Interview: Exit International

Posted on 12th Dec 11 by Daniel Robinson | 0

You guys played in London last night. How did that go?

Fudge: We did, we played with one of our favourite bands, Antlered Man.

Scott: It was like a small club night. We saw it as sort of a warm up for the tour with Ginger and the boys. But it was good, it went off, it was good fun.  Fudge: It’s always weird playing London because you don’t know what the crowd’s going to be like. But we’re getting quite a following there now which is good. Good. I’m saying good. Great. Put great!

You also opened for LaFaro there last month. Did it go well?

Fudge: Ah it was all right, I mean we don’t really like Irish people but as a band they’re all right (laughs). No, they’re a great bunch of lads as well and we’ve done a few gigs with them and it was nice to be asked for their London album launch type thing.

Scott: That was a really, really good show because a lot of their fans really get what we’re doing. It’s not the same genre per say but I think the kind of idea behind what us and LaFaro are doing is similar. Just guttural nastiness.

How did the current tour with Ginger and Hawk Eyes come together. What’s the relationship between yourselves and those bands?

Scott: Well I’ve been a Wildhearts fan since I was about fifteen, sixteen, and when we got the initial mixes of Black Junk, the very early ones, I sent Ginger a copy. So I started using Twitter, just to see how this thing works. And he got back and said he loved the album and from there it sort of escalated. I did some vocals on The Frankenstein Effect project, we did a one off show and that turned into a full tour. Which is amazing, I mean you can’t ask for anything more. That’s the sort of reward you can’t ask for.

What about Hawk Eyes? Any history there?

Fudge: Well there is. We met them earlier, got on quite well. There was a rough patch when we were outside and he didn’t have a light but we got over that, so we’re on good terms again now.

Are there any dates you’re looking forward to in particular? Ginger’s Birthday Bash on the 17^th perhaps?

Scott: That’s going to be fun. I believe we’re playing a couple of Ginger’s songs that he hasn’t really done. A couple of older ones that he thought would suit what we do, quite kind of nasty and visceral. So really looking forward to that one, I believe it’s sold out already so it should be a good night.

How do you find touring in general? Is any of it affordable?

Fudge: Yeah it’s doable. Don’t expect to make any money. We’ve got the point now where it doesn’t cost us personally any money. All the band money kind of rolls around and keeps it going so we’ve hit that kind of stage now. Which is good. We can eat, we can drink, we can find places to stay. It’s doable.

Is the travel and time together a challenge for the relationships within the band?

Scott: Well we’re all best mates. We’re from polarized parts of Wales but all ended up in the right place at the right time. It was the time to do something noisy that wasn’t similar to what anyone else was doing or anything we’d done in the past. We tried to sort of out-perverse each other with our sounds, but the structure and melody wasn’t really apparent in the band at that time. But it naturally gravitated towards ‘Yeah, there’s a chorus’. And after that ‘hard work’ it become more stylistically apparent where we were headed.

Your debut album Black Junk has been out for a few months now. Has it had much of an impact since it’s release?

Fudge: Yeah it has. It’s been really good. We get people turning up to the shows now that have bought the album. Like when you start off you’ll release a single or an EP and your friends will buy it. We were expecting that. So we released the first EP and that got kind of critical acclaim and stuff but our friends bought it mainly and it sort of trickled out from the website. But we got some amazing reviews for this album. We’ve been blown away by it and people turning up to shows going ‘Man I love you’re album!‘, complete strangers that just love music. That really makes it worthwhile. So it has had an effect. It’s really snowballing now.

Was it important to you for it to fare well critically?

Fudge: It is in terms of the fact that I can sticking a big fucking middle finger up to everybody who just thought that us three being in the same band was the worst idea in the world.

Did you face a lot of that

Fudge: Well it’s just because…well…we’re a tricky bunch of lads, but when it comes together it works. Singularly, in our private lives, we’re a fucking mess. But when we’re together we’ve got all the components of a working individual playing three different instruments at once. I never feel any more comfortable than when I’m with him and Adam. Ever.

A lot of the subject matter is fairly dark. Where do you find lyrical inspiration?

Scott: It’s sort of this juxtaposition of ideas. It can be kind of cheesy but I think we do it in a way that there’s an element of you thinking they’re actually serious about this. I’m not going to say categorically the things that are serious and aren’t. That’s for you to decide and I think that’s where the fun is. When over the course of an album there are some things that quite direct and really need to be said and other things that just throwing it out there, chuck the shit to the wall and see if it sticks. I would never say ‘This is about this’. I don’t think people should know the truth.

There’s already talk of songs in the works for the next release. How are they shaping up?

Scott: We were going to play a new song tonight but we got about eight minutes of soundcheck and we need to go through it one more time.

Fudge: We’ve got three or four songs already written towards the new album. We’re hoping to do the pre-production demos in about nine, ten months time, start recording it properly in maybe just over a year’s time. We’re aiming to write about twenty songs and we’ll pick the best out of them and b-sides. We’ve got a Japanese label and they always want exclusives, so we’ve got to give them three and that whittles it down to seventeen songs. We’ve got a lot of writing to do but we’re finding it incredibly easy and satisfying. We thought it was going to be hard going into it because we were like ‘How’re we gonna top Black Junk?’, but as soon as we wrote the first couple of songs we’d surpassed what we’d already done. After this tour we’ll put our heads down and have at least a couple of months of writing.

(We also quiz the lads on the mention of a new track ‘Kojak Rollkneck’. It’s a working title, but they don’t elaborate much further, instead kindly suggesting to Google it, at your peril.)

With the likes of yourselves, Pulled Apart By Horses, Turbowolf, Hawk Eyes, The Computers etcetera do you think there’s a larger rock resurgence above the radar in the UK at the minute or has this always existed?

Fudge: I think it’s more a point in time where people have decided to get a stick up their arses and do something again. And do something different, you know? It feels in a very, very, very small way that, like the grunge movement railing against cock rock, what us and Pulled Apart and everything are doing, is against no brains rock and roll for brain dead consumers. If you can make people think you’ve done your job. All my favourite records are challenging. I don’t feel like the band’s treating me like an imbecile. Those bands you mentioned want to give the listeners something to get their grey matter around and can enjoy.

For UK mainlanders here are the upcoming shows with Ginger and Hawk Eyes. No Irish dates sadly, but hopefully next time.

Fri, 09 Dec: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK; Academy Newcastle

Sat, 10 Dec: Leeds, UK; Cockpit

Sun, 11 Dec: Southampton, UK; Talking Heads Music Venue

Mon, 12 Dec: NORWICH, UK; THE WATERFRONT

Tue, 13 Dec: Bristol, UK; Fleece and Firkin

Thu, 15 Dec: Wolverhampton, UK; Wolverhampton Civic Hall – Wulfrun Hall

Sat, 17 Dec: Cheltenham, UK; The Frog and Fiddle

Sat, 17 Dec: London, UK; O2 Academy Islington

Sun, 18 Dec: London, UK, Jazz Cafe

Tags: Exit International, Ginger Wildheart