Simian Mobile Disco Interview

My Simian Mobile Disco Feature Interview ran on Pitchfork while I was still in the UK in the beginning of December. Below it the audio, outtakes and a link to the interview on Pfork + a SMD remix MP3.

Back in September I had a mighty fine chat with James Ford - he of Simian Mobile Disco and producer to the stars - indie stars that is. I'm IN LOVE with him... like since before meeting him. When did the love affair begin? Well, when he produced Test Icicles' album For Screening Purposes Only. Our names both appeared in the album booklet - mine cause I did the band portraits and his because he handled the production in France. I had to know more, but his name was pretty scarce on the internet at that time - mid-2005 - and only a few results returned for Simian and a few remixes of his led me to the Piccadilly Records site where I truly fell in love with electro. On the same page, a track from New Young Pony Club was displayed serving as my first and fateful introduction to them in the form of "The Get Go."

So James and I sat back in Diplo's dressing room at Neumo's in Seattle because theirs was even shittier and spent near an hour discussing songs, remixes, production and song requests when they DJ all the while surrounded by rude yet hilarious drawings on the mint green walls.

You can read the interview on Pitchfork for the above topics, plus song titles, their first "Hustler" video, just how busy James is and spy a photo I took them taking their name far too literally. What can I say? I'm obsessed with props!

Here are a few out-takes that didn't appear on Pfork about guest-vocalists and whether he will find himself down a rabbit hole as Paul Epworth did with so many production credits to his name currently flying around:

In terms of making the tracks with guest vocalists, how does that happen - do you make the music first?
We really didn't know how we wanted to incorporate vocals, we just knew that we probably wanted some vocals. It's actually really hard to get vocals over electronic music. Generally as DJs, we'd always play the instrumentals of things, but we knew for the album we wanted to have vocals on there.
Basically what we did, its we'd get people in that we knew, or that we knew as friends of friend. Get them in for an afternoon, play them four or five bits that we'd been working on that were at various levels of completed-ness and got them to pick one that they liked the most and try to write something there and then. That's a hard thing for people to do really. We had varied levels of success. The ones that were most successful are the ones that made it on the record. I think the most song-y one was the one from Simon Lord - "I Believe." I think mainly because we've had a history of working with him and he sort of knew roughly what to do.
Same with Barry from Clor. We'd done a little bit of work in the past, so we were already on a wave length. Some of them were way off the mark. We tried out quite a lot.
It was weird how we did it. We didn't want to get anyone who was really sort of famous, or successful, or really more famous than us, because we didn't want it to be about collaborations. We wanted it to be our record and there were some voices on there as opposed to "Hey - it's Simian Mobile Disco featuring -

Kele from Bloc Party."
Yeah. We could've probably gotten Kele on it if we'd wanted because he records in the same studio and he's really good and blah blah blah. It would've just been a bit... Especially with me being an indie producer it would've seemed like getting people in for the sake of it.
In terms of how we work with vocals in the future, I really don't know what will happen. We'll just see.

As a producer, you're working with so many acts. Has it ever crossed your mind, "I hope I don't encounter the Paul Epworth curse?"
What is the Paul Epworth curse? 

Granted he's now come back with Kate Nash, but after he hit success with Futureheads, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, etc. nobody new worked with him and none of the bands whose debuts he produced didn't do their second albums with him. So many acts that your working with, specifically Klaxons, are so adamant that you work with them on their future releases.
The thing is I've got a lot of respect for Paul and I think he's really good.

I agree!
I think the main negative thing that maybe counts against him is that he was apart of a sound and part of a particular type of band.

And you're kind of genre-hopping.
For me, I've always enjoyed, like you say, genre-hopping or not having a sound in a way. I think that Paul has really diverse music taste and can do that, but maybe the bands he chose and that particular time were all similar sort of bands whereas hopefully the bands I'm choosing are broader and the stuff I'll do in the future is... If you ever get into the situation we've got into where you're a - inverted commas - Hot Producer - there's bound to be a period six months later where you're the opposite of a hot producer. I'm very much expecting that to happen to me. I think the only thing you can do is to try to keep making records that you like. There's nothing you can do beyond that. The rest is all out of your hands.
The good thing about being a record producer and making music, your always judged by your last record. You make a really good record - hopefully people will see that and that's what you get judged on - that's what it says on the tin. I think that's a really good thing.

And you can listen to the interview yourself:

Simian Mobile Disco Audio Interview MP3 (48:22)

*For those of you new to my audio interview bandwagon, I have the tendency to say "yeah" and other similar words in response. It feels weird to stay completely silent only nodding my head in agreement and I'm exactly not gunning for a career in radio y'all. Preteens on forums seem to harp on it when my interviews get reposted (not that I think this one will), so that's the reason for the disclaimer...

Afterwards they DJed, came back down and got completely trashed. James is so cheeky - when the evening wound down he began to leave, then stopped to bow his face right in front of me waiting for a kiss. He didn't leave until he got one hahahahahaha. Both in looks and personality, he is quite the character.

Two more question and answer outtakes:

With remixes, offers, and people approaching you - are you picky with that?
Picky mainly because we don't have any time to do anything. If we do a remix it has to be something we really, really want to do as opposed to something we think just might be okay. Literally, we don't have time to. We've always done remixes rather quickly. We've always done them in a day or a couple of days. Literally it's like, you've got from mid-day today until you get on the plane tomorrow night or something, which is kind of dangerous. You can quite easily do something that is okay, send it off, and it's out there, which we've don't a couple of times. It's not a nice feeling. We're trying to say "no" as much as possible [right now].

Do you have favorite remixes that you've done?
To me, remixes are pretty throw-away, but in a good way. I kinda like that. I think that's why we don't spend that much time on them. For me they're almost function.  It's almost like make a song, do a job. It's like making it work on a dance floor. We've just done a Bjork remix [of "Innocence"] that I like, maybe just cause it's newest.

"Innocence" (SMD Remix) Bjork MP3

Simian Mobile Disco myspazz (how much do I love how many months Chromatics have been in their top friends?)

My flickr photoset of the evening (spent alongside Diplo and Switch as well)

Comments

[Anna]

Thanks for this, I love James ha!

Great blog too :)

[Emma]

err, james did the klaxons which and the 2nd artic monkeys album....and you compare him to pal epworth? he wishes

[sophie]

paul epworths output is far more versatile than james.
lame thing to say to james, glad he put u right.
james produced the klaxons, officially the worst hype band since menswear. glad this isnt on epworths c.v
dont be so rawly putting down an amazing prodcuer to try and please the new guy on the block.

[Nilina]

Would this fucking post die already? Yet the temptation to remove it doesn't trump leaving it up... I didn't put down Paul Epworth. He produced for the Klaxons too so that's not exactly the argument to make.
These quotes are out of context that is why the audio is linked. Still, we are not talking about whether Paul is a good producer or not because he CLEARLY is, we are talking about him working with ten million hype bands on their debuts, having ten million hits and then kinda disappearing from the press and what not. I mean at one point it seemed like he was garnering more press than the bands he was producing.
I really feel his work on British debuts was a hallmark of his production identity and then that kinda disappeared when he went to work with Rapture on their follow-up which was way under the radar. And he admittedly took time off production... apparently to go travel and get married.
The tone is a bit blunt but just listen to the audio for yourself.

I enjoy that you dismiss the Klaxons Sophie yet your outclick was on James' blog...

[sophie]

i happen to james righton the most hideous human being since james blunt and his pretentious blog bolstered that. i like the way you talk about paul like you know him and if SO many people take that you are being offensive, maybe you are. and paul didnt 'work' with the klaxons, he tried one tack they had already recorded in 2 days as the label didnt think james ford demos were up to scratch. GO FIGURE SMARTY PANTS.

[sophie]

and...other than working on the follow ups to klaxons and arctic monnkeys...what the hello is james doing now that is so mindblowingly genre hopping?!

[Marisa]

Seriously people, employ some spell check.

[Nilina]

The genre hopping has less to do with what he's done and more with what is on the horizon. If you had bothered to listen to the audio linked above, you would have heard it's about his upcoming projects that are penciled in through May.

I have had multiple conversations with Paul on this very subject hence why I bring up info about him in my first response to your comment.

If this blog bothers you so much Sophie, don't read it. It's that simple.