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“When we started Zero 7 we never had any intention of becoming a band or of going anywhere near a stage either. We thought we were something completely different, a million miles away from being a band. There was no performing planned at all initially then over time it became obvious to us that not only would playing live be an interesting experience but also that it wasn’t that difficult.” Sam Hardaker.
Conducting an intense day of multiple press interviews in a Warners Records conference room off Kensington High Street, the one-time studio boffins turned million selling pop stars, sound distinctly unhappy having to promote their impending UK tour.
“Ticket sales are really bad so we need some help,” Sam drawls, his voice dripping with sarcasm as studio partner Henry Binns admits they’ve become more than a little cynical about the press and touring in general.
“Dreadfully cynical, actually,” he deadpans.
Skrufff: You’ve got to play tunes for the thousandth time on stage, is it a battle . . . “to keep it fresh and vital?” Henry finishes the question.
“Yeah, it is and that’s why we have the holy shrine of the set list which we change every time.”
“You want to keep it interesting for ourselves then hopefully it’s interesting for the people that are there, but first and foremost we’re thinking ‘How can we still feel excited about doing this?’ and that means changing things,” Sam agrees.
“Not to Bjork standards, but we still try to approach songs differently. Which was something we didn’t do initially, we used to go and play the songs live in as direct a way possible as we could.”
The time he’s referring to is the strangely distant summer of 2001, when Zero 7’s debut album Simple Things was released to general mainstream indifference if not hostility (sniffy Air comparisons being amongst the softer of some of the criticisms they attracted). However, with minimal hype and word of mouth recommendation Simple Things went onto sell well over a million copies, launching the career of session singer Sia and confirming ‘chill out’ as a seriously mass market genre, perhaps the first of a post-house scene that was beginning to take shape.
Within months, however, TV advertised rapaciously greedy ‘best chill-out ever’ compilations were already deflating the bubble fast and three years on, chill out as a genre is gone and is virtually a dirty word. And with Zero 7’s latest album When It Falls (released at the start of this year) broadly repeating Simple Things’ downtempo melodic formula it’s perhaps unsurprising that friction has emerged between the media and the band. To describe them as hostile however, would be to over-egg the angst, instead their innate politeness and clear passion for what they do, shines through past any surface stuff.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): You were seen as being a part of dance culture when you started, as chill-out producers, whatever the term is, do you still feel a connection with dance culture?
Zero 7 (Sam): “We certainly felt a connection as punters because we grew up listening to dance music. We were around that club culture but we never made a dance record in our lives.”
Skrufff: Do you still go clubbing now?
Zero 7 (Henry): “Yeah I do and I’ve been getting back into house music recently. I don’t buy it anymore but over the summer I was hearing lots of interesting music at festivals, that electro-y acidy stuff. I was quite surprised. Mostly I go to places where they play, I guess, more black music, such as hip hop.”
Skrufff: Do you feel that as Zero 7 you could release an acid electro record?
Zero 7 (Sam): “Yeah, I’d like to.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “Definitely, it’s about pushing music forwards, chords and melodies have all been done- we want acid, man.”
Skrufff: you talked in a previous interview about when you both worked in RAK days when pop stars were pimping cocaine . . .
Zero 7 (Sam): “That was a very particular moment in time when all the extravagance of the 80s was coming crashing down and we got in just at the end of it. People were still spending fortunes in very expensive studios over long periods of time, making not very nice music.”
Skrufff: So you two were twiddling knobs and being ignored by the stars?
Zero 7 (Sam): “We weren’t twiddling knobs, we were just sitting there.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “Carrying pints back from the pub.”
Zero 7 (Sam): “Yeah, fetching pints and sushi and calling people who sell sold coke and persuading them to come down to the studio.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “Steely Dan left a legacy which Trevor Horn picked up on which was to use the lengthiest process possible to make records and I think every band thought that was the only way you could make a record in the late 80s. Then everyone started making tunes in their bedroom and they all scurried back underground.”
Zero 7 (Sam): “Exactly. So Bomb The Bass was at number one and he made it in their bedroom, while they’d be sitting there facing a £200,000 studio bill, going into the third month because they weren’t sure about the snare drum.”
Skrufff: You guys have now sold over a million albums has that changed your perceptions of the pressures of pop success?
Zero 7 (Sam): “I never considered it like that and I don’t think we’ve had to deal with any massive pressures. It was kind of unusual to be pulled along towards the mainstream of music.”
Skrufff: Did you ever find yourself getting swept up in ego stuff that your success brought, believing the hype?
Zero 7 (Sam): “I don’t think it really worked for either of us because as much as we do press days and things like this we never felt that we were the front people or that it was all about us, although it is. It never really felt like we were pop enough to pull it off, we weren’t ‘artists’.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “I don’t think there really was much hype, everything happened very slowly over a long period of time and there was no way we were lauding it or revelling in glory.”
Zero 7 (Sam): “We’ve probably missed the only chance we’ll ever get to do that we didn’t even notice it.’
Skrufff: What was Janet Jackson like when you met her?
Zero 7 (Henry): (adopting a high pitched Michael Jackson style voice) “She was wonderful, it was great. (Switching back to his normal voice). She was sat as close as you are, with a big bunch of fruit between us and we could hardly see her.”
Zero 7 (Sam): “It was really weird, I think her people probably arranged meetings with everybody they thought was cool in London, so she probably had lots of boring- not boring- pairs of blokes sitting down, saying ‘I love your records, I love the production’. We just went along to the meeting because it seemed like a really bizarre thing to do. We listened to her for ten or twenty minutes then left- that was it. We never thought about it again. I don’t quite know what happened, I guess she wanted us to give her a track, something she’d heard of ours, but very fucking stupidly we didn’t get it together. We could have done very well for ourselves.”
Skrufff: Regarding your song writing, are you churning out hundreds of songs a week or painstakingly crafting one every six months?
Zero 7 (Sam): “It’s probably closer to one every six months. We’re not prolific by any means. I can imagine lots of other bands writing constantly, sitting around with a guitar writing songs, whereas we tend to go into the studio and do it then, starting on the day, playing around with ideas then. It’s not like we turn up there with 30 ideas which we then start going through. Last week for example, we started working on some tiny ideas and we’ll develop them, and discard the ones we don’t like after a week or two. We’re getting a bit more used to the idea that we can do it, the process already feels, not easier, but less worrying (mumbling)”.
Skrufff: You’re doing this UK tour at the moment, are there more dates planned?
Zero 7 (Sam): “No that’s it.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “Though to be fair the live show has taken on a new energy.”
Skrufff: You refer to love and peace loving folk on your sleevenotes, are you interested in social issues, for example burningly angry or indifferent about Bush being re-elected?
Zero 7 (Sam): “Not indifferent, it’s a bitch.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “It’s difficult unless you’re Bob Dylan to convey a really strong message in music in that way. If you’re two producers it might come across as a bit wanky. Sometimes when you write lyrics you think about leaving certain lyrics well alone, apart from the odd subtle message here and there.
Zero 7 (Sam): “I think it’s affecting choices you make all the time.”
Zero 7 (Henry): “but that doesn’t mean we have to start writing obvious protest songs, though it would probably be a good thing if someone did, it’d be nice if there was a little more revolutionary music going on.”
Skrufff: Do you see your songs as belonging to you or more ideas in the ether you’ve tapped into?
Zero 7 (Henry): “Every one is our little baby. Some of them we like better than others, I suppose that reflects the cold harsh reality of life.”
Zero 7 UK tour dates:
Live dates - November:
Sun 14: Bristol Colston Hall
Mon 15: Exeter Great Hall
Tue 16: Reading Hexagon
Thu 18: Leeds University
Fri 19: Manchester Apollo
Sat 20: Glasgow Academy
Mon 22: Cambridge Corn Exchange
Tue 23: Wolverhampton Civic
Wed 24: Brighton Centre
Thu 25: London Hammersmith Apollo
http://www.zero7.co.uk (Zero 7 special remix competition: click her for details)
Interview by: Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
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