Laurel Collective : Interview

The Laurel Collective has been knocking around for a while now, consistently building on the success of their mini album released through Domino Records offshoot Double Six in 2008.  This year has witnessed further releases from the band notorious for their association with friends and counterparts including Micachu and The Golden Silvers, albeit this time minus the label and with the now typical DIY ethic fully ingrained within their remit.  

Collective in many ways other than their name, the genre transcending 6-piece produce a perfect slice of avant-garde pop married together with elements of math-rock, some jangly indie guitars and even some dancehall rhythms. Perhaps even more eclectic than this though is the dual frontmen aspect, bringing together conflicting yet unique vocal talents that creates a synergy perfectly representative of the different elements that exist within the Laurel Collective and their musical prowess.

Not content with just making their own music however, the Laurel’s have been prolific in promoting their own club nights, bringing together the best new music that London and further afield has to offer.  This perhaps most famously (or not due to it’s secret nature), culminated in their very own festival ‘In The Wood’s’ which saw it’s second outing this summer literally in the woods near a mate’s house.  Here the bill brought to the mere 300 revelers Mercury Music nominated The Invisible, plus Micachu & The Shapes, Pete and The Pirates and amongst many other stellar acts, themselves of course.  A line up better than some corporate-sponsored events could ever hope to bring together and an event which can be solely attributed to their own handy work and tastemaker qualities.

So as the curtain starts to fall on 2009 The Laurel Collective have a load more live shows in the calendar and their debut full-length record in the pipeline.  But probably most importantly they are well on course to continue what they started, cementing their reputation as forward-thinking musicians, curators and collaborators.

In amongst this activity we managed to grab some time with Bob, Olly, Al and eventually Martin (a photocopying emergency delayed him) before their live show as part of their Hindenburg Mile High Club series of events in London.

The Laurel Collective are…

Bob Tollast : Vocals, Martin Sakutu : Vocals, Olly Puglisi : Guitar, Charlie Andrew : Drums, Al Green: Bass, Mark Rainbow : Keys

4or The Record: The Laurel Collective has been around for a while now, taking on different formats, line-ups and sounds over the course of its existence. Give us the background story.
Bob Tollast: Yeah well we formed from 2 pretty different bands really a few years ago and basically stuck them together to see what would happen. [Laughing] We still don't know what's happening actually.
Al Green: There were lots more of us involved to start with, which was a mad kind of horribleness and resulted in a wall of sound thing going on, but there was always a kind of intention behind it from the start.
Bob: Yeah, we were a 10 piece and have subsequently been through different phases since then, but we're just really trying to find out what we are doing and that's the fun part. I think the best bands are like that actually.

4TR: So is the sound also permanently evolving?
Al: Very much so yeah. We are almost kind of full circle to where we began actually. It was quite computer based to start with and then it went quite guitary and now it's coming back around again to loops and synths but with a guitar influence.  We are notoriously bad for not making our minds up [laughs].

4TR: That constant element of varying the sound has led to plenty of differing descriptions as to what you are creating. Any you actually agree with?
Olly: [Laughing] From the press we have been described as indie, math-rock, afrobeat and even stronky, which was something Time Out came up with.  I don't really know what stronky means, but I kind of like it. Actually I looked it up and the urban dictionary provided me with different meanings including some actually involving sex [laughs], so who knows.
Bob: Someone else described it as ravey gravy, or something equally as weird as that.
Al: But the best ever was this band has the dubious honour of both of the lead singers looking like shaggy - one like the Scooby do character and the other like the rapper [laughs]. But yeah it's really varied which I think is a good thing for us.

4TR: So you put out your first mini-album last year on Double Six, am I correct in thinking that relationship hasn't continued with further recordings?
Al: Well we have a publishing deal in place but the Double Six thing is not happening now.
Olly: Our whole vibe is that we had this one off record contract with Double Six and we always knew that was going to come to an end, but then we just thought lets see where we go from there and whether we can get another record contract. It hasn't happened yet but we always said record contract or not we would still release stuff, so we recorded the ‘Fax of Death' EP and released it ourselves for free through Clash Magazine, which feels really good.
Al: And we recorded it ourselves, mixed it and mastered it, so the band has done everything.

4TR: So you are true purveyors of the whole DIY ethic?
Bob: It's a total DIY ethic at the moment, we rent a little warehouse space which we have set up our rehearsal kit in and we recorded it all in there with stuff we had begged borrowed and stolen from people we knew and just really enjoyed that process of doing it for ourselves.
Al: But in the future it would be great to work with an amazing producer or label but who knows!

4TR: So currently being the masters of your own creativity in relation to your music along with your previous experiences working with a label, must have been a real eye-opener for you in terms of seeing things done from all aspects. Have you found either way better for you?
Bob: I think a lot of bands would struggle to do what we have done in terms of everything being totally DIY. I think some bands given the choice would try and take that control, but it's a weird one because some bands need a certain kind of producer, and other bands don't - it all depends. Some producers hardly do anything for a band but then others do everything.
Olly: Yeah but the reason we were able to do it ourselves is that half of our band actually studied recording engineering at uni so that put us in a position where we could do it well. But I still sort of think it would be just as much fun to work with someone as it is to do it on our own - its about looking forward to different experiences every time really.
Bob: If we did it forever we would go insane so that's probably one of the reasons for getting someone else involved with the band directly so there's another person to take some of the decision making pressure off the band. But I suppose pressure can be a good thing can't it?

4TR: As a band who all have musical backgrounds, is the writing a collaborative effort?
Al: Yes but its quite a subtractive process, so we'll usually start off with a couple of ideas coming into the rehearsal room, then jam them out for a long time and end up with lots of different ideas which we whittle down by arguments really [laughs].
Bob: Always friendly arguments though...
Al: Of course, so from that we make it simpler and simpler. Where some people start with 3 chords and elaborate we generally start with something that is very complex and make it simpler.
Bob: Plus over the years we've all started to listen to the same music, which is weird because so many bands actually form over the music they love.  We didn't, but over the years we've started listening to the same bands and have started to think along the same lines.
Olly: Yeah its true, I guess that it comes from hanging about more and eventually you end up listening to the same stuff and you share the same experiences as well; its like growing up together. I mean especially with some of our musical contemporaries as well you know.

4TR: That's an interesting point actually because in London you would associate certain bands together - for example alongside the Laurel Collective you often see people like Micachu or Golden Silvers etc collaborating or often running on the same bills, or club nights etc.
Olly: Yeah well we love those bands and have huge amounts of respect for them and in a weird way maybe we kind of influence each other whilst all being very different.
Al: Exactly its not like a sort of Brooklyn where all the bands recently coming out of Brooklyn have got something similar going - the bands in London all seem to be really different.
Bob: Actually I think one of the best bands in London at the moment is Screaming Tea Party and they are not even English.

4TR: Lets talk about your live show, which is notoriously high-energy with the 6 of you on stage - how easy is it to translate the musicality behind the songs on record into the live environment?
Al: It's always vice versa with us. What's quite interesting is when we actually record as a band we try to keep a live feel but then make it sound unique and different on the record rather than it being a complete carbon copy of the live set. We try and inject something else into it because its nice to get a different experience.  I know that whenever I personally go and watch a band I like to see something new in a live set or vice versa on record.
Olly: Yeah but at the same time we're not opposed to doing things completely live because of the energy levels of it and also there are a lot of people who like to see what's on record being recreated live.
Al: [Laughing] You basically just had a little micro-cosm of the life of the Laurel Collective, so I said one thing and he said the complete opposite.  We have good creative banter because you can't just get stuck on one thing anyway, its good to have lots of different things

4TR: The Laurel Collective has received loads of comparisons to other bands, to mention just a couple Super Furry Animals and Bloc Party. Agree or disagree with any of those?
Al: I don't know really, another one we got was "the thinking man's Kooks" [laughing]
Olly: Comparisons are weird, sometimes they annoy you when you don't like the band but sometimes you've just got to take it as a compliment in that there's an element of all bands in others. Like The Kooks aren't my favourite band but they write catchy pop songs and we like to think we write catchy pop tunes, whereas the Super Furrys, again not my favourite band, they can go for really mental soundscapes which sometimes we really like to do as well.
Al: It can be ridiculous sometimes like we were once compared to Goldie Looking Chain purely on the basis that we have 2 vocalists and so do they, so you have to take it all with a pinch of salt.

4TR: The 2-vocalist dynamic is an interesting one. Was that an instinctive approach or again an evolvement of the band and sound changing over time?
Bob: It evolved actually, I started singing one night because there was no-one else to sing...
[Martin Sakutu - Other vocalist arrives]
Bob: Basically we were always trying to find different ways of doing things; sometimes people aren't used to seeing it, some people find it confusing and some people really like it.  We're always trying to refine it and make it work.
Al: Generally our fans really like the dynamic between the two because they are so contrasting, you couldn't imagine 2 more different vocal styles really and so its a nice challenge to write parts for them.
Martin: Plus we are 2 different looking people as well [laughs]
Bob: Well we both have facial hair, we both have hair and we both have faces.
Olly: [Laughing] but one looks like a Viking. They are opposites though in many ways.
Bob: Well it's a bit like one of us is Lennon and one is McCartney but it's more mixed up than that, [laughing] so Martin is John McCartney and I am Paul Lennon.
Martin: Bob's basically a ball of energy that could just jump out at any time and meanwhile on stage I just like to immerse myself in the rhythms and then also be mindful of the fact we have got to sing and my voice has got to sound alright. Everything is just kinetic, people like our energy and we sort of feel better when we are very energetic because it carries to the audience.

4TR: Your physical copies of previous releases came as interesting packages in terms of the art-work and format - are you trying to stay away from standard download formats that seems to be the easy way out at the moment?
Olly: Yeah well bands have just got to be more and more creative right now to get their music noticed. I don't know I think when there was a lot more money in the music industry that made some bands less creative, because they would just get money lobbed at them and would just go out and buy a ton of drugs and fuck around not actually being creative at all. I mean bands like Wave Machines do their own art work and stuff and they said in an interview that part of it was they didn't have that much money.  In a way that's true of us as well, its expensive to put records out especially when not that many records are selling anymore.
Al: The good thing is that its putting us in a position that even if you did do it the manufactured pop way and try to make it, that's just as hard to do these days so you might as well just try and do exactly what you want.

4TR: Finally, you are currently working on your album.  Is that again going to be the result of a further progression of the Laurel Collective sound as it stands?
Bob: Well I think you are going to see a slight departure from the EP.
Al: And certainly from the mini-album last year, it's going to be quite different to that.
Bob: And a massive departure from our first EP ever. I think with the songs that are emerging, some of which we are not yet playing live, there's a departure but it's probably not going to be shockingly different from this EP. [Laughing] We don't know we might just get David Sitek to do a mix of it and make it sound completely different who knows.
Al: Amen!!!

Words: Francesca Strange
Images: Gareth Jackson www.jacksonfoto.com

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