Interview Trashmonk. August 20th, 1999, Cologne.
Trashmonk's album "Mona Lisa Overdrive" is out on Creation Records.
Q: Could you tell us what your music is like?
A: My music is song-based in the song-writing tradition, but using sample-based technology that you might expect to find in dance music or electronica. I got this by going around the world to different countries, and instead of taking a camera, taking my tape recorder or DAT-machine and using the sounds that I found there to weave into a backdrop and then sing my songs over the top of that. So instead of having a group, I've got the whole world as my group.
Q: You did all the recording at home. How does that work?
| A: I met the head of the record label in England, called Alan McGee, who's the head of Creation Records and he had signed Oasis, Primal Scream and Jesus and the Mary Chain, and he came to my flat and he said: "Oh, this is great, where did you record this song?" and I said: "Here", and he said: "What, that's all?", and I said "Yes." and he said: „You've got to do the whole album here. You've got to make the whole album just like that." So I got a bit more equipment and I moved it into my front room and right now I just have a sofa and all my equipment is just really edging towards. It's very unpalatable when other people come around. | |
Q: You've worked with other musicians before. So what do you prefer?
A: Well, I always had my own group. I used to have groups, and then I worked with other people like different times I wrote stuff and worked with Pink Floyd, I wrote with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, with Marc Bolan and T-Rex, all these things. All those things are good, but it's not the same as making your own work. When you're making your own work, it's your say. You say when it's done and when it's ready, you shape the direction it's going in, and obviously I find that more satisfying. But it's also beneficial sometimes when you help people, like you help that person across the road, or you say "Oh, I really don't want to go and see my mother in hospital." But when you go you realise there's something kind of beneficial about it. So it helps your own work.
Q: But at the moment there's no band around you?
A: No, there's no band. The idea was to play everything I could myself, and when I had finished playing everything I could, and I'm not very good on some of the instruments, so when got to the end of that, to use the people that could do things I couldn't do. Like an electric violinist, an electric cello player, a tabla player....
Q: Will that stop you from playing live?
A: It's going to make playing live different. Because of the samples - I can't get 200 Buddhist monks on the stage - as much as I'd like to travel with them, maybe I could get them on the stage, but I don't think Creation or Double T will pay for them to come over. So the idea is to make a multimedia kind of situation, like a Pink-Floyd-in-a-suitcase idea. Sort of trying to match the sounds of the album to the visuals and make it an all-round experience. I wouldn't want to play just guitar and so on.
Q: When is this going to happen?
A: It was to be started in October, but then I got offered to do some music for a film with Cameron Diaz which was being filmed in Paris. I started working on that, wrote some music for it, and they called me a week ago and said: "would you consider doing all the music for the film?" That's something I really really want to do, so I'm putting on a hold playing live a while. In October I'll do the soundtrack and see how long that takes. And after that I've got to play Paris, and I've got to play Tokyo, so maybe once I'm ready to play I'll come and play everywhere. But maybe we'll put that to the beginning of the next, or end of the year maybe.
Q: Is film music something completely new for you?
A: I've done one or two things with my old group, The Dream Academy, we did one or two things for Ferris Beuller's Day Off, we did this kind of Planes, Trains, and automobiles, and I once worked with Diane Keaton on the first film she directed. But we just did one piece or something, and this is like 35-minutes of incidental music, and I already saw a bit that I had written with Cameron Diaz dancing to it in this amazing way, it's like Wow - there's a whole way of writing film music that I don't know, but the director says, "I know you can do it, I'll teach you, I'll send you the films to look at that I think the way it should be done in film, and then we'll talk it out." So I think this is a really great opportunity to try something.
Q: Will that influence your next album?
A: Yes, and my life. I rather like the analogy of helping other people. I think in a way, this is going to be very interesting for me.
Q: Are you going to tour Germany as well?
A: Yes, of course, absolutely, definitely. I've never been to Berlin - it doesn't have to be just Berlin - but I'm dying to go to Berlin. Why does it hold such incredible allure for everyone? It's like the gateway between East and West, it's something amazing.
Q: Have you been anywhere further east?
A: The whole album starts in Moscow airport, bing-bong, brabrabra, and that's where you have to go when you haven't got much money, you go from Aeroflot off to India and Nepal, that's where I went.
Q: With those nice old airplanes?
A: With those great planes. And hey, what are all these people doing? And they say, well they've got this nice little stove - but don't light it on the plane, Jesus, man, we'll all go up! Well, it's like that, or: Why are we stopping? It said no stop until New Delhi and they say, unscheduled stop in the middle of the Chechen Republic, and it's like "Ugh". Amazing.
Q: Why are you here at the PopKomm? To get in touch with some people, to make some contacts?
A: Well, no, I think it's coincidence. The record was released in Germany and then they said this was the right time. Actually, they wanted me to come two weeks ago. But I'd booked my summer break - you know, all year I've just been travelling for the record, I've been to New York, L.A, Tokyo, Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Paris, Paris, Rome, you know, endless, and it's been brilliant, incredible. Working, talking, doing all the stuff to promote the record, and finally I was like I'm going to have ten days where I'll go to Italy. Because there was a wedding, a Rock'n'Roll wedding in Tuscany, and I wanted to have a week before that in Sienna, and then I'll go down to this Rock'n'Roll wedding. So I just did that, and they said, "Ugh, well, that was the exact date that we wanted...", and I said, "Well, you know, everyone has to have a holiday." And they said "Well, then come now." And now it's coinciding with PopKomm.
Q: So will you go and see the fair?
A: Yes, this afternoon. It's amazing, we don't have anything like that in London. It's making Cologne the cultural centre of Europe. It's like the Cannes film festival. What you realise is when they say, yeah, everyone played in a swimming-pool last night, and there's twenty bands playing outside. I mean, it's not the New Music Festival in New York, it's much bigger than that.
Q: Have you been here before?
A: No, I haven't, and I wish I could have stayed on longer, cause it's like Mouse on Mars and all these interesting people playing.
Q: Did you never play in Cologne with The Dream Academy?
A: No, we didn't. We didn't come here, oddly. I think it was somewhere where we sold just under what they wanted for... We did lots of interviews, but we never came here. Hey, and our song was called "The Love Parade". And we say hold on - the love parade is now two and a half million people!
Q: So you should go there next year!
A: Yes, I'd like to make my own van, Trashmonk's van!
Q: What about the name Trashmonk?
A: I became a Tibetan Buddhist, I studied Tibetan Buddhism and became a Buddhist, and studied with this man who is part of the Dalai Lama's group. I was asking about these people who went there for a really long period, like two or three years, and mentioning these other people, he said, "Oh, you mean like Trashmonk", and he hardly spoke any English, so I said, "Trashmonk?" And then we kind of said what is this Trashmonk phenomenon, and I wrote it down in my book "Trashmonk phenomenon." Three years later Alan McGee said to me: "What do you want to call the album?" I said: "Nick Laird-Clowes, which is my name, Trashmonk phenomenon." "I don't know about phenomenon, but you are Trashmonk, this is the sound of Trashmonk. Ah, I'm good at this." So later on, everywhere I went, he said, "this is Trashmonk." So, certainly now, for everyone I'm Trashmonk.
Q: What about the album title?
A: Mona Lisa overdrive. The idea of a distorted, twisted work of art.
Q: Just one more question. Let's come back to the music industry. You're doing all the recording and stuff yourself. What do you think, here at the PopKomm everybody's talking about the internet and so on, what do you think will the future of the music industry be like?
A: I think it's a time of incredible change, I don't think we'll really know for a year or two, but the opportunities are incredible. And I think what's happening is that the Multinationals, the big labels, are definitely scared, the profits are down, they're backing these really safe groups. But that's never been the way that Rock'n'Roll music moved on. Music moved on when people took these great gambles on things and these amazing risks. But it doesn't matter because the internet is getting the music straight to the people. At the moment the musicians are losing out because we're not getting our royalties, o.k. But we are getting the publicity. You can go on my own website and you can find that people have written in and made their own albums out of the past music and stuff, and you think this is a fantastic system. The annoying thing is that the record companies, when you are signed to them - the big ones - they always tell you "We're taking so much of the money, because we look after all your interests, we protect you, and that's why we have to take 80%", or sometimes they take more. But they haven't protected anyone. They saw this coming, but they didn't do anything. CDs have been out for what - for ten, twelve years now, and they never put that code on it, which would stop people copying it, and so, I think their days are numbered. But it's like all the times of revolutions, it's fantastic, amazing things are going to come out of this. I think the future's really really exciting. I mean, I did everything at home. And I did the sleeve on my Apple Mac at home, I took pictures of my DV-cam, and then I took a buzzcard - it was brilliant, it's so empowering, it makes you feel you can do anything, and you can make a movie if you want.
Q: Which song would you recommend from the album?
A: 'All change', I think, because in the end it's the sort of centrepiece of the album. It's got Tibetan Buddhist monks at the end of it, that I recorded up in the Himalayas, it's got Paul Simon's son at the beginning on the answer machine saying, "Hello, are you there", I was trying to write this song and he was coming in on my answer machine going "I was hoping you were there because a terrible thing happened...", and then I cut that in and I started to think. And the tablas I cut up from loads of different little parts that I'd had for five years of a guy playing that I knew. But I had to make those parts myself, and it was like building a table, and then a cabinet, and then the rest of the room.... And also it's got a heart breaking, the words of it, it was about a relationship, it was over, and it was like the open letter to say this isn't working any more. And in the middle you got the first sample that I did which is the train from Fez to Marrakech in Morocco. It's got everything. And the solo in it has an electric violin, don't think, there's no electric guitar in it, it's a violin, and it's a killer. And it's in the Cameron Diaz film, "Invisible Circus."
Q: When was this journey of yours?
A: Well, it was ongoing for five or six years, I went to different places, and then I'd come back and do some work, and then I'd go off again. Even when I worked with the Pink Floyd, I came back, did the work, and then went straight off again for a couple of months.
Q: Would you say this is a kind of break with the past?
A: Yes, I would, and it's a way of getting out, it's got the lyrics, are like poems about things that I was going through, the sounds are from the travels, its like all out of a warehouse, it's out now, and there's a nice kind of feeling like, ah, now what. And it's a new century coming up, it's all going to be different.
Q: Where do you live now?
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A: Still in Ladbroke Grove in London. In the same room where I made the record, in the same flat, the picture of the front cover is the view out of the window. I've really done it with that room, it's time to move on. But I really haven't any time. I'll go back and do a Nick-Drake- tribute concert in London, and then I'll do the soundtrack and then about November I'll do a couple of concerts. And then, maybe think about moving. Q: Where to? |
A: Probably somewhere else in London, but I mean, as long as you can keep travelling, I think that's the important thing. I like this European feel now. It suddenly became a reality. To me, only in the last year or so, it suddenly became this thing like "United States of Europe", and everybody speaks the dominant, the Internet language, well English, but it's American really, and you think, hey, this is Esperanto. When I grew up everyone said "If only we could all speak one language", well, great, now you feel you can communicate with someone from other places and it's so.... Q: It's easier for you, though, isn't it? A: (laughs) I'm so sorry, yes, and listen, it's not my fault, I just happen to be lucky.
Trashmonk's six favourite albums: 1. The Beatles - Double White Album 2. Love - Forever changes. 3. Beach Boys - Pet sounds. 4. Lauryn Hill - Miseducation. 5. Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde / Blood on the tracks. 6. Mahler symphonies & Wagner operas.
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