Plugs: Interview: Proud Gallery

For the last couple of years Plugs have been on and off the live circuit reaching audiences with their multi-dimensional blend of dance music, against an effortless backdrop of guitar based rock.   The reason for the on-off relationship has been the trio’s other personal musical interests, which have taken them off in different directions during most of last year.  Perhaps the most notorious of those interests was Morgan Quaintances’ involvement with Does It Offend You, Yeah?, which in the wake of the bands success over the last 12 months took him all over the world on tour.  Meanwhile back in old Blighty, Dave Chin (bass) and Boomer Opperman (drums) have been part of experimental pop band Barringtone, whose endeavours have conjured up comparisons to the craftsmanship of 70s legend Todd Rundgren.

Despite the relative inactivity since the issue of their debut ‘That Number’ in early 2008, which Zane Lowe adopted as his hottest record in the world, Plugs released a 3 track EP ‘Imaginary Friend’ complete with remixes from the likes of uni friends Heartbreak and French producer Yuksek in November.  This release was a short yet sweet further demonstration of their progressive formula, fusing together angular guitars and synth sounds against reverberating beats, which conceivably wouldn’t be outta place in a club.  Unwilling to be pigeonholed into any particular genre or sound though, commenter’s and the blogosphere have Plugs down as pioneering post rave whilst dipping their toes into the realms of afrobeat, funk and dance.  

Now with all other commitments aside for the imminent future, things are amping up in the Plugs camp with a likely album on the horizon, collaboration with other artists for remixing purposes and further live dates in Europe and the UK. 

Lazy comparisons to Hot Chip aside, don’t call this a side-project, but a worthy attempt at creating something diverse and individual yet multi-influenced and soulful.

Sit back and plug in…

4orTheRecord – Let’s briefly discuss the bands moniker ‘Plugs’, which by the way is not Google-friendly unless you are researching the electrical variety, so where did it come from?

Morgan - The name, well I guess we just made it up one day in rehearsal after Boomer joined the band I think, it was just one of those moments where it just happened and stuck.

Dave – Yeah I think there were a few names thrown around and then eventually the name Plugs kind of came up and everyone was like well that’s a lot better than anything else anyone has suggested.

4TR – So one of those inspirational moments when you just thought hey yeah that sounds cool?

Dave – Yeah kind of and it seemed to work you know, its quite memorable, so Plugs! 

4TR – November saw you release your second EP ‘Imaginary Friend’, but amongst the acclaim there has also been some criticism that it’s only a 3 track EP, why did you decide to release it with just 3 tracks including remixes?

Morgan – Well the thing is none of us have had much time to really do stuff together before this release because I was playing with DIOYY and Dave and Boomer were playing in other groups so it was difficult to do more.  Plus these days when you release an EP, nobody really reviews the EP, they just review the first song, so this time we thought lets do it and just include some remixes on it.  Really we would have preferred just 4 of our own songs, but we are pleased with how it turned out.

4TR – Do you think your sound on ‘Imaginary Friend’ has progressed at all from ‘That Number’ or has it remained fairly similar?

Morgan – It’s the same really.  I think from what we have produced people will find that we are quite a different sort of band.  I mean it’s not specifically loads of dance music happening all the time; there is guitar music in it as well, loads of guitars, so the sound is more like a band than just a kind of club music, I dunno I find our sound really difficult to explain [laughing]

4TR – In that case would you class yourselves as any particular genre?

Morgan – Again I don’t know how to explain it; I think we are like an old school band, but with loads of different stuff going on at the same time, mixing things up.

Dave – I think it’s more interesting to let the music speak for itself and see what people say themselves. There is no point trying to put ourselves into a particular genre because I don’t think we fit any particular one, so you just have to see what happens and what we come up with each time we do something new.

4TR – So you are advocates of the come and see a show and see what you take away from it kind of attitude as opposed to the hype machine?

Morgan – Yeah definitely, come and see a show and buy the music, you get a free download anyway I think, so it is worth it.

4TR – You mentioned your music being a fusion of dance and guitars which seems to be a current trend with a lot of artists bridging the gap between dance and indie/rock with a heavier emphasis on synths reminiscent of the 80’s.  Was that your intended sound from the start? 

Boomer – Well when we started this about 2 years ago it was just a normal sort of guitar based band, quite punky, not heavy but quite loud.  But now Morgan comes up with the tracks at his studio at home and then we also throw in new elements that we have got through new influences and sounds and stuff like that.  Really no-one knew at the time we started what we would sound like now really, it wasn’t like a conscious effort. 

Morgan – Yeah I agree with that. When we first met through studying music at school, me and Dave and actually Ali and Sebastian from Heartbreak were all in the same class and all we wanted to do was play hardcore and punk 'cos all we did at uni was play with synths all day and talk about frequency rates, sampling and the technology behind it.  That made us just really want to play something physical with instruments, so now we still take those elements but we incorporate them with other stuff as well, like the dance aspects.

4TR – Obviously because of the huge success of DIOYY this year there will be people who are interested in what you are doing with Plugs Morgan, but do you think ultimately the fan bases will be different?

Morgan – Definitely, I mean with something like Does It Offend You and Plugs the fan bases are completely different already, I have never seen any of them at a Plugs show for example. I mean I never talk about this band when I am with DIOYY, and we are not on their MySpace page, so Plugs is like a totally separate thing.  Because of that I don’t really know who our fans will be.  It will be really interesting next year when we do a tour and when we are working on the album to see who gets into us.

Dave – I think you also have to take it on completely different levels you know, and as Morgan is saying there is no cross over between the bands despite Morgan being in both; Plugs has its own musical interests really.

4TR – There was speculation in NME Morgan, that you were just a session musician within DIOYY and your main focus was Plugs even though you guys weren’t doing anything together at the time, care to comment?

Morgan – Oh yeah, they were saying all that stuff, I don’t know why!

Dave – It’s always funny to like pick up something like NME and read about someone you know and the stories about them when you know they are completely not true.

Morgan – Yeah they do that with some bands and not others you know, like a friend of mine Rob, who plays bass in Friendly Fires is never in any pictures and publicity but they never call him Mr. Session guy, he’s just Rob from Friendly Fires, so I think they are just very selective with like who they pick on and what they write, but it’s irrelevant really.

4TR – Plugs are currently unsigned but are you in talks to secure label support at all?

Morgan – Well we are talking to someone at the moment about doing an album deal actually, I am sort of working on it as we speak, well not actually as we are talking to you [laughing] but we are working on it at the moment.  But it’s a secret…

4TR – Talking about the debut LP, have you thought about what kind of direction it may take when you come to making it?

Boomer – I haven’t got a clue to be honest yet, this man Morgan comes up with something different every day, he is always listening and taking influences from something new and old, so it’s just a melting pot of everything when we start something.

Morgan – Yeah I’m always listening to loads of different stuff, like at the moment there is this band called Numbers I am quite into, but also I really love old school hip hop, Andre 3000, then Lou Reed’s album ‘Transformer’ is really influencing me at the moment.  You know we are all into such different music and I think that will probably come out when we do the album next year.

4TR – There is some interesting artwork on your EP’s, is that an important aspect of your music?

Morgan – It’s important to me because I always like a complete package you know, and it’s nice to work with artists you admire and enjoy.  I really like Ron Rege and he sort of helped us out with the first one and then there is this guy I am talking to for the next one called Jeffrey Brown and he does these kinds of graphic novels about being lonely and stuff.  Then you know after that we will work with someone else because we just love the idea of being able to work with different people.

Dave – I suppose we want people to see Plugs as being into a lot of different stuff, culture into society for example, so all of these elements like artwork are important to that

4TR – Are you involved in designing your artwork or do you leave the artist to come up with something on their own?

Morgan – The only thing I try and do is to get them to do what they do best.  Sometimes you can commission people to do stuff for you and they try and tailor it to you, which is not what we want, it should be the way they see it.

Dave – Yeah you know it’s about giving total creative freedom to them and you want that person to deliver their vision of what they think should be on the cover for example; sometimes you get it and sometimes it isn’t what you want, but as long as you have a good kind of relationship with them you can get something very cool

4TR – You have been given the psychedelic music tag by some writers, do you agree with that description?  

Morgan – No, I don’t think we do agree with that tag, I think that whole thing happened because of our original artwork.  For that reason it’s going to be interesting because the next artist I am talking to just does black and white stuff, which will obviously be completely different.  Sometimes I think people go on our MySpace and see all the colours and design and go “oh right that’s psychedelic dance rock”, which we are not. For example, I quite like this girl Cassette Playa and I remember talking to her to get her to do some work for us and she initially said she was not really into it.

4TR – What she didn’t like your music?

Morgan – No, but then a few months after it had come out she changed her mind.  Ultimately she is a businesswoman, but the point is that we are not a grime band, so it’s a juxtaposition for someone like her as she usually works with grime and nu rave.  With us it’s something different, so therefore more interesting.

4TR – You have been busy remixing tracks for other bands (recently We Have Band’s ‘OH’ and Post War Years ‘False Starts‘) so is that something that will become more prevalent in Plugs’ career?

Morgan – Yeah possibly, I mean I do the remixes at the moment because it’s kind of difficult as we are all juggling stuff, but as well as We Have Band and Post War Years, we have done Clor, The Noisettes, this Japanese girl…

4TR – I saw that on your page but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying being that she was singing in Japanese.

Morgan – [laughing] Well neither could I and then when I remixed it I thought what if I have looped a really stupid bit, but it was cool. I started wanting to remix people like Cocknbullkid but then when you are asking to remix people, you just kinda think what’s the point when I could be doing my own stuff.

4TR – Do you spend time listening out for new music or is it just people you come across through the industry?

Dave – A lot of them are friends really, people we know of already. 

Morgan – Yeah like with We Have Band I just really wanted to work with them, and then Clor and The Noisettes ‘cos we all hang out.  So mostly they are people we know and then I have had a couple of commercial requests but I haven’t been able to do them.

Boomer – Who was that?

Morgan – This guy IMX and I can’t remember the other one now.

4TR – Getting commercial requests is a bit of an accolade in itself!

Morgan – Well we have stopped getting them really because I kept saying no.

Boomer – [laughing] What you were too arrogant, just didn’t like them?

Morgan – haha no I just didn’t have anytime, the laptop broke…

4TR – Any new music you are championing?

Morgan – I like My Tiger My Timing, check them out 

Boomer – And Metronomy, although they are pretty much established now aren’t they.

Morgan – We Have Band, Post War Years, think that’s about it at the moment, except for The Noisettes look out for them again as they are about to release a new album.

4TR – Do you think the market is saturated at the moment therefore making it harder to get your music heard?

Dave – I don’t know really, I think one of the biggest things is you need to persevere as hard as you can with the music that you like to write and play because its going to be hard for any band or new band to get their name out there.  Obviously we want as many people as to hear Plugs as possible but you know we are just going to keep playing and gigging to get it out there.

Boomer – There are always going to be alot of great bands around but you’ve just got to step up to it when you need to and keep going at it.  The important thing is playing live.

Dave – Yeah definitely and doing things like this at Proud Gallery as much as possible and as we go into the new year we have talked about doing the album and a possible tour.  It’s about trying to build on every single release and raising our profile.  It’s great to have the history with Morgan and his other band and with the remixing as well, so we can just work on building all of it up.

4TR – So tonight is the start of Plugs domination in 2009 then!

Morgan – [laughing] Yeah I reckon so, and we are really excited about getting back out there.  Now I just want to get it over and done with and kick things off properly man.

www.myspace.com/plugsmusic

Words: Francesca Strange

Images: Olivia Strange

Write a comment

Name:
Email:
Subject:
Comment: *

Security Code: