Zombie-Zombie (Pt. 2)
How does it translate live, how would you describe the live show?
We’re just two people, a duo, so onstage we have all the instruments next to the edge of the stage at the front. It’s like a barrier between Etienne on keyboards and me on drums. We look at each other a lot, and it’s just two people, so there’s action and reaction between him and I all the time, and I really like it because you don’t have this when you’re a full band. When you do something, you’re sometimes like, ‘Oh it’ll be fine, the bass player…’ but when you’re just two people, and there’s something wrong, it’s really bad. You really gotta do something, find something to get over it. When you’re two people, there’s only one musician who needs to follow you, so you’ve got the freedom. The structure of the songs are like there’s nothing really planned. There’s a commencement and then we play around with the theme, and even if it’s not jazz, the way we play is closer to jazz music than rock or prog rock. Sometimes the songs are three times longer than the record when we play them live.
It must be very intense for you as well as for the audience.
Yeah, and sometimes it doesn’t work too, sometimes you play and people look at you like, ‘What are these guys doing?’ [laughs] But when it works, it’s great for both, yeah.
Do you have any visuals?
Sometimes, yeah. We have a friend doing it and it’s very simple, like the movie Tron. I like it, he’s a good friend of ours, but I find it distracting to the musicians. I like it sometimes, but I think there’s enough things to see; to watch on stage when we play. I don’t want to be the band playing in front of the images, do you know what I mean?
Do you think it takes the focus away from the music a bit?
Yeah. Sometimes it’s good to do that, but just once in a while.
You mentioned movie soundtracks and John Carpenter, and you mentioned jazz and prog rock as well. There’s a big Krautrock feel coming through – are you big fans of Neu! and Kraftwerk and people like that?
Yeah, of course.
Especially in the drumming.
Yeah, Jaki Liebezeit, Can’s drummer, is one of my favourites. I really like to do a very simple thing and stick to it. Then it becomes very hypnotic if you play the same thing for a long time and there’s no changes. It’s more powerful when you play simple things than doing really complex rhythms.
A lot of drummers that people hold up as being incredible drummers are very flashy, but there’s such an intensity to really metronomic drumming.
There’s great drummers who do really crazy shit and stuff, but myself, I know I’m good at sticking to a rhythm and being like a human drum machine. It’s fun.
It works in with the analogue electronic equipment as well.
Yeah, even when you use a drum machine like an 808, a really old drum machine, if you listen carefully to it, it’s not perfect. It’s not like a digital sample, it changes a little bit from one beat to another. This is what makes it great, I think. You can also play on it with drums. It’s not dead like I find sometimes with electronic music, digital drum machines and stuff.
And finally, is there anything else about the band that we should know about?
We just did a video for the first track called ‘Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free’. We did a remake of The Thing by John Carpenter with G.I. Joes, with stop motion. It’s pretty cool.
It certainly is - you can watch the video if you click here.
Interview by Chris Jones
A Land For Renegades is out now on Versatile Records.
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