Blaine
Harrison
Mystery Jets
What was the best album released in 2006 that few people heard?
Jeremy Warmsley’s The Art of Fiction. Larrikin Love’s The Freedom Spark.
What do you hope to hear more of in 2007? Less of?
More Daniel Johnston. More Arcade Fire. More Deerhoof. More Devendra [Banhart]. Klaxons. Less of these bullshit invented pseudo movements dreamed up by the media.
What album or song do you feel best defines this generation?
I often think of whether there could be a song which the whole world could agree on being the last piece of music ever played (prior to the apocalypse). My fear is that it would be something out of one of those dreadful hymn books. But I was listening to an in-flight radio station on a plane today when Sinéad O’Connor came on. “Now that I’m alone I can do what ever I want. Eat my dinner in fancy restaurants...”
What’s the biggest goal for your life that you have yet to achieve?
Balancing an apple on Mark Chapman’s head.
With the rise of MySpace and the ever-increasing presence of bloggers, what is your feeling about using the Internet as a promotional tool? Will MySpace last and are you actively involved in your band’s MySpace page? With the music blogs seen as an increasingly influential source for breaking new artists, do you read them and are they a positive influence that bypasses the industry machinery or just empty hype?
The Web is no longer a branch leading off the record industry, it has become precisely what it was invented for, the central nervous system linking people all over the world. When we started, demos were on c90 tapes or gold coated CD-Rs. Now, they are 20-letter long URL addresses which anyone in any place has free 24-hour access to. Whether or not the major corporations take blogs seriously, music buyers like to hear the opinions of other music buyers and that facility has been made easier than ever. If there is some kind of grungy backlash to the current state of music sharing I will observe it with delight. But to not take advantage of the near-infinite availability of everything today is to make a rod for one’s own back. MySpace is very important to us. It keeps us on our toes. People don’t think twice about telling you what they think. And by the time you’ve packed the gear in the van, had a beer, and gone home, the fans are already up online discussing the gig.
1/2007