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| jaqkvade | Дата: Суббота, 16.07.2011, 21:48 | Сообщение # 1 |
 the childcatcher
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| the newly man-boobed singer explains why he's a nice guy but why klaxons are liars
hello, patrick. rumour has it you were just in a meeting.
i was! it's still going on, but i've excused myself for you.
was it a meeting about the future of patrick wolf?
kind of, it's about the future of my publicity and all that kind of stuff.
what decisions were made?
well, it was all about whether i want to be in the daily mail or the daily star.
not an easy choice.
i think i'd rather go with the daily star, it's quite gay-friendly isn't it?
is it?
the star like their boobs anyway, and i've been eating quite a lot recently so i'm developing man-boobs. (pause) DON'T HANG UP!
so let's discuss the fact that you're trying to swindle fans out of loads of money.
NO! i'm not doing that!
of course not. you're releasing your album independently, and fans can invest in you in £10 chunks through bandstocks.com. yes?
yes.
you're asking for £100,000, which seems a lot but in the grand scheme of things it's bugger-all for a proper album campaign.
well, yes. i want to work with the best photographers and video directors. i want to master my album at abbey road and i'm going to spend my last penny on making it sound right.
when you say your last penny, what you really mean is my last penny, as i have already invested £10 in this.
well...
and i'll tell you now - you're not having my last penny.
ten pounds is... well, that could go towards paying the hammered dulcimer (poncey harp - music ed) player.
i'm not paying for that! can i have some more options?
how about you pay for half an hour of hair and make up for a video shoot?
no. simply stand further away from the camera. i suppose the real question is whether the album is actually any good.
this is going to sound like miss world now, but i'm really proud of it. my last album, well, i was proud of it when i first finished it but i started to feel like i'd maybe become a bit too conservative. i'm not writing off my last album, but i don't think it was from the bottom of my heart and i always promised myself that everything would be. i went through a lot of trouble last year and i decided rather than going to rehab or giving it up and becoming a nun i'd write an album from the bottom of my heart.
are you easy to work with?
i asked my boyfriend the other day, 'am i nice person?'. it was 4am and i couldn't sleep. i'd had all these horrible emails. and he said, 'yes'. and he gave me six reasons why.
he only managed six reasons?
six is good! it made me smile again and that's what i care about.
what was the main reason?
that i'm generous. i have a warm heart. i'm not going to tell you what goes on in my bedroom! i know one of the reasons i was dropped from universal was that i'm - in quotes - 'a troublemaker', but i'm not! i just have aesthetics and i really don't want to compromise.
you say you're not a troublemaker but what was it you once told me about it all kicking off after you threw a vol-au-vent at one of klaxons' mums' heads?
THAT WAS A LIE! i was so confused - i was drunk - but i didn't remember doing it. and the person who said they saw it happen told my sister, and apparently jamie from klaxons' mum was crying, and i was banned from going near the house. apparently i was singing 'under the sea' from the little mermaid at her while throwing salmon. and then TWO MONTHS LATER it was finally admitted that it was all a joke and they'd made it up and spread it around.
maybe lay off the booze this year...
i will. i drank a punch bowl on new year's eve and that's it.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Суббота, 16.07.2011, 21:49 | Сообщение # 2 |
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the childcatcher
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| Patrick Wolf Talks New Album, Tilda Swinton, Satanism
"Middle-of-the road is a place where you're going to get smashed in the face by an oncoming truck."
"I'm gonna run the risk of being free," sang British glam-goth punk Patrick Wolf on his 2005 track "The Libertine". The line and song could easily double as a personal manifesto. Wolf changes genres (preternaturally confident combinations of chamber-pop, dance-pop, electro, folk, classical, and macabre machine music) about as often as he changes hair colors (stark black, stark blond, stark red). He talks with the lofty gusto of a true artiste; he would probably come across as something of an ass if his music didn't live up to his ambitions. Luckily-- for him and for us-- it usually does.
Wolf's upcoming album, previously titled Battle but now titled The Bachelor, and due June 1 in the UK, looks to be his biggest risk yet. Musically, he's experimenting with rougher textures (there's a self-described "heavy metal" track) and collaborating with both digital hardcore pioneer Alec Empire and Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton. On the business side, he's parted ways with Universal-- who released his 2007 breakout LP, The Magic Position-- after the major label didn't approve of his unhinged new direction, according to the singer.
So The Bachelor will be released on Wolf's own Bloody Chamber Music imprint and, in a unique move, some of the funding for the record as well as its marketing and tour budget will be paid for by expectant fans through a new site called Bandstocks. Wolf fans can buy "shares" of the new album for 10 pounds (about $14) each in advance of its release and eventually receive the record along with other fan club-type perks. (Check Wolf's UK or non-UK Bandstocks sites for more info.)
Wolf called us last week from his studio in England to chat about his iconoclastic nature and that time he watched some Satanists drinking blood.
Pitchfork: After your last album was released by Universal, why did you decide to go the opposite direction and self-release your new record and ask fans to help fund it via Bandstocks?
Patrick Wolf: When I split with Universal, the album was about 85 percent finished and I just needed a small amount of money to get it mastered, mixed, and pay for orchestra fees. I was wading through lots of contracts, going back and forth between lawyers, labels and managers. I just thought, "Oh God, this is going to be hell." It's one thing having a new record deal, but it's another thing getting the right record deal. Considering the little respect that I've been shown by A&R men, I thought, "Why would I split my money and my album with you?" I finished it from the bottom of my heart and it has nothing to do with a businessman sitting in his office waiting for the profits to come in.
I ended up taking the most liberal way of releasing the record, which is through Bandstocks. My lawyer told me about it. It's like side-stepping piracy in a way, because people help to finish the album financially, and they get a real copy of it rather than downloading half of it off Limewire. It just seems like an ingenious way of making sure the album format stays alive.
Pitchfork: So most of the recording for the album had been paid for when you decided to release it yourself?
PW: Universal paid for the recording...and that was the whole problem. They weren't expecting a record with a gospel choir, 12-piece strings, experimental noise, and Appalachian mountain dulcimer. They wanted me to make something very conventional, but that just seems like the death of creation to me. I've always done this from a place of pure, innocent creativity and no one can tell me what to do.
Pitchfork: If Universal paid for most of the album, how did you get the rights to the recordings?
PW: I've always had fantastic lawyers around me. I did some good planning before I went into my contract with Universal so I was able to own all my recordings. If the recordings had been owned by someone else I literally wouldn't know what to do at the moment. But we won.
Pitchfork: That's great, but I'm surprised a label as big as Universal would allow you to do that...
PW: I figured out that when someone says "you can't have this," I make sure that I do, legally. I know I sound like a very cold-hearted businessman, but if you think of your work as a real labor of love it's one of the most precious things you can own. If you can side-step a record label owning your work-- which I think is definitely a little more do-able now-- then you're onto something that could support you for the rest of your life.
And I've always been in a funny position with labels. I think I was signed as somebody who could be like Prince or Kate Bush or David Bowie and not just another singer that could be put with a load of hit producers and co-writers. But when England became more conservative in the last year and a half, I was thrown on the scrap heap. But that just made me even more creative and idiosyncratic.
Pitchfork: Was it awkward when you played the album for Universal and they didn't like it?
PW: I'm actually legally not allowed to talk about it, but I have a very big mouth! They weren't interested because they've had success with some very mediocre bands in England based upon all the retro, 1960s ways of making music. For them, I guess middle-of-the-road is the safest place to be. But, for me, it's a place where you're going to get smashed in the face by an oncoming truck. If I was ever described as "middle-of-the-road" I would literally commit artistic suicide right there and be re-born as a Parisian noise artist. Universal wanted me to conform, but it's not going to happen. Anyone who knows my work knows that I can flirt with the commercial world, but it's not where I belong.
Pitchfork: So why did you go with Universal at all, then?
PW: I blindly went into a life of music and touring after running away from home very early. After my first two albums, I had offers from six or seven major labels in England, and I thought, "I'd be very stupid not to take up this whole new way of working." I wanted to try it, and why not?
In hindsight, I really chose the wrong label. But they took me on a journey for a year and a half; I learned a lot about a different kind of world-- stuff like "Jimmy Kimmel" and "Conan O'Brien" and "The Charlotte Church Show". I don't regret a thing that I've done in my life, but it just wasn't working. I became obsessed with my Pixies albums again and I started to learn the electric guitar. I started thinking a lot of about German industrial and noise music. All sorts of things that draw blank expressions from major labels.
Pitchfork: Is it true you did some work with German industrial artist Alec Empire on the new record?
PW: I did quite a few tracks with him in Berlin, and we ended up doing two co-writes for the songs "Vulture" and "Battle". He worked a lot with synthesizers on these big electronic tracks, and there's one heavy metal track. I've always just produced and written my own songs, so doing a co-write and co-production was totally like losing my virginity.
Pitchfork: Based on his music and image, Alec seems like the type of person that may be intimidating to work with...
PW: Alec's a sweetheart. I'm sure he's going to hate me saying it. What I love about going to his shows is that there's this amazing hardcore energy, but there's also comedy behind that as well. He'd be crucifying himself and cutting himself onstage, but there's a slight cheekiness to it.
You know, even Charles Manson was probably a fun person to hang out with. I'm not saying Alec is Charles Manson, but everyone who's capable of destruction is normally capable of good humor. I've got songs about cutting my penis off and being raped by a child molester, so people think I'm going to be a really scary person. But then they see me drunk doing karaoke in a pub and they're like, "Is that Patrick Wolf?"
That said, I had all of these Satanist explorations in Los Angeles and I became a real voyeur of Satanism for a while. And then I worked with Alec, who was like 666...6. He was one-up on Satan. So that kind of helped me overcome all my Satanist urges. It was getting healthy-- like boot camp with Alec Empire.
Pitchfork: What kind of Satanic activities are we talking about?
PW: I spent a week in a hotel outside of L.A. before I went on "Jimmy Kimmel". I even find it hard to tell my boyfriend what happened, but it left me feeling extremely vulgar, dirty, and I just wanted to be re-born. Not Christian re-born, but I wanted to get rid of all these experiences that had left me just feeling filthy. I basically realized that Satan is the biggest myth-- as big a myth as Jesus or Allah. They're all just fictitious characters we create in order to be subservient to some ridiculous figure of dominance.
Pitchfork: Was there any, like, blood-drinking?
PW: Yeah, there was blood-drinking, showing daggers and guns, pledging allegiance to the flag and burning it, all that kind of stuff. I didn't do it myself, but I was watching it go on and thinking, "Wow, this is kind of like going to mass on Sunday in Venice. They think they're being reactionary to the Catholic church, but they're actually just being as ridiculous as the Catholics are." I'm sure Marilyn Manson would disagree.
Pitchfork: What's the most out-there thing you saw during that week?
PW: I can't say-- I could probably get arrested.
Pitchfork: Fair enough. Did you meet any famous actors when you went on "Jimmy Kimmel"?
PW: Oh, who was it? It was someone like David Hasselhoff. I think it was Harrison Ford-- he really liked my music. It was someone like that, one of those L.A. kind of people. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Pitchfork: I think you're the first person in history to potentially confuse Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
PW: I'm very English like that. It's all fake tan and Botox to me.
Pitchfork: I know Tilda Swinton does some spoken word narration on the new album, how did that come about?
PW: It was a real last-chance kind of experiment because I had written spoken word parts for the album and I was speaking them myself, but it just confused the whole story. I was desperate for someone to do it, and Tilda was at the top of my list. I thought, "Oh, how's that ever actually going to happen?" Normally with these things you go through official sources and everything gets lost in the process.
With Tilda, I turned up at a premiere and gave her a CD of a couple of my songs. I got really embarrassed and thought it was never going to work, but she loved the tracks. In three days we were in the studio together. With people like Alec and Tilda, there's no fear because you're agreeing on a creative concept. She was really testing the creative atmosphere, really hopeful, positive, and hilarious.
On one of the songs, she plays the part of my mum, who's found me at the end of a self-destructive period of my life. She's trying to tell me that I look like death, absolutely sick and disgusting, and to snap out of it. When I told my mum she called up her friends and was like, "Oh, an Oscar winner is playing me on this album!" I've actually got my mum playing spoons on one of the tracks, and then I've got my dad playing bass clarinet and my sister doing backing vocals. It's a real return to family with this record.
Pitchfork: Based on some of the snippets I've heard from the new record, it seems pretty full-blown. Have you thought about bringing it to the stage yet?
PW: Yes. I'm trying to be like the male Britney Spears, where I do a proper stage show with a headset mic and everything. I'm learning a lot about how to communicate as a dancer. I guess I'm quite influenced by early Kate Bush and late Britney Spears performances. I'm just looking to new ways of performing. Maybe making it more multimedia, more epic. I don't like the word "theatrical," but maybe more performance-based. And hopefully-- when I can afford it-- I'll bring in the 12-piece strings and the gospel choir.
Pitchfork: Is that the sort of thing you'd use the money fans contribute to Bandstocks for?
PW: Yeah. The main luxury of having a major label deal is the tour support-- you can fund quite a big production. I don't do things by half; I had my years touring solo with just a laptop and an organ, and I got a bit bored. But I've just lost my financial backing so the Bandstocks money will be poured into the live arena, definitely.
Pitchfork: If you do well with the album and on tour, there's a possibility fans can actually make money from their Bandstocks investment. Do you feel pressured by that at all?
PW: I'm lucky because a lot of this very expensive album has basically been handed over for free to me. So I've turned to making money back for everyone else-- and if everyone else is making money, I am, too. It's a kind of communist scheme. I've got the next album sitting about, which I'm finishing in April and I plan to be touring for two-and-a-half years. So there's a lot of time to make the fans' money back, and I'm a very hard worker. I genuinely will not be swayed by commercial failure; I'm not scared of initial defeat.
I hope it works, and if it doesn't I'll find another way. I'm gonna be around for another 80 years-- well, I'd be 105 then. I may not make it that far. But I've got many more albums in my body and God knows how they're going to come out.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:15 | Сообщение # 3 |
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the childcatcher
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| Originally entitled Battle, it was going to be a fairly bleak record, based on how Patrick was feeling during writing. However, upon entering the recording studio, he embarked on a new relationship. This led to the production of enough material for two albums. The first of these will be entitled The Bachelor, and will be released on June 1st 2009. The second record, The Conqueror, will follow next year.
Having previously been on a major label, he has now launched his own label Bloody Chamber Music. He has also made shares available to buy on the website bandstocks.com. An potentially important innovation in these tough times for artists and the recording industry as a whole.
The first single from The Bachelor, Vulture, will be released on April 20th.
Patrick has kindly taken time out from preparing for the release of his new album, and an upcoming tour, to take part in a Repeat Q&A where he discussed everything from the themes of his new songs to his love of Britney.
Lucy: Your band have been quite quiet for the last few months. Are you looking forward to playing gigs again?
Katie Jane Garside: I think I give very obtuse ans
1) Firstly, thanks for taking the time to speak to Repeat. I consider you to be the most exciting singer songwriter out there at the moment, so it’s an honour to get the chance to put some questions to you. I’m certainly excited about this year’s two new albums, but how does the run up to a new release make you feel?
Thank you very much my dear.. it's a pleasure. I'm finding the whole run up process really easy... I'm very well settled domestically this time around and have my head screwed on properly.. no drama so far. I found the whole magic position promo period quite stressful, I was falling apart at the seams, having alot of behind the scenes chaos with management and personal life. You should always make sure you enter publicity with your feet well connected to the earth, there is always a danger that if you're not in a good headspace before your album comes out then you are not in a good place to deal with all the madness that comes, everything from paparazzi attention to bad or good reviews or even stalkers... bonkers things can happen, but life can really only get bad if you are crazy to start with, and thank god I'm not this time!
2) I saw you play at St Georges church in Brighton in 2007, which created quite a unique event. Do you feel a venue can have a significant role in musical performance? And do you have any plans to play in any unusual surroundings in the future?
I loved that concert so much... I love churches, I was a choirboy in my youth.. I played a lot of cathedrals, I love the acoustics.. I would love to do a tour of churches as there is a lot of church organ on the new album. I have a dream list of venues, the biggest problem with playing unusual places can mainly be financial or acoustic... it's very hard to make a heavy electronic show in a cavernous acoustic space... and a lot of prestigious venues cost a small fortune to hire... I have many many years of shows ahead of me, many stages to explore.
3) You originally planned to release a double album, but have decided to split it into two releases. Why was this? And do you see the two as standalone records or still part of an overall project?
Both, I think with double albums both parts should work separately as well as together. I think that's what's exciting about releasing the two discs separately at first and then repackaging them later as a double album... it will be a bit like watching a movie and then a year later watching the sequel, then buying the dvd boxset I guess. Like Neverending story 1 and 2.
4) On your last album you collaborated with Marianne Faithfull on the superb track Magpie. Can you talk us through who you worked with this time around?
The duet for this album was with the singer and fiddle player Eliza Carthy. I wrote a song called "The Bachelor" for two voices, for a spinster and a bachelor. She is the spinster voice.. she originally came in to Olympic studios to play fiddle and I had these lyrics and threw them her way at the end of the day... it was a spontaneous duet, we were just totally communicating this story without having to discuss or prepare anything, that's how a good duet should be I think. She is an amazing story teller.. one of the world's greatest folk singers I think.. It was such an honor to work with her.
5) Your lyrics are what fascinate me most about your recordings. There always seems to me to be a wonderful mystery about them that leave the listener to tease out possible meanings. Can you give me an idea of the themes for your new songs?
Loneliness, self destruction and pessimism.. The songs are from a time when I had closed my heart off from any romantic feelings or from the idea or possibility of love. There is an exploration of male stereotypes and archetypes.. the selfish male bastard who fucks around and breaks hearts and never wants to marry (the bachelor, Theseus) the career obsessed lonely business man (Theseus, oblivion), the suicidal poet (the sun is often out), the boy who is becoming man and looking for a bond with his father (Blackdown), the Catholic son of a vicar who chooses his duty to his religion over true love (Damaris), the American soldier boy who wants to go to Iraq and play war, shoot to kill (Oblivion), the political/social activist (Hard Times/Battle)... the list goes on!
6) Do you feel these albums capture specific times and places in your life?
All the albums are like chapters of a diary.. I just reached chapter four with this last album.
7) It has been said that your last album gained more attention because it was apparently more "accessible". I don't think that's entirely true, and like to think its qualities are enough on their own to gain merit, regardless of how it fits into the commercial scene. Does the perception of your albums concern you?
It just had a huge marketing budget behind it... I don't think the sound is particularly commercial in hindsight.. I think in about ten years people will be able to hear the album for what it is and maybe see and enjoy the more experimental side to the album. I am not concerned with being misunderstood or misinterpreted anymore.. it is something that comes with age and experience, my duty is only now to keep my focus on producing and writing the best music that I can.. to not let any fear of ridicule or commercial failure into the creative process.
8) Who have you been listening to recently? And have any of these artists had any impact on this album?
I only really start listening to other music once my albums are finished... I listen to a lot of "classical" music to de-stress or to take on walking trips or get to sleep to while making an album.. composers like meredith monk, henry purcell and stephen micus. On the flip side I listen to a lot of music like recent Britney or Lil Kim to dance to.. any hard super electronic produced pop or hip hop...I really like a group called Brick and Lace and I still have a big thing for late 90's 2step garage...
9) If you were, somewhat unrealistically, only allowed three albums, desert-island-discs style, what would they be? And what is it about those albums that captivate you?
That is a bloody hard question to answer so I'm going to go from the top of my head....
Joni Mitchell "Ladies of The Canyon". a recording of Henry Purcell "Dido and Aenas" Kate Bush "The Dreaming"
10) You've already announced four dates in March. Do you have an extensive tour in the pipeline? And would you like to play some of the summer festivals?
I've just confirmed about 9 or 10 festivals over the summer across europe and a huge american tour.... all to be announced very soon. I'm very excited to playing many states and cities I have never ever played before.. It's going to be one hell of a journey and I plan to enjoy every moment.
11) Good luck with both records, I for one can’t wait to hear them.
Finally, which do you prefer, chips or cream buns?
Chips all the way... with mayo. I once got fired from a restaurant for sticking my finger in the mayo all the time, my bad.
http://patrickwolf.com/
http://www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf
Thanks to Patrick for his time and to Heather at Big Machine Media for setting it all up.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:16 | Сообщение # 4 |
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the childcatcher
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| Before I interview Patrick Wolf, I go to see him in London's gay nightclub Heaven, where he is playing a gig for the faithful. And, crikey, he really is something. Making his entrance in a long cloak, skinhead boots and blond ponytail, over the course of the evening he gradually strips down to a strap-and-buckle body harness and leather trews. At one point, he wears a burka; for his encore he dons full-face glitter and winged cape. James Blunt he ain't.
The music is equally dramatic, switching between industrial electro, Russian-tinged folk and acoustic yearning. Patrick plays the accordion, sings like a fallen angel. It's hard to tell if he's channelling David Bowie, Nina Hagen or the Count from Sesame Street but the overall effect is both confrontationally sexual and slightly giggle-inducing. And it is sincere. Patrick is a man whose songs come from the heart, whether that heart beats beneath black feathers or an S&M truss.
Only 25 and already on to his fourth album, Patrick Wolf is unlike any singer-songwriter around. More radical, more talented, more confounding, more ridiculous. There can't be many artists who manage to combine posing in a recent Burberry campaign with joining Charlotte Church in a duet on her TV show, supporting Arcade Fire and shimmying into Elton John's Black Tie and Tiara Ball wearing a silver sequinned cardie and silly trousers. Though he hasn't quite yet become our own Queen of Pop - he tells me that, when he brought out his first album, Lycanthropy, in 2003, he was shocked that people couldn't see that he was, in fact, the new Madonna - he's well on his way to becoming something far more interesting than regular old Madge.
Like Madonna, he's always changing; unlike her, he doesn't piggyback on other people's talents. He has no need. He plays umpteen instruments, including the ukulele (he made his own theremin aged 11); he's a trained composer ("I hear music in my head as loud as if it's playing through earphones"); and he styles all his looks, which range from Dickensian waif to Hoxton playboy. His latest album, The Bachelor, is the first where he's allowed himself to collaborate, principally with Alec Empire, formerly of Atari Teenage Riot, and Fiona Brice, a string arranger. Folk musician Eliza Carthy is on there; Tilda Swinton has a speaking part on a couple of tracks. Patrick also went to Paris to work with Thomas Bloch, world expert on the cristal baschet, an amazing 1950s instrument made of glass rods.
It all sounds extremely ambitious, particularly as last year he was dropped by his major record label. "They wanted me to have Mark Ronson as my producer," he shrugs. "And I didn't want to." Before he went he racked up an enormous cab bill - he can be very grand, Patrick - but then his accountant told him off ("For the usual: living a champagne lifestyle on lemonade money") and he reined himself in.
He tells me this with a wry smile as we drink cups of tea and eat digestives. Patrick's press cuttings and performances had led me to believe I'd be talking to a full-on diva, Grace Jones meets Violet Elizabeth, but he's proving delightful: polite, amusing, a bit shy. We're in his one-bedroom flat, in Borough, which he rents with his boyfriend, William, who works in radio and on Patrick's merchandise. They've just moved in; they furnished the entire place from car boot sales and second-hand shops. The landlord lives in a six-storey place across the courtyard. "He keeps saying he's going to introduce us to his houseboy, Julian," grins naughty Patrick. "We can't wait."
After he was dropped he set up his own label and brought out The Bachelor himself, asking fans to invest in him via Bandstocks.com to meet some of the costs. At one point he had so many songs that he planned to make a double album. But that would have been too expensive, plus the tunes fell naturally into two types; so now he's bringing out the darker set as The Bachelor and then, when he's raised enough money to finish off the next batch, he'll release The Conqueror, which will be more upbeat.
We spend a good hour talking about the lyrics on The Bachelor: they're far from usual, inspired by family ancestry, a friend's suicide, Appalachian mountain poetry, modern politics. At one point Patrick pretends to be an out-of-control computer, over some beats he made on an Atari when he was 16. He says, "I'm always searching for the new taboo", and has a knack of tickling people where they'd rather not be touched at all. His latest single, "Vulture", is a prime example. Dark, DAF-esque, but very catchy, it is accompanied by an online video that sees Patrick roll around saucily in a buckle-me-up jock-strap. It's a long way from the primary colours and school-boy shorts of the promo for 2007's "The Magic Position", his biggest hit. "My mum saw it and she was like, 'Oh, Patrick, what are you doing?' You know, I had my picture taken for the Burberry campaign, and I look like a gentleman, very classy. And then two months later I get my bum out for my video. She wasn't happy."
To Patrick, however, the video is an artistic expression of where the track came from, which is a lost weekend that he spent in LA, "experimenting with certain practices". "If a woman made a video like that it would be celebrated as sexy and artistic," he points out. "I do it and I'm a stupid faggot. It's not as though this is it, my final look. This is just a step on the way, so that when I'm 80 I can look back and see a life full of different characters and images that I've explored."
Although he's played around with his sexuality throughout his career - he currently identifies as gay but was in a relationship with a girl for a long time and once told an interviewer: "I don't know whether I'm destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man" - that's not what makes Patrick interesting. It's not even his one-man-Radiohead approach to making music. What's fascinating about him is his wilful, almost suicidal, desire to go his own way.
At 16 he informed his parents that he was leaving home and did so two days later, changing his surname from Apps to Wolf, supporting himself through busking and bar work until he got a record deal with an independent label. He made his first LP entirely solo. "I was really stubborn. I thought, I'm gonna be like Kate Bush, produce, choreograph, be in the charge of the artwork... I wanted to establish my own identity. I threw everything I had into that album. I threw everything out apart from it: I cut off my family, my education, any chance of financial security."
He dismisses the area where he was brought up as "the suburbs", though it was actually Clapham, south London, and he had a liberal, artistic upbringing. His dad was a musician-turned-BBC man; his mother, a painter. She took Patrick and his elder sister, Jo (now a musician and film editor), to see art exhibitions when they were very young: Damien Hirst, Egon Schiele. For music, there was classical or jazz: no pop until they were 10. Whenever he or Jo had problems they were encouraged to write a letter to a good fairy or a bad goblin. "It was an idyllic childhood, a fantasy world."
Holidays were spent in Ireland with his mother's family. He was very close to his grandfather, who told him that there were fairies in the garden shed. Patrick could see their lights, flickering in the night: he didn't realise it was his grandad, smoking. He had violin lessons at seven and was a choirboy, though he insists that it was his sister who could really sing: "I just ran about ruining parties through being really hyperactive. I never got parts in plays: I was too melodramatic. Always showing off, making people cry, spoiling things with my desire for attention."
Everything changed for Patrick when he went to secondary school: a private all-boys affair in Wimbledon, very academic and sporty. He was horrendously bullied.
"It starts with just three people and it spreads," he says, calmly, "until it's 30 people throwing things at you, shouting, beating you up and chasing you down the street. And you think it's your fault, because of who you are. It's your identity so it's your problem. And I wasn't sure if I was gay or bisexual, I wasn't really thinking like that. Obviously I wasn't as macho as the rest of the school but I was just being myself."
He would bunk off, painting his toenails so he'd get chucked out of swimming lessons, filling his time with making music and writing his fanzine. Through the latter, in 1997, he interviewed Minty, Leigh Bowery's art-rock group: during the meeting he broke down and told them how awful his life was. Fantastically, they let him join their band. Patrick first performed at Heaven aged 14, playing theremin for Minty.
Small recompense. His school life was still terrible. When Patrick asked his supposed mentor for support, he was told, "Well, look at you, what do you expect?" "With gay or bi people, I think education still wonders if it's a nature-versus-nurture thing. If you were black, they'd know they couldn't change you, and racist bullying would never be condoned, but if someone is quite feminine or knows they might be gay at 13, they think they can change you with a bit of rugby."
The bullying eventually stopped when Patrick was 15 and his mum saw him being chased down the road. She immediately pulled him out of school, eventually going to court to get the fees back: "It was important for my parents to feel that they hadn't wasted four years paying for an education that fucked their child up."
But it had. The only private establishment that would take Patrick afterwards was the do-whatcha-like boarding school Bedales. He was given a music scholarship and his own room: the only boy ever allowed this. He was considered too damaged to share. Bedales saved him, he says. Lily Allen was there, too, along with "all the other freaks that no other school would take. It was brilliant, being thrown in with all these characters. Before then, my freak status was something that I was made to feel ashamed of. Suddenly it was celebrated, like, 'Oh my God, I love your platform shoes!'" He laughs. "Though, by that point, that wasn't the reaction I wanted any more."
Patrick spent his time baking bread, playing the harp and making demos to send to record companies. Unlike his contemporaries, who were aiming vaguely towards university, he knew what he wanted to do. "People underestimate what bullying can do to your ambition. The more I was told that I would be a failure in life, the more I knew that the moment I was 16 and could legally get out of the education system, I was going to show them. I was going to be a superstar. I was on a mission to prove everyone wrong."
By everyone, he included his poor parents, who were still very concerned about him. Especially because after he left Bedales, he started dating a 39-year-old man. His mum and dad didn't approve, though Patrick interpreted this as them choosing to stand in the way of his becoming a pop star. Nine years on, they're close again, but his mum still worries about him.
"I think she thinks I'm an easy target. Which I am. I put myself out there with no irony or cynicism, so when people are horrible, it's easy to take it personally. But, you know, the sun still comes out in the morning. I can't worry too much if what I'm making is too gay or too straight or too this or too that. I like to throw myself into places I'm not entirely comfortable in. It's all experience, isn't it?"
He tells me about going to this year's NME Awards, in his leather trousers and big vulture cape. The indie-boy crowd sang "YMCA" at him. "But look at the lead singer of the Killers [Brandon Flowers, who's also wearing feathers at the moment]. He's seen as rock'n'roll. It's because I've got a boyfriend now. There was no comment when I was living with a woman, even when I was being extremely camp, in hot pants."
He doesn't really care. "The people I'm inspired by were always searching for the most groundbreaking thing. Like Stockhausen, he was the scum of the classical music world, or Hector Berlioz, who would create a symphony and everyone would get up after five minutes and leave the auditorium. I want to ramp things up a bit. And a love song can be inspired by any gender or sexuality. I feel things slipping backwards. Equal rights, once established, have to be protected."
To this end, whenever he employs people, he positively discriminates, so that even his roadies are not white, straight males, which is some achievement.
He is so hardcore, Patrick; so unwilling to compromise his ideals or vision that I find him both inspiring and incredibly touching. Still, in the end, his obdurance has served him well. He's not loaded, but he's doing OK: he owns all the rights to his music, other than for the last LP, "and I can always go on tour to make money".
Which is what he's about to do; to promote The Bachelor and to raise funds so he can record The Conqueror. Not forgetting Bandstocks. I've already pledged a tenner, figuring that if I put money in Patrick, at least something interesting will come out of it. "Oh, my biggest worry is to be boring," he says earnestly. "I'd rather be scary and confusing than mediocre." Fat chance of that. Come on, everybody! Invest in Wolf!
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:29 | Сообщение # 5 |
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the childcatcher
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| Patrick Wolf is distracted.
He calls while on one of London’s big buses, and confesses that he has trouble concentrating on a conversation while surrounded by people. So instead of just calling me back later, he hops off the bus and just walks.
It’s reflective not only of his current situation—a rebel freed from the constraints (and 24-7 car service) that comes with signing to a major label—but how focused Wolf is about everything from his music to interviews.
It hasn’t been easy. The 25-year-old started playing music before he reached his teens, and by his early 20s was signed to Universal and modeling in Burberry ads. He’s since left the label, turning to Bandstocks (where fans become music “investors”) to fund his latest project, the double-album Battle. While he waits for the first installment, The Bachelor, to come out in June, Wolf caught us up on life in the slow lane.
Off the bus?
Yes, that’s a lot nicer. I hate bus conversations, they’re awful! I’m back to public transportation, and I really enjoy it. When you’re in major label world, your feet don’t touch the ground, because you’re always in a company car.
Why did you decide to leave a major label?
Nothing really gets in the way of me getting my music out to the world. The label offered to put me with producers that I don’t think would have worked, but I was kind of brainwashed into thinking that my music was nothing unless I had a hot producer. Patrick, you’ve been making music since you were 12 years old—you should be producing other people’s music, not other people producing yours, stick with it! So I became independent again because I wouldn’t put myself in the machine. Now I’m back to getting on the bus, going to shoots…back to square one.
How is Battle different from your previous albums?
It’s a super personal project. It reminded me of being 13 again, [with] no audience, no expectations. I had to really, really work to get that freedom and space around me. I had to push a lot of people away and I had to cut a lot of financial ties, but I found it and I’m proud of what I’ve done.
Why did you choose Battle as the title?
The inspiration there is that I’m delivering something that is quite antagonistic and warrior-like, and I decided that I wasn’t going to be passive this time around. I wanted to be challenging. I felt like another pretty boy singer that can make you smile. That’s never ever, ever, ever what I wanted to do when I was 11 years old. I wanted to change people’s minds about certain things that are wrong in society, challenge parts of people’s identity…I want to change the world, with my music and my identity.
Do you think something like Bandstocks is the future of the music industry?
I hope so. It’s a very honest way of people seeing what goes on behind making a record. I think that whole fantasy element of the record industry is disappearing. We can be really pagan about things, really medieval. You can be like, hey here’s my song, do you like it? Give me your money so I can eat tomorrow and make some more music and put on a great show. I think it’s a really simple, honest system. And maybe it will be a big system one day. All I know is that I couldn’t get back into the [current] system of labels. I still want to be a human being and the same person who made my first album. I don’t want to be fucked by business people. There’s a reason why I left school at 16: To live a life of creativity, to create and not be a slave to anybody.
You’ve got some big-name collaborators on this album, like Tilda Swinton. How did that come about?
She’s the narrator on the album. It’s a celebration of the spirit of independence, because she’s someone who has been an actress with many different parts, and still retains her identity. She’s just a fantastic actress who I felt a real kinship with.
As a fan of independent cinema, what’s the last really great movie you’ve seen?
Like, movies that I actually really enjoyed?
Or the last really horrible movie you’ve seen.
[Laughs] Bride Wars was really bad. I think so much, and really am about high culture and investing my time in classical music and history and art, but then I just need that moment to watch Bride Wars. But I passed out, it was just too much.
REBECCA WILLA DAVIS
Visit bandstocks.com for more info.
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:35 | Сообщение # 6 |
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| 'I just want to live to the extreme'
At only 25, Patrick Wolf is poised to release his fourth album, The Bachelor, next month. Blending elements of indie folk and electronic, the record is one half of a double album with its successor The Conqueror due out next year. The Guide spoke to Wolf ahead of his gig at the Roadmender in Northampton next week.
"Hello Northamptonshire," he begins, "You know my album's got quite a link to your county. My boyfriend grew up in Bozeat and I spent some time in Kettering with his brother and his wife. I was returning to a lot of my family roots on this album, trying to explore a lot of things which were not to do with showbusiness and more to do with the people around me. I went up to the World Conker Championship. It was a great day and I ended up recording sounds and samples for the record."
The Bachelor charts the time before Wolf met his partner, a time he describes as "single and quite lonely."
"I guess it's quite an aggressive album - when you're single you have so much time on your hands to get politically and socially active and aware of the world around you," he adds. "You challenge things a lot more as you're not in a place of total love and comfort."
After a childhood in south London during which he endured bullying at school, Wolf left home at 16. He had begun writing songs when he was about 12. Two years later he began performing with Leigh Bowery's band, Minty. After being spotted by Faith and Industry Records in paris, he released his album Lycanthropy, which was followed in 2005 by Wind in the Wires and 2007's The Magic Position.
The Bachelor marks a first for Wolf, who teamed up with Eliza Carthy for collaborations and worked with former Atari Teenage Riot frontman Alec Empire.
"Blackdown is probably my favourite track," he says, talking about the record. "It's a song for my father which is trying to renegotiate a relationship with him. I want to support my family better, I want to make my sister proud, I want to make my father proud. It's a return to family, really, after everything I caused when I was a teenager and the reckless behaviour of my early 20s and thinking I wanted the pop star life."
He explains he wanted to find childhood heroes to work with: "I wanted to use it as a way to grow and learn new sounds," he adds. "There's a slight aggressive element to the album, a bit more of a vigilante approach to the songs. Alec was the perfect person to help me challenge my aggression."
Wolf's 'pop star' life has seen him touring almost continually since he was 19. However, after the release of The Magic Position, he decided to take time off from touring in an attempt to regain some normal rhythm to his life and "do decent human being things."
"It really helped my songwriting," he adds. "I was feeling really thrown around the world. I've travelled so much but I'm such a homely person - touring can do funny things to your head."
Wolf currently lives in south London with his partner William, in a home he describes as sanctuary where he could cocoon himself in forever and just look out at the garden.
Touring aside, Wolf is currently putting the finishing touches to The Conqueror, which he says deals with more stories in the present tense. With the next couple of years and albums already mapped out for him, Wolf explains he hopes to simply carry on writing.
"The thing has always been to be 90 years old and have a life of albums behind me," he explains. "That's all I want to achieve in life. I've no desire to have a property empire or adopt a Turkish baby. I just want to document my life, keep living to the extreme and see where this journey takes me."
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:36 | Сообщение # 7 |
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| I'm back after promoting my last album left me exhausted, says Patrick Wolf
PATRICK WOLF'S album The Bachelor is out on June 1 and he plays Glasgow's Classic Grand on May 29..
What have you been doing since your last album, The Magic Position?
2008 was a sabbatical from the public and publicity. I was exhausted by the whole promotion thing. So I spent the year writing and doing human things. It was good to take a step back and it's made me really appreciate that I needed to focus on what I am here to do, which is to be a songwriter.
What happened with your record company Universal?
I think it was just time for us to part company. I'm happy to be out of it and happy to be back in a place where I'm not patronised for being someone who knows how they want to make an album, knows the creative process quite well and isn't afraid to make executive decisions. I much prefer to be steering my own ship.
So you produced your albums, The Bachelor and The Conqueror, yourself?
Yes The Bachelor is due out next month and The Conqueror will be out early next year. I've just finished recording that. They are both selfproduced but with a lot of collaboration. The collaboration thing is new for me. I really wanted to embrace a lot of the people that I've met and worked with.
How did Tilda Swinton end up on your album?
It really felt natural for her to be on the record. I couldn't think of any other actress or any other voice with so much hope. She has such an inspiring voice, personality and passion, and she's a great actress and totally unique..
Your album feels like a bit of a journey - was it?
Once I put my albums together, I want it to be like one long novel and this is just a chapter of it. I would like to consider myself a storyteller - with songs, you can really tell a four-minute story but also the great thing about the album format is that it is a compendium of short stories that you can turn into one long narrative and that's what's exciting.
Tell us about the song, The Sun Is Often Out.
It is about a friend called Stephen who committed suicide. After The Magic Position, which was quite an abstract album, I felt the need to get extremely personal. When Stephen died, it was towards the end of the album and I realised I had been writing a lot of songs with the theme of death and loss and it was the last song on the album to write.
The album ends on a more hopeful note - was that intentional?
It was important to do that. I really felt there was enough hope in the album and I didn't want to leave people in a low place.
You've spent a lot of time in America - how was it for you?
I'd have that feeling of being a travelling businessman, in hotels, flicking through TV channels - it put me in a funny place as a songwriter. It was the total opposite of cooking stew at home and watching Antiques Roadshow. I missed even the sound of my mum's voice and things like semiskimmed milk.
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:36 | Сообщение # 8 |
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| Wolf a style guru, if a Lidl eccentric
HE was born in Ireland, raised in London but looks like he fell to earth from another planet.
Electro-folk innovator, avant-garde performer and self-styled fashion icon Patrick Wolf – who visits the Midlands later this month – spoke to Mail reporter TIM FLETCHER.
PATRICK Wolf – at the the risk of ruining a perfectly good article with a terrible pun in the first paragraph - runs outside the pack.
Inspiring quasi-religious fervour live, he is panned by some critics for the flamboyant sense of style which has seen him embrace everything from the Victorian street urchin look to peasant shepherd chic and which – in the video for new single Vulture – sees him writhing semi-naked on the floor in bondage gear.
“People have really bad style and they focus on the fact I know how to dress,” he says. “Many bands should be working at Lidl rather than making records and their dress sense reflects that.”
Miaow! Wolf says the criticisms belie a peculiarly British tendency – puzzling since we’re meant to be a nation of eccentrics – to mock those who dare to eschew the stultifying, Fred Perry-wearing conventions popularised by Oasis and perpetuated by a generation of even more dull imitators.
“When I was growing up, Bjork was the joke of the national press but she was one of the most inventive, exciting artists around,” he says. “I’m not afraid of ridicule – I take it as a compliment.
“Since I was younger I’ve always been the person shouted at in the street because I choose to walk and talk in the way that I feel. It’s something that comes with being true to yourself and not compromising in quite a conservative culture.”
The taunts drove him to quit school, leave home and embark upon his musical odyssey at the tender age of 16.
A songwriting talent honed in his early teens on second-hand synths would bear bittersweet fruit with 2003 debut Lycanthropy, a dark - at times disturbing - masterpiece of yearning vocals, folk influences (he plays, among other instruments, the violin, harp, accordion and ukulele) and mashed-up electro beats, bleeps and samples.
After furthering his bleak, bucolic, beautiful vision with follow-up album Wind In The Wires, Wolf went all 'happy' on us with 2007's The Magic Position, a more accessible, poppy collection of songs than its melancholy predecessors; inspired by his relationship of that period with ‘a girl called Ingrid’.
His sexuality has been the subject of lurid speculation, perhaps due to an unwillingness in his early career to pigeon-hole it, but he is now happily hooked up with ‘a boy called William’.
“I suppose as a songwriter I document a lot of my relationships in songs and so people focus on what the lyrics are about,” he says. “My sex life is extremely private but I’ve worked out now that there is no such thing as privacy.”
Having parted company with his record label, Wolf’s forthcoming album - The Bachelor - was partly-financed through Bandstocks, a venture enabling fans to effectively buy a stake in their favourite artists.
“I think you will find a lot more bands trying to find other ways of funding their album,” he says. “Really the music industry is dying. It’s an extinct species, collapsing around us.”
The new release - part one of what was originally intended to be a double album - features a return to the soulful, rootsy musical arrangements and yearning, impassioned vocals of his first two albums and catalogues a time of inner turmoil in his personal life when he was, he says, ‘at rock bottom’.
A more collaborative effort than anything he has produced before, it sees him team up with former Atari Teenage Riot mainman Alec Empire, Marianne Faithful (who also appeared on The Magic Position) and – with a series of spoken-word contributions – the White Witch of Narnia herself, Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton.
Experience the power of the Wolf for yourself later this month when he visits the Midlands on tour, complete with an enhanced stage show allowing a more mobile performance from the man himself. Expect to be entertained, moved, amused, but never bored.
“It’s like an out of body experience going on stage,” he says. “I’m always overwhelmed by the adulation I get – I’m not someone that takes compliments really well. I’m just trying to channel everything into the most intense performance that I can that night.”
If he’s guilty of anything, it’s perhaps taking himself too seriously. Of being too ‘precious’ – at times even pretentious.
But he’s also the most innovative, unique and uncompromising performer around – with a songwriting talent capable of making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. And you could never imagine him working in Lidl.
Patrick Wolf plays at Nottingham’s all-day Dot to Dot Festival on Sunday, May 24. Tickets are available online at www.alt-tickets.co.uk or by telephoning 08713 100 000.
The following night, he appears at Birmingham 02 Academy – buy tickets from www.ticketweb.co.uk or by telephoning 08444 7720000.
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 15:41 | Сообщение # 9 |
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| I recently chatted with MTV Logo ArjanWrites Award nominee Patrick Wolf about his much-anticipated new album, "The Bachelor" that will be released digitally on June 2 and will be in stores on August 11 on NYLON Records.
Originally intended as a double-album, Wolf's "The Bachelor" began its creation immediately following his tour for 2007's critically acclaimed "The Magic Position." Exploring his own doubts on ideas of love and marriage, Patrick found inspiration in experimentation with bleak electronic and industrial sounds, as well as finding solace in some of the classics of his teenage years like The Pixies and The Raincoats.
(Note: The interview with Patrick was conducted before his nomination for the MTV Logo ArjanWrites Award was announced. He will have some words about the nomination a bit later. Click here to vote for the MTV Logo ArjanWrites Award.)
Arjan: Thanks so much for taking my questions, Patrick. How did your recent tour go? Was it fun to perform some of your new tracks? How was the audience response?
Patrick: It had been a long time since had done any shows, our last proper show had been over a year ago as I had taken time off to finish "The Bachelor." Despite lots of rehearsing, It wasn't really until the third night of the tour I really felt us start to communicate better onstage and I remember a moment onstage in Cambridge where it really felt as though we were doing something very exciting, I felt a certain magic in the air between us and the audience. The new show incorporates alot of new technology and performance techniques, costume changes, wireless in ear monitors, headset microphones. It took a few shows to iron out any technical glitches. It was only a five date tour, a public dress rehearsal or test to try out the new show before the huge tour coming up that will see us going round the world for about two years.
You have decided to release two new albums in the next two years. Can you fill us in on some of the details of these releases? Album title?
The first album is called "The Bachelor." Originally the album was a double album and "The Bachelor" was the name of the first disc. The narrative of the album is split in two. "The Bachelor" is in exploration of me as a man who gave up on the idea of love and marriage, a time when I was very lonely and pessimistic about my future and the idea of entering a relationship. As a producer, I was exploring quite bleak electronic sounds and hard industrial beats. There is alot of heavy distorted surf guitar and I guess is influenced a lot by some of the music I used to listen to as a teenager, like The Pixies and The Raincoats. This is the most expensive album I have ever made, it was recorded in some beautiful studios with great engineers, It really is a labour of love and over a year of long studio hours with some really genius musicians. Two songs were co-written with Alec Empire from Atari Teenage Riot and and there is some additional electronic production from Mathew Herbert. Tilda Swinton does the narration. Its a bit of an epic I guess thinking about it all in hindsight...This is my first album where I have used a big string section and my first ever work with a choral section too.
I believe you intended to put it out as a double disc. Why did you end up making it two separate releases and telling them as two different stories?
I took a writing holiday last week to Cornwall to properly finish off the second part of the story. "The Bachelor" was getting to a point where it felt perfectly finished, as though I wouldn't change a note or lyrics. I still felt there were a couple of songs or stories to be written for the second part. I was right. I start the finishing off of the second album this week. I have given myself absolutely no down time over the next two years. I need to keep creating and writing or I feel lazy and go a bit mad. The second album is what happened after I met my true love one December night at the end of 2008. How I went from being very pessimistic about life and love to suddenly a year later where I am making someone breakfast in bed and moving into our home together. The bachelor becomes the groom I guess. It would make a good movie I think. I go from being a total hedonistic fucked up drunken bachelor boy in a house full of rubbish and fruit flies to being a loving domesticated house husband who is fast asleep in bed by 10 o'clock reading a book and drinking red bush tea.
You've found a novel new way to promote your new album independently with Bandstocks. How does this work? Has it been paying off?
It's been amazing, the most exciting thing to me Is that I feel it has re-established a close bond between me and my supporters again. I was starting to feel a distance between my hardcore fan base and me during the magic position, everything got a bit corporate and I was very out of control of the marketing aspect of my music. There was a lot of money being spent in places I was unhappy with. Now I have total final say over every penny that is spent on the everything from the recording to the advertising to packaging and distribution of the album. I have always felt very empowered by being aware of the business behind making and selling records and I feel that me and my team at Bloody Chamber Music (my label I set up to take care of my back catalogue and my current album) are trying to stay 100% percent aware of all the rapidly changing and evolving industry and economic climate around us. I find that if you don't embrace the changes around you then you end up stagnating and fucking yourself over. A lot of labels are very scared of all the new technologies and are running their labels as If its still 1995, we're trying to do a label (and bandstocks is a great modern way of financing everything) that is run as though its 2015. Its fun and i'm really enjoying the freedom it is bringing us.
Now that you have full creative control do you feel more inspired and feel you can take more risk? Talking about risk, the video for "Vulture" is stirring up quite a few emotions with people. Are you fascinated by s&m culture?
To answer both questions, I have always, even during my days at Universal retained full creative control over my music, artwork and videos. It's just now there is no one to argue with in order to get what I want. The funny thing is that a lot of people have been asking me, specifically with the new sound or the recent video about me being a risk taker, but I see what I do as very normal to me. I'm just making the things I have to make as Patrick Wolf, I'm 100% percent unaware if the things I do are unconventional or risky, the images I play with in the "Vulture" video seems so normal to me. The beats and sounds I make are the most natural thing I can think of. It would only be risky for me to make something against my character or aesthetics and try to be someone or something else that I am not, so in a way I don't see myself as a risk taker. S&M and bondage are two things I have always had a fascination with, there are so many hundreds of different sexual practices in the world, and god knows I have been having sex for over 10 years now so I've explored many things in my time. I thought it would be interesting to make a video as a boy and be submissive to an unknown threatening dominating presence. I think it is a taboo for a male to show vulnerability in pop culture, I think that is why the video has pissed so many people off so far, I understand it makes people uncomfortable, but I really don't care. The world is far too conservative right now for my liking. It feels very natural for me to write a song like the "Childcatcher" on my first album or to write about something that makes people think and feel something different to what they are used to. I would have made this video wether I was on Universal or not, it is not at all a reaction statement to not being on a major label anymore, that has been a huge misconception.
I'd imagine it must have been very liberating for you to film the video. Was it?
I find all performance and creating liberating, but If you're asking me if partaking in sado-masochism on camera was liberating then not at all, I am already a very liberated person sexually and morally.
Was there a specific point you were trying to make with the video ? Or was it mostly about the visual aesthetic in combination with the music?
Like all my music videos have been, I am always just making a visual representation of the lyrics and the music. Music videos make a song 3 dimensional I think, You have the lyrics, the music and the video. The 3 dimensions.. All should complement each other.
We are used to your eccentric characters from the albums. How much of those characters are your own self and how much is your imagination/creation?
They are all myself. I hate being called eccentric! sorry, I think I am a very normal person. I have a very over active imagination that is true, but a song like Tristan or Vulture is not really a character, it's an exploration of my emotions or identity. The poet Arthur Rimbaud had a great saying "I is another", to me this means that on a song like The Bachelor, I am telling the listener something about myself through the experience of a pig farmer from the Appalachian mountains. I am not a pig farmer but by singing a song from his point of view, I'm exploring certain parts of my personality and experience.
What's the story behind the boy in red shorts and what can we expect from him in the next two albums as they represent opposites?
The red shorts! Ah. I only have one pair of red hot pants. I think I bought them In Portland actually. I'm actually more into fabrics like leather and wood at the moment. I'm into clothes that would be worn in battle during medieval times or in a sex dungeon. I've put the hotpants away for the next couple of albums. I'm a bit more of a gentleman or a warrior these days I think.
What musical artists are you currently enjoying?
I've been listening to the composer Gavin Bryars alot. Been going through a Lil Kim phase recently too. Micachu has an amazing album out called "Jewelrey". The new PJ Harvey and John Parish album is genius. Fever Ray has a great album out too. Really genius actually and I recently saw Peaches at the Royal Festival Hall and I can hands down say it was one of my favorite shows of the last 5 years. I guess there is some kind of pattern to my music collection. Strong inventive women and modern classical composers like Stephen Micus and John Cag.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 23:45 | Сообщение # 10 |
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| Patrick Wolf gives interviews like his new record, The Bachelor, sounds—by turns heartfelt and bombastic, hardened and defiant. Sentences and thoughts overlap each other the way the album morphs from shimmering orchestral choruses to earthy electronic growling. Though, change is nothing new for the critically acclaimed 25-year-old English musician: The restless genre-shifter has mixed and matched classical, Celtic folk, chamber-pop, and glitchy electronica on his previous three albums. Before his show on Monday at Slim's, Decider talked to Wolf about casting Tilda Swinton as “the voice of hope,” staying connected to his audience, and touring with “celebrities.”
Decider: Musically, The Bachelor takes another new direction for you. What changed?
Patrick Wolf: I was really not interested in imitating the work I had just done. I don’t have that desire in me. [After 2007's The Magic Position] I had lost contact with the things that brought me hope and love. I had lost contact with nature. I had lost contact with my family, and I just kind of shut the door and locked the door and didn’t want to leave the house. That’s why it’s The Bachelor. It’s someone who’s not even contemplating marriage—deep down maybe waiting for true love but no empathy for the rest of the world.
D: What has the reaction been to this shift in tone?
PW: I got negative feedback from some of the people in [the music] business. They were terrified that after I’d done this album, I would have done myself in. The Magic Position was about the joys of love and being quite exuberant and positive about life, not, “My friend’s just committed suicide. My dad has cancer. I’m really depressed. I’m going to write about this darkness.” They didn’t seem to realize that pop music can be about human conditions that aren’t very popular to discuss. I guess my inspiration is something like Blue by Joni Mitchell, where you can tell she’s not even thinking about what’s going on past the microphone or who it’s going to be heard by, but she just has to confess. I’ve gotten so much human reaction from people saying, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” And that makes me all so happy.
D: Do you feel like you’ve found your own audience?
PW: I think the theme of my life is to always have to stick up for being an individual, always having to stick up for me—the fact that I can be gay but I don’t have to be an advocate, not having to be a gay martyr or something like that.
D: The Bachelor was funded through donations from fans on BandStocks.com. What was that experience like?
PW: The thing that I was most confused and happy about was that I thought people had given up on paying for albums or putting money into the music industry. So when the BandStocks thing came, I was really quite scared over the first couple of months, and it’s only now that I can really see how actually quite amazing it was. Especially when you think that it was up to £60,000 or £70,000, which might be obscene depending on the exchange rate right now. I think major labels sever the ties between you and your audience because they are taking all the data, all the information, and all the money from your audience, which means you’re losing touch in this ivory tower of your record. So I think things are right back to normal again. I am strong with my audience. We’ve got a strong bond, and I feel a lot happier, a lot more empowered.
D: Tilda Swinton is cast as “the voice of hope” on this record. She broke into the film world with gay film auteur Derek Jarman, one of your heroes. What was it like to collaborate with her?
PW: I think that’s one of the things that really drew me to her. It was kind of an honorary tribute. Some people have it with Elvis, some people have it with Bob Dylan, and I just have it with Derek Jarman. Tilda was always this beautifully hopeful voice, even when she was playing that tyrannical queen or an anarchist. There is always an element of hope to what she does, and the album was really crying out for that.
D: NYLON Records has enlisted Cory Kennedy and Peaches Geldof to act as hosts for this tour.
PW: Cory Kennedy? Who’s Cory Kennedy?
D: She’s famous for being a model for thecobrasnake.com’s party photography.
PW: Well, my band has got our own tour bus, and we’re quite insular, and we have our own private jokes, and we don’t tend to socialize too much. It’s important that we keep this sort of magic throughout the tour—on any tour that we do—to keep it like family. I know Peaches from London and she’s a sweetheart and very misunderstood by the press and a lot more intelligent than people think, but have no idea who this Cory is, so I don’t know. If this is going to be like The Simple Life 4, then I certainly won’t be involved.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 23:50 | Сообщение # 11 |
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| "I don't want to ride through Berlin naked"
Besides other things, Patrick Wolf talks about the recording of the new album "The Bachelor", the up and down since his childhood and his plans for the future.
After his alliance with the Major powers the skydiver of pathos pop fell into a deep hole. His soul was painted black from evil thoughts and bad drugs, he felt miserable. With a lot of labour - and even greater production efforts - London's paradise bird pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Alex Empire, Matthew Herbert, and Tilda Swinton all stand by his side, when he cleanses his psyche with his fourth album and invents himself anew.
Patrick, for your last album, you have gotten a contract with a Major - something you had always dreamt about -, have you been very disappointed by this experience in the end. Have you said goodbye to your goal of becoming a star?
Wenn you get hyped extremely by the media, when the label and everybody around you builds up such great expectations, then you easily lose focus why you have started to follow the vision to begin with: land a number one hit or reach the Top 10. One, two years ago, I thought to myself: I am doing this now since I was 18 and desperately tried to hold my ground in this world. Now it is time to let go.
Success is now unimportant for me. The only thing I want now is making the best album I can - and after that enjoying what may come. I will nothing let distract me from my job on this planent: to be songwriter and producer. Now that the pressure from Universal Music is gone, I have probably become a much nicer human being as well. This annoying voice in my head is gone: "Sell! Sell! Sell!". It is extraordinarily liberating to just be myself and not have to justify that any more.
But your music never sounded like you were exactly made for the huge success. You made advanced pop from the very beginning.
And I don't think my music has ever been compromised by circumstances like a huge contract, not at all. I never hid my music to be successful. Probably that's why I have never been in the Top 10.
But do you want to reach the Top 10?
At school, I always was the outsider; I always thought to myself: "I probably look different in your eyes and may talk differently, but I will never follow the rules of establishment or live like everybody else. But at the same time I don't see why that should count as a disability against me. I can be whoever I want to be and still have the same success as so many who are conservative and boring." Yeah, that's what I am still thinking today! But theses days, I'm not as much focused on success, but it's more about getting respect and being understood by people. That is the exciting thing for me: to be accepted.
Your new album "The Bachelor" has become a very personal album. In it, you are talking openly about a personal crisis and how you got through it. Was it a creative crisis at the same time?
My feelings, my state of mind, the question, where I stand in my life personally, and my music - that is all strongly intertwined. Often I don't think about the music or the tempo with which I am going through life. I am always searching for the new. And after the first three albums, I didn't want to create anything similar to them. I wanted to reinvent my personality, to reinvent my soul, since it felt dirty and tired and miserable. Thus, I had to reinvent myself in my songs at the same time. So, when I was aggressive, I knew: It is time to call Alec Empire and tell him: " I need a brute Heavy Metal song to channel this aggression." At first, that was an unconscious journey, but that way I found my way out of the hole. Now I can look down on all that filth from above. From that point of view, "The Bachelor" is a pretty dirty, aggressive, brute album.
Since you mention Alec Empire: How did that collaboration came to be? It doesn't seem like an obvious pairing.
A couple of years ago, Alec was at one of my concerts at Berlin's Volksbühne. We met there and talked non-stop about music and laughed a lot. It felt like with old friends. As a teenager, I went to many concerts by Atari Teenage Riot, they were my favorite pop band, being the most extreme, most subversive pop band one could imagine. They were my sex pistols. The rest of the music world was so conventional. For me it always felt like a revolution when ATR came to London. They were the band that gave me fire and energy when I was 14. My music collection consisted of everything that was published on Digital Hardcore: Merzbow, Ec8or, I listened to a lot of heavy noise stuff. But until now I had never documented that on my own albums. So I wanted to catch up on that and I thought that in that case I should work with Alec, one of the great creators of that noise world.
You are coming from a very educated family, right? Your parents are both artists.
Yes, but it is in no way an intellectual or academic family. My mother is a painter, my father's roots lie in Jazz. From them I learned early on to follow my dreams and passions. I can remember exactly how my father told me when I was five: "If there is anything that you really want to do in life - gardener or skydiver - don't listen if anybody tells you that it would be something stupid! When you feel it in your heart, then do it!" Then, when I was twelve, I decided: "I want to be a pop star!" And he went: "Oh no! Why did I ever tell him that?" But the next ten years of my life I just spend writing songs, making music, and reinventing myself. Part of that reinvention was to leave my parents' house at the age of 16 and to step into the world to become a star. Two years later I talked to my parents again for the first time and they have respected my decision.
Was music something that helped you escaping your environment?
Oh yes! In math class, I usually just sat there and wrote songs in my head. And I played the violin pretty much 24/7. Music was my best friend without a question and she still is. She (music) saved my life. I have no idea how in what shape I would have been at the age of 20, if I hadn't written songs.
On the other hand, do you think that it ever has become a problem for you? That you ever got all worked up about your musical escapism, that it was difficult to deal with the reality outside?
I think it would be dangerous if now at the age of 25 I was still caught in the same state of mind as back then when music was an escape and I hadn't even published an album. When I was 16 I had already written so much that I suddenly realized: I'll finally have to publish an album, which then happened two years later. This happiness to let your music out into the world is huge. And part of that is to be somewhat of an escapist. I would even still do it if I wouldn't publish any more records and hadn't any success in this world. But I am thankful that my music is listened to by people.
And what would happen if there was no audience for your music?
Hm. I can't really say anything about that. Since I was 18, I've always had an audience. I can't even imagine how it would be otherwise. There is nothing worse than to go on stage and play in front of a single person. I hate it. In Dresden, I once played for three people. I sang for those three and gave it my best. But probably I have been created to communicated myself in bigger circumstances.
So, you don't want to be a pop star any more, but ...
That involves so much work and stress that I don't want to waste my energies for it. When it happens, then it happens. But I don't want to ride through Berlin naked and shout: "Buy my records!" You have to do so many ridiculous things to become the number one - and have a million pounds in your advertising budget. I am not interested in that. I'd rather pay a million pounds to work with a Turkish string orchestra.
Since you mention orchestra: On the new album, we can hear choirs and church organs, string arrangements, western guitars ... the production must have been very complex. How many people were involved in it?
An enormous amount. We have recorded in six or seven different studios, with a total of more then twelve sound engineers. I worked with Thomas Bloch, a virtuoso of classical composition, with Alec Empire here in Berlin, then with Matthew Herbert, with Tilda Swinton, with Eliza Carthy, and then of course my whole band was with me. This time the credits take up a whole page. This time, it was more important for me not to play so many instruments myself, but to work with other musicians as producer and creative leader. That was more exciting. On all my other albums, it is pretty much only myself you can hear. After you have done that once, it becomes boring. At least to me. It was a great challenge for me to work with so many people and follow my vision until the last mix, the final mastering. That was done in the Abbey Road Studios, since I wanted a huge, full-blown mastering. It was an extreme effort; sometimes I thought I would go completely crazy. Some people even told me that I indeed was. But as a result I am getting great reviews now.
You even recorded two albums.
Yes, the second will be coming out next year. It contains the same amount of production efforts. But most of the stuff for it was recorded at the same time. In one month, all of it will be perfected and ready.
Obviously, everybody now asks you about Tilda Swinton. Could you say a few words aboyt how the collaboration with her came to happen?
Tilda was in the theater next to the studio where I recorded the singing and I gave her a CD. The next day, she stood in the studio. It went very fast. Tilda listened to the music and at once realized what it was about. We didn't have to talk much, it was an understanding like between soulmates. Awesome!
What impressed you most about her?
In her acting, she almost seems like a great songwriter. I mean, the way she can play a role in a movie but totally be 100% Tilda Swinton at the same time. Similarly to Bob Dylan playing a song like "Highway 69 Revisited" and being completely Bob Dylan, but in that role 100% at the same time. There are only very few actors who can do that. She is a champion in that.
I like this passage in "Hard Times", when the choir starts singing: Re-vo-lu-tion.
"Revolution, resolution, revolution." Yeah!
What kind of revolution is that?
On the one hand, I believe in the personal revolution within your life, very literally: everything is turning, chanding, and renewing. If you are unhappy with something in your life: Instigate a revolution! Change your life, your personality, renew yourself! And on a second level, it is about revolution against things in the world that make you unhappy: all the mediocrity, ignorance, brainwashing in the media, hatred against women, homophobia. "Hard Times" is very basically a song for everybody who still needs more motivation to get on their feet and change something. That doesn't have to be big stuff like: "Let's create a communist regime! Let's buy machine guns and kill people!" No, it can be very simple. You see a woman carrying loads of plastic bags and instead of just passing her, you help her with her heavy bags. That is a revolution, since you probably wouldn't do it normally.
Not too long ago, you have been beaten up by security at a Madonna concert. Was it really triggered by you kissing your boyfriend?
Yes, that is true. I think, it was triggered by a mix of the kissing, my sequined Studio 54 outfit with hot pants and the fact that I was singing a different Madonna song than the one she was singing at the same time very loudly. I simply was the freak at that party. But you could definitely feel homophobia in those security people. But if somebody tells me: "You can't kiss that person", I will just do it even more.
You both were beaten up?
Yes. I was doing pretty badly. I had an appartment in which I could reach my bed only using a ladder. But I couldn't go down that ladder and was lying in my bed for two weeks, all the time pain killers. And I had to work on my album on the side. But all of that has nothing to do with Madonna. That could have also happened with security at a U2 concert - besides the fact that I would never go to a U2 concert.
One last question. Now that you have overcome your personal crisis and transformed everything into a great album: What comes next?
Hmmm. "Patrick Wolf - The Musical!" Something like that would be great. I still have tons of goals. In the near future, I have some really huge concerts to play, at venues which I never thought I would play at. Even my mother could die proud and happy then. There is so much more for me to do. It feels like I have just started.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 23:52 | Сообщение # 12 |
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| Bachelor Boy Patrick Wolf On Sticking To His Guns
Luke Turner, June 2nd, 2009 06:36
He told Universal Records and Mark Ronson to get packing, and now he's the first artist to be a Bandstocks success. As he releases new album Bachelor, Patrick Wolf tells Luke Turner how he held onto his vision
Age breeds confidence
I'm a lot tougher than I was. But the way I got this way was to read everything, and know everything. You have to know about the public's opinion of yourself. When I started, I wanted to write from a place of voyeurism, and I wanted to get over myself, and write about the world around me. I wanted to get to the point where I could get over my emotional issues and do that, and I'll get there one day I think.
To be out of control is a very positive thing
When you're out of control of other people you're in control of yourself. As long as you're in control of yourself I think you're onto a winner.
The weaker other people are, the more they want to control you
Any time that you come across people, from being two years old to being 100, in any job you do or any relationship that you enter, is a battle over control, and lots of people trying to control you in their own ways.
I wouldn't be here now without rebelling
To be the person that I am, I had run away from a lot of things, from education, from family life. At the age of 12 I decided that A-levels and GCSEs and University and getting married in the traditional sense, all that was not for me and I had to find my own route. Spending more time writing songs, and getting dressed up in the morning to go to school, and then breaking all the rules at school, I suddenly realised that felt very natural to me, and I was probably going to be like that for the rest of my life.
Nobody but me could help me be myself
If you have a very specific idea of who you want to be and you know it's true to your identity, in the early stages you're the only one who can help you. You can't go to your careers advisor and say 'I want to play Benicassim when I'm 22'. They don't really know anything, they're not going to help you to become a performance artist.I knew that if I wanted to do the pop star thing I had to work out a way to bypass the whole education system, and the whole family 'you must do this, you must do that, I'm worried about you', so when I legally could I packed my bags and left school and left my family.
The idea of constructive criticism is an oxymoron
Other people's conservative values are the biggest barrier to creativity. The way in which people give you advice for your creativity doesn't help either, or the idea of a producer coming in and trying to tone down your work or your vision or your lyrics, or maybe somebody that you think is a friend who you trust is offended by what you're doing, so they try and give you 'constructive criticism', and it's actually their way of displaying their conservatism. It happened very early on with some of the lyrics on the first album, people were saying 'now Patrick, I think it would be better if you changed the word 'penis' for 'finger', or like take that song 'Childcatcher' off your album.
This has led me to create my own education system
I wanted to start a school called The School Of Non-Intellectual Thought. I wanted it to be a place where you'd give people a library of books and ask them which one they wanted to go to, give them two hours finding their favourite book in this library, and making their own education and making and breaking their own rules, but not following other people's. I remember telling Matthew Glamorre from Minty that I hated my violin teacher and I hated doing scales, and he said 'what's the point of learning other people's bad habits and rules, you should make your own up'.
Beware the people with dollars in their eyes
They're always thinking about they can take something that has maybe some commercial value, and making it more commercially successful. I think around album three when people decided I needed to work with a lifestyle producer, or someone who'd make my music acceptable to a Daily Mail reader, I was very confused. I said 'look at me, look where I come from and listen to my lyrics'. I think part of the trouble with Universal was that it confused them that a 40-year-old businessman would have every decision questioned by a 22-year-old. By ignoring the idea of commercial success, I feel wonderful after making an album. I don't sit there panicking going 'Oh my God, did I totally compromise everything?' because I don't compromise in the studio, and when I collaborated with Alec and Matthew Herbert and Tilda Swinton on this album, it wasn't a compromising situation.
I'd rather be homeless and have a great album
I have always made commerce work for me. But if I have to make my album and it costs £200,000 - we're talking very Apprentice here - and it loses £300,000, I don't worry about these things. Perhaps I'm different from the next person that releases an album. I don't have a good commercial instinct, but I have a good creative instinct and that's what counts.
Booze and drugs do affect your business judgement
There are times when I've been completely annihilated where I'd lock myself in a room and listen to The Dreaming by Kate Bush when actually I should be getting out of the house. I think it's self-destruction, if you have a self destructive streak then that mindset can maybe encourage you to be more obscure, and more scared of success. I think I'm somebody who has been to both places, I've been really ambitious and up at eight in the morning, having six cups of coffee and calling editors of magazines and trying to get things going, and calling the accountant, being 100% on top of things, almost like an entrepreneur. But then there are other days where you might just want oblivion, and to be free again, like a 16-year-old. I always find that when I reach that place I'm not as responsible as I should be, and it makes me less ambitious.
Making your own mistakes is exciting
You learn from mistakes, and it's a very obvious thing to say. I thought the only time I regretted not sticking to my guns was supporting that person, Mika, but I actually don't regret that experience. When you make your own mistakes, that learning is more exciting. When people make mistakes on your behalf you have to be sympathetic, but when you make your own, it's an adventure.
Take the piss out of me, I love it
My theory is when somebody winds down their window and shouts 'ginger' or shouts at a woman, they want to be that thing. So when I walk down the street in Hazlemere and they shout 'faggot', they actually might be gay and they want a bit of fucking. That's their way of communicating, and it's not going to stop me holding hands with my boyfriend. It's an insult, but I can see past that and see it as a way of them joining me.
But yes, I am growing old
I am more in control of my emotions. I went down to Cornwall recently. The first time I went down to Cornwall I was running across the sands going 'Waaaaah this is nature, waaaaaah seabirds, aahhhhhhh', like that, and then now five years later I went back and I relaxed. Went for walks, wrote something, went to bed on time, and went seal watching. Yeah, I'm growing old, and that's what I always wanted to do with my music, that's why I wanted to release my albums when I was younger, because I wanted people to have the joy of what I had with Joni Mitchell, being able to follow someone's life through their music. A biography, piece by piece.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 23:56 | Сообщение # 13 |
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the childcatcher
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| You played a couple of times with Patti Smith, and in one of your video blogs we saw No Bra in your backstage..
Hey, actually I wanted to wear my No Bra shirt today, but instead I put on my Sticky-and-Sweet-Tour T-Shirt (with a comic version of madonna on it, spreading her legs). But it's nice as well, isn't it? I'm channelling my inner Madonna at the moment.
Let's stay on the topic of Madonna. Was she a big inspiration for you?
Yes, definitely, a huge one. When I made the vulture video, I thought about her ‘Justify my Love’ and‘Erotica’ videos. When my parents asked what on earth I was doing, I told them: This is the beginning of my sex book era. I think what I adopted from Madonna, is how she constantly tries to liberate women and minorities, by celebrating her strenght of being a woman. With every record I try to inspire people in my way to liberate themselves as much as they can. I think that is always one of the main concerns of my records.
Why aren't Patti Smith and No Bra on the record?
(laughs) I'd love to hear a duet of No Bra and Patti Smith. Patti and I spent a couple of wonderful days in Wales and we played 2 gigs. With Susanne, I travelled for a long time through America and she's a great friend. But I think that might have been too many ingredients, too many strong personalities for the record. But I would love to work with Patti and I'm sure that there is going to be a duet with Susanne soon.
How about a duet with Madonna?
I don't think Madonna and I would be a good duo. You can guess why. (grins) But you never know, maybe keep an eye on it. Maybe I'll write something for her. At the moment there are a couple of people who ask me for songs, but I really can't talk about that.
And then the last bit:
When I was younger, I always took two pictures from my bedroom everywhere with me, but I lost them during the recordings in the studio. My two grandmas both had left me a stone, which I always had with me as well. But now I share my thoughts with a human being, not with two stones.
Let's get directly to the songs. With "Kriegsspiel" and "Oblivion" you talk about war twice. Have you ever talked about that with British soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan?
I am a big opponent of the war and an innermost pacifist; especially when dealing with religion and religious wars. Sometimes I think that those are the people fighting for made-up reasons. For me that is something like Snow-White versus the robber. These religions are so fictitious and I think a song such as "Oblivion" belongs to "The Bachelor", since the Bachelor is almost an exploration of different male identities.
When I look at myself - and somehow I am male - I think about this kind of personal, higher mission. I would say that in the past somebody like Theseus was forced to do it, but these days a boy has the right to say no to a war. And there is no reason that wouldn't unsettle me completely why people would still say yes to going to a foreign, far-away country and killing people - create peace by violence. That is paradox.
"Oblivion" deals with a soldier - maybe in the U.S. or England - saying to his father: "I will go to war, I will kill and I will search for oblivion and death." I am not attacking this, since it is their own choice, but I am highlighting it. Look, I am talking about a soldier without ever having been to war, but I might be using it as a metaphor to talk about a time when I went on a mission of self-destruction.
Let's stay with identity: In the Vulture video you are playing three very different chracters. Do all of those represent different sides of you?
Those three characters are definitely within me. First, I would say there is the Master, the dominant character. He is the Vulture - with all the makeup, the gloves, and the extreme fighting spirit. Then there is the submissive one, who is wriggling on the bed in an atmosphere of self-destruction. To be someone's subject to me means aggression and violence; that also belongs to it. The last character is the indifferent one, I would say: The Elvis Presley of my video.
This is the first video which I directed myself. That is why I decided to put a lot of my own personality into it. Otherwise somebofy else could have directed it as well. Thus, I would say that it is a very personal confession.
Can you deal with all three natures in the long term?
(thinks) I think I very much accept my dark and self-destructing side. In this album, however, it is rather a weak acceptance of those sides than a celebration thereof. Everybody has an enormous spectrum of identity he travels through on his life's journey. "The Bachelor" is from a time when I was at an absolute low point, but by writing this album I found my way out of the hole.
For the album, you won actress Tilda Swinton for a collaboration. Were you already thinking about that when you gave her one of your albums as a present?
You only can do things and hope for a reaction. I have felt like that frequently when asking people about possible collaborations. Tilda is one of the very few people in this world that still celebrate spontaneity and don't think before doing something. That's what I love in a person. Thus, the very next day we were in the studio.
A lot of people you talk to would ask themselves for a year: "I could do that, I should do that, but maybe not." I was extremely bored with those people. When I see something at the window for example, I just jump out and get it without thinking that I might get killed. I think a good collaboration should be very much the same way.
For his new album, "The Bachelor", Patrick Wolf went through hell and back. On his way, he met Tilda Swinton, Patti Smith, No Bra, and his true love, lost his great aunt, found himself, left his label twice and let his fans co-finance the album. Looking dreamily out of his window at a Berlin hotel, he re-lives his journey once more with us.
Patrick, you have chosen a new way for your album with the fan financing project Bandstocks. Why?
The thing about Bandstocks.com is that it offers an imminent way to realize an album. I am happy that my listeners come from all over the world and I rely on them for every new album. But this time I have used this direct way to finance the album.
Everything had been recorded partially to mostly, but there were a whole string section, choirs and studio time that had to be paid for, while sound engineers were already working for free. That was a terrible situation. My former label at that time thought I was crazy; what the hell is Patrick doing now? So, I basically only had the support of my two great managers and Bandstocks.
We were very couragerous and in a way put the future into the hands of my fans. Otherwise they probably would have had to wait another year until I would have got a new label contract. After working with Universal, I wanted to get a more intimate connection with my listeners, like I did in the days when I was 19, 20 and everything was still independent. Bandstock was a great way to get this relationship back.
Your fans in return get a more open and very intimate Patrick, who entertains a video blog and an online diary. What does this open fan-artist relationship mean to you?
It is extraordinarily important to me, as I think that my songs are moments of confession and of the intimate. I make them public by publishing an album. To be honest, though, I need less energy to do so now that I've grown older.
When I was younger, I have expressed myself a lot more metaphorically and was somewhat farther from reality when journalists asked me questions, since I was still developing as a human being with 18, 19 years. I was a little bit like a 12 year old Britney Spears being questioned. I needs a genius to be so self-assured at a young age. With my blogs etc I am just making sure to be extremely open and honest, as I don't have anything to hide.
Aren't you also taking the wind out of the yellow press's sails?
I am sure there are some good stories in those papers, but I think there is nothing hidden or secret about me, so there is nothing anybody could hurt you with. There is no mask somebody could tear off you to show a different, hidden character.
For "The Bachelor" you went on a long journey according to your blog. How did this journey look like?
Every album I do leads me to a certain journey; from the first song to mastering and then around the world. I arrive in Berlin or St Petersburg and talk about this work. That is a journey in itself. I think I am obsessed with the idea that life is a pilgrimage. Until you die, you are on a single, long journey and you learn a lot on this way - or not!
When I finished "The Bachelor" and somehow noticed: Oh my God, I have written all these songs about "the time after"; and the writing was like asking and answering all questions at the same time thorugh these songs. Thus, everything is pretty complicated. I think, I was on a long journey and still am.
At the beginning of that journey you have been almost burned out - how did you feel back then?
In 2007, I thought it would be better not to tour any more - probably no more interviews, no publicity. It all took away so much of my energy. The tour back then was still the continuation of my touring since when I was 20 or 19.
I had stopped thinking about unpacking all my stuff that was stored in depots; I didn't have a home I could come back to. My human ability to fall in love or even trust somebody was something I had lost. I came home into a flooded appartment and all my possessions were lying around and the next hour I was back on an airplane to Japan and then Australia the next day.
That had to stop, or else I would have become less and less human and would have soon been like Michael Jackson. The business is like a magnet and you have to ended and really get away from it. Thus, in 2008 I just said: No publicity any more, no tours.
I only did matters of my heart like the Anti Racism Festival, the Dylan Thomas Festival or a bigger, classical gig at the Tate Modern - small things that were not about glitter and glamour. That helped me to get back on my feet and I noticed that I would never be able to give up the music. Since I can remember, I was a musical being, had music in my head. You can't give that up.
This decision even lead to the second album, "The Conqueror", already being finished, which you want to dedicate to your boyfriend. How did William react when you told him?
(laughs) Hmm, I think, it's wouldn't be appropriate for me to talk about that; about the relationships I process thorugh my albums - be it to my parents, my friends, or the world. I think it has to be difficult for journalists sometimes to understand that what I really want to tell is in the songs and not in the interviews. Do you understand what I mean? So I put everything into the lyrics to tell my story.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Воскресенье, 17.07.2011, 23:57 | Сообщение # 14 |
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the childcatcher
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| Patrick Wolf has never been one for convention. Three minutes before a scheduled interview time, he’s still on the motorway skirting around the sprawling Bristol outskirts. When his blacked-out, ramshackle vehicle finally arrives, he tumbles out and shoots off, later revealing he needed to purchase a guitar for the show. Extravagant? Perhaps. Diva-esque? Certainly. But as he talks of split personas, “the best sex ever” and Little Boots, holding a grudge is utterly implausible.
Dots: Bandstocks. You’ve just signed for the remaining money to make up £100,000. Has that money gone solely into the production of The Bachelor?
Patrick Wolf: Predominantly, yes. We were about 70% done with the album but it’s been really expensive to make but a load of stuff had been paid for by Universal up until that point and then they cut their ties with us so we needed about forty grand plus to finish the album. We were just in the middle of recording a twelve-piece string section, the gospel choir were coming the next day and there was still all the mixing to do. It’s a huge process. But on top of that, we used the money to fund my UK label Bloody Chamber Music as well as singles, videos, artwork and all of that.
Dashes: Has it been more expensive than The Magic Position for example?
PW: A load more, yes. The Magic Position was recording mainly in a home studio I set up in Hackney. I lived on the ground floor and then the whole top floor housed my instruments so it was done incredibly cheaply. It was almost finished by the time it came to Universal so it was a very economic album to make which is fortunate because it was almost entirely self-funded really. Having done three albums however that were quite D.I.Y., with this one I wanted to work with great engineers and great studios and do a real Hi-fi, professional record.
Dots: Have you found a huge difference in the quality of the album? Do you prefer it?
PW: To be honest, whatever money I have or whatever I do or don’t have at the time I always try my best, making it sound exactly how I want it to so all I know is that it’s a lot more Hi-fi.
Dashes: In terms of the influences that run through The Bachelor, as every one of your records seems diverse to its predecessor, what was it that inspired this one? Having given it a spin, ‘Battle’ seems dark enough for an Alec Empire record...
PW: I’d never done co-write before, nor a collaboration as deep as it went with Alec really. I really wanted to refresh my brain and my heart and Alec was the perfect person. In a way it was almost like going back to school so he was certainly a great educator in the studio. There are only two songs I’ve ever co-written with anyone and they’re ‘Vulture’ and ‘Battle’ so the heavier, darker side of things. I needed to channel some of my aggression.
Dots: An aspect that perhaps has been largely absent from previous Patrick Wolf outings is your Celtic heritage which seems to be pretty evident, particularly in the violin parts throughout The Bachelor. Would you say that’s been more of an influence than previously?
PW: Yeah, maybe because I’ve got such strong Irish roots and I really didn’t want to explore them too much in the first three albums. I was maybe obsessed with England.
Dashes: Would you say this album’s more open whereas previously you’d been quite protective?
PW: No, I’d say I’m better at articulating myself than I was when I was younger and lyrically I’m more interested in realistic situations rather than the fantasy element that I explored when I was eighteen and nineteen as a writer so it’s not so much unicorns and werewolves any more and it’s more about heartbreak and human reaction.
Dots: In terms of the difference between The Bachelor and The Conqueror, where’s the line been drawn between heartbreak and discovering love?
PW: The Bachelor is about a time when there’s no romance either through total loss of love or for instance ‘Damaris’ where you’re going so far beyond romance you can’t even begin to feel anything and I guess it’s all the depression and the dark side of being alone. The Conqueror is about the thickening of skin through being alone for so long and then that reluctance to warm to people and new relationships when they do come along. It’s about breaking down the attitude of “I can do everything on my own” and “I don’t care about romance or dating” and so I had really thick skin that somebody else needed to come and knock down to get me to feel again and I guess that’s the struggle on the second album. It doesn’t open with “I love you so much la la la” but it does get to that point by the closing moments. This relationship with William has been the most major commitment of my whole life and it took a real, brave person to come into my life and see the absolute mess that I was and just try and get me back on my feet again. It’s not an easy ride, the second record.
Dashes: Yet the Heaven show wasn’t exactly the image of an entirely content self...
PW: The whole point of performance is that you’re channelling the songs and so when I’m playing songs from The Bachelor, even if I’m offstage having the best sex in my life and I’m really happy waking up every morning with a smile on my face, I’m not going to do that on stage when singing those songs. It’s important to me to channel everything, from the outset to the lighting so it’ll never look like I’m walking on sunshine.
Dots: There seems to be a fairly dramatic split between you as a person and Patrick Wolf. Do you feel as though you’ve purposefully created ‘Patrick Wolf’ or is it a natural product?
PW: I love the whole idea of the performer. So when we’re sat here doing an interview speaking about life in general, there’s no specific subject matter but when I’m onstage I’ve got to re-enact songs written when I was sixteen up until the last six months and if there’s a song about suicide I have to channel that onstage whereas for ‘The Magic Position’ I have to suddenly flip to that so I guess it can look schizophrenic, especially if you know me offstage. It’s not acting as I’m confessing things that have happened in my life. It’s more channelling rather than acting. I’ve been there, done that with acting but I view my performance as regression therapy.
Dashes: Can it become quite difficult to channel such emotions? Of course you can pick and choose with setlists but Heaven certainly seemed as though it was the darkest side of Patrick Wolf...
PW: Without blowing my own trumpet, that’s why I’m good at doing what I do because I’ve now spent my whole life learning how to do that. I feel if I couldn’t channel the precise emotion contained within my songs then I shouldn’t really be performing them in the first instance.
Dots: Could it be compared with the absorption you experience when reading an enthralling book and what’s contained within fiction affects you? When working on a new record, do you feel that the emotions of those songs transfer onto your personality outside of music?
PW: It certainly does happen that I sometimes become someone else and my personality is altered. Last night I was meant to do this meet and greet thing that had been organised by my management and it was a dark set last night. Wed chosen quite a few heavy songs so afterwards I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I sat down and thought I’m not really in a good place to meet people so I think subconsciously it had affected me. It does affect you every now and again but you do learn how to cope with it without hitting the bottle.
Dashes: Are the hair extensions here with you tonight?
PW: No, not tonight. My hairdresser’s not with me.
Dots: Regarding your billing within the Dot to Dot Festival, how do you feel about being billed beneath the likes of Friendly Fires and Ladyhawke, both of whom have a single album to their name?
PW: I don’t know who they are! The thing is I’m going to be doing this until I’m ninety. These things come and go. Have you seen Little Boots? She’s basically The Magic Position reincarnated by Polydor. I mean it’s just ridiculous but people come and go, it’s flotsam and jetsam. There’s a great Joni Mitchell lyric about how she’s on her sixth or seventh album and she’s watching all these new bands come up and grasp the limelight and she says “there’s too much confetti on my TV set” so these bands are like confetti, just passing through. I’ll be like the cockroach with a greater lifespan and I’ll go up and down bills and that’s fine.
Dashes: So you’re not looking forward to seeing anyone after your set...
PW: I think I’ll spend time with my boyfriend, William. He comes everywhere on tour with me now.
Dots: There was a time when you wouldn’t even share his name with the public! You went on to claim that you didn’t know whether you’re destined to live your life with “a horse, a woman or a man”.
PW: Oh God- that old chestnut! My mum still asks me when I’m bringing the horse home! I’ve actually become very interested in equal rights but we don’t do that whole OK thing and we avoid the paparazzi in London but I think it’s very clear, especially with an album coming out about him, how I feel about him.
And on that hopeful note, the van door slides open, tour managers poke their heads through the blacked-out windows and Wolf departs for the nimble fingers of his make-up artist.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 00:05 | Сообщение # 15 |
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the childcatcher
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| A butterfly attempts to escape my guts as I climb the stairs to Patrick Wolf's riverside flat. With notoriously difficult (read also: exceptional, eccentric, explorer-like...) artists there's always a chance they'll misinterpret a question before you've finished it and start bashing you in the face, Björk-vs-'ratzi stylee. Or there's the distinct possibility, especially at 11am on a wet Monday morning, you'll be greeted by silent indifference verging on belligerence, especially if you happen to catch one of them before their first caffeine hit of the day. There's also the chance they read something on your site and wanna get their rant on like Ryan-Adams-vs-Pitchfork.
This is before factoring in the smaller fanboy-related matter of Patrick creating landscapes which I've lived and lost myself in for many of my darkest days.
Then there's the tall matter of ringing the door bell and shaking hands with the towering, lightly glittered blonde, musician-cum-otherworldly-popstar. There's the sitting down, drinking tea (without spilling it everywhere), eating biscuits, surveying the loft-space - it has assorted stage wear and distinct spaces for living and recording. Oh and the small matter of opening my gob, pressing record on the dictaphone and beginning the interview about The Bachelor...
DiS: Do you hate doing interviews or do you quite like them?
PW: Oh, I guess it’s second nature now, really.
DiS: I suppose it has to be…?
PW: Well, I’d say maybe more like third nature - after: shows and live… behaviour, performing, videos, artwork and everything. First nature is of course making music but I’ve become very used to it now, on my fourth album. Even before I did my first EP I was around a lot of performance art where you have to constantly – even at music college, doing composition – justify your actions, you know? So it’s a little bit like that for me. And after the end of today it’ll be the third day of this album, and it goes on until 8 o’clock at night, so…towards the end of the day you’ve been asked the same question six times. But it's early and you’re the first of the day!
DiS: Good! When you started making music it was very much in your bedroom, and you’ve now had to adapt to bigger stages, different audiences that do and don’t know who you are. Is that something that you’ve embraced? Because on the one hand you seem to reference classical music and on the other it’s Madonna, and just looking at these [rom-com, Care Bears and art-verging-on-porn] DVDs as well…
PW: Oh no, no don’t! Tilda Swinton was going to come over for tea and I was just like, ‘What the fuck are we going to do about, like, all these’
When I make an album, there’s so much emotional confession going on during the day, and I’m lost in like, string arrangements, and beat programme stuff, which really takes a lot of heart, and a lot of focus – creative focus – I need to lock myself away with the Lady Gaga album or, go through the ‘girls’ night in’ DVD collection from Woolworths…or wherever it is now.
DiS: You mentioned Britney on stage at an album preview show the other night, which always seems to have been slightly there in your music, buried but that side of you has certainly crept out increasingly, especially over these past two albums?
PW: It’s not ironic, at all. I really do enjoy listening to her. With this album, I became really interested in Danja, Timbaland’s protégé, and all the vocal effects he was using – obviously utilising Pro Tools and Ableton to a real extreme within pop music. And that was kind of where, like on album one, it was actually a lot more influenced by all the old records by Planet Mu, Reflex and all the experimental one-offs on FatCat. And I don’t know what’s happened. Maybe on album four I’ve been listening a lot more to Mariah Carey produced by Danja; Britney produced by Danja. There’s been a big American R’n’B influence on this album.
DiS: Is that like the art of mass communication, that art ofpop, something you’ve been quite intrigued by? Like how to communicate with a universal crowd? It seems like you’ve made a transition in the past few year's, with an album not for yourself, but for what someone a bit like yourself might want to listen to? Don’t get me wrong, I don't think you've shifted but perhaps the scale of things has changed?
PW: I don’t think… It’s half and half. When I go ‘okay: it’s time to really make an album, to finish an album, and finish songs’ – say I’ve written a song on the piano or my acoustic stuff here, and then I have to climb up the ladder and start programming it, it’s not changed too much at all. I’m just no longer living in a little hostel, and I’ve managed to sustain a business. Everything’s a lot easier for me now, and I don’t have to panic if I’m spending twelve days in a row working on a song, for example. I’ve got myself in a comfortable position following the touring I’ve done over the years, and owning my back catalogue, and having this business… I can be as selfish with my time as I want, you know? Now it’s all finished – the album got sent off to the factory the other day and it’s almost like ’Oh God! It’s the end of that free time…’ Now you’re onto like, wake up, six hours of interviews, and this is the part where I have a bit more creative license.
I’ve learnt not to lie or make stories up. I remember on my first album I was so ashamed of coming from Wandsworth, that I just started talking about my great-grandfather’s friend who has a lighthouse, and I was just alluding stories that I was born like, on a windswept cliff. And I think I was just really ashamed of being from South London. I just wanted to be international. Or Kate Bush…
DiS: You just didn’t want anyone to think you had any roots, it seemed…
PW: Yeah. I just didn’t want anyone to connect me to anything. I didn’t want to be connected, at all. I almost accidentally created an enigma for myself, and by the time I was on Universal, with that amount of press and that amount of speculation, there’s no room for enigmatic behaviour. You just can’t do it, basically, so I protected a lot of my private life for the first couple of albums, and now it’s like…I don’t know. I’m a rambler, so…
DiS: So you touched a bit on the business side, and obviously this record’s coming out in a different way – which seems different to the way music is currently funded and released. But it doesn’t seem different to the way music was funded when people first started recording music, and it doesn’t seem that different to taxes paying for sculptures or artworks on ceilings…
PW: Yeah.
DiS: Do you feel like people are making a big deal over it, when it feels quite natural, maybe? I know some of it’s obviously people buying the album now and they’re just happening to pay in advance, so you’ve got the money to cashflow things?
PW: I’m in a really lucky position, with the whole Universal fiasco. Basically, I always say to any new musician, have a fantastic lawyer with you, even if you don’t have a record deal – even if you haven’t done your first show – make sure you find an amazing lawyer. Someone that’s passionate about your career, because they will save you. Like, what you think you’re doing at the age of 18, could affect whether you have to give up music at the age of 30, or 80, or have to sign on when you’re 35. And I’m so blessed to have had a lot of good lawyers in my career so far.
The first person I called when Universal turned around and said, ‘this album’s too weird; you’re too much of a troublemaker – you’re not conventional enough for Universal Records, etcetera’ – I was like, ‘thank you, thank you!’ – it was such a compliment. I put the phone down, was like, ‘yes!’ But then I was like…I looked at my flat, looked at my boyfriend, looked at the kitchen cupboard, and was like, ‘Oh shit. What am I going to do?’
My plan was to do-a-Prince and go on tour for two years, release the record for free, which was about 80% finished at that point – and they’d paid for it all. Basically, I’d made a very expensive record – twelve-piece strings, gospel choir, everything recorded in a beautiful studio with the best mics and the best engineers – sort of the opposite of the last three albums in a way. The last time I was recording a drum kit in a nice studio was with one little radio mic, trying to create a garage-y sound, whereas this one is pristine. I’m really, really proud of the way it sounds and the people I’ve worked with...though a lot of people were waiting to be paid. A lot of people had worked on favours, and I’m not one to scam people, you know – I want to be good to people who I worked with on the record. So I thought I’d go on tour and raise money for the record that way, but it was such a shame, as we were up to the last hurdle, and it was just…okay: time to look for another record deal. And there were lots of people who had been interested and excited, but because I’d got to this point where I had this album I could potentially finish with 100% no compromise – and looking at the way the industry is now, where even independents are looking for this 360° deal thing – or, most are – and I’d always owned my merchandise and everything, my whole life had been making sure no-one touches any of these things, I just thought: I’m going to get in real shit now. But then I found out from my lawyer that Universal owed me the album anyway, contractually.
(SNIP! Off the record stuff removed else DiS will need to find a good lawyer...)
I always used to idolise Kate Bush for having all these arguments with her record label yet always managing to get the record out, and I thought I could do the same, but it just…I always think of Pulp as well. I always think they’re fantastic for getting to album seven or eight. I love all their early records, and to keep on going as a band; I think it’s harder for a band, who have so many units to support as they go along. I don’t know how they did that. I think it’s amazing, and really inspiring. But for a solo artist…you can’t split up with yourself, you can only quit.
There was a point two years ago when I was thinking of giving up publicity, there was a point when the thelondonpaper was photographing me and the Daily Star was writing about me in gossip columns, and it was going a bit over the edge of – what’s the name of that girl who was getting her fanny out all the time? Chantelle? Chanelle? I felt like a musical Chanelle, and I just really didn’t like it. And it was getting that way with the media and press in other countries, and I just suddenly thought – this is zapping my energy for what I ought to, what I have to be doing, which is writing songs.
DiS: It detracts from what you are.
PW: Totally. And it’s so easy to get out of a taxi, and your PR person’s called thelondonpaper, and you don’t even know all this shit’s going on. You get out and they’re right in your face, asking if you’re having sex with Agyness Deyn, and you’re like: ‘This is the worst person I wanted to be when I was 18.’ So I wanted to delete the public thing. But then everyone thought I was talking about quitting music forever, and, if you see what I wrote on the internet, it was totally the opposite. I could never quit doing what I do. That was never the idea. When Universal dropped me I was like well, I’ve done one and two without them and even album three was pretty much finished before they picked me up. So why should this stop me? I could still be doing record company negotiations right now, looking at a 2010 release, which would just literally screw me up. I need to stay productive and creative and touring.
DiS: You’ll probably end up writing another four albums in that time…
PW: Exactly. I mean, the fifth album is 60% recorded – it’s the second part of the album – which I plan to finish really soon to come out in the beginning of 2010, so I really have to get my creative rhythm going. Otherwise I’ll sit here eating Krispy Kremes everyday, getting really fat, and probably won’t even be able to get in the studio. It’s not good. I have to keep creative.
Check back later this week for Parts 2 and 3 of this feature where Patrick talks about everything from pop co-writers to Bjork, Bright Eyes, Alec Empire right the way through to lyrics involving chopping off your penis.
DiS: On the subject of solo artists, every tipped artist this year seems to be another solo artist, and there’s been a few years of Lily Allens and Jamie Ts. Do you think the way in which things are funded - as it's cheaper to be a solo artist - or do you think it’s fundamentally something about our generation, like with an individual sat on a computer who might be playing games, yet still interacting and reaching beyond. Essentially, do you think it’s becoming much more the norm for people to aspire to be solo artists rather than be in a band?
PW: If you actually look at the people that are solo artists here – and I did a bit of research on them…there are so many co-writers, so many producers.
DiS: Ladyhawke had four co-writers on her latest single.
PW: There was a time in the late 90s after Björk and PJ Harvey, when everyone was signing up solo artists, and if you actually looked – you know, I’m a total music nerd for the credits. Even if I don’t like the person I’m straight on Wikipedia looking up all their production credits and finding out if they’re Joni Mitchells – do they write, do they produce…
DiS: Essentially whether they’re real or not.
PW: Yeah exactly, and I get so excited when someone is. Do they come from that ideal, of somebody wanting to create and produce their own world, from their own heart? And it’s not just a collaboration? Collaborations can be fantastic if it’s like the Eurythmics, two people creating as a band. But it seems like a few of these people this year – girls, generally girls – have producers in the background who are maybe a bit too shy for the camera, for one reason or the other. I think there’s a charm to a lot of it, and I – I don’t want to sound bitchy, I always want to say good things and have a positive mental attitude. But I have been looking at all the production credits. I have this thing with my sister where we’re always looking for girls that are like… Björk was great ‘cause even though she was calling people in, she was always the executive, always in charge of her own sound. She was the successor to Kate Bush to me, in that sense.
DiS: They had more of a vision, it seems.
PW: It happens so much with boys! I mean, you look at Reflex or Warp and everyone’s a producer, everyone will get involved with the artwork – they’re all artists in control of their own world. For me, it goes: Buffy Sainte-Marie, then Joni Mitchell, then Kate Bush, then Björk. And I’ve been, kind of…what’s coming next? No-one’s coming through. I mean, PJ Harvey did Uh Huh Her herself, but there’s a lack of girls producing their own work – even writing a whole song themselves. And what’s the difficulty in that? I mean, I‘m sorry, but as a songwriter you CAN do it.
I’ve only ever done two co-writes. One was a total collaboration with Alec Empire, and that, for me, was weird; I came back from Berlin like ‘shit’ – like I’d been cheating on myself. But I learnt so much from that flirtation. It was almost like going back to college again and learning something new. But if I want to be known and remembered for anything it’s for being a great songwriter, definitely.
DiS: You’ve obviously been quite keen to produce everything yourself. Has that been about control, or has it been about wanting to learn and understand the process?
PW: It’s a mixture. I think the control part comes later on, when you’ve finished the song and there are people standing there listening to it and trying to get their opinions in…even when you do clearly experiment with production, there’ll always be someone who says it’s too far out. A lot of complaints about The Magic Position, especially the song, from people on the business side of things – were that it didn’t have enough bass in it, that it sounded too lo-fi. To me it sounded like a real, hi-fi pop song, but they were looking at real Radio One rules, which is the last thing I think about. I was thinking about Pizzicato Five and a lot of Japanese J-Pop music, where they have a really crunchy, 50s radio sound. People want to get in and change things at the last minute. And that’s where the control, the protective mother part comes in. And this sounds really like, ‘earth-woman,’ but you give birth to something, which you see as a perfect thing, and you become really controlling over it.
DiS: It’s like Van Morrisson’s first album, where it was an acoustic record, and they added the bass and drums before it was released without him even hearing it.
PW: Right, yeah. It happens, and people – even on Lycanthropy there were people trying to get me to change the lyrics at the last minute on ‘The Childcatcher’ and ‘Lycanthropy’ about cutting your penis off. I remember a funny story where somebody at the record label was saying ‘I don’t think at 18 you should be singing a song about cutting your penis off.’ And I was saying it’s all about gender exploration…you know, that you should forget about gender – that it’s more important to be yourself and to be human. They were like, ‘could you change it to cut your finger off?’ And I remember trying to do a demo of it [sings], and thinking that this is why, in the future, I’m going to be really severe. And that’s why I’ve got a name as a difficult artist to work with, because I won’t compromise at the last minute, but…I think that’s why a lot of people appreciate what I do, as well. So yeah – I think I’m known as a bit of a…I accept the word ‘diva’, ‘divo’, ‘difficult artist’, ‘temperamental’, ‘nightmare’ – I like accepting all those things because it means I’m one of the last few people that give a shit.
DiS: Indeed. You see so much compromise in music these days...
PW: Even with this album, sequencing it, it’s like 14 tracks – 13 songs – so for me it’s like Lycanthropy two. It’s a long record – a record to get lost in – there’s songs with full strings and choirs that my engineer and I were sat there, 99% but not 100% sure about…if there was one beat that wasn’t right, we’d delete them. But I’ve ended up being able to listen back to all my albums and be proud of every beat – in the same way I listen back to Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, and every single noise should be there.
So it’s not totally about control. The control comes after the really innocent, creative process where you’ve just experimented, got out all your lyrics and made it exactly what you want it to be – but then people come in at the end and fuck it up. My engineer worked with Kelly Rowland last. I’m really bad at repeating quotes, but apparently she turned around to him, and was like, ‘you know what Jonathan? Opinions are like arseholes. Everybody’s got one.’ I thought that was a pretty cool thing. Especially creating records these days – everybody wants their say.
DiS: You’ve said that this is like your own label. I’m guessing to a certain extent, it’s various other people doing a lot of things, but have you learnt a lot while putting this record together? Maybe in terms of the dull, day-to-day business things…
PW: Actually, it’s been a lot less complicated than working with another label. The great thing with Bandstocks is it’s like a separate bank account – it’s there whenever the money goes through. In the past, you talk about ‘making’ the album, after finishing it and all the photoshoots and everything. But I think this is the first album where everyone’s walking away from it having being paid honestly and well. In the past, everybody had been trying to pay people less or get the video director cheaper…
DiS: Obviously people place a value on creativity, and it seems especially in the music industry, where people are also downloading music for free, a sense of value has short-circuited. But when people are investing in your record they’re obviously investing in you, and when you’re paying for other people’s creative input you’re obviously investing in them – paying them for their talent. Do you think that somewhere along the line within the business-art-commerce model, there’s a mismatched appreciation of value for certain things?
PW: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, what I know – which I didn’t when I was 15 – is…I didn’t know how much an album could cost. With Wind In The Wires I literally finished it for £450, favours for a really amazing mixing engineer and a split on the royalty. And I thought that sounded like quite a classy album, and I listen now to an album that has been produced in a studio with a full band…I took my band – who I’d met on the road – into the studio last year, my own little unit of musicians and…
DiS: It costs?
PW: It costs. And you know what? These are people that work really hard for me. The drummer – I don’t like normal rock drummers, I really like Brazilian and English folk drums and stuff like that – he’s Brazilian, this guy Marcelo. I couldn’t have worked with anybody else and I wanted him to be paid properly. All this stuff, it’s just another brain-space to have to develop.
I found out recently how much an album that I consider a lo-fi record cost, and the jaw drops at the expense. And the fees certain producers, big-name producers of the last five years, are asking for. Just to stand behind the glass booth going ‘yeah, that’s great!’ I just thought: I’m not doing that. One of the big bust-ups with the record label involved a certain producer, who I’m sure you can guess – a ‘hot name’ – who is a lovely man but I don’t think we would have made anything good together, and I would literally be homeless right now if he were to have produced one track. I just thought it was crazy – I could have paid for six brass bands rather than the production on one track. And the label thought it was crazy, you know? Like, ‘how can you turn this guy down?’ I was just like, come on – you’re not thinking.
DiS: It’s your money as well, and I think that’s something a lot of people don’t realise in those situations.
PW: I’d rather employ, like, 200 cleaners to do a big, shout-y chorus; at least do something interesting. And it might mean that I never have a hit record, never have a Brit Award, never go to the Grammys, but if at least I can just look back on albums that I’m proud of, then that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I mean, at the beginning with Lycanthropy I was like ‘yeah! I’m gonna be on Top Of The Pops with a wind machine!’ and then a week later it’s, ‘yeah – like that’s ever going to happen with these songs.’ But I’m glad it’s that way.
DiS: What are your aspirations for the record? Do you want to hit No. 69 again, or do you have to hit No. 66 maybe, to validate it…?
PW: Well, 69 is a good number for me! ‘The Libertine’ was No. 69, ‘The Magic Position’ was No. 69…
DiS: Did you find that funny? ‘Cause most people did…
PW: Yeah, I thought it was very funny, very funny. Especially ‘cause not only is it a great, fantastic number, but it’s also…the amount the label spent on trying to get ‘The Magic Position’ to Number One, compared to ‘The Libertine’ where we spent ten pounds trying to get it into the charts. It’s all about – no matter what the marketing is, and even if you have these massive advertising, brainwashing campaigns, which is what so much of the Top Ten is nowadays…there are so many tricks that record labels pay. I like the fact ‘The Libertine’ was No. 69 and cost nothing to get there, it was just on the value of the music. I like to think that my audience is militant, and clever, and they can look through marketing campaigns and they don’t care about cheap ploys or desperate emails from record labels.
DiS: It’s an aside, but Cassadaga by Bright Eyes, which I think also came out on Polydor – despite having a full-page ad in pretty much every newspaper – on the day of release sold exactly the same amount as I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning sold.
PW: That was Number One in America wasn’t it? I think Bright Eyes is amazing. Starting my own label, I was thinking about other people that had done it with their own music. And Alec Empire. Alec’s been a real inspiration as a person. When I was in Berlin and I was a little bit tired and angry about the way things were going then, he gave me a lot of strength. Which shows in the music that we made, definitely.
But his label, it’s a room twice the size of this (about 7 metres square), and he doesn’t live there, but one of the rooms is a soundproof box and that’s the studio, ‘The Hellish Vortex’. And there are all these amazing Russian synthesizers, and an Atari. He’s still making music on an Atari! Which this album’s really influenced by, actually. I had all this fancy equipment from Universal, though I actually went back to all the programmes – and FatCat gave me a Commodore, too – so I just went back to all this stuff I was using when I was 15 and wrote new songs on top of that, which really matched what Alec was doing in Berlin with his Atari. So it was like a real return-to-roots for both of us.
DiS: It’s odd – when we were kids they seemed like such futuristic devices, and now they’re really retro…
PW: They’re retro, but the sounds that they’re making are really like…it’s quite Liquid Sky, that new wave movie – it’s so cold and it’s so un-luscious, the beats that they make. They’re like machines, or construction work – chk chk chk! Really perfect for this album.
But Alec, returning to the record label thing – he has this recording studio, then on the other side of the room he has the merchandise and the office, and he goes between the two. So he runs great business for his work and his back-catalogue and his DHR label, then he goes into the studio and makes good music. Backwards and forwards. It affirmed that you can really do this – you can be really creative, and also be a really good businessman, in order to sustain your creativity and your creative space.
DiS: As long as you can switch headspaces it’s fine…
PW: Yeah, you don’t want to go crazy. I’ve now employed someone as head of merchandising, and given certain things over to people that I really trust. We do all the weblog stuff from here now – the stuff that if I was on Universal I’d be getting billed for, like, £10,000 – could have done so much better with just one camera and iMovie. It’s exciting to return to everything being in my control, and in the control of people I really trust.
DiS: In a globalized age, with expectations of artists to talk to every media node and to blog, vlog, etc... how much of that expression are you comfortable with? ‘Cause the appeal to most of your fans is that magic of the unknown – that ‘gap of myth’ – where they can’t quite see behind the curtain…
PW: That’s all done by mistake…maybe it’s my laziness in terms of, like, doing Twitter or something. I don’t know.
DiS: But I’ve even seen that people use Twitter to actually add myth – an extra barrier or crypticism.
PW: I guess I like to express things a bit more…abstract. I’ve got a bit of an abstract, OCD side to me, where if I have to tell a story, instead of being like, ‘today I was in the studio, and these were the people I worked with…’ I’d rather just do something like Derek Jarman – filming people’s faces and the strings and putting it together. I think that tells more of a story to me than somebody sat there in a tracksuit just talking about themselves. It’s what I do for interviews, so when it comes to my own communication I like to do it in a more exciting way. This whole ‘enigmatic’ thing is a complete accident.
DiS: Do you think that might be an unconscious result of the artists you like?
PW: Not at all. When I write the blogs on the MySpace…I left school when I was 16, I’m very dyspraxic, and I can’t write properly, but I’d rather write poetically – write with metaphor, than about buying eggs at Iceland. I don’t want to hear that. I’d rather hear that there are peregrine falcons nesting at the top of the Tate Modern; things that I find interesting. And I’m well aware that every time I write a weblog – which is kind of why I’ve slowed down – I get ripped to pieces by a lot of people for being pretentious, which I’m really not. I’m just being honest about the way I think about things. Even when I describe my music, it’s from the bottom of my heart, and it’s a really dark record for me. And people take all these things and they’re like ‘oh, he’s so pretentious.’
I don’t read Bridget Jones’ Diary, I read Dylan Thomas, Angela Carter, Hans Christian Anderson. So of course, I’m the sum of my influences. I’ve got over here [Patrick points at his wobbly tower of DVDs], sure, I’ve got like – Jane Austen book club and 27 Dresses...
DiS: You’re really worried I was looking at them now.
PW: No I’m not! I think it says a lot about me. We’ve got…Lifesize with whats-her-name, Tyra Banks, the A-Z of tranny movies, but then there’s all my Derek Jarman stuff, all my Sally Potter and French films, all this experimental stuff. I’m a bit like that really. I guess that’s what Patrick Wolf is, you know. On stage I’m in an outfit I find absolutely hilarious, but I’m singing about suicide... and for example, really industrial beats set against me singing about the happiest time in my life.
DiS: Back to The Bachelor then... With this album, you recorded in quite a lot of places...
PW: ...the most that I’ve done so far, yeah.
DiS: And how did the different context, the chaos and disorder of it all, rather than being in one place making music, effect the music?
PW: I think it’s something I’ve grown to really enjoy when making albums – going on an actual physical journey, so the places that you end up going to almost infiltrate the sound of the record. A lot of the stuff was done on a laptop in the back of a touring van during the two American tours. Like, Las Vegas to Seattle is a twelve hours minimum journey, with a stopover. So I was going through the desert and making all these beats there. I was deeply single and thinking that I might be celibate for the rest of my life – I don’t do the whole going out after shows and sleeping with the most desperate fan. I’d rather go home and just lock myself in a room and…
DiS: Watch porn? [DiS would like to note that this was intended as a joke]
PW: No, you see I’m not a porn person either. I wish I was, I’d probably be a lot less tense on tour! I just keep alive until my next depraved sex session a few months later. I was just on this real bachelor vibe. And I’ve renamed the first album The Bachelor, the second album is The Conqueror, all under the name Battle. The ‘battle’ thing came from recording in Battle itself, in Hastings, and on my little break we were staying at The Cure’s studio and they had a month off when they finished making their album, so everything was still painted purple, with red velvet curtains and stuff. Every book in the library was like, The Night Is Dark and The Devil Knows Darkness and things like that. I was definitely getting into the Gothic thing. So we all stayed out there for a month in the summer.
After that I went to Paris to work…I didn’t want any synthesizers on this album at all really. I wanted everything that was done with a synth to transfer to an acoustic instrument. But all the stuff that I worked with, Thomas Bloch, was all this very early 20th Century electro-acoustic stuff – instruments that fit in with early synthesizers but they’re all made out of glass or crystal. Then I went to Berlin – Paris! Berlin! – so a lot of the songs on the second album are quite cosmopolitan, love songs. Not on the first album. After that Leeds, Castleford, which is like one village along from where Shannon Matthews was bundled into that house. It was interesting. Very different to Paris. It was really rainy, one Chinese open, I went to Iceland all dressed up and people were pushing me around on mobility scooters, like, ‘get the fuck out of my way!’ So that was Castleford. And I really focused while I was up there.
DiS: I think that’s where the Sisters Of Mercy have a church they converted into a studio?
PW: Oh, it was nothing as glamorous as that. It was this new place for mixing – really new equipment. So after that…
DiS: That’s one hell of an adventure to make a record.
PW: Yeah, so far…we did a lot of stuff in Brixton, then another studio up in North London to do the strings in Flood's studio – where PJ Harvey made White Chalk I think. We did the gospel choir in there as well. Then some more stuff in a studio in Highbury & Islington, then a lot here [at his flat] as well – inbetween periods. I met this fantastic engineer halfway through recording. What I needed at the end of all this, where we’d recorded on all these classy microphones – all this stuff from Battle as well – was to transfer it. It was a big deal. I needed the top engineer basically; there was lots of it on Logic, lots on Pro Tools…so I met this guy who had done all the Simon Fuller stuff for the last few years. He had a real pop sheen, and it meant that when all the information was transferred it kept all the quality. It’s been a big journey! But it’s ended up as two albums.
DiS: The odd thing about that is that most records you’d finish, and then go and do a world tour – another journey – when it seems you’ve done quite a lot of travelling already. Which kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about not having any roots.
PW: You know…I was born in South London, I never leave South London in terms of a permanent home. But we’re planning to move to San Francisco soon, and get out…my thing with this album is: I’m going to try one more time with this English music industry thing, but it’s so much better for me in America.
DiS: It can be so gripey and short-sighted here…
PW: I’m starting to get quite tired of it, really. I think I’m misunderstood by a lot of journalists, by a lot of the English public, and I can’t be bothered with being misunderstood if there are places in the world where you are understood. And San Francisco…every show I’ve done there has been great. It sounds like I’m giving London a bad ‘rap, but I was born here and I started doing shows when I was 13, and for every amazing show there’s always some shitty… For example, I did this DJ thing on Saturday night, just for a bit of cash in order to buy a bed for my new house. And I refused to leave. I DJ-ed for three hours, with all these shitty people in the audience – nice people too, but for every wonderful person there’s a really shitty one, gakked off their face. From Hollyoaks or something like that, and you’re just like, ‘is this it? Is this London? Where I really want to live for the rest of my life?’ And we both got picked up and thrown out into the street, me and William, ‘cause we refused to leave until we got paid. I was like, ‘I’m not spending Saturday night at Hollyoaks: The Bar if I’m not going to get paid.’ But…I’m really lucky – I’ve got a great audience in the UK. But the stuff that goes on around it, the whiners, the moaners. I’ve only ever tried to do something positive, and give something back.
But every time I go to America, and San Francisco, California…I’ve never been on prime-time television here, apart from The Charlotte Church Show, then on my first trip to America it’s immediately Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien. You look at the Grammys, and has M.I.A. ever been nominated for a Brit Award?
DiS: But then, in the same way someone like Final Fantasy probably plays bigger shows when he comes over to London.
PW: It’s true. It’s a total switch. Also with the Scissor Sisters, and Rufus Wainwright. It’s weird because of the sexuality thing as well. Over here I get much more like – ‘Patrick Wolf: Gay Musician’, in the Daily Star or the NME…and it’s like, when the fuck have I ever talked about gay rights too much to you guys? Why can’t you respect me and talk to me as a producer, and a musician? I mean, if I’m pulled up on gay rights, I will talk about it, and I’ll defend female rights, minorities – equality, freedom for all – I would stand as an advocate for all those things, but it’s not my agenda as a musician. My music is for everybody that wants to listen and…let’s go through like everybody else and say: straight, female, black, Filipino musician. It’s not my agenda.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 02:47 | Сообщение # 16 |
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the childcatcher
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| "When I do shows like that I'm showing people where I come from," he says, "playing coffee shops in my teenage years. When I was trying to get publishing deals with people, and they were asking me what I was listening to, they expected me to say Fischerspooner or Kraftwerk, and it was usually Joni Mitchell or Kate Bush. I articulate with my stories and narration, and everything should be able to stand alone. When I do the acoustic shows, people realize that it's not a Las Vegas revue thing for me all the time."
The Bachelor fits nicely along an unorthodox artistic continuum for Wolf. Consistently embracing flux sonically and thematically, he explores the fluidity of love and sexual identity via an assortment of character devices, both assumed and personal. He sought out Atari Teenage Riot's Alec Empire and actress Tilda Swinton to assist on the album, and they provide something of a yin and yang influence, with Empire lending a grizzled edge that hearkens to Wolf's debut album, Lycanthropy.
"I just felt such a kinship with Alec," says Wolf. "I needed him to give me a bit of confidence to go back to that extreme place that I used to be when I was a teenager making music, because I think the confidence to do that had slightly been knocked out of me because of my recent experience with the music industry."
While Empire instills an abrasive, volatile sonic influence, Swinton provides a nurturing, stabilizing counterpoint. "When it came to this album and I needed someone to come in to be maternal, or even sisterly, she was the voice in my ear saying, like an oracle, 'everything is okay, here's the future'," he recounts with obvious gratitude.
Wolf's first exposure to Swinton was her starring role in Orlando, Sally Potter's monumental film adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel, which radically impacted him as a teenager. "When I was 15, I felt this immediate empathy with Orlando. My boyfriend and I saw myself going through changes of sexuality and indentity, much like Tilda's character. He used to tell me "Patrick, you're Orlando." And whenever something goes wrong in my life, I watch that film. I didn't want to put an album out in the world where I had been super-negative about life, so I went to all of her voiceovers in Orlando, and they were just full of inspiration and a lot of hope. We did a lot of improvisation in the studio, like on Oblivion. When the soldier's close to death, I'd come up with a phrase, and she'd come back with a phrase to provide an optimistic view. It just felt so incredibly natural, like there was this odd order between us. She's definitely a total kindred spirit, like a psychic partner, and you meet them so rarely in life."
With his strong connection with Swinton, is there a future in acting for this notoriously charismatic and flamboyant performer? "I'm a really bad actor; when I play practical jokes, everyone can tell I'm up to no good," Wolf laughs. When I mention to him that Michael Stipe was originally sought out by David Fincher for the serial killer role eventually given to Kevin Spacey in Se7en, he reluctantly confesses, "I was offered the part of the Mad Hatter in the new Tim Burton film [Alice in Wonderland]. I might have looked the part, but why would you pick somebody who had never even gotten into a school play? If something right comes along, maybe I'll do it. My focus is 100% music, but mad things happen all the time. I composed a piece for The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a Nan Goldin exhibition at the Tate Modern, and it was brilliant."
So Patrick Wolf is seemingly content to have followed his idiosyncratic and daring artistic muse on The Bachelor, which was partly funded by Bandstocks, a new system that allows fans to invest in the recording of an album for 10 pounds, for which they receive a copy of the record and sundry other benefits, including the potential to make profit if the record sells well. Absent the pitfalls of a major label deal and the attendant commercial pressures that accompanied The Magic Position ("They wanted to turn me into Phil Collins," he laments), Wolf is already looking forward to releasing 'The Bachelor's already completed companion album, The Conqueror, sometime in 2010.
"The upcoming album is about after you've been through a very depressing period in your life, and you're looking back and it's summer and not winter," he explains. "I wanted to document The Bachelor as this time of loneliness, while The Conqueror is the idea of dealing with the depression, and the love of my boyfriend William bringing me out of this very dark place. The Conqueror's like part two of this odyssey, working my way out of that negative place I'm in on this album. It's life after I've grown up, sort of a more serious joy, an awareness that I've been in a dark place and come out of it, as opposed to the fleeting joy of The Magic Position."
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 02:49 | Сообщение # 17 |
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the childcatcher
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| This is taken from June 2009 Attitude Magazine ( UK )
Bachelor Boy
Patrick Wolf survived singledom, adventures in sado-masochism and a record company split to find love and a new record with Tilda Swinton. He tells Colin Crummy how the bachelor boy got it back.
Patrick Wolf greets us at the front door of the mews house he shares with his boyfriend near London Bridge, all 6 foot 4 inches in short shorts, knee high socks and a shock of bleached blond hair. We climb through his bedroom window to get to the garden they share with their landlord, a fellow fruit, as Patrick muses wryly on what he might have to do to get the keys to this leafy city oasis. Basking in his new found domesticity Patrick is funny, articulate and startling, smilingly honest and not the stroppy diva of repute.
The last time we encountered Patrick he was in not such a happy place. His foray into the pop big league, The Magic Position, came unstuck when his record company's attempts to mainline him by getting Mark Ronson on production clashed with Patrick's overriding urge to go his own, avant-garde way.
Patrick was used to going his own way. He began writing songs aged 12, playing theramin with Leigh Bowery's band, Minty in heaven at 14 and, after being bullied at school because of his ambiguous and burgeoning sexuality, took the authorities to the European Court of Justice. He bought a piano with the award and ended up transferring to anything-goes private school Bedales. The wildly independent spirit transferred itself unto self produced, extraordinarily rich albums Lycanthropy and Wind in the Wires, through which a multi-faceted, uniquely British pop maverick emerged.
The Magic Position followed in 2007, Patrick's most successful work but also a strained experience as art got into bed with commerce and didn't quite climax. Professionally, he was doing appearances he didn't want to, personally the romance he based the album on with an artist called Ingrid, was falling apart. He channeled all of this darkness into a record that makes up the story of his new record, The Bachelor, which tackles depression, suicide and the fear of being alone.
In the meantime, things took a turn for the better. He fell in love again, with a Northern Irish boy, William, got off the corporate treadmill and wrote another suite of music,the more positively titled "the Conquerer". After breaking away from Universal, he set u shop on Bandstocks.com, inviting fans to invest in the new record in return for exclusive tracks and shows. He decided not to release the Bachelor/Conqueror as a whopping double album, but in two stages. He blew the budget on orchestras and choirs and won over Tilda Swinton to narrate the Journey on the Bachelor. There's going your own way, and then there is Patrick Wolf's way. And it is in this good place, releasing a record about that bad place, that we meet him.
Colin: It must be quite weird talking about and touring an album, The Bachelor, which is a bout a time you're over whilst holding onto another, happier album, The Conqueror, about the place you're in now?
Patrick: Every album has been like that, like public progression therapy and I just see it as the challenge of promoting or touring an album. This album is from a time when I thought that I was not really massively attractive to anybody. I was just a bit of a freak of nature and I thought that I wasn't going to be in a relationship. So I was like "fuck it, fuck off and I'm going to live my life 150 per cent to the maximum and not care about romance"
Colin: The Pessimistic frame of mind was when you were touring the magic position, which again was celebratory and about finding love.
Patrick: Yeah, [the period Magic Position is based on] was a time of really innocent love I shared between me and my partner at the time. We had this very artistic relationship where we just really...it wasn't so much sexual as two people living in a kind of ideal situation together. We both grew up and she had her eye on her work and I had my sexuality to deal with. At the same time that I was on prime time US television I was also having satanic sex with sadomasochistic masters in LA and I was exploring my sexuality
Colin: Vulture is about this time in LA. Tell all.
Patrick: It's a song about getting yourself in a self destructive place, and going through self-destructive tendencies and wanting to feel a bit more like a dominatrix. Putting yourself in a dark submissive place, like do you want to be stronger and be master of your own emotions a bit more? I was in LA and I had a week off, my first week off in a long time and my phone was broken and I'd sat on my credit card. I had no way of doing anything in LA, apart from running up the mini bar and having this phone book full of people that I met over the years of traveling. Like really dodgy people and I ended up just hanging out with the worst people in LA you could really think of. And just for pure voyeurism I ended up in these very strange situations, just to write, but I got to the point where I really thought I had hit real rock bottom in this whole kind of satanistic, sadomasochistic like ritual. They're mad in America with that kind of thing, they can't just have dirty sex; it has to have something to do with Jesus. It's like a punk thing or they involve the American flag and everything. I just thought it was really fascinating, but the next day I woke up and I felt like a piece of sh*t, because I put myself in that situation.
Colin: I imagine the American Flag needed a wash afterwords
Patrick: [Laughs] I'm not going there, all I know is, I remember having to call my publicist in Chicago and saying like, "Dana help me, help me, help me, there's a boy with a gun, he's holding it to my head and I need to get out of here." And I had the one night off in Chicago and this person had tried to involve a gun in a sexual ritual that was loaded and yeah, I needed to escape. That was really when I was like, "Dana, America's driving me mad, I need to go back home, I need to go back to London and just calm down a little bit."
Colin: It was after the touring that you met William, your current boyfriend. How did you meet?
Patrick: At a Burberry perfume launch. It was love at first sight. I just saw this person, who just looked like the type of man who i would fall in love with when I was 15, he looked like him, and then we just started kissing. Then I had to go on Never Mind the Buzzcocks the next day and I couldn't even think straight. I hadn't been in bed with anyone for years. I was very, very overwhelmed by all my emotions and then I decided, "that's it, this albums over, I've got to really take time to work out where I am again as a person and just forget maybe about Patrick Wolf for a while. Maybe just focus on this relationship and wait and see."
Colin: And this change of heart inspired the conqueror?
Patrick: I realised I was focusing on this negative aspect. Even when I met Will it was a long time of it being Mister two-suitcases-hotel-room-mini bar-bill and no social contact; just shows and interviews. For a long time I had become very cut off from trusting human intimacy and everything. I guess the Conqueror is my working myself out of that: returning to being human.
Colin: On top of all this, you also split from Universal. What kind of things did you disagree on?
Patrick: People try to give me makeovers musically and visually a lot of the time. They will be like"Oh, Patrick, you're going on this TV show, can you please wear something that doesn't make you look like half the audience might not turn up because they think you're gay or too punk." So I would literally get out the scissors before I go on stage and rip it up [demonstrates by lifting his ample legs up] so you can see my asshole. I blindly went suicide bomber style into the music industry and come out with my own record label at the end of it.
Colin: How were you working through your sexuality in this period?
Patrick: Just becoming more confident as I get older and not being so afraid. I think with anything you make bold gestures, you come out or you find your true love. With the media I found myself in the position by album three or four when I was on a major label , and I was under so much speculation and I never really had that before. I realized when I was younger that it meant so much that someone was open about their sexuality in the media. It was so inspiring just to see somebody free from caring about media misinterpretation or commercial failure. I saw a lot with other artists who were openly gay in their private life, but were not admitting to it in public. When I said I was bisexual in the press or that I was talking about freedom of sexuality, in a way I wish I had just been very, very, punk about it and said like what would be the problem with me being a 100 per cent gay to you? Like what would be the problem to you, Q magazine? Would that make me less of a respectable musician? Would you want to suddenly compare me to Freddie Mercury and Erasure? And they would. I'm having the same issues now. There's a speculation whether I'm anti-Christianity or I'm pro-gay marriage and of course I'm all of those things and I could talk forever about it. But I wish you would ask say, Bright Eyes if he was pro-gay marriage as well, because it's just an issue that we have to deal with universally as humans. Of course I want to marry a man, that man that I love, but I also would really like to talk about my album. But I also really want to be strong for all that kids that are fighting at school or even in their jobs.
Colin: You've mentioned various gay bashing - from security guards at a Madonna concert to the NME audience who called you faggot.
Patrick: Oh, I get it all the time, just to walk down the street. I'm 6 foot 4 inches, I have huge blond hair. I step out onto the red carpet at NME awards and Brandon Flowers walks in front of me in the most disgusting outfit I've ever seen in my life. Like it could be from Primark, suprise suprise, but everyone's like "oh, he's like the new David Bowie". I walk down in an amazing haute couture, like something specifically commissioned, designed by Gareth Pugh and everyone's like "YMCA" and I'm like"do you want to come have a f*cking fight with me right now?"
Colin: Beth Ditto [ as interviewed in the magazine ] has been bemoaning the lack of a hot boy couple in the public eye. You need to step up, Patrick Wolf
Patrick: The thing is now, I do. When people thought I was with Ingrid we hadn't lived together for a long time and even when it was purely artistic kind of relationship. They would obsess with me walking down a red carpet with a woman. The moment I would specifically hold the hand of my boyfriend down the carpet they would literally turn away because they knew they couldn't sell the pictures of this. It doesn't see column inches.
Colin: Your boyfriend has also been very handy with hooking you up with a certain Tild Swinton.
Patrick: Yes he did. It was almost at the end of the recording of the album and I was talking about Tilda Swinton doing the narration. On the second to last day of recording, there wa sa Q&A with Tilda Swinton next door to the studio and William came by to get me for dinner and he had brought two tickets for us to go. I went straight up to her after the show and she's like "Hello Patrick", and I went "hello Tilda" [laughs that she even recognizes him]. And she's like "how are you?" And I went "Ok, here's some songs that were written for you six or seven months ago, but bizzarely I'm recording the vocals next door, do you want to be the narrator on the album?" And she was like, "Well, thank you so much, that's great" And the next morning there was a mesage from her on my Blackberry saying, "I love the songs, when can we get into the studio?"
Colin: She's the voice of hope, isn't she?
Patrick: Yeah, I think if it had been all me, in this down period maybe I would've felt embarassed about releasing it, because I felt there wasn't enought inspiration on the album. I think it's good as a songwriter to go to a dark place, but if there's some extra element that is a bit inspirational, you know you're not depressing people.
Colin: The expectation would have been that this was a real noisefest, lo-fi record. There's some of that but it's also big and beautiful with choirs and huge orchestras.
Patrick: This is my biggest production so far and I hope that this is the beginning of a journey that I can take madly through a time when no money is being invested in the music industry. I wanted to release Vulture as the first single, because I thought it was the most extreme sound format to wipe the slate clean from the last album. It's a very expensive album that that's why you [his record cokpany] have to drop people [laughs], because the recording expenses were going up and up and up.
But I was like "C'mon! Get the gospel choir, no I need 12 string, I need 50 strings!"
Colin: You are being willfully non-commerical about this album. Do you still want to be massive?
Patrick: What I've learnt in the past is the more I try and be that the more I try and put my energy into being established and to be understood and the more I'm misunderstood by audiences and the media. I'm working on some really extremely commercial dance music with these producers from LA and that's really mad, thinking I'm going to make some insane, dance Ibiza album. That would be fun. I've got many albums to make and I just want to see what happens with each one.
Colin: Do you ever see the mini Patrick Wolf's?
Patrick: FPWs? Fake Patrick Wolf's we call them. They dress different for each different album. I haven't seen anyone dressing in the Vulture outfit. Maybe at Underage Festival everyone's going to be in leather thongs and harnesses. That would be funny.
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 02:49 | Сообщение # 18 |
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the childcatcher
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| When I speak to Patrick Wolf, he’s just got in to his hotel room late at night after a show in Norwich. The man is pretty pumped-up and energetic, if a little bit scattered. True to form, Patrick begins by telling me about the castles in Norwich.
“We’re touring around the UK right now and we’ve just finished a day in Norwich, it was fantastic. There’s a lot of amazing people in Norwich. We’ve seen the castle, explored all these medieval artefacts and…yeah. It’s been a very good day today.”
But quickly things get out of hand. Over the crackling line, I can hear sounds of chaos, shouting, and other horrifying noises. “Oh, my boyfriend…I had a chicken…” he begins to explain. “Can I just tell you this?” he asks and then continues. “This is what happens after midnight with my band. I had a chicken that I was going to eat, I eat it after a show because I’m hungry, and my boyfriend just threw the chicken in the street. How would that make you feel?”
I am not sure. Sad, I volunteer, and ask if he’s still hungry. “I’m sitting here, and he’s gone off in a strop. I’m very hungry,” he complains. “There’s no food right now. I’m going to starve to death, you know. If I die tomorrow, it’ll be my boyfriend’s fault. I have no food.”
Although it’s sad to hear about the waste of a good chicken, it’s nice to know that Mr Wolf has settled down with a nice boy. His previous records have been so fraught with heartache and troubles. It’s been said that since he met this nice man, things have really turned for the better.
One of the other bigger changes in his career is the decision to leave Universal Records, who put out his last release, The Magic Position. “Well, it was a mutual decision,” he says. “I mean, I’m an extremist, and they’re conservatives; it’s just not going to work. I want to change the world; they just want to stay boring and just keep on making money out of people. I want to keep on changing things and they just don’t even want to bother thinking about being creative.”
Starting his own record label Bloody Chamber Music and joining Bandstocks.com – a website that allows everyday people to buy stocks in musicians – has really opened some long-awaited creative pathways. “The thing is, if I make a creative decision, I don’t have to answer to anybody. I can just do what I want to do. That’s what I’ve been about, since I was like, 12 years old. Like when I had to do homework…Why do I have to do homework? I want to be free and I want to do what I want to do.
“That’s what makes me the best at what I do,” he continues with confidence. “They want somebody in this world of people who conform to do something different. That’s why people are listening to my music.”
As to whether Bloody Chamber is looking to sign new artists soon, Patrick is very enthusiastic. “Yes, I’m looking out for the next Madonna. The next Joni Mitchell, the next Boy George. Anyone who is a liberated human being; anyone who makes fantastic music.”
Talking about being liberated, we move on to the video clip for Vulture, the single from the new album, The Bachelor. It features Patrick in some pretty interesting bondage positions and costumes. It’s a far cry from The Magic Position, which Patrick admits is behind him now; musically at least.
“I’m proud that I made it and that it had such an impact on the world, that it found an audience in quite mainstream culture, but it’s my job to move on. What I do is just about closing one chapter, closing a book and starting a new one. I’m all about progression, and the only way to progress is to be futuristic.
“With Vulture,” he explains, “the whole point was that this is a song about being in a self-destructive place, like being self-destructive, sexually. Male and female people, heterosexual or homosexual, we all put ourselves in places of self-destruction in our lives, even if you’re like a purist or a Catholic. Maybe they think they’re enjoying themselves but they’re just not really enjoying it. I wanted to put myself in the place of someone who is sexually vulnerable.”
Realising the implications of what he’s just said, Patrick takes a moment to defend his character, despite me not saying a word. “I’m not an awkward person,” he says, “but it was like acting: portraying a sense of awkwardness and not really knowing much about myself sexually, so I was kind of just exploring that. We’re used to sexual images, like, pornography; people being very, ‘I’m so sexy, look at me, I’m so sexual, blah blah blah’. I wanted to convey someone who’s quite human, who didn’t really know much about themselves. That’s really who I was while I was going through all these emotions and I ended up writing the song Vulture.”
The Bachelor and assumedly the forthcoming sequel, The Conqueror, embody a new aesthetic for Patrick, including a nice new blonde tint. He talks a bit about the new style of the shows he’s playing.
“I’m trying for a lot more of a…No, I hate the word so I’m not going to say it…OK, theatrical look. I guess I’m just expressing myself more as a dancer. It’s more choreographed; a more personal performance. I’m not so scared now of being controversial on stage. I’m not scared of shaking opinions up in the audience. I just want to inspire a lot of happiness, and for people to be free. I’m not trying any more to numb my attitude on stage. It’ll be ten times more interesting this time.”
By this stage Patrick is just exploding with confidence, and I can’t help but ask where he thinks it’s all coming from. “I think it’s like my independence from the world of major labels. I don’t have that pressure to be more family friendly. That’s quoted: ‘Be more family friendly, be more conservative.’ I was shocked because the whole point of what I do as an artist is that I want to help people break free from their constraints, from society. I wasn’t put on this planet in order to pander to the mediocrity of society; I was put on this planet to change things.”
It’s getting late by this stage, and touring is hard work, so I let him go to sleep – even without his chicken. He says he has writing to do, and I ask whether he’s working on the new album. “I’m always writing, of course. I mean, I went to a museum today,” he says, whimsically. “And I went to the castle of Norwich, and I found a wishing well, and I just sat there for five or ten minutes, and I just wrote even on my BlackBerry because I just, uh, I didn’t bring my moleskin.
“I’m always writing, ‘cause that’s the only way I can deal with life. If I can’t write then I can’t live. If I can’t write, then I can’t feel anything. It’s my way of living.”
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 02:50 | Сообщение # 19 |
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the childcatcher
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| ondon troubadour Patrick Wolf tells Garrett Bithell how the love of a good man has changed his whole outlook on life.
“For a long time I hadn’t really dated anyone or kissed anyone. I hadn’t entertained the idea of being in a relationship. It’s hard on the road to even imagine forming any kind of permanent relationship with anyone. And that whole rock and roll cliché of having one-night liaisons with fans – that’s my idea of hell to tell you the truth. I love the idea of domesticity and intimacy. I’m a romantic; I’m not interested in fucking about. I did that a lot when I was a teenager.”
So says London-based troubadour Patrick Wolf, who has become something of a new renaissance man since his debut album Lycanthropy in 2003. The multi-instrumentalist – he can play 18 at last count – has wooed the avant garde set with his fiercely original repertoire that traverses genres from romantic folk to techno pop, often fusing electronic sampling with classical arrangements.
Wolf is set to release The Bachelor, his fourth LP, this month. It is the prelude to The Conqueror, which will be unleashed at some point next year. As Wolf reveals, The Bachelor is pre-love, The Conqueror is post-love. This primal dichotomy reflects how his entire outlook changed after meeting his current partner, William. He moved swiftly from hating love to being in love.
“If you’re doing a three year tour, of course you end up being a bachelor,” Wolf says. “I wanted to spend some time off the road in order to see if I could actually form relationships again with people. Or kiss someone. Or cook dinner for someone. Or go out on a date and talk – and not just be lost in show business.
“And I met somebody – without even putting lonely hearts ads out! I just bumped into someone and there was an instant love connection.”
Lead single ‘Vulture’, and its bondage-inspired leather-and-chains video clip, has polarised fans and novices alike. It’s certainly a provocative and visceral track. Croons Wolf in the chorus: “And all my dead meat yearns for the vulture’s return”.
“It’s about reaching a point of sexual depravity and feeling maybe a bit disgusting afterwards,” he muses. “And then just wanting to be reborn – and maybe find your innocence again. So you’re calling out for the vulture to come and take all your dead parts so you can grow new parts of yourself back. That’s where I was.”
Wolf collaborated with arthouse-film darling Tilda Swinton on The Bachelor, and she contributes four spoken-word pieces. “Tilda is really like the godmother of this album,” he says. “I was quite exhausted towards the end of it having to speak up to the people around me for making the album. Everyone thought I had gone crazy. It took someone like Tilda, who doesn’t have any commercial expectations of me, to go ‘I think what you’re doing is really great’. It gave me motivation to keep moving.”
Indeed, Wolf’s fearlessness has often landed him in hot water – most recently at a Madonna stadium concert in London, of all places.
“The security guards found it was offensive for two boys to kiss, yet very normal for a man and a woman to kiss,” he tells. “And evidently, the people around us felt the same.
“When you do stadium performances you’ve got to realise they’re not actually rock stadiums – they’re places for football. So their security guards are used to dealing with football hooligans, not boys in hot pants and sequins dancing to Madonna with a glass of cider. They just don’t get it!
“Madonna attracts everyone from rainbow-flag-cowboy-hat-wearing guys to soccer mums, and it’s like opening all the gates at the zoo and letting them all eat each other.”
just sing
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| jaqkvade | Дата: Понедельник, 18.07.2011, 02:50 | Сообщение # 20 |
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the childcatcher
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| I’ve been to a fair few gigs in my time, but it’s not often that I find myself watching a peroxide-blonde rubbing himself on stage, posing suggestively with a microphone down his pants and climbing the walls in something resembling Borat’s mankini. But that’s just a smattering of the experiences on offer at a Patrick Wolf show.
Love him or loathe him, you’ll agree when I say that this is a man who likes to be at the centre of attention. Having got “a bit of a reputation” for being outspoken in the press after the release of his last album, 2007’s The Magic Position, Wolf promises to be “much more ‘no comment’ this time round” when we speak before he takes to the stage. It’s a grand statement of intent for a man so outspoken, and it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t exactly adhere to it.
After being released from his record contract, Wolf’s latest album, The Bachelor, has been released via the revolutionary Bandstocks approach, allowing his fans to fund his recording in exchange for various privileges: “I needed a way to get it finished, and I didn’t really want to get down on my hands and knees and start licking arse in London for money, so I went to my supporters.” Luckily for him, the personal approach paid off, and The Bachelor was released at the start of this month to almost universal acclaim.
Escaping the shackles of the mainstream music industry has turned out to be more a blessing than a curse, partly because the scene in the UK is “miserable” now (whilst he admits to liking underground garage, bashment and donk (they’re real things, I checked), Wolf confesses to being “so bored with all these starlets the record companies are churning out right now”), and partly because the advent of illegal downloading has lost the major labels plenty of sales (“it just so happens right now that people think that can take everything for free, which is fine.”)
Above all, though, Patrick Wolf thrives when apart from the crowd, left to indulge himself without the pressure of mainstream success. “Writing music is an instinctive urge, the urge to create; it’s like doing a big poo; y’know, it just comes out of my bum sometimes, or from my mouth or from my heart. Creativity just happens.”
At the moment, his creativity (wherever it’s coming from) covers all manner of styles, his greatest influences coming from remote places, from literature, art and film (his love of Derek Jarman coupled with a chance encounter near his London flat led to his recent collaboration with Tilda Swinton); unsurprising given that “if the alternative is being influenced by Little Boots, then I’m sure I’d rather go to the National Portrait Gallery for inspiration instead”.
Comments like this are typical with Wolf, his precocious opinions always coming ahead of politeness: “I’ve got to be careful my reputation doesn’t destroy me, but, really, I’d rather be honest than be all ‘X Factor’ about it. So often, I just say what most people in the industry are thinking but don’t say because they feel like they have a gun held to their heads, scared that they might offend their demographic.”
For such an extroverted and individual artist, it could seem that Patrick Wolf’s antics are somehow deliberately alternative, but not so, he claims: “it’s a misunderstanding from the way that I look that I’ve thought about it; if I’d actually considered how I come across to the public, I’d probably start panicking and change my identity and my music. I’ve recently become very strong in the feeling that I don’t need to care about public perceptions, as long as I remain true to my sense of individuality. Whether I’m the clown or the prophet, I don’t care. Either way I’m happy.”
It must be said, whether posing in bondage gear, straddling a microphone stand on stage, or just talking to The Yorker in his dressing room, Patrick Wolf speaks the truth: he does seem happy as ever.
just sing
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