The Storm Before The Calm - Our Last Interview with Moloko

Roisin Murphy is sitting pretty on a solo career and Mark Brydon has his own side projects on the go but what of the pair's extreme, eclectic-electro collaboration - Moloko? The sun has not set on the project, at least not yet and, on the strength of our last chat with the Anglo-Irish tune-makers, it looks like there's still a future for one of the sexiest sonic outfits to come from Britain. HT&E spoke to Mark Brydon and Roisin Murphy after their last Moloko tour.

Mark Brydon sounds a little tired; a year's worth of touring and a "long weekend" of gigs is likely to have taken its toll. Roisin Murphy, on the other hand, sounds remarkably chirpy. This juxtaposition of characters - the melding of the laid back and the wildly charismatic - is what lies at the heart of Moloko's production technique, sound and stunning live performances. As Mark softly talks tech, Roisin enthuses on vocals and performance while relishing watching her boyfriend tuck into his first ever Irish fried breakfast, cooked by her mum. The 2004 DVD 11,000 Clicks sums up Moloko in more ways than one, while showcasing their enigmatic set and superb compositions, the backstage footage and bonus 'rockumentary', filmed by the band's Hammond genius Ed Stevens, offers fans an entertaining and insightful look into the world of a successful band on the road. Things are looking better and better for the band, and since the astounding success of dance-meets-pop-meets-funk hits like Sing it Back and The Time is Now, their sound is ever maturing and diversifying. HT&E quizzed the duo about their tour, the transfer from studio to stage and the way in which they put together their ideas and convert them to music.

HT&E: Were you happy with the way 11,000 Clicks turned out?

RM: Yeah. It's just one show, and in one show you can't capture the whole tour, but it's there and I was very proud of how the live show developed over a year. I'm just happy it was captured on such a lovely, big, fat film.

MB: It's not a bad effort. It's not a bad way of recording a show, but the problem is that you have good gigs and bad gigs. Ideally, you'd film them all and cherry pick the ones you like, but unfortunately we didn't have that kind of budget.

RM: Brixton is such a beautiful venue and it was nice to shoot it there. We watched a few of the modern concerts and we didn't want any of that jump-cutting and of the crowd. We wanted it more composed and beautiful. We wanted it to be like a film and less like a TV thing. The plan was to compose things as much as possible. They filmed God knows how many feet of film; it was all tightly planned, but we didn't have the luxury of planning each and every shot.

"People say 'do you get really high before you go on stage?', and I don't think I do - I'm more excitable in real life than I am on stage"

HT&E: Do you get nervous playing venues like Brixton?

RM: I'm not always nervous. I find the stage quite a natural place to be, without wanting to sound like Shirley Temple or anything. People say 'do you get really high before you go on stage?', and I don't think I do - I'm more excitable in real life than I am on stage because I have to be so focussed out there. There's so much to remember and it's not even about remembering, it's just all happening. I think I've learned over the years to be more focussed and calm. I feel calmer there than most places, to be honest. It's something I'm on top of, especially recently. I was a bit nervous at London, because all my mates were there, and people I know. It's much easier to walk out on stage in Rotterdam and just kill it.

HT&E: Obviously, a lot of your studio material is hard to translate into a live context so how did you go about getting around that?

MB: It's really, really different. The last album was mainly about recording instruments, but in a live show you need to somehow represent this. We had a lot of brass and strings on the last album and there's no way we could come up with a 36-piece orchestra, so we'll wait for the Royal Albert Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra another day. We have a lot of synths to substitute those instruments; it's a compromise, and its not the same as a record, but it is something different.

HT&E: The vocals must have to change a lot, too.

RM: I think there is a big difference compared to the studio. You project more and you can't use that soft voice that I used, for example, on The Time is Now - that would get lost live, I think. It's more projection and I'm dancing around, so what you lose in perfection you gain in performance.

HT&E: How do you manage to integrate computers into your stage show?

MB: We have little sub-mixing desks on stage, so it changes from one song to the next. The sounds change and provide a click for the drummer, so he can sync to the sequence stuff. It's evolved that way over the years and it also means that the tempo stays the same, as well as the delays. It's a compromise; sometimes you'd like to be free of the shackles of a computer, but on the other hand, what it offers outweighs its downsides.

"I'm dancing around, so what you lose in perfection you gain in performance"

HT&E: Does the computer come into play to affect the vocals at any point?

MB: There's a lot of vocal treatment, but not as much as we used to have. We used to add some gender bending to Roisin's voice to turn her into a man. We haven't done that lately.

RM: It depends on what you're trying to achieve. With Statues, we tried to achieve something more emotional, more personal and more intense in that sense, and say something definitive about ourselves.

HT&E: How do the pair of you work in the studio?

RM: I get involved in every aspect of it; it's the kind of artist I am. When I started singing with Mark, I really challenged him to do something different to what he'd done before, and he challenged me to learn to sing and write songs. That's always been the way and I've been there throughout every part of the process for every track that's ever been written for Moloko - to the point of going green while trying to mix Statues, which was hell. I was there and I made sure I was happy with everything. I'm making a different record at the moment with Matthew Herbert. I'm not saying that I produce the music, but it starts with me in a way. It's not an ego thing; it's the simple approach. I'm never going to be a wallpaper-like singer; I'm always going to be full of personality, so the music has to evolve around that. I don't touch the technology. I'm there with the enthusiasm of the ideas and trying to keep things as pure as possible. It's always handy for a music producer to have somebody around telling them not to do too much.

HT&E: Do you compose tracks separately when you have time out from the studio?

RM: I always start with music. I'll go in at the beginning of the week, we'll make some tunes and I'll take them away and then I'll work on melodies and lyrics on a really crappy four-track. Then I'll go back and we'll work through what I've got, put it down bit by bit. Another thing is the way I've been brought up with music - I wasn't a singer before I met Mark, and I don't see a boundary between instruments and the studio and production and song writing. It's all the same; things evolve quite naturally with the technology.

MB: Songs generally start on a computer. Even if it's a little guitar loop, it'll get chopped around and arranged in a song that way. That's the way a lot of people work - just taking a recorded sound and manipulating it like a sample.

"It's always handy for a music producer to have somebody around telling them not to do too much"

HT&E: Is there a genre of music you haven't played with yet, but would perhaps like to explore in future song and album releases?

RM: This new material doesn't sound like anything else at all - it just sounds really fucking modern. That's the ultimate for me, to make modern music, whatever the emotions behind it are. I would never sit down and say right now that I'm going to have a rock band, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't later say: 'Lets sit down and get the Les Paul out.'"

www.moloko.co.uk
www.roisinmurphy.com

Moloko's Greatist Hits - Catalogue is available now
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