time working on your visual accompaniment also…
Yeah, especially more recently as we learn how important it is to represent your music more visually. Me and Jas are very audio-centric people, but we’ve been working with this girl, Kate Moross [a 23-year-old London-based creative] who works with the videos and the artwork, and helps us tie it all in together. She’s working on the live visuals too, with another really great lighting guy who puts a lot of time into the show. We’ve got all these stupid harebrained ideas that he figures out how to work in a live arena. We’ve built in lots of weird videos and blinding lasers into the show.
I saw you recently at Primavera, which was really visually astounding.
The live show is really evolving and coming into its own. At the beginning we really weren’t bothered, but it’s taken a life of its own. We’re doing quite a lot live unlike some electronic bands, so we pretty much learn a new trick every time we play, we’re growing rapidly with each show.
So despite turning over your album so quickly the electro trend it was born into in 2007 has pretty much died out already. Because pop and dance trends have moved on did you make any concessions or directional changes on Temporary Pleasure?
I wouldn’t say we did consciously. We’ve been listening to lots of newer stuff for quite a while. Even the first record started to move away from that electro-y sound. Sleep Deprivation was the last song we did, which was more techno, deep disco, cosmic than the other stuff. It’s best when we just get on with it, really. We thought this record would be more instrumental, but the vocals we got sent back were so good we couldn’t really not use them, and ended up steering it towards a more songy album.
What with Little Boots, La Roux, et al being the moneymakers at the minute, is it time for SMD to get an in-house pop girl?
We like with having lots of different voices too much to ever narrow it down to one.
For this feature we’re talking to some of those collaborators about the Simian Mobile Disco experience. Give us some slander about your guests before they start gossiping about you.
Very unfortunately we don’t have a lot of slander to offer. The guests this time were mainly people we met at festivals over time, and whose music we enjoyed. Everybody was happy to do it. The Telepathe girls and Chris from Yeasayer couldn’t come in all the way from New York, obviously. I don’t think our studio made anybody do anything absolutely ridiculous though.
Jamie Lidell said you’d beat Jas in a dance-off. Is he right?
Yes. I think he’s definitely right. Jas just does the odd DJ wiggle. Jamie’s probably got the best moves though. We’re massive fans of his really wonky Supercollider stuff. He has lots of these old, bizarre effects pedals and things. He came in and lined them up in a row and sang into this thing that looks like a toilet seat, basically, and got really carried away. We recorded him for… a few hours, he was so into it.
Were there any collabs that didn’t work out, or fell through?
Well, we spent ages chasing Nick Cave down, but it didn’t work out. And Andre 3000! He ended up being too busy with other stuff to come down though. Maybe next time.
Simian Mobile Disco play Electric Picnic on Sunday 6th September. Their sophomore album Temporary Pleasure is released on the 14th August via Wichita Recordings. Check out our forthcoming inky edition for Telepathe and Jamie Lidell’s thoughts on the spaceship Simian.
