music personally? I got a bass guitar when I was 13 and totally fell in love with it. And that was it from then on, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I had no idea of what kind of music I wanted to make; when I first started I was listening to my older brother’s record collection, which consisted of Manchester guitar bands like Joy Division, Te Smiths and Te Stone Roses. Ten I kind of graduated into funk and hip hop and eventually jazz. I studied jazz at Leeds College of Music, which is where I took up the double bass. I had a teacher who played it, and it intrigued me. Jazz as a genre can be considered quite challenging to get into. What would you suggest would be a good starting point for a beginner? Tough question! I remember hearing some stuff when I was younger, like Eric Dolphy and it just seemed really out there. It took me a long time to get into that. I guess people often turn to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis to start off with and that kind of makes sense. It’s influenced so much music that came after it that you can go back and detect that lineage. It’s a great album. How did you feel when you were nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2014, and what did you think of the winners, Young Fathers? We were absolutely blown away by it really. We’d applied for it but had forgotten all about when it was announced, so when our manager emailed us to say we’d be chose we were amazed. For us it was incredible..we were the least known band on the list. Everybody else had a bit of a reputation and we’d come out of nowhere. Young Fathers…I thought they
did a great speech, ha ha! I haven’t checked out too much of their stuff although we saw them knocking about backstage. I suppose one of the best things about being nominated for the Mercury is that it introduces your music to so many people who wouldn’t otherwise have heard it. Yeah, the amount of attention it brought to us was phenomenal. We couldn’t have got that so fast off our own backs. We had a bit of a following but when we got shortlisted, we had a lot of people saying they found out about us through the Mercury. I think just being shortlisted for us felt like winning. We didn’t ever entertain the possibility of winning it, in fact our manager had already told us we wouldn’t win, so we just had a nice time! How would you say your sound has developed from when you first got together? Yeah, maybe not compositionally yet, but I guess it’s a bit more electronic than our last album. I think the main thing that I’ve noticed is that since we’ve been out on the road so much doing loads and loads of gigs we sound more like a band, and a better band. Everybody knows their role and we know the spaces to go to more than we did when we were making v2.0, our last album. Your new album Man Made Object is out this month. Can you tell us a bit about what we can expect? It’s not a huge departure from the last one in terms of where we’re at in terms of style but there are a few more pointers towards electronica, as I said. Do you make other styles of music individually or with other musicians? We don’t really have time any more. Tis
is our main thing and we’re so busy with it. I know that Chris has been wanting to do more stuff with synths and he was also doing some solo classical stuff but that’s really gone out the window with how busy we’ve been. Rob’s always making electronica on his laptop and I used to always be gigging here there and everywhere with other people but Gogo Penguin is our main thing now.
Tis tour is taking you through Europe and the UK and your two Manchester dates are already sold out. What’s the music scene been like for you there? I love the city and I think the music scene’s really strong. It’s not as big or varied as London but everybody knows each other, there’s one degree of separation between each person. Even if you’re not involved in a particular style everyone’s aware of what’s happening. Everyone’s been really supportive of what we’ve been doing. I was wondering if you have heard Mammal Hands, a great jazz group from Norwich? Yeah totally! We actually played a festival with them in Birmingham, they were on before us and I ended up telling the chap who runs Gondwana Records about them and he signed them! Te last time we played in Norwich we supported them and they did their thing, they’re great. You’re signed to the legendary label Blue Note now, that’s a real achievement! Has this spurred you onwards? It took ages to sink in after it happened because it came out of nowhere really! Our manager sent us an email on the Tuesday, we had a gig in Hamburg on the Friday, and he said “Oh, some guys from Blue Note might be coming out to see you play, but don’t worry about it.” So we were like “OK..” It was a great room, a good audience, so we felt reasonably comfortable. Ten we had a chat with the head of Blue Note in the U.S, Don Was, and then Blue Note France who were really cool guys and the next week there was a deal on the table. We couldn’t really believe we were signed to Blue Note!
Lizz Page
INFORMATION Gogo Penguin play Norwich Arts Centre on 12th February. Tickets available from
ueaticketbookings.co.uk
outlineonline.co.uk / February 2016 / 25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64