Late of the Pier are on a one-way trip to all tomorrows after-parties

by planbmag on Mon, 2008/12/08 - 5:04pm Post to Twitter

“There’s too much respect in music. You’ve got to stamp all over your influences to get the shards you can use to build new influences with the glue of instinct. Don’t have respect.”

You’ll know this lot. They’re the ones who released 2007’s weirdest single, ‘Bathroom Gurgle’: a behemoth of sound pretty much unprecedented in mainstream indie-pop with its threefold ability to be at once completely inexplicable, completely like Queen and a completely sensible thing to create.
I mean, why the hell not? If you cross gender-indeterminate wails of pleasure/pain with quadruped rhythms lifted from an aerobics programme as practised by NASA, then sure, people are gonna LOVE it. D’you really think the public wants to slouch around beneath a beige veneer, dribbling into Caffè Nero froth? Nah. It’s all pretence. What people actually want is their drums to sound like 20 heathens bashing Neolithic totems into the ground; their falsettos to be sung by asexual witches casting a hex on the chorus.

Listening now, ‘Bathroom Gurgle’ is still as ludicrous as it was several months ago – but the cynic in me eventually buckled when exposed to the physical impulses it seemed to generate in my friend Andrew. Anything that makes anyone move like that is definitely something. Their latest, a re-recorded ‘Space And The Woods’, dishes out the kind of guitar-hybrid sine waves that reduce – no, elevate – you to new levels of movement, while sounding kind of like everything the, erm, Bravery* so wanted to be, but failed so disgustingly at. For that, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to give this foursome from Castle Donington, Nottingham, your time – and so we catch up with them via third-party email as luck serves them a backhander and dirty thieves nick their laptops in Amsterdam.

“It all began via a mutual dislike of the education system and a click of the fingers,” explains Unidentified Late Of The Pier Member #1 across electronic signals and many miles of wire. “The first gig I ever saw was Whirlwind Heat at the Liars Club in Nottingham and it totally inspired me,” remembers Sam (Eastgate, singer); “I used to want to be like Guy Picciotto from Fugazi – totally unpredictable and brilliant,” continues Sam Potter. And their collective intent? Their reason to make music? “It’s a life enhancer,” intones the Mystery Voice (by a process of elimination, either Andrew Faley or Ross Dawson). “It’s a drug without the hangover, and it’s not illegal. It’s also good for getting rid of the Blue Meanies.”

Late Of The Pier certainly achieved that for plenty of kidz while shaking ass at various festivals last summer; then scuttled away to nurture more glam slams towards adolescence in the studio, securing the musical investment of a fatherly Erol Alkan as producer in the process. His position at the helm of their upcoming LP marks the band out for fans of unpretentious, extroverted dance-jams (although their fun-punch beats and Disney synths hardly require endorsement, ‘cause your limbs judge for themselves.) “Our first contact with Erol came about when [Andrew] Faley freaked him out via MySpace. We started off along a misty curve; met Erol and blasted off at six times the speed. We’re now on top of a cliff looking out over a vast plateau. We constructed a long-handled net out of Erol’s analogue equipment and scooped up the mist. Sometimes we lie awake thinking about Erol’s eyes…he’s got murderous eyes.”

As a tangible aura of pre-release excitement emanates from the band’s virtual typescript, I ask
for snapshots of their worsts and their bests, their pasts and their futures. “Playing the 333 in London when the toilets were leaking. There was piss coming through the ceiling, through our amplifiers and out of our voices – and into the piss-soaked ears of the crowd” counts for the former, apparently.
For the latter, there’s the time they played “in London with Jack Peñate before everyone knew who he was. We finished and just decided to drive to Cornwall. We spent the next few days walking around forests and psychic fairs, sleeping in the car or on beaches and living on cider and sandwiches. Everything’s influenced by everything – things we’ve seen, things we’ve eaten, heard, thought, smelt, dreamed up. It’s life and it’s endless. There’s so much in the music, it’s impossible to say.”

*Author cannot assume responsibility for mental or physical trauma incurred by the inclusion of this reference.

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