"We've
been going for about three years, it was February or March 1995", says
John. "We've just changed the name from Rocket Science to Magnetophone.
There were other bands called Rocket Science, one was a hard-core band. We did
not want things to get confused. As we're sending demos out now and with the
single coming out on Earworm it's the best time to change."
"We met at Solihull Tech on an arts foundation course. Everyone on the course was music mad. One Christmas we did some jamming with guitars and it just stemmed from there. We started off with a singer, wrote a couple of songs, did a couple of gigs - but I don't know how much we should talk about that! To cut a long story short we went from three to two. We were left with this gig to do with just the two of us. Matthew said on the night that he felt like a career change and that perhaps we could do without a singer. So we played a thirty-minute instrumental set with a break-beat behind the songs - it kind of worked! We were listening to a lot of that sort of music anyway, I lived on a diet of the Aphex Twin for a year! It pushed us further to make the music we are now. It's always been about not having the best resources and making the best of it. Lo-fi results - it's always been that way. We had a situation, dealt with it, and stuck with the band from then on."
"When you've been playing the guitar for years and years you just develop a style. You work through ideas with bands but then you get to the point when you've done what you want to do there. We were really into Led Zeppelin at college - learnt their albums, every single nuance. We've both been in 'Led Zeppelin' bands. When you are in your first band there are worse groups to be influenced by! At that age you either go into computers, sport or music. Luckily I had a community centre that had weekly jam sessions. Every Thursday it would be great just to go down and be with other musicians who loved music. We used to play for hours on end."
"You
can't explain why you do it," Matthew adds. "I'm sure there is a reason
but it's really deep-rooted, it's just something you do."
"The band is not really about performing, it's about playing the music," John continues. "We're very much a live band anyway. A lot of it is very spontaneous, quite organic. Some of the best songs have derived from having nothing and having to go on stage.We know if we've just got a drum-break or a bass-line that we enjoy then we have to play it to see what happens in a live atmosphere. Having it so much louder helps.With a basic idea and rehearsal the rest just forms itself. There is an end to it though, when a song is written, it's written. Some songs have developed and we've thought 'that's it, that's the final result, let's keep that and record it.' It's a case of catching the song when it puts over what we want it to say. I don't think it's ever been the case of recording something and then playing it live, it's always the opposite way for us. It's strange because you might think that our music has a very 'in the studio' sound, you can't believe that it's happening live."
John describes the tools of their sonic trade: "It's keyboards, pedals, bits and pieces. I play bass as well. We take a radio on stage but it's the delay pedal that it's going through that generates the sound. Hopefully you can't tell what it is at times. We're very pedal based. The sampler is everything - it's the nerve center. It's in the middle of the floor when we play; it's the base of everything, even if it's just producing a drone or the sound of someone talking. It's stuff that has been gathered over the years. We used to have all our beats on tape. We had to use a Walkman plugged into a four-track!"
"Two and a half years ago we felt more awkward about playing than we do now", says Matthew. "We were supporting 'New Wave of New Wave' bands. It was weird fitting into that atmosphere - very glammy, very 'stand up straight, strut with your guitar and do the right poses'.....and then it was us - just kneeling on the floor experimenting with noises! We got some strange looks from other bands."
"Especially with me doing my Penguin Cafe Orchestra bass-lines!" adds John.
I ask John and Matthew about the current state of music in Birmingham.
"There's
definitely something different going on now", answers John. "It's
been so full of standard pub-rock bands for years. Now there are more bands
around who can play with each other. It gives you confidence.Some of these bands
seem to have come from the underground. I'd always heard of Pram. Broadcast
seemed to come out of nowhere a couple of years ago.You don't want the music
press calling it a scene though. It's good for a period of time but it can be
easily killed off once it's labeled. It's not bad being part of a scene though
it's really dangerous as it can't sustain eight bands all doing the same stuff."
"The demo was such hard work", says Matthew. "It's difficult trying to put on tape what you've played live for so many gigs. We've finished it and now we're trying to give it to all the right people, sending it off to the labels that we think might be interested in us and passing it onto bands who might like us. Dominic from Earworm thinks we're mad but he's still putting a single out for us.
"You get protected in your home town. You think, 'we're going to play here for as long as possible', but you have to concede to London at some point. We want to get to London, play the right places just to try and get a record deal."
"You see so many so-called signed bands coming to Birmingham and you think that it can't be that hard, because, to be honest, there's a lot of crap about!"