|date=2005/10

== Original Text ==

{{boc|'''Marcus''': No, we don‘t find making records difficult at all. We love it. We only take so long to finish albums because we‘re always going off at tangents. We record something like 20 songs for every one that appears on the finished record.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': I think that‘s been levelled at us enough times now for me to start believing it! I don‘t know, we‘re just not able to let things go unless we‘re totally happy with them, so we do tend to spend a lot of time on tiny musical details that some other musicians might think are trivial.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': It can be. There are times when I‘d love to just simplify things by rocking out like the Foo Fighters or something. But there would always be a part of me that was looking for someone else who was making really subtle music. I think a lot of mainstream pop and rock music is fantastic. I listen to everything really, but you need the ‘Clair de Lune‘ moments...}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': I would say that‘s exactly the point.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': I think some people do. Especially since ''Geogaddi'', we sometimes hear about people finding things in the music that aren't even there. A lot of what we do is done with a sense of humour that can be missed if you‘re not careful.}}

{{boc|'''Marcus''': Well, we do try to put themes and references into most of our tracks, usually as a kind of ‘spike‘. Sometimes we put things into tracks where we think the idea is so obscure and arcane that nobody will ever notice it. But they always do, and it gets a bit crazy at times when we realise people are really going to incredible lengths to analyse everything we do, you know, even stripping tracks apart with spectral analysis.}}

{{question|How might your music change if the environment you make it in did?}}

{{boc|'''Marcus''': I don‘t think nature and rural life is really what it‘s all about. The main thing for us about being based away from the city is that it allows us to switch off. We can create a hermetic bubble where our music exists without any outside influence at all. When your studio is out in the country you can easily imagine that you‘re in any place, or even any era that you like.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': I‘d take that as a compliment. We just decided for this album that the sound we wanted to go for was more of a loose, amorphous 70s pick-up-truck acid jam.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': That‘s a good question. I've never really been interested in ‘happy‘ music. It seems kind of pointless. I think when people are feeling sad, they actually find it therapeutic to wallow in it a bit with some sad music. Having suffered some pretty savage depression in the past, I've always found sadness to be the strongest emotion in music.}}

{{boc|'''Marcus''': No, our music is often working from the perspective of current music shifted onto another branch in time, so when you hear things that sound folky or traditional in our melodies, they‘re usually sitting together with odd hip hop rhythms or some atonal electronic riff. None of it would make any sense unless you were listening to it with a specific set of experiences, I mean people of our generation. Folk music, on the other hand, is something that uses traditional motifs and repeatedly translates them into new arrangements for new generations, almost the opposite of what we‘re trying to do.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': In a world where people watch execution videos for entertainment, I think we can safely say nothing is sacred anymore.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': That‘s a good question. Maybe ‘Geno‘ by Dexy's. That‘s my favourite song.}}

{{question|'''Mike''', has fatherhood changed your approach to music?}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': Well. I have to run all our tracks past my daughter now. She‘s a tough critic: she just stares intensely and sometimes breaks out into a jiggle.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': Canada‘s a bigger, colder version of Scotland. It‘s possible to get colder than Scotland.}}

{{boc|'''Marcus''': We just try to be prepared for anything.}}

{{boc|'''Mike''': Ha ha, we prefer to get the listeners to fuck with their own heads.}}

 

* https://archive.list.co.uk/the-list/2005-10-06/20/