Popular caught up with Blaine from the Mystery Jets for a quick interview…
Popular- What have you been up to lately?
Blaine-Well I've been painting….and uhhhhhhh watching ballet…….been re inventing the wheel (adopting an accent from 'The Importance of Being Ernest')…..We've been…uhhhh..bringing our art back to is fundamental elements...and reconstructing it. In the most...pretentious way possible.
Popular-Last time we did an interview William told us about a band called the 'Hallelujah Chicken Run Band'…they're great…you got anymore recommendations we can juice out of you?
Blaine-Do you want some cutting edge shit?!
The most recent thing that I bought was a record released on Analogue Africa which is a German reissues label.....Of a band called Green Arrows......It's a 70's Afro Beat Zimbabwean funk band
Popular-okay i'm satisfied with the obscurity whether or not there is any truth in it….
Blaine- William just distracted you.....William go away!.....we're trying to do an interview...
Blaine- 'Green Arrows' other people hmmmm.....i'd like to talk about a couple of bands that we've been on tour with us 'Stricken City' http://www.myspace.com/strickencity..really good band…
Popular- Alright…what about books…anything you've recently read that has particularly stuck in you mind?
Blaine –Hmmmmm...Okay the last book I read was called 'Kill your friends' by John Niven. But William…ask William about books…William's the one who knows about books….(William wanders over)
Blaine- (Goading William) Lets have some edgy author….lets throw some edgy authors out there....
William-BLAINE SHUT UP.
Blaine- Ellen this interview so far…no ground has been covered, lets cover some ground....Let me ask the questions, I'll ask the questions…..(Blaine takes the crumpled up piece of paper and asks himself a question) Right...
'Really liked the art work on the Twenty One album, does anything visually inspire you to make a track?'
We're definitely visually inspired I mean.... i wouldn't like to say we're an art school band or anything but both myself and William went to art school...and I think that when we were making our previous record Twenty One, we got to a point where we had all the songs but we weren't sure what kind of identity the record would go on to possess. Once we found the art work (Natro Alegros photography) we really thought about the record in respect of 'coming of age, and falling in love for the first time and having your heart broken...I really think that with his photography (Natro Alegros) that was when we really finalised the ideas. So I'd say yeh we are visually inspired... i don't necessarily know if images inspire the song but ..i think perhaps they're kind of like mental images that brought the album together…the running order and all that....
Popular- How do you go about composing or laying down a track?
I think when we write there's a bunch of different things sometimes i'll sit down and i'll have an idea... I'll just write a melody and some lyrics and let the band do the rest and you know William writes and when he writes it he does it in a very open ended way which allows the band to create their own paths… which I think is kind of how I see this album happening. As writers i think our job is to lay down what the song is trying to say and then allow the band to explain the message in a sonic way..
Popular- Do you have an agenda, of how you want people to think or feel when they listen to a song?
Blaine- Yeh of course...I mean i think you know songs should inspire, thoughts and I'd hate for our music to just be. I think we want to create music that inspires thought...and some kind of reaction you know...reactionary music I think is what we've wanted to always to do...
Popular-Do you feel that being in 'the band' has ever in anyway hindered you…as in do you feel in anyway that doing this has stopped you from doing anything that you might have done otherwise?
Blaine- I think the bands been a really good kind of platform for us to create some kind of reaction with our songs and I think that whether its this band or any band, what we all want is to inspire ideas and do it through our music. I mean if you were to say to me 'what are you trying to say with your music?' I couldn't say but I think with every song has its place, was born…its got its own ideas about what its saying
Popular- I guess if a song has the ability to move someone then that's an achievement in itself…
Blaine- Absolutely. I'd like to kind of take words out of peoples mouths...perhaps feelings that people have felt...but have never really found the words to say, you know try and find the words to say....and put it across in a language that people can understand...
Popular-Kate (one of my friends who is suppose to be here)wanted to ask about Astoria the closing gig...about how you lot felt about playing that?
Blaine- i think for us it was a tremendous privilege to play, I saw my first ever gig at Astoria..in about 96 a band called Japan a kind of weird new wave band from the 80s they reformed with a different singer. I didn't really know who they were at the time either but it was just ingrained in my memory as my first live musical experience and I've always thought back to that. It was so loud! And the lights were fucking blinding, it kinda of inspired me to put a band together and play live gigs.
We played at the Astoria 5 times we where privileged to be asked.. And the last gig there that we played was amazing, we only played 3 songs, but on the last night it ever opened its doors…to be invited to do that......
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