The Interview Well finally...the album is out and what a fine album it is! Thanks. We tried to make it so that there was a bit of depth to it. There's been quite a few people already who have said "well I didn't like it at first but now I'm getting into it" Well I first played at work on with bad speakers and didn't get into it, but I played it at home on a decent stereo, and after a smoke thought..yeah! ...as you do. We did that a couple of times while we were mixing it too. Are you hoping for an overseas release at all? Big time. We haven't seriously been able to look at getting a release overseas because we haven't had an album yet. But our record company is quite interested in the Asian market, obviously, because it's a healthy market and they love pop music. Asia is a very viable market, it's very close to us and it's relatively inexpensive to get there, compared to the UK. And they're very open to Britpop with the likes of Bis, Cardigans etc doing very nicely. And yet America, for example, are still scratching their heads - "Der, It's not grunge it's not death rap. what is it?". But Oasis have a bit more of a grip of the rock side so have managed to slot in. I mean their latest album's Pink Floyd for the 90's isn't it (laughs). 9 minute songs and all that. Well I thought the guitar riff in Heaven had a bit of an Oasis rock feel to it. I actually wrote the guitar line when we were having one of arguments about who should play what. In the band I've always wanted to be more of the singer and less of the guitarist. Mark's more into the wah wah peddle and Marshall stack, while I'm more into playing the more simple 2/3 note kind of hooky riff. So that was one I came up with. Mark works on a totally different way to me, he's more of a traditional guitarist while I come from more of the flying nun school of picking the guitar up, hoping it's in tune and twang out some nifty riffs. You mention Flying Nun - I can really hear that sound on some of the songs, particularly between "Kilty Blue" and The Chill's "Pink Frost". Yeah, that's very kind of Cleanish too. It was a bit of exercise that one, but it seemed to work. Live it was one of the songs people used to quite dig and yet I was never happy with the melody. With the way it's been recorded I go through about four or five different melody changes. The first half is recorded with 808 drum samples and it's all computerised except for the guitar and the second half is all the band. It's the idea of computers playing what the bands plays, the robots so to speak. You'll have virtual shows in the future, like the Kraftwork idea...(laughs)...but virtually all the good recording engineer's have a sampler, even rock and roll ones. It's just a studio tool now and nothing to be suspicious of. I remember in the 80s when all that was coming in... ...It wasn't rock Exactly. Human League were ground breaking in that they were a group but didn't use any "instruments". So there's quite a few forays into technology on the record like the jungle beats on X-Ray. That reminded be a bit of Mansun's Taxloss They have seem to have managed to encapsulate a lot of that technology without making it obstrusive as they still sound like a guitar band. That record seems very produced though. They are very talented but maybe it was a little overproduced, a little too lush. You were saying how the album was ambitious before, which I totally agree with, especially with "Kisses in the Snow" and "Mascara" which have strings and keyboards. It's opening up this new side of Mr. Blonde. I think it's also another thing - In the past, I've thought "boys in bands - have guitars will rock" and I've always made sure that there was a lot of focus on the guitars and layering of guitars with ten to twelve guitar tracks and I've come around a little bit and think that you only need one. If you've got one guitar playing great shit and it's recorded well, that's all you need. It's almost the Spector vibe compared to the George Martin vibe, as Spector used to layer stuff up till it went to another dimension. I think that whole Flying Nun sound relied quite a lot on that wall of sound concept with layering and reverb, where's now, especially with songs with a bit more feel and emotion, you really only need a handful of things to make a song really cool. Another thing is focusing more on the melody or the singing, and that's another thing, the old indie thing of having the vocals buried - bugger that, I'm over it. It's sort of proven that people focus and zero in on the voice first of all. It's obviously what the human ear likes to listen to the most, otherwise the charts would be full of instrumental songs. That's probably why some people have a problem with Dance music because it often doesn't have any vocals or vocal melody. That's a little different. I was more talking about it in the pop music context. When you go out to a club you don't really want to listen to vocals, you just want to drop your E and dance your arse off. All you need is a thumping drum beat and a couple of hooks...but getting back to the recording, I think that instead of going nuts with guitars and putting down so many guitar tracks you can barely work out where to use them all, we put down one or two or three and then leave space for the extra instrumentation. We employed the services of the wonderful Coda, who have a lot of experience playing on stuff, and they had a really good time. They actually jammed on "X-ray eyes". We got them a bit pissed and stoned and went - okay go for it guys. So the album was fun to do? Yeah, we prepared for it a lot more than any of our other recordings. We recorded about 16 songs all up, and we culled a couple out that we'll use later on but we did do a lot of pre-production and had people like Tim Whitten come in and do stuff with us. We demo-ed the stuff on eight track and on four track, constantly breaking it down and building it up. For example, with the song "Mascara", Tim was a bit apprehensive about us recording it totally acoustic, but I just had this feeling that it would work really well with some nice simple acoustics, some strings and couple of wobbly keyboard bits. And it did work really well. The planning was quite precise well as much as it can be in a creative process. When we went to record it, it was like Uh-oh...now we haven't to do it. What are your thoughts about the Internet and it's distribution of music? I think in time that the penetration of modems and Net access is going to escalate and it's going to give people to surf on the net and find out more about bands. The thing is, is that there' thousands and thousands of bands, but unless someone knows about a band it's not going to make a strike. So all the traditional ways (posters, advertisements, songs getting played on radio) are the things that going to point people toward the Net sites. There's been no convincing research that people buy music because of web presence, but it could be used as part of the marketing mix, if you like. As far as buying stuff goes...I don't think it's been as big as they've thought. People still like going out and physically touching stuff. Yeah, if your a compulsive CD buyer sure, but I remember when I was a kid getting the NME and looking in the back for the CD mail order shops. It's just another information system which i don't think is as Sci-Fi as they make out. In fact often when I've rung up directory inquiries for a phone number and I'm on hold and they put on that crap music, I'll actually get out the phone book and look up the number and it's quicker. It's very bizarre. People get lazy... True people get lazy, but I'm going anti-lazy and going back to the manual system. The whole Information revolution obviously created benefits and improved people's quality of life ectcetra but in actual fact it's just created a lot more information, flowing back and forth and bouncing off satellites. It just makes you wonder how long it can go on before it gets jammed pack. I think we've gone off on a bit of tangent there I think we've been on a bit of a tangent since we started. Erm, yeah, you're probably right. Do you have a name for the secret track? Saturn It's another foray into drum loops and samples like the b-side to Supergirl, isn't it? Yeah, although Saturn's a bit more sophisticated, than that ("Take it Easy Rider") for which I basically just ripped off a sample (Primal Scream's "Loaded"). I didn't feel guilty ripping that off though, as they probably ripped it off from somewhere else. In Saturn we made our own loops: I basically wanted us to do a backwards track and the band took to the task with great gusto. We started by recording our drummer playing a whole of lot of different stuff forwards, then we got about twenty patterns and listened to them all. We isolated the one that sounded best, record it backwards and enhanced it with further more bottom end and percussion and built the track from there. Matt came up with a bass line and I had some guitar ideas for it. That's actually an edit, the full one actually goes for about five minutes. The spoken sample is from Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. Do you have any favourite movies from the sixties? Well my Mum was a theatre person so from and early age i was going to see all these bizarre, avant garde plays when I was five to ten. Film is always a big influence and if I wasn't doing music I'd definitely want to do film and if one day I can combine the two of them I'd love to do it. The penny dropped the other day when I realised that I tend to write a lot of stuff watching films/videos, chilling out on the couch. It's got to the point now where I accompany the film soundtrack on a acoustic guitar, either playing lead breaks when it's exciting or a chase scene, or playing minor and diminished chords when it's sad. It's a good exercise learning what works for a film or video. But as far as sixties movies go Westworld, Easyrider...I could name dozens and dozens. It's the same with music. I don't understand how people can confine themselves to one or two influences because there's so much good stuff out there. I mean there must be a thousand great albums that came out of the sixties, which all have validity, and it's the same thing with movies. The sixities were such a prolific time, for art, because of the whole "youth revolution" if you like. I've got books and books and books, in fact I'm sitting in front of my book case - there's B movies, science fiction films, Rock 'n' Roll Babylon, Those Who Died Young, The Star Trek Annual, The Manual of how to have a Number 1 hit the easy way, by The Time Lords. People say "I get stuck with lyrics", how can you get stuck with lyrics? You just read an amazing book and you've got enough lyrics to fill and album worth. There's a lot of inspiration out there. Just off the track for a minute I've got a book called "Bad Wisdom" by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning (aka Zodiac Mindwarp) and it's like a really bizarre road trip. Go and get it, it's riotous. It's really classic because they go on this road trip to find themselves and go to the Arctic circle. But it's fucking funny and it's all written in about a week. Links (internal) Blow Up Review (external) TWA (Discography | News) | CC's Fan Page

The LP Song by Song Sunday The only song written in the UK, after my (adopts french accent) Beaudiful, French girlfriend, dumped me (drops accent). I went to New York for a holiday, came back and on the same day lost my job and got dumped, which was quite tough. And I just remember that feeling of I'm alone at night. But that thing where you fall out of love that feeling...passion. People kill in the name of love. Supergirl It was written about a young fan of ours in Melbourne, who started doing smack in year twelve, which is really quite tragic, and there was nothing I could do or say to stop her. So the song was the only thing I could do in the end. She stopped talking to me and probably realised the song was about. For some young people alcohol and pot isn't enough for them, they think heroin is this glamour drug. In Melbourne you can buy heroin cheaper than you buy speed. A simple warning. Heaven The "I want to get to Heaven" is a metaphor for how an individual would like to self actualise, which is a fancy term I learned at Uni, about the only thing I learned actually. Everyone's got there own idea of Heaven so I guess it's a universal kind of thing. If anyone's seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid and in the last scene when they're surrounded five hundred Mexican soldiers. I think at the end they leave it open ended, they leap of a thousand foot cliff so they never die. So it's a bit about idol worship and lyrically it's a bit like a song on the Velvet Underground's Loaded which talks about stars and the silver screen and how they lives seem perfect, when in fact they're often quite tragic. Sex Industry Worker Not about a real person, but about the Sex Industry in general. I was listening, I think it was to Jen Aldershore's (JJJ) show - about these working girls, and it's funny because they don't call themselves hookers or prostitutes anymore, but sex industry workers - and how that whole sleazy underground, is now a called a industry. It's just about a phone sex worker who is wasting their life. In itself it's quite a bizarre concept because we re-hearse or play late and come home pissed and there's often this beautiful girl telling me to ring her up, and it's like "sure i'll ring you up" but I never do. I just write songs about them instead. Okay Alright A metaphor for me being a crap musician in a way. One of those things which you worry about things too much but ultimately they're kind of cool. When you get stressed and start to panic then you have spliff and it's okay. There's a few references in there, like the reference to Geelong which was written when I thought about how crap I was and how cool Magic Dirt were. Credibility wise anyway. Kisses in the Snow Just a love song. Inspiration wise love is a many splendid thing (laughs) and it's probably a pity that they have been a million songs written about it, and they'll probably be a million more. It's a feeling thing as well, trying to write about the feeling about what's love is like. X-ray eyes About a dark dingy club where a super vixen is staring right through you, giving you a look which could kill. About people how people walk around, particularly in the dark gothic clubs. Saw you standing there Almost a continuation of the theme. Almost a mini noir-ish thriller about a girl who is mistaken for another person and she has to do a runner, and the police won't believe her. A couple of journalists have suggested it could be a theme tune for a sixties program or movie, like Mission Impossible, which I used to love as a kid. I grew up thinking that was normal. Just a little story in the James Ellroy mode. Mascara Erm, this is quite hard actually. It's about another person I used to see out and about in the clubbing scene and she'd always have a different hair colour or hair style and a different outfit, to the point where you could hardly recognise her from one week to the other. I imagined her being this spoilt rich girl who had life handed to her on a plate, and behind the facade was unhappiness. And dare I fucking say it with the Princess thing, it could almost be written about her, as behind her smile she had lot's of problems. Or even a Marilyn Monroe. Kilty Blue The title is made up. It's about how it feels to be a new face in the music industry in Australia. It's one of those things which is a bit close and I don't write many songs about my personal situation. It encapsulates a moment when I kind of stepped on the wrong side of the fence as far as favoured people go, and suffered the consequences. Australia's an odd country, It's a large place but the music industry is very tight and cliquey. I'm not into that. We have a lot more respect for bands which do their own thing rather than ones which follow the pack. Saturday Nite Just going out drinking too much and thinking "ooerr I've gone over the edge again" but doing it anyway. As we all do. Kind of a soundtrack of a generation of pub going...erm, whoever. Chester: Is it still fun to play? It's always been quite a hard one to play because of the amount of lyrics. But it is fun. We were playing this song on the pub circuit before the Britpop thing was really popular but most of the journalists thought it was a little too obvious. Radio loved it though, but our own A&R man at the time said "If you take that to Triple J you'll be laughed out of the station as the Australian Blur show" - which I thought was the most outrageously cheeky thing that anyone could say, let alone your own A&R man. Chester: Triple J loved it though and the lead track on the EP "Rubber Bullet's" was ignored. Well funny you should say that, because we wanted it to be the lead track. The band argued like fuck for it to be the lead track but the record company wouldn't have it. But Triple J added "Saturday Night" straight away ahead of the lead track ("Dominator"). And another thing that rackled me was the fact that we'd been playing that song for nine months and the audience was really responsive to that. I always maintain that the band it it's own best A&R man. Nervous Inspired by a comic which I read when I was about ten. It had this line which I never understood, a brain teaser line, "Tomorrow you live, tonight you die" from one of those darkish, Watchmen type comics. And I always remembered that line for some reason and finally had the chance to write a song kind of around it. Space time continuium, thing. Time is just a concept really. Waiting on a 389 The 389 is my local bus. There's a guitar shop in Bondi called Inter Music, and the friend of mine you owns it said "Oh man you just summed up the whole Bondi scene in one go" and I re-read the lyrics and thought, "fuck I have as well". Bondi is full of some very cool people and some very tragic people - you know a lot of out of work actors and models a lot of sceney people. There's quite a weird and wild bunch of musicians done here too. Some of the guys are great, but some of the guys think they're God's gift. The title I think I stole from an early punk song, maybe the from the Jam...I can't remember. It's kind of a metaphor for life as well, just waiting for a bus to take me out of Bondi to the rest of the world. Again it's also stream of consciousness stuff, almost done as cut up thing as well. Burroughs'esqe if you like. Saturn (Unlisted) It has film samples from the closing scene of Space Odyssey (the guy breathing), and Hal 9000 with "My mind is going" and then addition to that the majority come from Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. If anyone saw Silence of the Lambs or those movies, see this movie, it's fucking great. It almost looks and feels like a documentary. A fantastic movie.

- Caleb