Fanzine interview

Can you tell me how the members of Fanzine met?

Ed and Kit went to nursery together and I met Kit in primary school. We met Billy in secondary school and we've all just been sort of hanging out since. If we weren't in a band it'd be quite depressing knowing that our social circle hasn't expanded since we were twelve but we are so it's sort of OK.

Have you recorded your songs in a commercial studio or in a homemade studio?

I've got a portable 8 track so we just take that to where there's space to record drums or whatever, then Ed mixes it all on Logic. I think ideally we'd like to have our own home studio set up, but none of us have the money at the moment so we're just doing it where we can. I don't know how well we'd take to recording in a proper studio though, we like keeping things as self contained as possible.

It is often said about Fanzine that you manage to find a balance between the indie pop sound and the modern sound. Could you name a few bands, old ones and new ones, that inspire your music ?

Blur are a band we always look to as striking a great balance between really good, classic songwriting and always being stylistically cool, especially early stuff like Modern Life Is Rubbish. Early Weezer are another big influence for a similar reason.

We're all really into heavy stuff too; bands like Deftones, Black Sabbath and Kyuss. Essentially metal bands who in one way or another transcend the genre and make music that's awesome, as a lot of metal is, but intelligent and in some way"other". It was a love of stuff like this that brought us together initially and we still try keep an element of it aspects of our music.

Do you think that living in London has influenced your music ?
Only as much as living anywhere would influence what you do. We certainly wouldn't think of ourselves as epitomizing anything inherently "LONDON", or even English in our sound or style. We leave that to Dizzee Rascal.

Do you consider your songs as translations of moments and memories, or on the contrary as universal stories anyone can identify to?

Hopefully a bit of both i guess. There's certainly nothing elitist about our sound, musically or lyrically; we've never set out to appeal to any one group of people. Having said that we wouldn't presume that anyone at all would identify with our songs, which is a shame really as we want to be doing a stadium tour of the American south by this time next year. If not sooner.

It seems to me that your lyrics are pretty cinematic. Do you watch a lots of movies ? If so, what are your all-time favorites, the ones you can watch over and over ?

Fanzine do indeed watch a lot of movies. Perhaps too many. Our tastes, like anyone's really, are pretty diverse, but there are definitely a few films which have influenced us collectively as a band. We're all really into the films of John Carpenter. He seems to walk a thin but invariably awesome line between intelligent mainstream American cinema and the B, or even C-movie. He makes all the music for his films too; very minimal, often very scary stuff which sounds like it was all made on a single Casio keyboard by a deranged teenager. Which it probably was actually. As well as being very cool, enjoyable movies, John Carpenter films also tend to have Kurt Russell in, which is no bad thing.

In terms of things we've watched again and again, we'd have to site Cannibal The Musical, the first movie by Trey Stone and Matt Parker, the guys who made South Park. They made it when they were still at college and it's very very low budget. It's a parody of stuff like OKLAHOMA! and other manic Broadway musicals, and as well its being really very funny, I think what we all like about it as a band are the quality of the songs in it. We recommend youtubing these as it's difficult for us to properly describe how a song about cannibal's love for his horse can be both funny and musically challenging.

Did you play with other bands before Fanzine ?

We've all played music with each other on and off since we were like 14. Jock and Ed have written music since before that probably. An early incantation of what is now Fanzine was the prolific death metal band Clawhammer. We recorded one song, 'Roaming the Plains' for our GCSE music course before deciding that the world wasn't quite ready for us yet. I think we're actually going to put this song up on our blog soon so look out for that.

Is there a particular band or producer that you'd like to collaborate with ?

I think we're all in agreement that there's only one man in the world right now who could get the best of us in the studio; Timbaland.

If he's not available we'll make do with Rivers Cuomo or Graham Coxon.

Did your drummer Billy really go to a monastery in India to hone his drumming technique ?

Yes

What are your upcoming projects ? Particular expectations/wishes for the
future ?

We're just finishing up some recordings at the moment. Three songs to be exact. Work has been slow and arduous as we're recording it all ourselves but they're sounding good and will be done very shortly, at which point we were thinking it might be cool to release an E.P. We've been writing a lot of new stuff too, and have a bunch of shows lined over the next month or so.

In terms of expectations, if we're not signed to Fred Durst's record company and embarking on a world tour with Kid Rock by the Autumn, we're splitting up.

Fanzine - Susan

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