Win two tickets for Wave Machines!
Words by Sally McIlhone
Wave Machines… loungy, white-funk art-disco from four masked men with a penchant for bargain basement equipment and an aversion to being pigeonholed. So we won’t even bother trying. Instead drop what you’re doing, grab a hand-made squeeze box, cover yourself in tin foil and get skipping as we check in with guitarist/vocalist Tim Bruzon.
DH: What’s the idea behind wearing the photocopied masks of your own faces on stage? We all know you’ve got faces under there, you aren’t fooling anybody…
WM: Yeah, we do have faces. The idea initially was to cover ourselves up out of some basic shyness of being in front of people and singing. I hadn’t done any singing before I started doing it with Wave Machines so it was sort of an insecurity thing and that turned into something we could mess about with and have a bit of fun with. Putting our own faces on the masks seemed like a novel twist on a very traditional theatrical technique.
DH: Like a safety blanket you’d wear on your face?
WM: Yes, exactly like that. Something perfectly normal like that.
DH: The DIY ethic seems very important to you, what with your hand-crafted EP covers and the like?
WM: Yeah, basically the DIY thing is a way to make it work, with the way the industry is at the moment. I think that most people expect to get their music for free. So we recognise that to get somebody to spend money on a physical product, there has to be a good reason to do that, other than the fact that they like the music. We thought that hand-crafting some cases would be a good idea. We messed about with some designs and came up with this one that seemed to work quite well and was pretty cheap. We get all our cardboard from stuff that’s getting thrown out so it’s all fairly easy to do, it doesn’t cost much. Of course, a lot of time goes into it so it’s not exactly the most practical way of doing things…
DH: But it’s very recession friendly! What can we expect from the album?
WM: You can hopefully expect some really good growers – good tunes that you’re going to like for a really long time. That’s the idea. Some of the stuff, particularly our first single “I Go, I Go, I Go” was probably the most instant tune that we do, which was why it was an obvious selection for our first single. But some of the stuff is a bit more sophisticated and it’s going to take a bit more time for people to like, but hopefully it’ll be a long-term relationship that they have with the tunes.
DH: You’ve been described as “the theme tune to a Michael Gondry animation”. If you could write the theme tune to any film, past or present, what would it be?
WM: I don’t know why I’m going to say this but, Aliens. I really like it and I think even though it’s not an obvious suggestion, just where I am with tune-writing at the moment, I think I could see myself writing a spiky, dark theme tune for someone creeping around on a random, fucked-up spaceship with a big horrible monster. That makes perfect sense.
DH: Both of your singles are about leaving or escaping, what does a person have to do to keep you in one place?
WM: Feed me I suppose, a nice hot meal!?
DH: You’re not fussy are you?!
WM: No, that’s all it takes!
http://www.myspace.com/mywavemachine
Posted Thu, April 09, 2009