Interview - South Central
Words by Cass Gowing
DH: For anyone who isn’t familiar with South Central, can you sum up who you are and what sound you’ve got?
Rob - Basically our sound is indie/dance/electro kinda stuff. The new dance thing I think, which is obviously a mix of rock, indie and dance. It’s a new thing which is growing. Basically it’s Rob, Keith and Chris thenNicoli on drums.
Keith – We like to call our music electronicana. We just invented this word.
DH: Fantastic, I was then going to ask what music genre would you say you fall under?
Keith - We’re ahead of the game
DH: Where did the idea come from to mix live music and djs?
Keith – When we play live, its not really mixing the two together. I play keyboard and I manipulate all of Rob’s vocals, some of the drums here and there, my keyboard and some extra stuff. We don’t really dj, by playing a track or other people’s music. Everything is done live and that’s how we like it to be. It’s live music. Everything is live.
DH: What are your musical influences?
Keith – Do you have about 24hours left?
Rob – Crystal Castles!
DH: You’ve been touring with Does it Offend You Yeah? How has that been so far?
Rob – It’s been amazing. We played Brighton last night. It was mad. The mosh pit was the biggest mosh pit ever. I was seeing people from the back of the venue running from the back right to the front. That mosh pit was as big as Japan.
DH: Japan?
Rob - Yeah when we were in Japan there was a massive mosh pit as well and that was, I think it was equal.
DH: So what’s the biggest gig you’ve played?
Rob - When we played in Japan there was about five thousand people. When we played Transmusica it was pretty insane too. We played a national day in France, called the Bastille Day. That was probably the biggest gig, about twenty thousand.
Keith – The Mayor asked us to play a French track at the end.
DH: Where are you guys from? You have quite an unusual accent.
Rob – We’re Maltese.
DH: What can we expect from your live shows?
Rob – Big noise, big drums, new sounds, good melodies. No slow records.
Keith – Something to dance to.
DH: Your album The Owl of Minerva is due to be released on 3rd November, are you looking forward to it?
Keith - It’s a collection of singles from the past two years from vinyls. We’re working on the debut album. It’s sounding good. __ It’ll be out next year definitely, probably February, March time.
DH: Which label are you on?
Keith - It’s our own record label.
DH: DIY bands are quite popular at the minute, creating their own record labels. Why do you think that is?
Rob - Basically we want to evolve naturally. It’s not that we don’t want to get signed, we do want to get signed but we want to be able to evolve naturally without being told what to do. Because that way you can become the best you can be. We do want to get signed but want it to be on our terms as much as possible.
DH: Do you prefer to do remixes or your own material?
Keith - It depends, obviously we like to do our own material but when a good remix comes along, we’re very selective by the way, we don’t just do anything that comes along. If something interesting comes along, we’ll look at it not once or twice, until we’re sure we want to do it. With The Wombats, we did a tour with them so we have a relationship with them.
Rob – We like them as guys as well. It’s funny cos I was thinking about that, in interviews they say “But you’re much cooler than The Wombats”
[laughs]But we see it in a different way. You see the music being played but because we’re backstage we see how hard they work. You automatically become respectful of them and like their music for who they are and how hard they work.
DH: How did the Bacardi advert come about?
Keith – We’re signed, well not signed actually but an agent takes care of our tracks. We pitched for the advert and they really liked it. It’s like being signed without being signed: we can afford to do things.
Rob- Obviously we got quite good money for the advert. Some people would say ‘Oh you’re sell-outs’ but if they were in our place, and you don’t want to get signed but wanna work yourself you would rather get the money from an advertising company. Because we aren’t signed, we own the track so the record company doesn’t take 80% of the money. It came about because they like South Central, weirdly enough. [Laughs] You always think these big guys who are the head of Bacardi would like Celion Dion or something like that. They liked the sound. They liked Crystalling, one of the tracks on the cd. From Crystalling we did the track Aeon which is on the advert.
Keith – We were listening to a lot of Interpol then, so a lot of the guitar parts are influenced by that. It worked quite well actually.
Rob - You have to see it in the way of: either sign to a label and sell all of your tracks for four years. Or sell one track and get the same money.
DH: What are your views on the New-rave scene?
Chris – That’s a tough one, it depends what you see New Rave as, lots of bands get chucked in there, some bands don’t deserve to be in there. I like a lot of the music, like Crystal Castles. Like Hadouken, we really liked their first song That Boy, That Girl, then they changed.
Rob – It’s because they didn’t get an advert like us. [Laughs]
Chris – So if New Rave is them, then no.
Rob – I think New Rave started with The Klaxons and then it evolved. I don’t think it really existed before, in my head anyway.
DH: What do you think of the Klaxons? I remember listening to all their demos and really liking them. Then when they released their album a year later, I was shocked at the difference.
Keith – At the beginning, we actually did a bootleg.
DH: I was now about to ask you about the controversy concerning The Klaxons’ song Bouncer…
Keith – We listened to this band on Myspace and thought this band was really fresh. We were trying to fund this band by doing dance remixes. We released the track The Bouncer, before we even called ourselves South Central. They weren’t very happy at all. By the time the bootleg came out, they got signed to a major label. And James sent us this massive email, they weren’t very happy and called us cunts.
DH: You are renowned to have had an £18 for the single Nothing Can Go Wrong music video. What did you spend £18 on?
Keith - The 3d glasses for the video. £18 went on them. Everything else was free.
DH: What’s your overall view of the music industry at the moment?
Keith – It’s in trouble
Rob – It’s in big trouble. That’s another reason why we don’t want to get signed because all the big companies around us are crumbling. Can you imagine if you get signed, this A&R person really likes you and you get signed for four albums. Then a month later you he gets sacked. The new A&R person comes along but he doesn’t really like your music but you’re signed.
DH: You’re fucked basically.
Rob – Exactly. That’s happening to a lot of bands. Loads of bands, loads of bands. Cos you get stuck. That’s the worse thing that can happen. But the live thing now because of the internet, is increasing. The companies are promoting their bands but with the internet, if you are a good band and you’ve got a good sound then people find out it.
What is your proudest career moment to date?
Keith - This might sound weird, but for me, when we supported Gary Numan. We did a track with Gary Numan. Then we supported him as well. I used to listen to him when I was five, six years old. That was a good one.
Chris – Playing Japan. That was my career goal, now I’ve got to think of a new one.
DH: What do you still have left to achieve?
Rob – Loads, absolutely loads.
Keith – This one, it’s probably not going to happen: we’ll remix Kraftwerk with the Fall, Mark E Smith vocals on top. It’s not gonna happen but at least we’ll have something to work towards.
Interview: Cass Gowing
http://www.myspace.com/southcentralmusic
Posted Mon, December 08, 2008
Comments on Interview - South Central
Pretty amazing act tbf (:
Posted by: Alicia (: | 20/01/2009 at 21:13