ST004

N0 . 4

& THE MAC PLUS: PATRICK WOLF TELEPATHE VS. THE GZA SUNN O))) AMAZING BABY PINK MOUNTAINTOPS

CHINE

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Editor-in-Chief / Publisher Andrew Parks, Pop Mart Media aparks@self-titledmag.com Art Director / Associate Editor Aaron Richter arichter@self-titledmag.com Managing Editor Arye Dworken adworken@self-titledmag.com Photo Editor Sarah Maxwell smaxwell@self-titledmag.com Contributing Writers Kim Taylor Bennett, Cassie Marketos Staff Photographers Travis Huggett, Alexander Wagner Contributing Photographers Craig Boyko, Hobo, Caroline Mort, Lockett Pundt, Olivia Wright Contributing Illustrator Faris Rotter Advertising, Submissions & Other Iquiries Andrew Parks / self-titled 685 Metropolitan Ave. #1 Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-499-3983 aparks@self-titledmag.com

N0 . 4

Display through forever—we’re digital, remember? Published by Pop Mart Media. All self-titled content is property of Pop Mart Media. Please do not use without permission. Copyright 2009, Pop Mart Media.

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RUVAN “Ruvan’s pictures remind me of that feeling— that your life could be saved if you could get there right then, that you’re geographically fucked, and it’s all happening right now, somewhere else, without you.” — James Murphy

BLOG CHATTER

the 23 best comments on self-titledmag.com — Missed the theremin. — Even back in the day, his shtick was playing fun party tunes at a time when every DJ had their progressive house heads up their own asses. — LOL! — What is the Alligator headed statue with 4 toes? — Love the video. Love his lyrics. I don’t care what he has done! — It’s nice when people make good music. — You missed a song from the set list. They played “Surrender” by Cheap Trick... and it was awesome. — http://lovebritney.net/ — Nice photos, nice fu manchu. — It’s been a long time since I sat down to read an interview like this. — I didn’t realize “That Lucky Old Sun” was considered a Johnny Cash song. That’s an odd choice for a tribute. — Hope the outcome of this fracas doesn’t prevent any of their future shows from happening. — Do you think Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough for Me” was inspired by The Vaselines? — Perry Farrell looks like Derek Zoolander. — James Iha has hit a new low, although I don’t really remember him being that brilliant of a guitarist in the first place. — Wrnlrd. — The ’80s have stabbed the 21st century in the head with a pair of neon green sunglasses and recycled materialism. As a result of 20 more years of fashionable layers, it’s even more entertaining than the first time around. — Stood wide mouthed and wide eared to maximise the audio-visual goodness coming my way. — NOBUNNY loves you. — Jealous. — Yup, that’s my butt crack. — Her guitarist was in Saves the Day. Bad. Ass. — Remain in Light, The YACHT Trust //

CONTRIBUTORS A childhood spent in San Francisco and teenage years in Britain mean that Kim Taylor Bennett enjoys the full range of her optimistic and pessimistic spectrums. Having written extensively for music magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, Kim has also taken part in televisual broadcasts, frequently being miscredited as some kind of “entertainment” or “celebrity” reporter. For a lifelong music fan—who at 18 played guitar onstage with Green Day (look it up; footage exists: Astoria, London, ’98)— this rankles slightly. Kim lives in London with her hamster, fish and fiancé. Her favorite game is Mario on the NES.

Born and raised in Michigan, NYC photographer Alexander Wagner has worked under such luminaries as Annie Leibovitz and Hiro. His photos, which explore a fresh perspective on portraiture that conveys rich intimacy and startling character, have appeared in self-titled on many of occasions as well as in the pages of Anthem, V and Spin.

He has had numerous gallery exhibitions, including a solo show called “Oxford Proper.”

Alex, who studied photography at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, finds himself constantly laughing in the dark and refiguring the telescopic. It becomes more or less defined later on.

Photographer Travis Huggett has shot editorial work for many magazines and Web sites. His art has been shown in galleries and museums in Boston, Connecticut and New York City, where he resides with Ridge, Orson and Cass (his wife, son and dog, respectively).

Travis has danced with all three members of self-titled’s editorial team after many drinks (too many to count) at a Jewish wedding, and his photo above was shot by Gabrielle Revere, a photographer Travis says is “no joke.”

Sometimes he goes to bed early because he gets so excited about the iced coffee he’s going to drink the next morning.

350 WORDS OR LESS From the Editor This past March, I skipped South by Southwest for the first time in five years. Which shouldn’t be a big deal. Yet I can’t tell you how many music-industry types (read: our managing editor, Arye) said, “You’re not going? What’s wrong with you?” It was as if I’d decided to skip the senior prom. You know what, though? I quickly got over the lack of label showcases in my life.

So why am I scrambling for an excuse to revisit Iceland’s Airwaves Festival this fall? And what makes the event so special aside from the allure of inactive volcanoes, sputtering geysers and blue lagoons? A lot, actually, though one detail stands out—the overwhelming sense that people there are genuinely passionate about new music, about stepping outside their comfort zones with the kind of enthusiasm I’ve never witnessed in Austin. This despite a muted bill headlined by such mid-level artists as CSS, Yelle and a joyless Crystal Castles.

The reason is simple: While we’re spoiled with several shows a day in NYC, every visiting artist is an event in Iceland. It’s difficult to describe without sounding like a sap, but Airwaves reminded me why I got into this business in the first place.

I know what you’re thinking. I work at a music magazine; I’m supposed to give a damn about discovering Hidden Treasures and Next Big Things.

But the truth is, music “criticism” breeds cynics.

Writers become far too analytical and—in an age

where poorly edited blogs are elbowing respected publications—concerned with beating the Web at its own game.

Why bother? I say. Just do what you do, and readers will decide whether you’re bullshit. One argument in self-titled’s favor is this issue’s cover, assigned right after Airwaves 2008. At the time, I’d never heard of Florence and the Machine. (In fact, I’d stumbled upon her show on the way to Fuck Buttons.) And what I saw was enough to leave me uttering five words I rarely speak these days: “This girl’s gonna be huge.”

Andrew Parks, Editor-in-Chief / Publisher

1MM

The Kills / Music Hall of Williamsburg / 05.04.09 photography by aaron richter

Bat for Lashes / Brooklyn’s Penny Licks / 05.02.09 photography by olivia wright

1MM

The Maccabees / 60 Thompson, NYC / 06.22.09 photography by caroline mort

1MM

Paper / NYC’s Lower East Side / 03.06.09 photography by travis huggett

1MM

A scene from Coachella / Indio, California / 04.17.09 photography by hobo

Jump to...

Amazing Baby Black Moth Super Rainbow The Long Lost Lockett Pundt Pink Mountaintops Sunn O))) Florence and the Machine Patrick Wolf Telepathe vs. the GZA The Horrors’ Faris Rotter

AMAZIN DRINK UP The Brooklyn group reviews two rounds of microbrews.

S

ome people store water in bomb shelters,” says Amazing Baby drummer Matt Abeysekera. “We store Sparks.” Even though most of the group is fine with scoring oddly labeled malt liquor and deadstock cans of Sparks from shady bodegas, self-titled has rounded up the guys—anticipating the release of their debut, Rewild (Shangri-La)—to review the well-curated craft beer at Brooklyn’s Barcade, and the band can’t keep the conversation off their favorite shelved energy elixir as they imbibe a range of delicious microbrews. “I drank four [Sparks] at my first bachelor party,” notes guitarist Simon O’Connor. “By the end of it, I got into a fight with the best man, and the last thing I remember, I was at Manitoba’s at 3 am, doubled over in pain.” But back on track and munching on the bar’s flaming hot beef jerky, Amazing Baby taint their palates and let the scathing booze critiques fly. photography by aaron richter

NG BABY Simon O’Connor (lead guitar)

round 1: Cape Ann Brewing Company, Fisherman’s Brew “At first it tasted like cardboard, but I’m starting to like it. It has a rustic antique-store vibe. I’ll give it an E for Exquisite. It reminds me of the end of the night, when everyone’s clearing out of the party and you’re so drunk that you’re looking for what’s left behind.

So you find a Schlitz with a cigarette butt in it, yet it tastes so good.” round 2: Victory Brewing Company, HopDevil Ale “It takes a bit like wood. I give it a B.”

Matt Abeysekera (drums)

round 1: McNeill’s, Professor Brewhead’s Brown Ale “It’s excellent—a nutty brown ale with notes of jerky and a nice lingering finish. I give it an 86.” round 2: Victory, Pilsner “I like this. I’ve been really into European pilsners, like Stella or Kronenbourg—light and spicy stuff. I give this a 93.”

Will Roan (vocals)

round 1: Harpoon Brewery, Barleywine “I ordered this because of its high alcohol content.

It’s 10.3 percent but super sweet and smooth, though the jerky diffuses some of the sweetness. If I wanted something with 10 percent alcohol, I’d get one of these but only one because this is a bit too sweet for me, almost akin to Honey Nut Cheerios. I’d give this a college B+ and a high school C-.” round 2: Allagash Brewing Company, Allagash White “This was less sweet than my last one—a little more pleasant and amber.”

Rob Laakso (guitar)

round 1: Chelsea Brewing Company, Black Hole XXX Stout “The beef jerky is a great combo with this. As a salve for the [jerky’s] heat, I’d give this an A-.” round 2: Harpoon Brewery, Munich Dark “Quite good.”

Don Devore (bass)

round 1: Southampton, “German Style Something Or Other” “It’s very nutty, fruity and crisp. I’ve got to be honest, though. This tastes a little too much like a Newcastle Brown Ale. I give it an F for Failure.” round 2: Abita, Turbo Dog “This one gets a D for Dick. No, it’s good actually. It’s not mimicking anybody, although it reminds me of a particular Yards beer—one of their dark ones. You know what? Fuck microbrews. If someone says they’re amazing, they’re lying.”

CREEP SHOW

Tobacco takes us

Dandelion Gum

(Graveface, 2007) I imagined this one night and worked at it for years until I got it right. It’s kind of sad that it took years to make something so lo-fi, but it went through a lot of changes. The facial features are mine and just distorted from my drivers license. [As for the inside layout, below] these are some of my favorite [photos].

I have no idea how old that shack was, but I had seen it all my life tucked off of this winding road. It had been condemned for years, and I got my pictures just a few days before it was torn down. Both pictures are combined with shadow masks of the vegetation in a utility trail near the house I grew up in. There’s a ton of weird history in these for me.

Chin

(70’s Gymnas I can’t reme Pennsylvani I like lookin

BLACK MOTH SU

behind the panels of his album art designs.

Eating Us

(Graveface, 2009) I imagined this cover way before I had the music. For me at least, it was one of those rare things where you have to jump out of bed to sketch something or you can’t fall asleep. Without any concepts involved, I wanted a record that would sound like this looks. The song “Bubblegum Animals” is this image exactly for me. I was trying to get a picture of my hand that would have that kind of grain, but I couldn’t get it right. I got lucky in that my friend got a big box of old magazines and let me borrow it until I found this hand.

nese Witch Guy With An Ax

stics Recording Co., 2004, CD-R limited to 84 copies) ember if this was a Polaroid from my parents’ backyard, or a spot in Gettysburg, but either way it’s ia at its creepy finest. Those heads and the 666 hand were my ideal characters that might have lived there. ng at this one because it feels like the bottom fights with the top.

UPER RAINBOW

THE LONG LOST

We test the duo’s love with our take on The Newlywed Game.

M

uch like Thurston and Kim, Alfred and Laura Darlington (aka the Long Lost, a folk extension of Alfred’s Daedelus alias) make perfect sense as both a married couple and creative collaborators. Hell, they even dress the same—like extras in Back to the Future IV: Marty Done Gone Dandy. But how well do the two, who started dating in high school and took a decade to finish the Long Lost’s eponymous debut, know each other? self-titled puts the Darlingtons through a spin on the famous game show.

T

Laura on Alfred

Alfred on Laura

• It’s Alfred’s last supper. What’s on the table?

Indian food, with a bowl of cereal for dessert.

• Laura wins the lottery. What’s the first thing she buys?

A home—specifically a not-so-big California bungalow that can house all of our stuff and us.

alfred’s response: She’s got me there. Other acceptable answers would have been a thali or dosa in the place of Indian food, as well as muesli and/or granola if we are getting technical. I’m sure Laura just didn’t want to bore the readers with such minutia.

• What is Alfred’s greatest fear?

He’s very chocolate-phobic, but I believe his biggest fear is the ocean. alfred’s response: I simply don’t like chocolate, but the ocean is the setting of many a nightmare and some childhood trauma that isn’t worth repeating/reliving.

• Who would Alfred want playing him in a film version of The Long Lost Story?

I would cast James McAvoy or a young Alan Rickman, though I think Alfred and I could both agree on Gene Wilder circa Willy Wonka. alfred’s response: She would say Alan Rickman. I am more of the mind that perhaps Gonzales would try a crossover to film. He certainly can play the instruments accurately—something I am quite disappointed with in many a music biopic.

• What mainstream pop act would Alfred love to remix?

You went and saved the best question for last: Vanessa Williams! alfred’s response: Oh, dearest, how do you know me so well? But sadly I have already done so (and not played it for a soul, nor ever will). So if it’s in this future tense, I’m going to say Boyz II Men. (Not that they have much going on right now, but the same could be said for the current constellation of pop stars.)

laura’s response: Indeed, but it’s going to have to be an enormous craftsman to house all our various and sundry collections.

• Laura decides to run for president. What would her platforms be?

Her party’s platform would be cat- and kitten-centric.

After that, perhaps reforming the work week for four days or omniversal health care. laura’s response: All of the above, and much more: rob the rich and give to the poor, increased funding for tomfoolery and poppycock pudding for all.

• You just got the Sunday paper. What section does Laura tear out of your hands first?

Must be the real-estate section. I’m not as into it, but she does find very tempting deals there at times—not that we could ever consider on these musician wages. laura’s response: I always go for the California section first. Something about local cats doing good gets to me.

• You’re taking Laura out to dinner to celebrate your anniversary. What will she be wearing?

I bet it’ll be green and blue, some ribbons and smart shoes. She always has the best memory for previous gifts I’ve given her, or poignant moments from our past. She’ll find a way of wearing one of those baubles or trinkets. laura’s response: Well, that’s a safe answer since everything I own is either blue or green! And yes, probably some exquisite Victorian jewelry given to me by my darling husband. Does that mean I have to put out?!

“Does that mean I have to put out?”

LOCKETT PUN

ON THE JOB The Deerhunter guitarist shares his first love: photography.

I

got into photography about five years ago when I found my dad’s old Nikon camera in the attic of his house. I didn’t really know anything about it other than it seemed like fun, so I started taking pictures of pretty much everything and learning how it all worked. Even though I would barely get a few decent pictures out of a whole roll, I was immediately fascinated with it.

I’ve always used film. It’s definitely harder to afford, but I feel like I learn a lot more using it than I would using a digital camera. It’s the literal capturing of a moment. Once the shutter is fired, there is no going back. It’s one of the greatest feelings to me: to prepare for a shot, compose and then press the shutter. And I can hardly wait to see how they came out. It’s kind of grown from something I did for fun to something I love and try to learn as much as possible about. I still have a long way to go, but I’m having the best time getting there.

NDT

Pundt’s first sepia-toned full-length as Lotus Plaza, The Floodlight Collective, is available now on Kranky Records.

LIB SERVICE

PINK MOUNTAINTOPS photography by craig boyko

Pink Mountaintops’ latest release, Outside Love—the closest Stephen McBean’s ever come to a Jesus and Mary Chain tribute—is available now through Jagjaguwar.

SUNN O)))

FREE ASSOCIATION by andrew parks / photography by alexander wagner

“There’s no intro. It’s just fucking full on—a punch in the face.”

“I mean, really. If you’re going close to Coltrane... Come on, w guys from the suburbs.”

T

he strangest thing about the listening session for Sunn O)))’s Monoliths & Dimensions LP wasn’t that director Jim Jarmusch was seated a few feet from self-titled. (After all, he tapped the band as well as frequent collaborators Boris for his soundtrack to The Limits of Control.) No, it was the inherently awkward setting of perfect strangers keeping straight faces as $40,000 speakers spewed overwhelming waves of subterranean sonics, hellish howling, ghastly chorus lines and an exquisitely layered score.

“The idea wasn’t to put anyone on the spot,” explains guitarist Stephen O’Malley, as we slam pints of Guinness with him and Sunn O))) co-founder/ Southern Lord owner Greg Anderson. “We just wanted to present it in a way where you get an idea of how it’s supposed to sound, to give people a chance to hear everything clearly.”

Well, it worked. When heard on a proper stereo—a decent pair of desktop speakers and high-quality MP3s will do—Monoliths & Dimensions stands as a towering achievement, the closest Sunn’s ever come to replicating the organrearranging raw power of their live sets. With O’Malley, Anderson and such key supporting cast as vocalist Attila Csihar (Mayhem’s only non-Scandinavian member) and Oren Ambarchi spread across several countries (France, Australia, Hungary and the US) and most of the recording happening in Seattle, it took the band a long time to get there, but the end certainly justifies the means. As O’Malley puts it, “It was a challenge to accept the fact that it would take a while to finish, what with so many elements involved. It certainly tried our patience, but it wasn’t negative.”

Sunn’s core duo reveals more details about the making of Monoliths & Dimensions in the following pages. As you read, remember the disclaimer that’s plastered across nearly all their releases: “Maximum volume yields maximum results.”

On the tubular bells of “Big Church” Stephen O’Malley: The tubular bells on the second track were recorded in Rome. We didn’t fly there just to do that or anything. One of our engineers went there and made a bunch of recordings.

Greg Anderson: She had a library of sounds to choose from.

O’Malley: My idea for it was using a bell the same way you would in a religious ceremony—to clear the air, like the ginger that clears your palate when you’re eating sushi. And rather than bringing a giant bell into the studio, her recordings had the perfect tone and the perfect notes to it.

On why Monoliths & Dimensions isn’t “Sunn O))) with strings” Anderson: There’s this cliche of metal bands reaching a dead end in their career where they say, “OK, now we’re going to make an album with the local symphony.” We didn’t want it to come across that way. We didn’t want to give off the wrong impression of forced maturity.

O’Malley: It can be seen as a weakening of ideas, like when Satyricon played with the Norwegian Philharmonic. With us, we’re trying to expand our sound.

On the record’s overwhelmingly positive and uplifting final moments Anderson: It wasn’t intentional. We weren’t sure what the sequence would be until the final days of mixing. There wasn’t a grand plan or vision from the beginning of how the record would be. It’s cheesy to say, but it’s magical how it happened.

O’Malley: It was incredible and kinda bizarre, having the final sequence bring everything together in such a strong way.

On Sunn’s secret weapon, trombone/ keyboard player Steve Moore O’Malley: He’s a great player and a good friend—a total inspiration that’s a badass jazz piano player, then turns around to expand his palette with us.

Anderson: I’m almost intimidated by him because he’s such a skilled musician. What we’re doing is primitive in a lot of ways, comparatively. So it’s interesting to combine the two and see where it takes us. That guy’s taught me a lot about music.

O’Malley: Especially on this record—some of the guys who played on it have worked with

g to get that we’re white

him before, like the old-timers. [Horn player Julian] Priester was Steve’s teacher.

Anderson: [Steve’s] enthusiasm was the bridge for getting those guys to play on the record. We were familiar with the names, especially Priester, who’s played with Herbie Hancock and John Coltrane. It’s like, “Holy shit, that’s insane!”

O’Malley: I mean, really. If you’re going to get that close to Coltrane... Come on, we’re white guys from the suburbs.

[Anderson laughs.]

Anderson: Steve’s able to speak their language, so when they saw his enthusiasm about playing live with Sunn, they were like, “Yeah, cool, I can dig that.”

On the inspiration behind “Alice,” arguably Sunn’s greatest song ever O’Malley: A lot of our songs are tributes to our favorite players.

Alice Coltrane’s music has always been something we enjoy encountering. [“Alice”] wasn’t directly a memorial to her—more like [capturing] the spirit of her songs, especially the first few albums.

Anderson: We also wanted to challenge ourselves to make a track that’s more subdued in volume—a song that’s as heavy as our other stuff but without the wall of sound and overly saturated guitars.

O’Malley: The gravity of our music with a new dynamic.

Anderson: Also working with space and silence. It’s one of my favorite tracks to have worked on ever. It’s amazing to have this big challenge in front of you and just conquer it.

On the nasty, gnarly sounds that open the album on “Aghartha” Anderson: That was the first song we put on tape.

O’Malley: The first riffs that Greg and I hammered out.

It had more of an abstract arrangement with some of the same players from the “Alice” session. It was more inspired by...

Anderson: Dismember?

Let’s talk about the front section [laughs].

O’Malley: Well, the front section is total Swedish death metal, as in, “Dude, how heavy are you going to get with your guitar sound right off the bat?” There’s no intro; it’s just fucking full on—a punch in the face. It’s like, “Here’s their record. I heard it has strings and horns...”

Anderson: And it’s like, “BLAH!”—a vomit feast.

On CSiHar’s genuinely bizarre lyrical themes on “Aghartha”—about “a black sun inside the earth” O’Malley: I get turned on by weird ideas like that. I don’t know if it’s a high or low concept, but I’m into occult ideas. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s real or false; the possibility is what’s important, so you don’t strangle your mind with limitations. That inspires me with the music, you know? This guy’s talking about the inner earth? And people take him seriously because he’s this avant-garde opera singer? It’s cool to crack those kind of possibilities wide open. //

Florence and the Machine just sold 26,000 records in one day. And guess what? the british singer is just getting started.

Sealed With a Fist

by kim taylor bennett / photography by ivan jones

F

lorence Welch doesn’t really do silence. But at the moment, she’s hushed, contemplating her recent Brit Award, the UK equivalent of a Grammy. The win is an enviable accolade for any artist, but for Welch—who performs under the name Florence and the Machine—it’s quite surreal because the 22-yearold singer has only released three singles. Launched in 2008, the Critics’ Choice Award is appointed to an artist who industry bods predict will make it big in the upcoming year. Predictions came true this past year as winner Adele achieved both critical and commercial success. Essentially, the award is a prize for hype.

“It is very abstract: an award for something we think you might do well at?” Welch questions skeptically. “I sort of feel like someone who walked in the back door, someone who’s there by accident. I feel slightly out of place.”

Since her Brit win was announced in December, Welch has been caught up in a tornado of probing TV cameras, exploding flash bulbs and endless interviews. (Pinning her down for this piece took rescheduling 10 times.) It seems you can’t throw a studded shoe boot without hitting a British, tipped-for-the-top female solo act. Welch joins the list of 2009 hopefuls such as La Roux, Little Boots, Marina and the Diamonds, VV Brown and thecocknbullkid—all of whom have their own sassy, inventive take on pop, and all of whom have been lumped together, at least in part, because they each possess two X chromosomes. At the NME Awards in February, Welch was photographed having a fake fight with disco popstrel Little Boots. After pretending to strangle each other, the two ended their tussle in a full-blown lip-lock. “She had it coming,” says Welch with a laugh.

Although Welch beat Boots (aka Victoria Hesketh) to the Brit (Hesketh came second), their roles were reversed in the BBC’s influential Sound of 2009 poll, with Welch coming in second and Hesketh walking away with the top spot. self-titled asked Hesketh about the kiss a few days later, and the platinum-haired 24-year-old demurred, “The only time I met her was during the famous pouncing incident! Nothing to do with me, honest!”

Kissing aside, the hair-tugging mock catfight was the artists’ sly swipe at the idea that because they’re women they must be rivals. “It’s a great time because there are a lot of female musicians around,” says Welch. “But I think the media might be pitting us against each other, which is sad because we’re individual artists and should be judged as such.” self-titled is sitting with Welch in a cozy pub in an area of southeast London called Elephant and Castle, just ’round the corner from the studio where she’s is working five days a week and often late into the night on her debut album, Lungs. If she’s feeling any additional pressure, she remains sanguine.

“I feel like someone who walked in the back door.

I feel out of place.”

“I have moments when the realization hits me,” she says. “But I feel more pressure in the idea that you put so much heart into it and then it goes out there to be judged. Who wouldn’t be terrified by that? Then I think, ‘Well, I’ll just have to make it good. No fucking around now.’ ”

T

he first time we ever clapped eyes on Welch was the summer of 2007 when she opened for her teen hero, Courtney Love, at an intimate, 350-capacity show. (Love remains “really, really supportive.” Most recently, she bestowed Welch with a generous stash of vintage gowns.) Onstage, Welch looked gawky and shy, but when she opened her mouth, out flew this show-stopping voice steeped in confidence.

“I’ve been in choirs singing hymns ever since I was little,” she says. “That’s when I first thought, ‘I’m a bit louder than the girl next to me.’ I’m a soprano, but really my range moves all over the place. When I hit those [sings] AHHHHHH notes, it feels really good.” Even letting a 10th of her soprano escape makes the heads in the pub tonight snap around for a peek.

Back in 2007, Welch was still feeling out her own sound, so

“You know it’s a good gig when you come back black and blue.” it’s no surprise that two years down the line the only song she still plays from that era is “Kiss With a Fist.” “You hit me once / I hit you back / You gave a kick / I gave a slap / You smashed a plate over my head / And I set fire to our bed,” she sings on the manic garage-rock ditty. It’s not as tragic as Carole King’s “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)” but rather a lighthearted take on the seductive dynamics of a destructive relationship. “I was in love for the first time and also hanging out with a lot of older people, watching relationships unfolding,” she explains of the song’s inspiration. “I had a couple of friends where the main thing that kept them together was they had so much passion, it was tearing them apart. They drove each other completely insane.”

Witnessing Welch live now, you won’t find a trace of her former awkwardness. With her willowy frame and cloak of auburn hair, she looks as delicate as a pre-Raphaelite muse, but then she fearlessly flings herself into the crowd. “You know it’s a good gig when you come back black and blue.”

F

lorence Leontine Mary Welch was born in Camberwell, South London, to an American mother—“a Europhile who speaks fluent Italian”—who left New York at 21 and now works as an academic and art historian. Welch’s British father works in advertising. The singer’s parents were liberal, encouraging and a bit bohemian. When Welch took to the road supporting MGMT in 2008, her father filled in as tour manager, driving the band

through Europe in his Winnebago. “My dad’s always got some kind of harebrained scheme,” she laughs. “He’s really thin and has this crazy mop of white hair. He was out the front for the first show, and MGMT came backstage, saw him and went, ‘Fucking hell! The ghost of Andy Warhol was in the fucking audience.’ ” Her parents are now divorced, and Welch’s father has since remarried—“a nice artist lady”—while her mother fell in love with the next-door neighbor, moving the then-teenage Welch and her younger brother and sister into a house with two older stepbrothers and an elder stepsister. “It was like The Brady Bunch with all of us coming up to being proper teenagers— unbelievably chaotic,” says Welch. “My sister and I shared [a room] with two beds squeezed together. It was so small, she used to accidentally hit me in the face in the night!”

During the nuttiness of her teen years, Welch and her best friend, Sophie—whose nickname, “Sad Sack,” Welch has tattooed on her inner arm—started tearing up London.

Obsessed with the film Party Monster (about murderous NYC club kid Michael Alig), the British cult flick Withnail and I and burlesque performer Immodesty Blaise, the two would pile on costume jewelry and old bridesmaid dresses and crash warehouse parties thrown by students at the Camberwell College of Arts. Camberwell has always been a hotbed of creativity, but 2003 was a particularly fertile time for the scene due to the emergence of the art collective !WOWOW!. The group turned its townhouse squat into a thriving gallery and counts photographer Matthew Stone and avant-garde designer Gareth Pugh among its ranks.

“They were always inspirational to me, and I kind of wanted to follow in their footsteps,” Welch says of her decision to remain in her birthplace and study art. “It was nice to have a creative space to go doodle and listen to the radio. I needed time to think about what I wanted to do. And then I fell into the music.”

Welch maintains that she “can’t play anything for shit.” She can smack the drums, but says, “I always saw myself as more of a performer and singer.”

As the story goes, her manager discovered her singing gospel from a club toilet stall. In the beginning, she roped in her friends to write music to accompany her instinctual melodies. Welch formed a particular bond with Dev Hynes of Lightspeed Champion.

“We just started talking about all the music we’d ever been into, and as soon as we hit on ’90s American pop-punk, it was like, BINGO!” she says excitedly. “We decided Green Day’s Nimrod was the best album of all time! I thought I was going to move to America and marry [Green Day frontman] Billie Joe [Armstrong]. I named a duck after him.”

Hynes and Welch took to the stage together, playing impromptu acoustic sets of blink-182 and Green Day covers under the moniker Team Perfect. Reinterpreting other people’s songs was an integral step in Welch’s musical development. Live favorite “Girl With One Eye” is by her ex-boyfriend James McCool’s skifflepunk band, Ludes. (“My Boy Builds Coffins” is also inspired by McCool). “Girl With One Eye” is a sparse track, but in Welch’s hands it sounds like a vengeful tale of lesbian love gone awry.

With Lungs pencilled in for an October release in the US (via Universal), Welch’s debut American EP, A Lot of Love. A Lot of Blood (IAMSOUND), features “Dog Days Are Over” and “Kiss

With a Fist” as well as two covers: mid-’90s dance-soul belter “You’ve Got The Love” by the Source, featuring Candi Stanton, and “Hospital Beds” by Cold War Kids. “I love covers,” says Welch. “You really learn about song structures, and if you love a song, you sing through it to find your own meaning.”

Now Welch has struck a happy balance of musical journeying and experimentation with her current band: Tom Moth on harp, Christopher Lloyd Hayden on drums, Rob Ackroyd on guitar and Cherish Kaya on keys and violin. “I had to find my own style, and in order to do that, I’ve had to work fucking hard and with a lot of different people,” says Welch. “Some guys you work with, it feels like you become their possession. When it feels like they’re trying to put too much of themselves on it—and I think you do get it when you’re a girl—I had to move forward until I found the confidence.”

Her eyes flicker to the clock on her BlackBerry. “I should get back to the studio,” she says, anxious not to keep anyone waiting.

P

roducer Paul Epworth doesn’t seem like the kind of person who is easily moved to tears. He’s a passionate, straight-talking character whose production credits include albums for Bloc Party, Kate Nash, the Rapture and now Florence and the Machine. He’s certainly been privy to many awesome recording sessions, but when Welch laid down her vocals for “Cosmic Love,” he couldn’t help himself; he started to cry.

“It’s like her voice is coming from somewhere else. It’s difficult to pin it down,” says Epworth. “There’s an otherworldly side to her, to the point where she reduced me and the engineer to tears, and that’s a very rare thing to happen in the studio, especially in these days of making records in quite controlled circumstances.”

Amid cascading harp ripples and core-shuddering tribal drums, Welch’s voice tangles in harmonies, reaching and breaking and articulating the bleakness of a broken heart. Like fellow bottle redhead Kate Bush, Welch sings songs that fall around you like spells, beating with a primal pulse. Juxtaposing baroque, animalistic imagery, they’re also rooted in the physicality of the body. In “Blinding,” a rumbling, wild-eyed epic, swelling with strings and fraught with drama, Welch sings, “I feel it in my fists and my feet and my hollows in my eyelids / Shaking through my skull through my spine and down through my ribs.”

Even the title track reiterates this motif; recalling Regina Spektor and Arcade Fire, “Lungs” makes the simple act of breathing in the same room as another person an erotic experience.

During the recording process, Epworth wanted to transform the studio into a makeshift forest to stoke the embers of inspiration, though the most they managed was a projection of a full moon on the wall. Welch is obsessed with werewolves, and the moon helped spawn “Howl,” a song full of “flesh tearing” and animalistic sensuality—the beat is built with the sounds of grunting and panting.

Religion plays a role in her songwriting, as well. Welch isn’t religious, but she finds herself drawn to the passion it inspires.

“You want to make it as religious as possible,” she affirms. “Spiritual— not in a hippie way, but in a deathchoir way. Not peace and love. Fuck that!”

Epworth calls Lungs a “digital Wiccan record,” combining a “lo-fi electronic, Timbalandtype aesthetic.” Occasionally these ingredients blend to create unexpectedly slick offerings such as the chill-out Morcheeba vibe of “Hurricane” or the delirious gospel pop of “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up).”

On first listen, parts of Lungs seem impenetrable, almost too intense, but repeated spins bring it into sharper focus. It’s an ambitious, careening and richly textured collection, thrilling in its disregard for conventions or genres.

“Florence is a fountain of energy and ideas and quite literally bounces off the walls,” says James Ford, acclaimed producer (Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons) and half of Simian Mobile Disco. He also worked on Lungs (producing “Dog Days Are Over,” “Drumming Song” and “I’m Not Calling You a Liar”) and was baffled by her vocal capacity. “Some microphones could barely handle the sheer volume she creates,” says Ford.

Elsewhere, her fascination with hitting things—from pounding timpani drums to smacking the inside of an elevator with a chunk of metal—often sparked the recording process.

“The single incident that sticks in my head was when she arrived at the studio having been out all night, looking like a ghost in a dirty white dress and smeared makeup,” remembers Ford. “We attempted a drunken vocal before she fell asleep on the sofa. When she woke up, she got in the shower. We stopped halfway through a piano take when we heard an almighty crash.

Florence came out in a towel covered in blood.”

Welch laughs heartily when reminded of the accident. “Those sessions were pretty chaotic, as we were trying to fit so much in, and we experimented a lot,” she says. “I didn’t actually fall through it, but something in the door got caught between the

frame and itself, and it just shattered, big chunks of glass all over me, all over the floor.

“It’s a strange position to be in,” she continues, “because you’re naked, wet and vulnerable, and you can’t move. I looked at my arms and these cuts suddenly appearing. There was all this blood. So I had to go to hospital.”

And then in a typical Welch turn: “It was funny. We went to hospital with a bottle of Cava!”

T

he last time Welch cried was at four in the morning while watching the Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie En Rose.

Today she’s tickled by a neon-pink sign on the side of building that reads “No one is not loved.” “Underneath, in yellow, it says: ‘Yeah Yeah Yippee Yippee Yeah!’ It was just like, ‘Fuck, that’s so amazing!’” says Welch. “I’m quite easily overwhelmed.”

Most of Lungs was inspired by love and rejection. “When you’ve just been broken up with or you desperately want someone and you can’t have them, that is the...” She inhales sharply, a look of pained longing on her face. “You’re so hyper with this emotion; you have to find ways of letting it out. It’s cathartic.”

Songs such as “Lungs” and “Dog Days Are Over”—which takes its title from the rainbow-colored installation

by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone that she saw by the River Thames—are about the moment when heartbreak recedes and the world starts opening up again. “When you start fancying lots of people!” she laughs.

Welch is currently in a “happy, stable relationship” that she’s convinced she’ll screw up. “It just happens,” she shrugs. “I see something and think, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t do that. DEFINITELY GOING TO DO THAT!’” The statement is classic Welch, her brain cantering along, recounting a tale, and then to emphasize her excitement—or shock, or an illicit thought—she lets out a giddy whisper-shout.

“The comfort of a relationship is really good to be in, but there’s a part of me that wants to break free and not have to call someone,” she explains. “I would not want to date me. But I’m not demanding or high maintenance. In some senses I want to be left to my own devices. I’ll disappear for three days, and I’ll be like, ‘Shit, I got lost in a whirlwind of something.’ I never want to have to make it stop.”

Florence often prefaces her stories with “I’m not supposed to come across as ‘crazy drunk girl’ anymore,” but she’s unable to stymie the flow of her thoughts to keep her adventures— alcoholically assisted or otherwise—within. She tells us about this past summer when she flew to Scotland to join her friends

Milo Cordell and Robbie Furze, otherwise known as the Big Pink. “I was drinking in the Soho Hotel, and Milo called me and said they were going to Scotland,” she recounts. “I was like, ‘I’M COMING! I’M COMING!’ I was just [at] the end of some crazy weekend, and all of a sudden I was terrified. I knew the fear was going to come, and I had to run away from it!”

At 6 am the next morning Welch flew to Glasgow in her pajamas. She boarded a bus that took her four hours into the Scottish Highlands. “It was such a whim,” she says, “but it was nice to go and calm down.”

Cordell has similarly fond memories of the trip. “We went for long walks, went fishing, ate fish and drank a lot of rosé wine,” he says. “We were writing music and asked her to sing on a song, and she added some clever melodies.

“I love her very much,” he adds. “[She’s] someone I’ll probably know forever.”

W

e catch up with Welch a few weeks later. Since we last spoke, she’s filmed a MySpace Artist-on-Artist interview with pop’s perkiest star, Katy Perry. It’s difficult not to compare the two, side by side on a couch. Perry sits composed, her false eyelashes perfectly aligned. Churning out charming sound bites, she seems completely comfortable with the notion that the public is fascinated by her personal life.

Beside her Welch looks a tad rumpled (she was sick that day) and shudders at the thought of such speculation before expounding the mindwarping greatness of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane.

“Katy Perry is so on all the time; she’s amazing,” says Welch.

“I’m shit at that kind of thing. But I don’t want my personality to be a performance. I’d rather the stage thing be a performance.

You’re controlling the environment because you’re creating the music, but you’re losing yourself at the same time, giving yourself away.”

Just the night before, Welch put the finishing touches on Lungs. “It feels a bit weird, but it’s ready,” she says. “It does kind of feel like I’m sending a kid to school for the first time.”

For now Welch has a moment to catch her breath before she’s swept away on a new adventure: the summer festival circuit and a coveted slot opening for Blur at one of the group’s reunion shows.

“I’ve been working so hard, cooped up in the studio for so long,” she says. “I wish I had more time. I actually want to go to more parties. That sounds so shallow, but I’ve been hibernating!

Now, when I do go out, it’ll be like, WAAAAAAH!” And the unstoppable whirlwind of Florence Welch spins on. //

PATRICK

THE

K WOLF

E self-titled INTERVIEW by cassie marketos / photography by travis huggett

S

orry I’m late! I was just chasing a pigeon ’round the block,” says Patrick Wolf—quite seriously, mind you—as he sweeps a cape off his shoulders, greets his manager and orders a margarita.

In less than a minute, he’s already exuded more magnetic energy than most planets, drawing an entire room of people into his orbit. With his towering six-foot-four presence, platinum blond locks and self-styled avant-garde image, Wolf is impossible to ignore—even if those qualities didn’t make his former major label enough dough to justify all that “artiness.”

Lucky for Wolf, his fans would rather ignore his genre-less jams—an unparalleled mix of IDM, classical, glam, art rock and, lately, Celtic music—than hear them get watered down.

Just months after parting ways with Universal due to creative differences, Wolf completed his half-finished album, The Bachelor, by inviting fans to invest in its production through Bandstocks. Which they did...generously. (According to Wolf’s manager, “fans and private investors” ponied up £100,000 to help cover the cost of marketing, promoting, recording, licensing and touring for the album.)

Now that The Bachelor’s been officially released through Nylon’s new record label, Wolf seems poised to change the industry just by being himself. We spoke with the artist during a brief New York trip, which included a special acoustic set.

self-titled: This record started out as one thing and evolved into something else. What did you originally intend?

I decided it was time, after three albums, to do a double album.

And I realize that maybe I didn’t quite have the power as a producer to perfect my two bodies of work at one time, so I thought it was better to focus and perfect one and, if I had time off, to do the other one. So it ended up being a double album split into two: The Bachelor and The Conqueror, with the second part coming out next year. The reason for doing it in two parts was that there were all these songs with a huge positive outlook on love and maybe a recovery from depression, and then there were all these problem songs—songs about a time when I really couldn’t get out of bed and didn’t believe in love. It was important to split them so people could realize the two sides of the coin.

That’s interesting because people have been enamored with your ability to bring two sides together.

Yes. I’m proud of the other records, but I felt it was time to be pure about one subject.

How was the experience of purity for you?

I think about my most eclectic album, the first one (2003’s Lyncathropy), and how it goes from one song about putting yourself in a really vulnerable position as a child sexually to being about escaping to Paris to being about depression in London. There were so many extreme subjects that were like chapters in a biography. Once you’ve done that, you want to focus on one element. You know the Confessions on a Dance Floor album by Madonna?

Yes! I would love to make something as coherent as that one day.

It changes, but it’s definitely one world; it’s a universe. I think

Björk did that as well. Homogenic is amazing to me because she’s using a limited palette of emotions and instruments but making such an amazing work of art with it.

Were you trying to challenge yourself?

Yeah. To be more focused on one emotional world.

How would you describe your emotional world?

Currently? A place of wonder, actually—a bit enraptured about the world again. I don’t know what it is. I feel like I’m sixteen and coming to New York for the first time again, just walking down the street—yellow cabs [gasps]—just a bit in that mode. That enthusiasm I lost somewhere along the line, and I think it shows in the album. Not a lack of enthusiasm but a lack of that innocence. There’s a bit of jaded bitterness in The Bachelor that I’m well aware of....I didn’t want to travel; I didn’t want to see anything. I thought love was a bit of a joke because it hadn’t really happened to me properly. But now I see. I’m still kind of writing the second album, too, so that’s really going to fuel the next adventure—that return to innocence.

Do you think that sentiment stems from your departure from Universal?

I think so, yeah...that feeling of working in a company where you put so much into your job, but your boss is exhausting you; your boss doesn’t understand you. So you decide you’re through with this: “I’m working so hard and not getting anything out of this job, so I’m going to start my own company.” And then suddenly everything is amazing. You’re in charge of your own destiny.

With the major label, you’re somebody’s slave. You’re a slave to somebody else’s commercial aesthetics. I’m so stubborn nobody will ever get their way with me creatively. I’ll always get what I want. It’s so much easier to have nobody to argue with, and now I don’t!

Does this have anything to do with the subject matter of your video for “Vulture,” your first single off The Bachelor?

It’s funny that you put it like that. I guess sometimes you’re not aware of what you’re doing. You’re just creating, and then you look back, and you’re like, “Oh, maybe it was something to do with the whole master/slave idea and relating that to the record label.”

At the time, I was more thinking about that personal situation you might put yourself in, where you put yourself in a destructive place

“I’m so stubborn...

I’ll always get what I want.”

“I like being a diva when people are being dickheads.” at the hands of somebody else. You’re doing it as a human because you think it’s what you should be doing, and then you realize at some point that you’ve been putting yourself in quite a dark place. You know, like domestic violence, where a woman puts herself in a place that she thinks is a place of love and respect, and they’re actually in danger. Sometimes you’re really not aware as a human of what you’re doing until the damage is done. In that video I’m not glorifying sadomasochism. I’m exploring it as a theme of putting yourself in a place of harm.

Do you dislocate yourself from the protagonists of your songs?

About 90 percent is in the first person.

When I’m doing an album like this, I’m the messenger. I’m looking back at my life on the road and doing what I do now. I’m thinking about the person at fifteen who had no idea what was to come. In a way, there’s an acknowledgement of the Patrick Wolf idea and my perspective as a human and as somebody who has to perform a lot and do this job. On this album, there’s a deeply personal, no-showbusiness kind of thing—all the moments that happened offstage, behind-the-scenes thoughts.

I was doing all this press, and people were saying they really love me, but I had nobody to go home to, and I didn’t know if I could even go out to a club and flirt with anybody because they’d be Wikipedia-ing me on their BlackBerry.

Do you miss home?

I try to carry it with me as I travel. I have Skype now! I love it! I can just call up my boyfriend, and your face comes up on Skype and your like, “Oh! I look so horrible!” It’s one of the maddest things I’ve ever done in my life. That’s going to be the new postcard home I think.

Speaking of technology, how do you establish a balance between traditional mythology and

experimentation? Your music and art have a lot from both.

I guess I don’t really distinguish much between the two. I think lyrically I have bigger roots with the past and with romanticism, but maybe as a producer I have deeper roots within trying to be futuristic and embrace new technology.

Are you a science fiction fan?

Yeah! [Laughs] I was a big X-Files fan when I was younger. Don’t tell anyone that! Me and my band were on tour, and it turns out we’re all X-Files geeks. Now when we sound check, we’re like [sings the opening notes of The X-Files theme]. I was the biggest nerd! I started the only computer club at my school when I was younger—for the Atari Sg. You weren’t a nerd. You were a revolutionary!

I know! Right? [Laughs] I put all these posters up around the place like, “Join the Computer Club! It’s cool to learn about the computer!”

How was growing up for you?

Just a process of being the odd one out nonstop. It wasn’t until I started with the Patrick Wolf thing that I actually found there were others like me in the world. I don’t feel unusual. I hate being called “eccentric” or “flamboyant.” I feel like that’s a way of people still pointing their finger in school but in a professional context. So growing up was really tough. I had a lot of issues to deal with by the time I was twenty. You know, but then you’re suddenly twenty-four onstage at the Sasquatch! Festival, and everybody is singing the words to your songs; it’s a bright sunny day, and you’re on a mountain gorge, and you think, “I’m so over that time of my life! Look at my life now.” It’s great.

People were obsessed with your age when you first started making music.

Oh, it’s true. Oh, my god! It was always the first question. Either “You’re so tall!” or “You’re so young!” [Snores] I couldn’t wait until I was twenty-three or twenty-four so it might stop.

Now that you’re there, do you feel like it’s changing your relationship with your fans?

It’s a lot easier! I don’t feel like there’s that panic to establish a relationship because it’s already there. I feel like there is a duty to retain an intimacy with my audience always. Doing

that [acoustic] show last night [at Manhattan venue (Le) Poisson Rouge] was important for me to retain that balance. I feel the need to know that people care about my music on that level, that it’s really conversational, a part of a normal life. It’s not so much “Curtain goes up! Strobe light! Show business!” A lot of the general public might play to you on that level, and that’s cool, but I like to know that people have the opportunity to know me on a more intimate level. It’s something I’ve grown into with age, definitely, to let people in a lot more.

I don’t like that whole “The audience is waiting outside—put on sunglasses, jump in a taxi.”

Diva!

I like being a diva when people are being dickheads. But when they’re being really nice?

No. It’s interesting to think about that audience intimacy in terms of how you opened up your most recent album to fans on a financial level as well.

I didn’t realize until people started interviewing me about “Isn’t it great to re-establish this bond?” and I thought “Yeah.” I guess more than anything, it’s so important because I did have a feeling at the end of the Universal period that it had all gone a bit like, “Give me your mobile number so I can send you details about all our new acts.” Data capture! I was so freaked out by it! But I had no control over it. Now it’s back to being quite innocent communication.

On another note, I read that you saw an exhibit

by Nan Goldin.

That was a big deal [for me]. I had moved next to the Tate Modern, and I’d watch people come in and out every day and think, “Oh, I’d really like to be there one day.” And suddenly this

person comes to me and is like, “Nan is in town, and she wants you to do the music for her show.” So I just did this big classical work for her show, and I felt that absolute love of creation of music just for the sake of music because when the performance happened, all the focus was on the slideshow, and I was just making music onstage. And so it’s not about me at all. It was amazing. I suddenly realized why I do what I do. I close my eyes, and I’m making music, and it’s just all about musical creation.

Do you see yourself doing more of that in the future?

I would love to! When I was younger I always thought I would be a lot better suited to do soundtracks and classical work rather than pop music.

What happened? What attracted you to pop music?

I went to music school to be a composer. They were so steeped in tradition and ways that you should work. They were a lot more restricted there. There has been no Madonna or Elvis of the classical world to change things, to make it a radical world.

I was so out of time and place in their world that I just knew it wasn’t going to happen for me. I had ideas and passion, but I didn’t have the skills of being so retro, so conservative thinking.

It’s ten times worse than what the pop-music industry was in, like, 1930.

So I thought, “This is the place where I can give my ideas. I can’t do symphonies and orchestras. I am going to have to do it as pop music.” If you’re a composer, then once every five years you get your work performed, and then you have to wait until your dead before it’s regarded as a good work. Classical music is an outdated world. It needs to be updated, and nobody is really helping to do that at the moment.

Are you?

I don’t know! I let my old music teacher, from when I was like fourteen, listen to what I was doing. And he was like red in the face because he thought I was going to be a composer. He was like [imitating a huffy, elderly gentleman], “You’re...making...pop... music!” Like that! And it was so funny! I was like, “Oh, my god!

Get me out of here!” and he’s going, “Are you enjoying it? Are you?!” I don’t know. I’ve kind of lost the plot now of caring about the two worlds. I just do what I do!

“People look back at what I’ve done, and they don’t know what to say.”

A lot of your music is about declaring that kind of individuality.

When I was on my first album, and I was so young, they all thought it was a novelty act. So I went, “OK, you think this is novelty? I’m going to show you the opposite of novelty.” I went right into this whole singer-songwriter [thing], no smile cracked onstage, no talking, just music, music, music—ram it down people’s throats. I was trying to gain a respectful position where I could be a performer. I think that in England the idea of a performer is really... There’s no Las Vegas. There’s no place to go as a performer except into people’s joke universe. But over here? People like the show as well. And they’re not scared of a show mixed with good musicianship. Take Liberace as an example.

He’s an amazing showman; he just has these insane outfits, but when you talk to people about him, they all remember him as the most amazing piano player. That’s it!

Do you consider yourself pigeonholed now?

I think people look back at what I’ve done, and they just don’t know what the fuck to say. I like that. It’s good.

How would you want to be perceived?

If I’m dead, I’d like people to remember me as a songwriter. All of this is fun, and I’m being myself, but I would love people to be covering my songs when I’m eighty. These songs are my life, more than any of the rest. That’s just the exterior packaging. The meat and gristle is the songs and the lyrics. That’s what I pour everything into. That’s what I would like to be remembered by. //

WHEN GZA MET TELEPATHE The Dave Sitek-approved duo trIES to keep up with one of Wu-Tang’s true eccentrics.

photography by alexander wagner

“There’s a fine line between ge that line. I like your hair.” — G

T

o say we didn’t think the following interview would happen—after months of planning—is an understatement. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to file a feature on the Wu-Tang Clan: Nearly every member is notoriously restless and impossible to track down, especially such a project-juggling mic manipulator as the GZA. We originally planned to stage this exclusive artist-led interview between the MC and Telepathe—a recent Brooklyn breakthrough due to their outstanding Dance Mother disc—at

the GZA’s Jersey City home. When that became increasingly unlikely, self-titled scheduled a meet-up during South by Southwest, right after the rapper hosted a Dickies Battle of the Bands competition—a gig he parlayed into an impromptu jam session with the Black Lips.

After countless text messages and straight-to-voicemail calls, self-titled finally reached the GZA and his laidback entourage, and the following Coffee and Cigarettes-esque conversation with Telepathe’s Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes ensued.

enius and psycho. Don’t cross GZA

Melissa Livaudais: I just want to say that Liquid Swords is such an inspirational album to us.

GZA: You all look so young. How old were y’all when it came out [in 1995]?

Busy Gangnes: We’re not that young. We’re 28.

GZA: That makes you guys like 14 [when it came out]?

Gangnes: Yeah. I was listening to it on cassette. We still listen to it. We wanted to ask you what you use for beats.

GZA: I don’t really use instruments. I just look for somethin’ that grabs me—a certain sound, a certain rhythm. I just go for it.

Gangnes: What is it about a beat that you gravitate toward?

GZA: I just feel it. Some beats you hear—you get a story, something abstract. Sometimes you hear a message. It calls you.

Livaudais: For that record, you sampled Shogun Assassin. I love that element. Where you planning on using so much from that movie?

GZA: When we were mastering the album, the RZA sent the assistant out to get that movie—at the last minute. RZA was a big fan, but we didn’t plan on using it so much.

Livaudais: We wanted to ask you about the chemistry of the Wu-Tang Clan. How do you all still keep getting inspired?

GZA: Well, for us, it don’t stop. We get inspired by so much in such a short period. Most movies and most stories come from stuff in reality. Inspiration never stops just as long as we’re living in reality. I don’t have to be in a certain place, be a certain thing, look a certain way. It comes to us. It’s natural. I can be sitting

around, and I hear a song. When I did a song called “Animal Planet,” I was sittin’ around watching TV, and the narrator was speaking about the polar bears feasting on the blubber of the seals, and I wrote a whole song about that. Pull that wherever you can pull it from. It’s like energy. Energy goes up. It goes down. It is what it is. Take it in, and give it back. I’m inspired by the energy right here right now. I’m thinking about it. I’m writing a song right now. You all are inspiring me. Wanna know the title?

Gangnes and Livaudais: Yeah!

GZA: I don’t have it yet.

Gangnes: Ha! Well, we can wait.

GZA: Maybe I could say “Two Birds and One Stone,” but I don’t want y’all to be offended by it. It’s a metaphor though. In the hood, we call girls “birds,” and I don’t want y’all to think I was calling you birds. I’m not really thinking of writing right now, so maybe I’m not coming up with the best.

Gangnes: [Laughs] We don’t get easily offended.

GZA: Oh, yeah?

Livaudais: Well, maybe. It depends.

GZA: Maybe I could flow into some verse. Tell me some stuff about yourself.

Gangnes: Um, let’s see. I’m a dancer and, um, she’s a Cancer.

GZA: OK. “I got a question as serious cancer / Who can keep your average dancer? / Hyper as a heart attack / Nobody’s smilin’ / Because you express the rhyme that I’m stylin’.” Where y’all from?

“I got two trips to the Moon. Maybe I’ll hit up

Gangnes: I’m from LA. Livaudais: I’m from Virgina.

GZA: Where’d y’all meet?

Livaudais: We met in Brooklyn. Now we live in Bushwick.

GZA: A lot of people moving to Bushwick. Y’all live right next door to me.

Livaudais: How do you start recording a track?

GZA: You look at a track like you look at an opponent. You observe them with a close eye.

You want to check ’em out, up and down. And you always keep your eye on them. You gotta inspect them, and when you intimidate it, it’s yours.

Gangnes: What’s your relationship with numerology?

GZA: Numbers are everywhere. Very influential.

Patterns, you know, sports, slavery—you can relate numerology to a lot of things.

Livaudais: We had all these questions, but we didn’t know we’d be meeting up with you in Austin. We’re caught off guard.

GZA: You don’t have to think of a question. Just let it flow naturally. When you’re not thinking about it, the questions will just come to you.

Just watch. Wait a couple minutes.

But there are good times, too.

Gangnes: Do you have a sound person you travel with?

GZA: Nope. We’re the Wu-Tang. We don’t practice. We don’t have sound guys. We just show up and do a sound check. The venue has a sound guy, and we’re good. What do you gotta hear?

“One, two; one, two.” We’re done. Ya know?

Livaudais: You just show up?

GZA: We just show up and wing it. That’s part of the excitement. I’m a little crazy, a little off.

Gangnes: But you’re so cool [laughs].

GZA: That’s why we get along so well. You gotta be a little to the left, ya know?

Gangnes: It’s true. I tried for a long time to be normal.

GZA: It don’t feel right. But there’s a fine line between genius and psycho. Don’t cross that line. I like your hair [at Livaudais].

Livaudais: I’m letting it grow.

GZA: Your hair is nice, too.

Gangnes: You’re just saying that! I cut my own.

GZA: Oh, nice job. You’re a little more serious though. You hold back a bit and don’t laugh as much as she does.

Gangnes: I’ll laugh at a really good joke. Do you

Mars and then a short stay at Venus.” — GZA Gangnes: We’re going to send you our beats.

GZA: You should. We would so something pretty dope I bet.

Gangnes: What else are you working on?

GZA: Graphic novels, a TV series, a couple of commercials, movies. I’m all over.

Livaudais: What’s the TV series about?

GZA: It’ll be all about myself. It’s all about GZA. It’s a comedy—kind of a Curb Your Enthusiasm thing—taking the humor out of the every day.

Like this right here...this is funny.

Livaudais: Where are you going after here?

GZA: I think I got two trips to the Moon.

Maybe I’ll hit up Mars and then a short stay at Venus.

Gangnes: Have you been to those places before?

GZA: Oh, yeah. Many times before. Mentally, though. Pretty cool.

Gangnes: Do you like touring?

GZA: I like it sometimes. It can be a headache— tiring and annoying. Managers be fucking up shit, and you gotta deal with that. Roll with it.

know one?

GZA: Yeah. Yeah. Knock, knock.

Gangnes: Who’s there?

GZA: Orange.

Gangnes: Orange who?

GZA: Orange you glad I didn’t say “banana.”

[Laughs all around.]

GZA: That one ain’t so good. I gotta come up with a better one and give you a call.

Gangnes: I got one. Knock, knock.

GZA: Who’s there?

Gangnes: Silent cow.

GZA: Silent cow who?

[Silence.]

GZA: Oh, I got it. Good one. Good one. What else do you guys like to do? Do you like to talk about music?

Gangnes: Nah, I don’t talk about music that much. You should come party with us later.

GZA: I would love to.

Gangnes and Livaudais: We’re the most fun people you’re ever going to meet.

GZA: I don’t doubt that—not for a second. //

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SHAWN BRACKBILL

The above notebook page belongs to The Horrors singer Faris Rotter. It was inspired by—and drawn while he listened to—Under and Under (In the Red) by Brooklyn’s Blank Dogs. The Horrors’ fantastic second album, Primary Colours, is out now on XL Recordings.