I've been working on this thing for the Ambient City in Helsinki. I don't know exactly who else is being involved with it. It's nice because they just phoned up and said, 'We're really fans of Hoodlum Priest and we want you to do something. The whole idea is that they've got this CD machine installation in some museum which will broadcast ambient music 24 hrs a day for one month each season. I think for the next one they are actually going to manufacture their own ambient city walkmans which they will just give out which are only tuned to this one station. It's things like that that I love, that is more interesting than somebody in Camden phoning up and asking if we want to do a gig.
The album "Heart of Darkness" seemed to have reached a lot of people, how many were actually sold?
I don't know, the first batch was 5000 and it sold that, they didn't delete it but it just wasn't in the shops. I've continually had people ringing up, DJs or regular people, saying that someone's played it to them. I think in the industry as well, a lot of people have heard it but nobody's got it. Scott Piering, who did all the KLF stuff, he's a radio plugger, he was really blown away by the album, he said he wouldn't do a job on it, but he'd pass it to all the people he thought would like it. That's how a lot of people got to know it, there was never a single out so it was never really commercial, obviously the record company are never going to do anything about it.
That's the way it was then, at least things seem to be changing a bit now, following the American model: more albums, less singles.
We had meetings, where they were saying the club responses from the single, the White Label of Caucasian, was really good. The next meeting, after a little argument about Copkiller, was: "Yes, well, we've decided that it's such a concept album and so strong, that to lead with a single...it's too throw-away, the album has to speak for itself." We're dropping your single, basically. And they didn't want to talk about it or have anything more to do with it.
So, Copkiller was done even then?
The Copkiller which is on the new CD, is the monitor mix that I did that night those two coppers got shot. The only other version was Andrew's (Concrete - see Death of Industrial. . .). It isn't even track listed, but in a way it's almost like a little historic footnote. To me it's a funny track, it's got a sense of humour about it. Scanning is a monitor mix of Caucasian which ZTT wasn't aware. We just went away with a big bag of weed and went off into space.
What happened to Sevier, the other member of Hoodlum Priest?
I sacked him, we had very different ways of working, when I first approached him to get involved, he was virtually the rap version of Cliff Richard (laughter), very Christian, very prose, wouldn't hear anything even remotely fucked up or dark. He's got worse now, apparently, I met him recently, six months ago, he's in Minister's college. He's in with a Christian group, Christian recording studios, doing Christian festivals.
He probably thought he was working with the Antichrist, or something.
I think that's what he thought, but he was a little seduced by it all. On the one hand, he did have that religious side to him but he did want a record deal. The guy is a pop star, he's one of those people who, given the chance, would do it. He's not selling out, he just wants to be a star and he has got it. All that White Label stuff we did used to freak him out completely, but he was a little bit intrigued. He'd never really worked with anybody, working with me was different for him musically. It was interesting for me as well, because I'd laid down the groundwork for it: either this was going to be a really interesting instrumental project or I'd try and address the mainstream in some way and make it Pop. They weren't real songs, so the only thing that'd fit with them was Rap. I didn't want to go out and get an American Black rapper, that would have been a cliché, the music's sort of more sophisticated European take on Hip-Hop.
I have heard that, not only are you a budding surfer, but you have a side project called Surfers for Satan what is that about?
I got completely obsessed with Surfing, starting last September. down in Newquay. My girlfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said: "a Surfboard!". This country's not a great place to get into surf, but it'd be good to have a British take on a surf band, there's the whole Beach Boys thing and classic American surf pop and then there's Thrash, y'know the whole Skate scene. It's still very American throughout It would be good to get a British take on it. I mean, what's the British take on surfing? It's always fucking freezing, dark, gray skies: it's not Baywatch. Anyway, it's really the outlet for getting some stuff out, now I've got this CD out, I want to start putting records out faster and faster. So far its taken considerably longer than it should of. Andrew was getting to grips with getting Concrete up and running and I was getting to grips with getting Hoodlum up and running again. Now that Hoodlum's there, it's a little bit easier to pump more stuff out. I'm totally for having a number of different projects running at the same time, all fuelled by Hoodlum Priest. I've knocked Black Radio (my previous project) on the head, it was a Rock band written from samples, but it got to the point where it wasn't interesting enough to justify it's existence. They were really good rock songs, a really hard, loud beast of a rock band with a lot of good virtues in terms of being a Rock band, but ultimately that wasn't enough to be a great Rock band. During the last gig, the singer was out of the country, which let us do what we wanted to do. We sort of split the gig half and half: we did half the stuff we were going to do and some really experimental stuff, it was definitely in the Hoodlum area, but not like the stuff we've put out on CD. I've been wondering if there's some mileage in doing it live. Doing the new stuff was enjoyable, I just did it with a guy that I've worked with on various different things, Cliff. Recently we've actually been putting some things together for film work.
Film music? As in writing soundtracks?
Yeah, I'd really like to get into it, but unfortunately you can't just walk into a film company and say that. The doors are starting to open for me. About two months ago, I was offered an advert with a really up and coming director. I had given some rough cuts of Hoodlum stuff to an editor and he played it to an Ad agency and they said, "fucking hell, who is this guy?" So, it was like, "do you fancy doing an advert?" It was French and they said that they weren't going to have music until they heard the cuts and they decided that they had to have it. It was advertising these toughened glasses. The whole ad took place in an African desert, big long roads, vanishing point style. The owner of the company is standing with his back to a big black mustang, heading down the road towards him, you're thinking: "if he doesn't turn around, he's going to get killed". It gets right up to him and you think: "right, that's it: he's gonna get flattened". Then it hits this toughened glass that you couldn't see, behind him. It's a really heavy metal advert for glasses! I thought - yeah , that's the stuff I want to do! I don't really want to go into advertising, I haven't got an agent or anything and you've always got to do personal ads and I'm not remotely interested. But I'll do the odd little thing, here and there. Basically I want to build my own recording studio, hopefully by this summer, where I don't have to depend on record companies anymore and at the same time trying to get into films.
Are you still very much into the Samples?
Totally, not sampling in the sense that everyone else has done. Those things are just boxes, empty boxes, I think that most people abuse them in much the same way that people abuse guitars. Most people haven't got a fucking clue what to do with them. Just crap. They are an easy tool: you can get quite a lot out of them, and not really put much in. You only have to clock your favourite records and see what's happening. You can see on the dance scene, there are rules as much as any scene. You know where to get the grooves, there's happening 12"s out, and you can just lift bits off them. Sampling isn't that to me. Every now and again, I listen to Pete Tong on a Friday night, I just think that most of that stuff is disgusting.
What are we listening to at the moment?
This is the Aphex Twin, it's rare that I'll sit down and actually listen to music, I bought some Jazz in Australia. I like going to other people's houses, sitting with them and listening to their music. But what's the difference: most of them are all pretty much the same anyway. Occasionally something will get rave reviews, I'll buy it and think: what the fuck were they on? I don't know if the fact that I make music makes me listen to other people's any differently. I don't analyse it because I don't put a lot of musical skill into making my own music anyway. It's all pretty abstract. There are two schools of writing, those who can hear it in their head: the lyrics, the hooks, the songs, and working on an instinctive level, that's how I work. I write a blue-print, I don't like the idea of going into a studio and laying it all down, the creative side I can do really quickly. What really pisses me off is the people that are just fucking about with the machines, it bores me senseless. I don't like having anything to do with it. I have to here because I don't like working with other people, I like to just sit by myself and get on with it. I've got to grips with the basics of music software, but I'm not a boffin, it's never interested me. I just can't deal with it at all, I can't look at manuals, I'm not at all interested in how these things work. I'm trying to get Cliff a lot better with the computer side, at the moment we're about the same. Because he can't be round here drumming all the time, I'm trying to get him really sorted out on the technical side. He's actually more into that than I am.
Several of the other bands we have talked consider that the most important part.
Who's interested?, apart from other boffins and anoraks? To me, it's got no place in music.
When I first heard Hearts of Darkness I noticed that you had used a great deal of samples from Robocop, Bladerunner and Terminator.
I was just putting on all the things that I'm into. Copkiller is two years of collecting samples. It's quite Watergate that one, because a lot of the phrases have been chopped. I don't always think "that'll be good", but I've got an instinct for having a phrase there and later getting another and thinking: "that'll go well with that, and if I chop it here..." To me, that was the most verbal track that I've ever done. It wasn't supposed to be a great piece of music or Art, just 100% kill cops. If you don't do anything with your life...go and kill pigs. As a hobby now, I still collect Copkiller samples. In terms of speech, I'll just look through the papers for something that looks interesting and bang in a tape to record it. It's not too planned. I like to have a lot of my favourite films on tape, I get a lot of stuff from that. The sample on Semtex Revolution "If you gave me a gun, I'd shoot you in the face" it's Gary Busey from Big Wednesday, the ultimate surfing movie. You wouldn't expect it, it doesn't sound like a surf sample, but it's perfect for the track. I've ruined Bladerunner for some people, they can't watch the film, 'cause they're all going "I know that! I know that!". The "Satan's getting stronger" sample's off a trailer, I can't even remember the film. "Reign in Hell" is off a documentary about John Milton.
Clearing samples is just complete bullshit, you can't do it, if your not massive they're not interested. I was told that that was the one of the main reasons that Heart of Darkness got canned, they were frightened of the whole sample business. It was early days and they were major films. We personally contacted the people on Hellraiser, they all said "Sounds fucking cool", we sent them an album, they said "brilliant, you've got permission, you might even like to do a soundtrack." We ignored some people and contacted others. There was a photograph that we wanted to use on the cover of Heart of Darkness, a helicopter gunship full of cardinals from Rome over South America. It looked fucking incredible. The guy who'd taken it was a top war photographer, we found where he was, he was just going to Cambodia, we whizzed him over a tape. The guy was obviously a little bit too old and heard it and said "I don't want to be associated with this sort of thing, you can't have the photograph."
I really like the Hoodlum tag, the self promoting samples in a lot of the songs. "oodlum preest" etc.
Yeah, well it's annoying when you go to a club and hear some incredible things but how do you know who's record it is? It's the best way: just to put an interesting little tag on your records. A stamp. I haven't thought about one for Surfers for Satan yet, but the name itself is a good starting point. If you've got a band with that name, which is apparently a Satanic Surfing band based in England, people are going to think: I want to find out about these boys. I think it's important for balance, there are Christian surfing organisations. You can get surfing tuition, accommodation and food for a weekend from [[sterling]]150 to [[sterling]]200. These guys offer the same for [[sterling]]40, but hidden in there is this indoctrination. "Come to Jesus through Surfing". It gives you that everlasting battle between Christ and Satan, all these Christian groups thinking: We've got to do it through rock bands, they're always trying to redress the balance. Going where supposedly bad people go: surfing, hanging out and doing drugs. Yeah, let's get in there and turn them around.