British Sea Power Interview January 2011 [PART 1]
By: Stan Morgan
After playing Rockfeedback’s 10th birthday show back in September, British Sea Power are nearing their own decade anniversary, having released their debut single ‘Fear of Drowning’ back in 2001. 2011 will see the band release their fourth album (not including their soundtrack to The Man of Aran), Valhalla Dancehall. What the Norse afterlife has got to do with Sean Paul is anyone’s guess, so we sat down for a glass of mulled wine with the band to try to make sense of it all. Topics for discussion included Michael Jackson’s This is It tour, N-Dubz’ work ethic, and giant robotic owls.
You guys have been together 10 years now, how do you think you’ve changed since you started out?
Yan: I can actually justifiably call myself a musician now.
Noble: We’re now a 6 piece, we started as a 4, went to 5, back to 4 and now there’s 6 of us. I think we’re a bit more realistic, I’d say we were probably overly ambitious when we started. I think we wanted to be the biggest band in the world.
Since your first album you’ve always been one of the big indie bands, do you think there’s ever going to be a point where you break into the mainstream?
Yan: We’d like to dominate the mainstream, we’ve always had big plans, we’ve just never managed to fulfil them properly. I’m not sure why, maybe musical reasons, maybe other reasons.
How do you think your new album Valhalla Dancehall compares to your previous albums?
Hamilton: Obviously our last one was completely instrumental, but then again lots of people don’t count that as a proper album.
Noble: Geoff Travis, our label boss, said it was our most diverse collection of songs yet. We tried to avoid a lot of the things that we’d done in the past, and by doing that hopefully we’ll have done something new.
Yan: I think we tried to reinvent it, but being humans, and having our habits and that I think it’s inevitable that it will sound similar to Do You Like Rock Music?
Hamilton: It can get a bit psychotic and aggressive sometimes.
Were there any themes that you are trying to get across?
Yan: The idea that everything is happening all at once, and more and more. Nowadays you can go from something nice and wholesome, to bestiality, to science, to drinking and joking down the pub in seconds. It used to be you had to travel to do things like that, but now you can do everything all of the time.
What was the recording like for the new album?
Noble: Last time we moved around a lot, we did it in the New Forest in a water tower, and we went to Canada and the Czech Republic. This time we thought we’d do something we hadn’t already done and just be sedentary and hole ourselves up for ages.
Yan: Hamilton and Abi live on the Isle of Skye, so they came down to Sussex first and then we went up there.
Hamilton: We’ve got a little studio up there, so we got everyone in. There wasn’t much else to do. We’re quite big on atmosphere, and I think the atmosphere of the island made it onto the record, the only thing we had to worry about was making too much noise for the neighbours.
Why did you choose to stick with the same producer?
Yan: I can’t imagine many people who would be willing to do what he did really, he moved into the house with us.
Noble: We’d record loads of stuff and he’d sort it out and make sense of it all. We gave him loads and loads of tracks and he’d just sit through it all.
Yan: We put him in what we called the ‘Room of Doom’, with all his endless work. Every time he thought he was on top of it we’d turn up with 300 more tracks.
Artists in this article: British Sea Power