New Build is a trio built from Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem, their sound falling somewhere in between the former’s frenetic whirls and the latter’s suave developments. The result sounds like a solo project from Martin L. Gore, who takes the lead on Depeche Mode’s more intimate and heartrending efforts, or a relaxed sequel to Twin Shadow’s Forget. Many of their songs seem like an homage to Gore, Vince Clarke, and other essential synth-pop mavens. Exchange Twin Shadow’s post-punk percussion for marimbas and gentle snares, and you come somewhere close to New Build. Two of its members, Felix Martin and Al Doyle, are in Hot Chip, and Doyle has performed a number of instruments at LCD’s live shows. The other member, Tom Hopkins, brings experience as a respected producer and DJ. One of his many roles is as an engineer at Lanark Studios, the East London recording space of Martin and Doyle.

The Gore comparison is heard prominently on “Last Gasp”, where a simple piano line and trickling drums accompany a sullen vocal performance. The additional drums, blaring synths, and slight string movement during the second half is a noticeable uptick, but the song retains its minimal and personalized feel. You have to love the tropical marimbas at the end too… unexpected and tactful. “Finding Reasons” is a mellowed-out piece of electro-pop, more in line with the delicate post-punk maneuvering of Twin Shadow. This is another track that begins minimally, but evolves into something more substantial. This time a wavering organ and sharp guitar licks add another dimension, the latter with a touch of distortion and feedback. And yet again, marimbas end the track.

Of course, New Build do not present entirely understated affairs. The club-ready twinkle at the lead of “Silence and Muttering” seems prime for a dance club at 1AM, its shimmering qualities and hectic bass-synths promoting infectiousness without detracting from the driving ambience. With its futuristic tone, “Silence and the Muttering” is less filled with hooks and more intent on establishing energy. You’d expect something like it from Erasure.

Their debut album, Yesterday Was Lived and Lost, is out April 3rd on their own Lanark Recordings. You can expect plenty of Euro-pop with post-punk infusions, along with the club-driven production touches like string-synth flourishes and disco-laden synth pads. New Build have a ton of tracks available for streaming on their SoundCloud, so head on over and check it out.

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The Carpels represent a new era for the Birmingham music scene, one that looks set to grab the ears of London and the nation. The area’s rough-and-ready indie sound has bred a small and exclusive scene that is gaining strong recognition nationwide.

The Carpels’ music is by no means easy-listening; it grabs listeners and hurtles them through a list of genres including indie, punk, dubstep and electronic, all while picking up an inspired lead on pop from Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, Late of the Pier, and The Fall – not to mention Birmingham natives Scarlet Harlots. It’s a winning combination that earned them a record deal last year with Birmingham-based record label One Beat Records. Owned by Jon Brookes (drummer for The Charlatans) and his business partner Ian Light, the pair discovered The Carpels at a gig in Birmingham and have since eased them onto bigger stages.

Last month they plated at The Queen of Hoxton (in Shoreditch, London) as part of the ultra-cool club night This Feeling with fellow Birmingham outfit Tantrums. There, they were snapped by Libertines photographer Roger Sargent. The Carpels have just released the video for their new track “Handshakes”, which will be released in August. The track follows airplay for their debut anthem “Sand” on Mark Radcliffe’s BBC 6 Music show and an appearance on Rob da Bank’s BBC Radio 1 show, where he called them “incredible”.

“Handshakes” was produced by Jim Spencer, who has worked with New Order, The Cribs, Doves and Shaun Ryder.

RIYL: Tantrums, Scarlet Harlots, Nick Harrison, Rent the Movie, Arctic Monkeys, Zest, Calais, Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, Late of the Pier, The Fall, The Editors

The Carpels – Sand

The Carpels – Handshakes (forthcoming single available from 08/21/11)

Tantrums – Mek Ya Feel Hype

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by Matt Keefer

Frontman Wayne Coyne approaches the tour at his own pace.

Few could predict that an indie punk group from Oklahoma City would have such an innovative presence in the music world. At 49, Wayne Coyne and his quartet of space-a-delic freaks, including bassist Michael Ivins and drummers Steven Drozd and Kliph Scurlock, have earned a Grammy, covered Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety, and toured relentlessly across the world. Currently on tour for their first double-album Embryonic (excluding Zaireeka, their 1997 four-album experiment), the self-deprecating Coyne delivers about the not-so-glamorous side of touring, as well as about future projects.

Matt Keefer: Thanks for your time. Do you mind if I record the interview?

Wayne Coyne: Sure. I don’t expect you to write it all down and remember it. I’m not doubting your ability to remember, but, see, I just talk. It might be a lot easier for you to say, ‘Nah, that fucker goes on too long.’

M: At 27, being 49 seems like a long way to travel.

WC: I remember when I was 27, I would think about someone who’s almost 50 years old: ‘Dude, are you alright?’ I don’t ever get the feeling that I’m any different. It’s only when I look in the mirror sometimes that I think, “oh wow, I look like a weird old guy.” I don’t feel different to myself. It’s a strange phenomenon.

M: How’s your tour for Embryonic going so far?

WC: We’re never really on tour for very long. We’ll go out for maybe about ten days, play some shows, then we’ll go home for ten days… we’re always doing everything at the same time. Since we’re playing some shows in the summertime, you always run into other groups, and we ran into a group, Trombone Shorty, just last night. They’re almost into their third consecutive month of playing. That can beat you down. I already did that several times – when I was your age – and it can be such a mind-fuck, you’re so torn away from your life that you’re trying to build, the people that you knew. Like I said, I’m 49 years old, and the other guys, they’re not as old as me, but they’re not in their early 20s. I think they don’t want to be taken away from their families and their lives for that long. And you can almost go endlessly the way we’re going. You can almost never stop, because we’re going full-time. Doing the Flaming Lips tour is kind of like working at Target: it just kinda is. It’s not too hard, you just get up and go to work.

M: I know some musicians that have kids, and touring must be rough on them.

WC: Especially for musicians. The reason I say musicians is that they have a sensitivity about them, or they probably wouldn’t like music. And all these things that play into human dramas and emotions are just a little bit more, either enjoyable, or a little bit more painful. Sometimes I think groups try to say ‘we’re going to play for six months straight,’ and then take three years off. You know, that’s easy to say, but a lot of things happen to people in six months that you cannot reverse. Especially if you have young children. Six months, they’ll be completely different little creatures by then. We don’t want that. We want to make our music, do our performances, do all these things because we love what we do, not put one thing that we love on hold so we can have another. We want to have it all at the same time.

M: On the positive aspect of that, do you have any good tour stories?

WC: (Laughs) I don’t know, a lot of times there’s not that much crazy shit going on. When we played at Bonnaroo about a month ago, you play into the night pretty long, and there’s a lot of young people there that are doing drugs and stuff. So those [gigs] always play more into the good old rock and roll stories. After we got done, it was about ten minutes after three in the morning, I went over to the LCD Soundsystem stage, where they had just started their set – and I sort of Tweeted about it the day afterward – but this big, naked guy sort of attacked the stage.  Me and, what’s this comedian’s name, Aziz Ansari? – this giant, freaked-out naked guy, had to be doing some acid or something, simply attacked the stage, and we sort of had to hold him down until the security guards could take him away. It was a very strange, charged moment, where that doesn’t happen to you every day. You know, where you’re suddenly assailed by a 300-pound, naked guy, and he’s all sweaty and he’s drenched. That’s probably the last phenomenal rock-and-roll moment that happened to us.

M: I guess at that moment you’re glad that you pump iron five times a week.

WC: I don’t do that much, but I do yoga almost every day. So, yeah, you’re glad that you have energy and you can react and you don’t feel intimidated. I know you’re saying that jokingly, but I mean it. To be in a group, and to do all these things; you wouldn’t want to do it if you don’t have a lot of enthusiasm. So yeah, I jumped right to task. We didn’t really want to. The guy was very strong but he was pretty slippery, because he was so sweaty. The slipperiness made it impossible to grab him. It’s a good trick. If you’re ever going to run from the cops, strip yourself naked and be slippery.

M: Sure. I should probably carry some cans of grease, too.

WC: (Pauses) Then their only solution is to tase you.

M: You’ve also toured Europe and around the world. Any places you’ve enjoyed outside of the US?

WC: It’s all pretty great when you’re a group like the Flaming Lips. Most everywhere that we would go nowadays, we’re invited to play by a group of enthusiastic ‘freaks.’ We just recently went to Croatia, and we played the Glastonbury Festival (in UK) and got to see Snoop Dogg, meet Mick Jones from the Clash. Hang out with Damien Hirst. There’s a lot of great things that can happen to you simply because you’re just traveling the world all the time. But the other side of it is that you spend a lot of time in airports and on airplanes. Sometimes you get done playing at two-o-clock in the morning, and you have to get to the airport at four-o-clock in the morning. Running from one show to the next, everything is ‘hurry hurry hurry’ all the time. Sometimes I think it’s too many experiences. It’d be like having to eat twenty meals in one day. There’s just no way you can enjoy all the things that are happening.

M: Do you have anything new on the horizon?

WC: We’re always – I don’t know if ‘contemplating’ is the right word – but you’re always considering new musical ideas, new things that you want to play into. We’re always doing little movies and little videos. I just shot an ending of a video for a song on Embryonic called “See the Leaves”. We were shooting this guy on the north side of Oklahoma City who has a big acreage where he’s burning a bunch of his brush that he had chopped down. So we saw this giant fucking bonfire. We shot for an ongoing piece in our storyboard there. So it’s always a kind of combination of everything: new music, and new movies, new videos, new things for our website, new toys, new t-shirts. Everything is a Flaming Lips creation. The great range of things that you can do readjusts your focus on music.

M: Last question: Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a brief appearance as a frog on Embryonic.  Would you consider a fuller collaboration with her?

WC: These are definitely collaborations of a sort. I don’t know. For me, I’m more comfortable doing these types of collaborations, where I have the song written, and I have the arrangement, and I just simply call Karen and say ‘All you have to do is be you, and I’ll do all the work.’ A lot of artists don’t really want to collaborate in the sense that people think they do. The art is a lot of times just made very intensely. You simply say, ‘I like this and I don’t care what you think.’ That is in a lot of ways how art is made. And when you’re collaborating with someone that you love and admire, the way that I was working with Karen O, it’s not so much a collaboration, as it’s me giving her a format for her to be her pure self. And that’s different than us writing a song or writing lyrics or writing an arrangement together. So, I don’t know. If whoever called me up and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do this,’ I would always be open for it. I’m open to new experiences and new failures or successes. But I could understand how a lot of people wouldn’t be. It’s nerve-wracking; it’s not always very pleasant. I try to make ours as easy, as quick, and as pleasant as possible. They simply can do this little thing, and be part of this bigger thing. That’s why most artists would want to do it in that way, more than a ‘Hey Henry (Rollins), why don’t you write a song today?’ A lot of people will do that to us. I’ll say ‘not really, but I will, if that’s what we’re doing.’

M: You’re definitely right: you talk a lot. But it works with interviews.

WC: (Laughs) I know I paint it like it’s going to be torture, but I’m trying to give you as much a lay of thinking about me as you can. Make me sound cool.

The Flaming Lips will be playing on 10/10 in Austin, TX. You can buy tickets here.

The Flaming Lips – Race for the Prize

The Flaming Lips – Fight Test

The Flaming Lips – It’s Summertime

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Kamp! are a sight to behold. They are on the cusp of an global breakthrough, yet at the moment remain confined to a Polish fan population that rightfully feels as if it has the best kept secret in electro-pop. Their sound rings of no foreign distinction, choosing to present a familiar version of the genre that brings to mind artists like Cut Copy and Tesla Boy. Essentially, it is the type of electro-pop that avoids the occasional pretension of other electronic genres, often being over-repetition or reliance on sample-based development. Kamp! produce purely great pop music that is minimally reliant on contemporary production. The reverb or droned keys are far cries from acoustical production, but the bells and whistles are minimal enough to divulge a sensational melody that could stand on its own even after an acoustic rendition. Transposing to an acoustic format is something that most electronic artists cannot accomplish without stumbling over the technologically astute components of their recordings. In this genre, an ability to do so represents a far more genuinely engineered and enjoyably straightforward vein of pop music.

“Heats” is the latest single from Kamp! and could potentially serve as their entry into the big time. While perhaps too developmentally paced for mainstream radio, it has a whiff of coolness in addition to songwriting that stresses proper patience throughout its five-minute run, opting to work in vocal melodies early as opposed to repeating the central loop for several minutes. Instead of muddled repetition in the vein of house music, we are graced with Tomek’s vocal abilities early on, as well as the musical intuitiveness of fellow members Radek and Michal. I hate to say that Tomek sounds a bit like Bono in the beginning, but it’s true. He has the same sort of confident clarity, with the European accent and dragging croon only making things more noticeable. As the music grows in complexity and hook-laden fury though, the styles of ’80s rockers and Kamp! begin to grow more noticeably apart. For example, the comparison to Cut Copy is more evident on “Distance of the Modern Hearts”, a brisker and more dance-friendly counterpart to the majestic glow of “Heats”.

Although their most recent offering only includes these two songs, it is certainly enough to predict future success. The single’s accompanying track, “Distance of the Modern Hearts”, is more in the vein of ’80s electro-pop upstarts like the Pet Shop Boys. Kamp! do not rely as much on complexity or mood like on “Heats”, but succeed in their more house-oriented efforts through the creation of sheer infectiousness (which is usually the point for songs like this). One can begin to appreciate production techniques too though, like the sudden burst of synths a bit after the two-minute mark of “Distance of the Modern Hearts”. Moments like these make it a particularly good reason to show Cut Copy fans the work of Kamp! Certain comparable songwriting flourishes are unavoidable. Back to the song, it is worth noting that the synth solo at the conclusion wraps things up nicely. “Heats” and this track both succeed on vastly different stylistic fronts, and that immediate exposition of variety is encouraging when considering the trio’s future. At the moment it looks very bright, and all one needs are these few tracks to hear why.

RIYL: Cut Copy, Tesla Boy, Chromeo, The Presets, Hot Chip, Junior Boys, Lo-Fi-Fnk, Friendly Fires, The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, LCD Soundsystem, Neon Indian, Passion Pit, Ladyhawke, Simian Mobile Disco, Calvin Harris, Miike Snow, Hercules and Love Affair, Muscles

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Kamp! – Heats

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Kamp! – Distance of the Modern Hearts

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Kamp! – Breaking a Ghost’s Heart (Radio Edit)

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The Very Best are a deliciously odd trio. The band formed more than four years ago, after DJ gods Johan Karlberg and Etienne Tron of Radioclit met Esau Mwamwaya after buying a bike at Mwamwaya’s used furniture/junk store in East London. In 2008, the group released a mixtape, Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are the Very Best, featuring samples of artists like M.I.A, Architecture in Helsinki, and Santigold. Since then, the trio have been producing popular ballads like “Warm Heart of Africa”, inspired by Esau’s native country of Malawi. They released their official debut of the same name, Warm Heart of Africa, last August to critical acclaim from Rolling Stone, NME, and Pitchfork. I recently sat down with the band to discuss their collaboration with Ezra Koenig, the process of creating beats, and why The Very Best’s aim is to put a smile on your face.

How did you guys meet?

JOHAN: Esau ran a second- hand junk shop on my street. Etienne lived up the street, so he used to pass the shop going to my house. He bought a bike from Esau and invited him to his house warming party and that’s where I met him. He told me he was a drummer so I invited him to to the studio, thinking he was an African percussionist. As it turned out, he was more of a proper drummer and was drumming for his local church in Hackney, East London. Esau came to the studio and, as we played him some beats, he started to sing along. That day, we did the song “Chalo”, which is still on the album, Warm Heart of Africa, ’til this day. We just went from there and started recording every week; we practiced whenever there was time Esau had off work.

How long have you been playing together for?

We don’t play together in the sense of playing instruments. but we play together as in having fun. It’s been four years in September now. We chilled out and had fun and took our time making the album, then the mixtape. Now we’re just touring and doing all that comes with having a record out, but we’ve managed to almost finish up a new mixtape as we’ve been on road, so we stay creative.

As a three-piece, what does your music writing process look like?

Usually we give Esau an instrumental piece. He brings some melody ideas, which we develop together. And when we’re set on melodies, he will write the lyrics for it.

You collaborated with Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend on “Warm Heart of Africa.” Did you write the song with his vocals in mind?

Nah, that song was made with him and Esau in studio, at the same time the instrumental/beat was made. That was made the same morning, just about an hour before Ezra arrived in the studio. Ezra wrote the hook and recorded, then Esau came in and did his verses, and then Ezra, Esau, and us vibed together to get it all glued together the right way.

Esau, I know you grew up in East Africa. Do you feel like this greatly influenced your music?

ESAU: Everything influences my music… life, nature, love, hardship. Of course, my background inspires me too. I grew up with a lot of western music so that influences me too. Now I’m back in Malawi after nine years in England and it’s a combination of all these life experiences that really inspire me. There’s sooo much to life and sooo much to observe and experience, hence sooo much to write about.

You guys came out with “Warm Heart of Africa” in 2009. Should we be excited for a new album in the near future?

We’ve just started to toy with some new ideas, so its still very early. But there will be another album one day, we hope….

What do you aim to achieve with your music?

To go as far as we can, really. Go wherever it takes us. It’s amazing seeing how people take to your music and how it affects people. We had such a good time making this album and in general, making music together. It’s great to see that filter down to listeners. This was a happy project and it seems we managed to translate that from us being in the studio to people being at home listening or coming to the shows, taking part. We just want to put a smile on people’s faces and open up their mind to some different styles of music.

RIYL: Amadou & Mariam, Annie, Tinariwen, Vampire Weekend, Discovery, LCD Soundsystem, Ebo Taylor, Surfer Blood, Ra Ra Riot, Local Natives, Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangare, Salif Keita, Orchestra Baobab, Two Door Cinema Club, The Shins, Girls, Broken Bells, Boubacar Traoré, Cold War Kids, Issa Bagayogo

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The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa (feat. Ezra Koenig)

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The Very Best – Chalo

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The Very Best – Mfamu

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Green Owl Records

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