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Maxïmo Park Interview (english) |
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Anna-Lena Gugger and Martin Lüscher met Duncan Lloyd, Lukas Wooller and Tom English on April 14 before their gig at Zurich's Mascotte. The three members of Maxïmo Park talked about the contemporary music scene, and how they see themselves in relation to the Britpop hysteria.
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Nowadays it seems like pop music is consumed like any other good, the lyrics and meaning of a song get lost easily in this process. Nevertheless, you obviously aim to write lyrically and musically challenging songs. Do you think your fans even appreciate that?
Tom: I think some do and some don't. We're still very much an alternative band, there is a lot of depth and meaning to what we do. It's there for people who want to consume it in that sense. Even though we're on an independent label, we're putting our music out in a wider scale. We're lucky enough to get on a MTV playlist, and a lot of people will consume our music without getting the meaning.
Lukas: We want people to listen to our music for a long time to come, we built it to last. That's why there are many levels. Obviously, you're never going to get them first time round or all at the same time. How ever deep you want to go, you'll be rewarded. The music we listen to we feel has depth and meaning and something timeless about it. We're massive consumers of music - Of music that has a seriousness about it, and something to give back to the listener, rather than consuming music just in a fashionable way. MySpace fuelled this need for the "next big thing", so there's a kind of a constant factory, like a conveyer belt. As time goes on, some people will disappear. Hopefully, those who made a little more of an effort will still be there.
How do you think will this trend with MySpace develop?
Tom: Some bands will survive, but the trend will get worse. There will be more ways of discovering new bands than ever. Whether it's a bad trend or not is hard to say. What is bad about it is probably that bands only get that one chance. No one is ever interested in your second chance. People want something new, as opposed to something they really like. If it's both, then great! But you're right: People often want something new just because it's new and because they found it first. This culture will eat itself up. Bands who get found for the right reasons will stick around, the others probably won't.
Lukas: I think it's a golden period for new bands to be heard. I'm not sure if it will be like that ever again. The internet is still quite a new thing, and I think it's going to be censored more and more. Things like MySpace will become less free , it'll be a lot harder to swap ideas. People always find ways to communicate. When radio first came out, it was quite a free thing. Now it's heavily censored.
Tom: Every radio station, every TV station and now Internetsite gets commercialized. MTV used to be non-stop music videos, now it's programmes about people's lingerie.
Lukas: For example John Peel's radio shows didn't get replaced. That's why MySpace has become such a big thing. Again, I think it's going to wane.
Tom: You have to have faith in people who will come up with an alternative way of presenting music. MTV went commercial, but then we got MTV2, which has also gone commercial, but at least it plays alternative music. When one thing goes commercial, another will turn up allowing indie or alternative stuff to come through. There will always be people who want to hear it, and therefore, there should be people who want to broadcast it.
You said this was a golden period for new bands to get their first chance. You just released your second album: Do you feel any pressure coming from these new bands?
Tom: There probably is this pressure in reality, but we don't really suffer from it ourselves. Certainly when we were making our new album that couldn't have been further from our minds. We're completely absorbed in what we are doing, which is not tailored for anyone in particular. It's just what we do. If we start thinking beyond that, we're going to fail ourselves.
Duncan: We built up our reputation through live performances rather than the internet. We put our record out and toured and toured. People know we're a good live band, which makes us confident. Again with this record: The shows we were putting on were selling out fast. It's a good sign if people want to see us, it takes the pressure away.
An article in a Swiss newspaper ("Neue Zürcher Zeitung") stated that nothing new evolved from the Britpop era, as in the way how new wave evolved from punk.
Lukas: That's true.
Tom: No, it's not. New wave moved on from the punk era in the same way we moved on from the Britpop era. The problem was in the sense it had the name Britpop. There were genuinely good bands in it, like Blur or Suede. But as soon as you take in loose baggage like Mansun, it's not a good era all of a sudden. When you start putting a Union Jack on something and call it a movement in British culture, it makes the good bands look bad and the bad bands look good.
Lukas: A lot of it had to do with the media of the time. The media were responsible for hyping and blowing it up in an unhealthy way and then later for completely destroying it. Bands were being completely slain, like Sleeper. This time round I feel the media is more supportive. And also, the bands themselves are a bit more savvy. The Arctic Monkeys for example realized if they started playing these stupid media games, they would be the only ones who'll get hurt. It's more about music this time, the bands focus on what they do: Writing songs and playing live.
Duncan: The exponents of Britpop all went to Downing Street to meet Tony Blair and it was all about: "Isn't Britain great again". We live in a different time, a different culture. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was not much more going on in Britain than Robbie Williams. There wasn't much support for bands of our generation. That's why we decided to record our album in Newcastle and sell it to the people there. Other bands from our time were doing the same, and the next wave used the internet. We started with nothing. This "Do It Yourself"-attitude is more the punk sort of spirit.
Tom: Also production-wise, we're closer to punk again. Bands like Blur and Pulp released very slick and poppy productions in the 1990s. Style-wise, bands from the nineties referred to the sixties, while we are probably closer to the late seventies and eighties. We have slightly less Brit-centric origins, we're as interested in American music as in the Kinks or the Rolling Stones. It's too hard to give sweeping generalisations, but I think there is more of variety now than in the nineties.
Playlist chosen and commented on by Duncan, Lukas and Tom (to be broadcast on May 7, approx. 9 to 10pm, on toxic.fm).
Die deutsche Version des Interviews gibts hier .
Some live footage from their excellent gig at Mascotte in Zurich on April 14, 2007.
And here some more.
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