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| VOX: Let’s start off with who
each of you are what you do in the band. SHACK: I’m sHack from Lunatic Calm and I do some singing and some computer programming.
JEZ: I’m Jez, I play the drums and take pictures
HOWIE: Umm, My name is Howie and I play guitar and the keyboards.
Where are you guys all from? Tell us about home. HOWIE: Uh, London, the United Kingdom. We lived within a very short distance of each other. So, you grew up as friends? HOWIE: I’ve known sHack since I was eight years old. I’ve know him as long as I can remember. Jez was a relatively late edition [to the group], but he has made his impact considerably since then. So, we’ve grown up listening to the same music, hanging out in the same places, going to the same gigs, enjoying the same music, and making the same mistakes as well. What kind of music? HOWIE: Well, we’re classically trained as musicians. Kind of went from Mozart to Motorhead and really got into rock bands and then our tastes…we grew up a bit. We kinda went to left-field guitar bands like Sonic Youth, Big Black - people like that. And, umm, everything changed with the Acid House revolution in the UK. And, uh, our whole lives just changed, we took a complete about-turn…Stopped going to gigs, really, and became more interested in clubbing and raving, as it was known then. And, just going out and having a good time. So, umm, Lunatic Calm is really kind of a composite of how we’ve grown up listening to that kind of music. And, that’s why we do dance music, with the guitars feature, and the vocals feature, cause it’s in our musical heritage. 
Where does the name come from? HOWIE: I think I’d better hand this off to our lyricist. SHACK: Umm, well the name…where did our name come from? ALL: Yea, where did our name come from? Strange oxymoron! SHACK: This strange oxymoron originated from…fuck I don’t remember really! No, we wrote this song, years and years ago as a different band. And, umm, the name actually came when the album Metropol was finished. It seemed to be the only thing we could agree upon without getting into fist fights. HOWIE: So we have gotten in fist fights? SHACK: No, no never did that! HOWIE: Not yet! [laughing] What inspires you now? What makes the music come out? SHACK: I don’t know…Having been out here [America] for five weeks is inspiration enough. There are so many experiences we’ve had out here on the road. This is, you know, the very, very end of the line as far as this tour goes. This is a phenomenal place, the Shrine, and we are very vibed up for tonight. There is so much we’ve learned on the road. All of that will go in the melting pot for the next album. Who would you cite as your favorite band or influence? HOWIE: I find it difficult to, we all do, find it difficult to list individuals, to list one, why not list a thousand. I would say it’s more to do with types of music, different genres of music that have influenced us as a whole. The appealing thing about dance music in the UK, is that it wasn’t about superstars, it wasn’t about rock heroes, it wasn’t about that kind of thing. It was more about the anonymity of the artist. Specifically, [that’s] what appealed to us originally, because it was the ‘antihero.’ So it was more about people having a good time and dancing, getting on with each other, rather than bowing down to the ‘Rock God.’ It’s kind of difficult to pinpoint individual artists, but like I said, the whole Acid House movement, was one particular movement, and more recently drum ’n’ base, is another exciting development we’ve all kinda bought into. The best clubs in London were drum ‘n’ bass clubs as far as we were concerned, because they were the rawest clubs , they were kind of grass roots, really underground. We found ourselves going to a lot of drum ‘n’ bass clubs as well. Our music is made of so many different factions, it’s kind of really difficult to draw one out.
The music is really bigger than any one band. HOWIE: Absolutely. SHACK: Oh, definitely. Just think, in terms of the movement, in the UK, certainly at the moment, there are cultures based around record labels, there are cultures based upon stylistic decisions that people make. You know, you can’t isolate people or bands and say these are spokespeople for a generation. It’s much, much bigger than that. Dance music is very much a way of life in England. It governs what people do, their whole style and what they do during the weekends, as opposed to what they do during the weekdays. The cult with the djs has obviously been important in that. A lot of the djs, the best djs, are completely anonymous. The ones you just completely stumble across. We don’t have a great deal of time for that superstar ethic, so… Djs are often more popular than the dance artists. SHACK: Yea, I think what djs do can’t be underrated. But equally, I think a lot of djs are overated and are hyped up to such an extent. I think what people really should look at the end of the day is who makes the parties - the kids that go to them. How did you guys hook up with Bush? [ALL: Laughing] HOWIE: I need time to prepare. The whole Bush remix thing, and other people that we’ve remixed…As far as Lunatic Calm is concerned, our remixes have been very important in our development. It gives us a chance to express ourselves in a different way without the pressure of it being an actual Lunatic Calm release and have vinyl in circulation when we don’t have any. It’s really important. The Bush remix was our second remix that we did. The Bush thing was really our way to impose our paw print on it. We saw it as a case, it wasn’t a collaboration or anything, we saw it as a case of making that music more appealing to our ears. We wanted to give it a groove. The end result is kind of indicative of how when two completely different genres of music come together it can actually work. That’s particularly exciting. We shan’t be remixing Bush again I’m sure. Since then we’ve done Black Grape and Curve and various other people, who are little bit closer to home. The whole remix thing is just an important aspect of what we do. Are you guys big Bush fans? HOWIE: No. [Laughing] Did Bush like the mix? HOWIE: I actually bumped into Gavin [Rossdale] at a Bush afterparty in London. This was about two months after we handed the remix over. I asked him what he thought of it and he said he um, "I haven’t heard it." And I said, well, "We went through the trouble of doing it, you can at least have the courtesy to actually listen to the damn thing and tell us what you thought." And, umm, a couple of weeks later, our pitiful fee that we received for doing it, our check was in the Post . And, our remix appeared on both side of a white label. Oooh. [Laughing] Was it something I said?
Do you have that kind of experience with superstars? HOWIE: What kind of experience? Whether or not they are paying attention. HOWIE: I just think, I don’t care whether they are superstars or not. If they commissions someone to do some work on their behalf, at the end of day, it’s released under their name they should have the courtesy to kind of check it out, at least. SHACK: Yeah, I think, a lot of the time in the last couple of years, there’s been a movement of bands trying to get accepted in up-to-date contemporary fields, who don’t really belong there themselves. Some acts we have remixed, like Curve, for example, actually got on the phone and said "thanks", and said "it absolutely rocks." It gives us a bit of insight into our own stuff. It means a lot when you actually get a response and some respect back from the artist. But those are the people certainly in the future we really want to remix. They actively want something from Lunatic Calm. What are your upcoming projects? SHACK: We are halfway done recording our second album. It has been interrupted with this five week jaunt across America. I think we’ll take a week or so off to recover when we get back. How do you feel about touring? HOWIE: It depends on the tour. We did a tour of Europe and we all, for whatever reasons, it didn’t go as planned, and we returned home early. This tour probably the best tour we could have possibly gotten. We’re with the Crystal Method, who are probably the only home-grown US band to be breaking electronica on this kind of scale. We’ve been to towns and cities we’ve never been before, places are sold out, and people are going mad for it. It’s by far and away the best. For more of this interview, and more of Lunatic Calm and other great artists, check out the VOX Alternative video magazine… |
