The Go! Team are all about the highly intense positivity. so it's a little strange to find producer-songwriter-mastermind Ian Parton, 33, so somber and sober, speaking from the UK on the brink of their SF show tonight, Oct 19, at Mezzanine. Oh well, the fun is all over the new record, Proof of Youth (Sub Pop) - and that's what counts. Here's a bit more from our talk.
Bay Guardian: Did you have anything that you really wanted to accomplish with this new album?
Ian Parton: I wanted it to be noisier, more kind of ballsier, just a bit more wangy, a bit more kick ass, and a bit more live sounding. I always loved weird tunings and white noise and feedback and more aggressiveness. A bit more Public Enemy and more sing-along.
BG: Speaking of Public Enemy, how did you get Chuck D to perform on the album?
IP: Oh yeah, I never really thought it would happen. I still never believed it up till that very moment. It was six months in the making after the first e-mail was shot off - to nowhere, not knowing if we had the right address and wondering if it was really Chuck that replied or someone fucking around with us.
We ended up getting it to his manager, a scary bloke who was, like, "Who the hell are you and why are you calling me?" But [D] gets hundred of requests a year. He obviously thought there was something exciting there, and I think so, too. We kind of reclaimed the sound in a way, kind of reminded people why [Public Enemy] were so amazing.
BG: The album is so hyperactively joyful.
IP: I just naturally veer toward action-packed things. I really want to see an all-out assault - from day one I wanted trashiness to be the name of the game, but mixed with cuter stuff as well. Excitement is kind of the name of the game - happiness is a by-product of that. People describe it, in a way, as an antidespressiant, though we certainly weren't setting out to make a Coke commercial with people holding hands.
BG: Are you a fan of jingles?
IP: I'm just a fan of slogans. I have a book of slogans of things I hear. Actually I just have books full of stuff and I sing into a dictaphone and write down phrases. This album, I wrote some of the songs and lyrics, but Ninja wrote some of the lyrics as well. And we collaborated on stuff. It was a real random process. But she's really hot on rapping as personal expression.
I still write the songs - I'm still the person who finds the samples. It's the quest for that perfect three-second loop, the whole found sound. My record collection boils down to those sounds, I suppose.
BG: What sort of sources have you used?
IP: I wouldn’t want to name names to draw attention to it. There's Bollywood stuff on there, Blacksploitation things, children's TV show soundtracks, a few funk things. But I try to not look in places that are too obvious. I have a lot of forgotten records: easy listening records that are generally 99.99 percent unlistenable but occasionally there's a thing that jumps out. That’s why I like salvaging.
BG: Going back to advertising, have you been approached much to use your music in commercials?
IP: I guess I'm quite vocal about my dislike about people doing adverts. I had to make a few concessions to pay for tours, but I've generally tried to avoid it and I've sacrificed quite a bit of money to stay out of world of branding. I think music is something special and I don't think you should really imagine a yogurt or car when you hear music. I think you should keep it pure in some way, if you can.
BG: Pure aggression?
IP: There's loads of aggressive music. I'm interested in the idea of surprise and things like that. I always loved the Velvet Underground for that the way they could make heavier songs sound heavier by putting it next to a cute little Moe Tucker song. I guess I wish that’s what I wish bands would do more - aggression is easy, if you know what I mean. There's lots of new metal bands going through the motions. But I think, originality - not that we're superoriginal - is still possible.
IAN PARTON'S CURRENT TOP FOUR
Deerhoof
"One of my favorite bands."
Caribou
CSS
David Axelrod
"Quite an influence in terms of the breakbeat, orchestral, brassy kind of sound - he did it amazingly well and he's quite underrated."
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Comments (1)
Thanks YOu All Greatz
Posted by yalıtım | October 22, 2007 04:24 AM