Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies - London, UK - Spring 2005
By: Tim Dellow
I stagger down the institutional staircase; the echoes of my footsteps clattering down after me. I follow the voices into what appears to be a squash court. By one of the walls is a settee with members of Redjetson and YMSS, sharing jokes about the last tour. Andy (Vox, Geetar) has filled what appears to be an oversized swimming hat with ice cubes and near frozen water, and is now stretching it over his head, attempting to pass himself off as some kind of demented Smurf. Ham (bass), Graham (drums) and Al (Keys, Guitar, androgynous looks) seem to be playing squash, using ice cubes and ping pong bats.
'Hey Tim!!!' they clamour, before rushing me, and smothering me with hugs, kisses and post-tour body odour.
Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies are as ridiculous in person as their moniker would suggest, and their music even more so. Their most recent album (re-pressed with bonus tracks this month) 'Hurrah! Another year...' combines about sixty songs into four sections. And rocks hard. If The Mars Volta had less pretension, a negative budget and a fetish for hard teenage nipples, then you would... turn that horrific noise off. But somehow, YMSS take magpie song construction to its limits, and come out smiling. A trait that has seen these implacable adventurers play alongside such luminaries as Mission of Burma, Ten Grand, Biffy Clyro and um, THE Charlie 'nice eyebrows' from Busted. And this is where the pre-gig interview, at London's ULU begins.
'Your three girl groupies from Fightstar are here.' Shouts Ham.
'Which ones?' Replies Al.
'The tall 'I'll f**k you' one, the middle perfect one, and the smaller, OK, you would because....because it's ok, one.'
I'm just about to make some comment about the three bears when Al cuts the group short.
'Hey guys... this is already the kind of shit that we were talking about at the last interview, let's be serious. This is serious.'
We're recording.
[It's a proper recording device this time. Not like the last time when I used an ancient Dictaphone and Graham just went on and on, like a deranged Connor from 'Neighbours'.]
Check.
Check.
Topic one. The new single. The pop single. Which sees the band condensing the album down into four minutes.
Ham: 'Doesn't have a name. Isn't written yet.'
Andy: 'It starts kinda dumb rock, then there's like a clapping breakdown, then it goes a bit Math, and then there's sort of a Dixie bit. And then it goes into a chorus that one half of it is sort of Latino, the other half of it sort of Bulgarian...'
It does have a name. 'Ores'. And it frenetically tries to combine at least seven verses and five choruses into one radio-friendly unit-shifter.
'The plan was to just try to condense everything we'd normally try to do in nine and a half minutes into, three and a half, maybe four, just because um...We haven't done that and its not what's expected of us.'
Pre-empting the forthcoming pop format question;
'So it's not like conforming to what people were saying; 'Oh, you should make your songs shorter'; it was that we hadn't ever exerted that level of self-control.'
Not that it fits into the traditional format at all... Mathy, obnoxious, it sounds like an Attention Deficit Disorder patient with his finger hovering over the station skip button.
'We've always said we make music for people with short attention spans, because we've got short attention spans, but it seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know, maybe we never really believed that; it used to just be like a sound-bite for people who were trying to describe the way we wrote. Now it's just like, I get really bored if I go and see a show and someone is just doing one thing for an hour and you're just like, 'I can't get enough out of it'.' Explains Al.
But there's nothing conceited or planned about their writing process; it really is just a jumble of four young men, frustrated and passionate about music.
'I think it just comes from loving lots of different things. We don't necessarily agree on what the end product is going to sound like, so it ends up not sounding like any of the things that we wanted it to.'
Their progress has been equally hard to chart. Doing things the old-fashioned way, the band have never received that much hype (although Al's PR job has ensured they receive their fare share of coverage), they have toured relentlessly, releasing a mini-album, a number of small split singles and comp releases and now 'Hurrah...' on Fierce Panda which has, to date sold around 2,000 copies.
'We've just found ourselves in a really funny position where enough people know of us that we get offered these good gigs. But people don't generally seem to know who to put us on with. So we get to play with a large spectrum of people, which is fun.'
And this has allowed the band to convert a number 'safer' music fans, to the joys of Beefheart, Ninja Tune and Post Rock, just a few of the band's influences.
Graham begins: 'The best thing about the Fightstar gig was playing to people who don't necessarily...'
Before being cut short by Al, finishing his sentence:
'...have an idea of where that music comes from...'
'Who don't have the back catalogue or anything.' Compounds the feisty drummer.
It's certainly refreshing to play to such an audience, though, much better than a cynical crowd who tick off a group's influences and moan that they'd seen this sort of thing back in '82 (not that music like this existed back then).
'Busted fans don't have the reference points. They can't even, like, flippantly say, 'Oh, they just sound like Mogwai,' as a lot of ill-informed people would say about us. They don't even have that as a reference-point.' Re-iterates Al:
'It was really fun to play to these kids who really didn't know where we were coming from.'
If they didn't before the gig, they certainly did afterwards, if their dressing-room groupie antics are anything to go by. But this is a perk of the job, and being a touring band at this level is anything but glamorous.
'Now, we're in this weird position, where we've done all this touring, we've broken our backs with that shit, and we've had all our allowances, and none of us can get any more time off work, we're in massive amounts of debt, and we just can't afford to push ourselves in that way anymore. But also we got to the point where we weren't rehearsing, because we'd be playing a show every week and so there'd be nothing new. We'd just be like, 'Oh well, we can just turn it on like that and play the set blindfolded...' Explains Al
'It seems like we've been doing a lot, but it feels to us like we've been stagnating.' Exhales Andy.
'We've been playing a lot, but it's been the same set. So now we cannot tour until we've put an album out. So we're going to take this time to write an album that's just too good for people to ignore. Because we feel like we've had a lot of acceptance and we've done well, but it's not like the goal is to make a living from this, but if it wasn't crippling us financially...' Al Explains. And it takes serious conviction to sink as much as they have into a band, emotionally and financially.
'We'll be paying back the loan for making that last record for five years. And we ...'
He stutters, as if realising the magnitude of the situation for the first time;
'We've had a year of touring as hard as we possibly could; five tours in the last year; and for the first time, we made just enough on the last tour, to actually pay our rent for the time that we weren't working. While we were on tour. Even when you appear to make something, it's only really moving money about.'
'We accept we're not going to make lots of money, but we just don't want to go on losing money.' Explains Andy, thrilled by the support offered by the likes of Fierce Panda, but frustrated that a country such as this has no real government funding of 'artistic' pop music, despite it being the UK's largest export; 'It's all very well making a record, and people have been really receptive and bought it, and that's great but really, it's f**ked (financially) us a bit.'
But it hasn't deterred them, especially when they see the results in a new generation, a generation that will make more interesting records than the historic re-hashes of their predecessors. 'Well... some of (the Fightstar fans) reacted really well. They were music fans, you know; they were at a show for a band that haven't released a record yet and like, they were real, into the whole thing that was going on. So a lot of them were receptive. For some it was their first or second gig.' Enthuses Andy.
And they don't want to let their public, or themselves down.
'Now, we want to spend a year, instead of playing as hard as we can, writing as hard as we can, to write something that when it comes out we know it's more than just the sum of all of our ideas. Really make something that documents all we want to do...' Enthuses Al, before Andy pushes his way to the fore; '...and give us the opportunity to like...' he trails off, suddenly to regain focus; 'because the mini albums are a really nice little format, but it doesn't really give anything the time to breath or develop on...they're sort of statements of intent...'
'We get accused of trying to do too much. That's exactly what we are doing. We don't see it as a bad thing. We're trying to get as much down on tape as you can in the allotted time...' But they'll be breaking with this tradition on their new album, recently moving out from their shared house, and into unknown territory;
'Now we know it's going to take us a while to get this record done. But it'll be all the better for it. 'Cos we've always just written songs and recorded them straight away and then toured them...'
'We were at the point that I think we needed a bit of distance. I'd been living with Al for four years.' Andy explains, while Al candidly raises an eyebrow;
'We've all just been living on top of each other. And we were getting... that and rehearsing in then house, then going on tour and being in the back of a van with each other for three weeks. Like. We were all just sick to death of each other. No one would do anything that surprised any of us. And now when we practice for the first time in ages, writing this new song, people will do little things and you'll notice and think it's really f**king funny...and we're just having a really good time again.'
Which is what counts. In every generation, there are artists who are, at the time, largely ignored, only to have their albums rooted out in the future and declared modern classics. Or, perhaps, artists that are seen by the next generation, who all go off and form bands of their own. And, perhaps, YMSS fall into this category.
'It's been an adventure for us. Our aspirations seem to change on a day-to-day basis.'
Finalises Andy; 'In the start, it was, 'Let's form a band. Then let's try and get some gigs in High Wycombe. To alleviate some of the boredom of being in High Wycombe.'
'We went for the course,' Graham mumbles.
'They do some quite particular courses,' Andy suggests, a lilt in his voice.
'It's a bad, bad place to be,' Ham shakes his head disapprovingly.
'But, yeah...' Al allows a crafty smile to stretch across his face; 'We didn't necessarily go to Uni as often as we should have. But we did practice a lot.'
All too favourably, it shows.
Artists in this article: Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies