Interview: Viva Machine
Artist profile:
Viva Machine
We catch up with drummer Dai (DP) and Bassist Tom after a storming live set in Cardiff, and chat about the progress of their début album and how useful Lidl’s can be for upcoming bands.
Write-ups have had difficulty coming to a clear decision on what you sound like, with comparisons being as diverse as Yes, The Automatic and Isis. How would you describe it?
Tom: I quite like the fact that people can’t make up their minds, really, but it’s intriguing then; you want to go and see a band live to see what they actually sound like.
DP: I’d say we chuck in a lot of music, we all listen to very different music and we all have very different bands that we all like. I think that people have difficulty putting us in a genre; I find a lot of the time you get packed in with who you’re touring with, when we toured with the Shiny Toy Guns, people were calling us electro, and then when we toured with The Automatic we were an indie band. It would be nice if people could think for themselves.
Tom: Dai’s favourite bands are, like, Queens Of The Stone Age...
DP: Yeah, I guess I have the heaviest taste so I kind of bring the rock, I like Clutch and Mastodon and stuff like that. And then the other guys, they bring the harmonies
Tom: Big fans of Weezer.
DP: (laughs) We do like a bit of ‘oo-ee-ooh’s and ‘bah-bahhs’. That’s basically from Weezer and The Beach Boys. We’ve got the heavier riffs, and then we’ve got pop melodies.
Tom: Our aim is to combine the groove of QOTSA with the madness of Jarcrew and the harmonies of Weezer and a little bit of the knife thrown in.
DP: That’s where the keyboards come in.
Tom: And if we can combine all them, we’ll be well on our way.
DP: (to Tom, with a grin) Oh, we’re nearly there.
Has this broad range of styles allowed you to fit in on any kind of bills?
DP: It’s kind of made it harder and easier in different ways. Sometimes we’ll tour with a band like the Shiny Toy Guns, and even though we don’t sound like them, we fit... the same with The Automatic. But at the same time, if we were to sit and rack our brains ‘who do we tour with, who’ll fit?’ we can’t think of anyone. So it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage, really.
Tom: I think that’s quite good, as when we toured with those bands, there were a lot of people who didn’t really know what to make of us, but liked us. They might have been into electro but when they came to see us hopefully they found something that they liked.
Right, let’s get on to the album, then. Is it ready?
DP: It’s 99.999% ready! There’s just two little things we need to do. There’s one little thing I’m not happy about. I want to take something out.
Tom: (grinning) All the drums
DP: Plus, obviously, we need to find a label and they’ll probably re-mix it a bit.
Tom: But as far as the recording goes we’re pretty much done, and we’ve been listening to it loads. We’re not one of those bands that can’t listen to their own music, (laughs) I like our music.
DP: (laughing) If you don’t make music you don’t like listening to then quit, just die!!
That’s a bit harsh! When can we expect the album to be released?
Tom: Well we’re thinking early 2008...
DP: But in music industry terms, that’ll probably be 2009.
What can we expect from it?
DP: (pauses to find the right words) Eleven hits of pure rock. (Both laugh)
Tom: I think there’s a lot of tracks on there that people wouldn’t expect from us.
DP: yeah there’s a lot of diversity.
Tom: That’s the good thing about it. It’s still Viva Machine, but, like the track we played tonight ‘Here Comes The Speed Of Light’ that I play keyboards on, it’s a lot different to what we normally do. There’s a bit of an eighties groove to that one.
And what do you expect from the album?
DP: (pauses) We expect ... nothing, but we would like... (chooses words as modestly as possible) international superstardom.
Tom: We’re just hoping to get on tour as soon as possible and just keep touring until the album’s done, and then go to America and do it there.
DP: We’re far more of a touring band. We find ourselves far more comfortable on tour than in a studio. Especially as we’re doing it very old-school; there’s no one with us, we drive , we set up our stuff, we tour for months on end...
Tom: and then we come back and work jobs for a couple of months and then we go out again.
DP: And we love it.
Tom: I can’t wait till we’re on tour so we can just chill at the back of the bus.
Is it difficult juggling the job and the music?
Tom: I think we’re quite lucky in the jobs that we’ve found. I don’t think there’s many jobs that would put up with us going out on tour for so long.
DP: Where I work it’s a bar run by a family, and they’re all big fans. So I can just say to the boss “I need to go out on tour next month” and he’ll say “awesome, tell me when you’re playing and we’ll come watch it.”
Tell us a bit about some of the tracks that will be appearing on the album.
DP: Well there’s some that people will know: [b]‘A Futuristic Dracula’ which is the oldest song on the album.
Tom: Then obviously the songs that are on the internet; ‘Death Star Trucker’, ‘Robot Bodyrox’, ‘Yo Ho’, and a new track up called ‘Oxygen’, probably the chilled track off the album.
DP: We’ve got another one called ‘Hospital’ which is really chilled.
Tom: It’s [the album] quite to the point, there’s no filler.
DP: We made a point of that; we made an album ourselves a couple of years ago.
RL: Ipsofacto?
DP: (laughing) They’ve done their homework! Well, that record had a couple of tracks of filler on it, and I was so opposed to it on this album.
Tom: the albums that we love are the albums that have got eleven brilliant songs on them. That’s why I hate Mars Volta... well I don’t hate them, but they’ll have some amazing bits, and then eight minutes of-
DP: a lot of wank.
Tom: eight minutes of wank.
DP: you know, eight minutes of, like, a sample of birds or weird noises.
Tom: It’s just ‘skip, skip, skip, skip’.
RL: You don’t want anyone skipping Viva Machine...
Tom: we want people listening the whole forty minutes.
DP: The only time we want anyone hitting the skip button is at the end of the last song, going back to the start.
Have you guys got particular favourites?
DP: My favourite is the one Tom swaps and plays keyboards on called ‘Here Comes The Speed Of Light’, and I really like the song we opened up with called ‘Earthquakes And Loveshakers’ Basically I like that so much because, well I like all the heavy groove
Tom: I really like ‘Mental State’ but no one’s heard it really, we played it in Swansea last week and we played it in Spain. Me and Chris (lead vocals/keys) both play keyboards on it and it’s a bit of an epic. It closes the album, and playing that live it just sounds huge. Definitely my favourite.
You’ve got some interesting song-titles, such as ‘A Futuristic Dracula’ and ‘Nothing Is Impossible In A Cardigan’. Where the hell do you come up with these names and what gives you the inspiration for them?
DP: Some of them are just random sentences that come up in conversation and someone will go “that’s a song title!”
Tom: I think the album is a pretty good reflection of the last year of our lives and all the song titles are part of that’s happened to us.
DP: You hear a lot of bands write about love lives and a lot of bands recently write about things really literally. A lyric in a typical modern indie band could be “I went to a pub and saw a girl I fancied but she didn’t fancy me back”
Tom: I think we can write about what a lot of other people would write about, but we try to wrap it a different way. So many bands write literal lyrics that mean exactly what they say, whereas on something like ‘A Futuristic Dracula’ you wouldn’t really know what it’s about until you read it and work it out for yourself.
RL: So are you telling us that 'Death Star Trucker' isn’t about space truckers from mars?
Tom: Yeah.
DP: (mock serious) No. It’s not... It’s about Darth Vader.
Tom: A lot of the songs have a lot of metaphors, it’s kind of like saying “fuck you and I’ll do whatever I like.”
Have you started gearing up for the release?
Tom: The main thing at the moment is a label to put out the album. We’re looking to get out on tour in October, we’re hoping for a headline tour in November. There’s a lot of plans but hopefully it’ll all come together.
And the last time Rocklouder saw you, you threw out special ‘Viva Machine Shakers’. What are they and is that something you do regularly?
DP: (laughing) That was just for that tour really.
Tom: The palaver!
DP: The night before the tour it was just me and Tom in the rehearsal room making these shakers.
Tom: We must have made about 350 shakers. It felt like child labour.
DP: We used them at every show until they ran out.
Tom: I think we had to kind of stop it because (laughs) Chris was throwing them quite violently into the audience, y’know, hitting girls in the face and stuff.
DP: I wouldn’t mind doing something like that again. Bring ‘em back. Or something else.
Tom: We used to throw out kazoos.
DP: For the shakers we raided Lidls. If you want to make shakers, go to Lidls!
RL: What goes into it or is it a Viva Machine secret?
Tom: Packs of water, full or not, you can get a 24 pack for about a quid! And like a massive pack of rice for like 50p,
DP: Electrical tape, paper and a printer to put VM on.
Okay, and finally, are there any bands that you’ve been listening to that our readers might not know, and really should?
Tom: There’s Sons Of Thunder, they’re here tonight actually.
DP: If you like good heavy rock and roll check them out. Friends Electric are brilliant too.
Tom: Then you’ve got Shiny Toy Guns.
DP: I’m not sure if they’re that big over here yet, but they’re just phenomenal. One of the greatest live shows.
Now head on over to the Viva Machine myspace and listen to your heart's content! We recommend 'Robot Bodyrox'!
Phillip May
Viva Machine Myspace
Buy Viva Machine CDs | Buy Viva Machine mp3s | Buy Viva Machine Tickets | Buy Viva Machine Merch
We catch up with drummer Dai (DP) and Bassist Tom after a storming live set in Cardiff, and chat about the progress of their début album and how useful Lidl’s can be for upcoming bands.
Write-ups have had difficulty coming to a clear decision on what you sound like, with comparisons being as diverse as Yes, The Automatic and Isis. How would you describe it?
Tom: I quite like the fact that people can’t make up their minds, really, but it’s intriguing then; you want to go and see a band live to see what they actually sound like.
DP: I’d say we chuck in a lot of music, we all listen to very different music and we all have very different bands that we all like. I think that people have difficulty putting us in a genre; I find a lot of the time you get packed in with who you’re touring with, when we toured with the Shiny Toy Guns, people were calling us electro, and then when we toured with The Automatic we were an indie band. It would be nice if people could think for themselves.
Tom: Dai’s favourite bands are, like, Queens Of The Stone Age...
DP: Yeah, I guess I have the heaviest taste so I kind of bring the rock, I like Clutch and Mastodon and stuff like that. And then the other guys, they bring the harmonies
Tom: Big fans of Weezer.
DP: (laughs) We do like a bit of ‘oo-ee-ooh’s and ‘bah-bahhs’. That’s basically from Weezer and The Beach Boys. We’ve got the heavier riffs, and then we’ve got pop melodies.
Tom: Our aim is to combine the groove of QOTSA with the madness of Jarcrew and the harmonies of Weezer and a little bit of the knife thrown in.
DP: That’s where the keyboards come in.
Tom: And if we can combine all them, we’ll be well on our way.
DP: (to Tom, with a grin) Oh, we’re nearly there.
Has this broad range of styles allowed you to fit in on any kind of bills?
DP: It’s kind of made it harder and easier in different ways. Sometimes we’ll tour with a band like the Shiny Toy Guns, and even though we don’t sound like them, we fit... the same with The Automatic. But at the same time, if we were to sit and rack our brains ‘who do we tour with, who’ll fit?’ we can’t think of anyone. So it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage, really.
Tom: I think that’s quite good, as when we toured with those bands, there were a lot of people who didn’t really know what to make of us, but liked us. They might have been into electro but when they came to see us hopefully they found something that they liked.
Right, let’s get on to the album, then. Is it ready?
DP: It’s 99.999% ready! There’s just two little things we need to do. There’s one little thing I’m not happy about. I want to take something out.
Tom: (grinning) All the drums
DP: Plus, obviously, we need to find a label and they’ll probably re-mix it a bit.
Tom: But as far as the recording goes we’re pretty much done, and we’ve been listening to it loads. We’re not one of those bands that can’t listen to their own music, (laughs) I like our music.
DP: (laughing) If you don’t make music you don’t like listening to then quit, just die!!
That’s a bit harsh! When can we expect the album to be released?
Tom: Well we’re thinking early 2008...
DP: But in music industry terms, that’ll probably be 2009.
What can we expect from it?
DP: (pauses to find the right words) Eleven hits of pure rock. (Both laugh)
Tom: I think there’s a lot of tracks on there that people wouldn’t expect from us.
DP: yeah there’s a lot of diversity.
Tom: That’s the good thing about it. It’s still Viva Machine, but, like the track we played tonight ‘Here Comes The Speed Of Light’ that I play keyboards on, it’s a lot different to what we normally do. There’s a bit of an eighties groove to that one.
And what do you expect from the album?
DP: (pauses) We expect ... nothing, but we would like... (chooses words as modestly as possible) international superstardom.
Tom: We’re just hoping to get on tour as soon as possible and just keep touring until the album’s done, and then go to America and do it there.
DP: We’re far more of a touring band. We find ourselves far more comfortable on tour than in a studio. Especially as we’re doing it very old-school; there’s no one with us, we drive , we set up our stuff, we tour for months on end...
Tom: and then we come back and work jobs for a couple of months and then we go out again.
DP: And we love it.
Tom: I can’t wait till we’re on tour so we can just chill at the back of the bus.
Is it difficult juggling the job and the music?
Tom: I think we’re quite lucky in the jobs that we’ve found. I don’t think there’s many jobs that would put up with us going out on tour for so long.
DP: Where I work it’s a bar run by a family, and they’re all big fans. So I can just say to the boss “I need to go out on tour next month” and he’ll say “awesome, tell me when you’re playing and we’ll come watch it.”
Tell us a bit about some of the tracks that will be appearing on the album.
DP: Well there’s some that people will know: [b]‘A Futuristic Dracula’ which is the oldest song on the album.
Tom: Then obviously the songs that are on the internet; ‘Death Star Trucker’, ‘Robot Bodyrox’, ‘Yo Ho’, and a new track up called ‘Oxygen’, probably the chilled track off the album.
DP: We’ve got another one called ‘Hospital’ which is really chilled.
Tom: It’s [the album] quite to the point, there’s no filler.
DP: We made a point of that; we made an album ourselves a couple of years ago.
RL: Ipsofacto?
DP: (laughing) They’ve done their homework! Well, that record had a couple of tracks of filler on it, and I was so opposed to it on this album.
Tom: the albums that we love are the albums that have got eleven brilliant songs on them. That’s why I hate Mars Volta... well I don’t hate them, but they’ll have some amazing bits, and then eight minutes of-
DP: a lot of wank.
Tom: eight minutes of wank.
DP: you know, eight minutes of, like, a sample of birds or weird noises.
Tom: It’s just ‘skip, skip, skip, skip’.
RL: You don’t want anyone skipping Viva Machine...
Tom: we want people listening the whole forty minutes.
DP: The only time we want anyone hitting the skip button is at the end of the last song, going back to the start.
Have you guys got particular favourites?
DP: My favourite is the one Tom swaps and plays keyboards on called ‘Here Comes The Speed Of Light’, and I really like the song we opened up with called ‘Earthquakes And Loveshakers’ Basically I like that so much because, well I like all the heavy groove
Tom: I really like ‘Mental State’ but no one’s heard it really, we played it in Swansea last week and we played it in Spain. Me and Chris (lead vocals/keys) both play keyboards on it and it’s a bit of an epic. It closes the album, and playing that live it just sounds huge. Definitely my favourite.
You’ve got some interesting song-titles, such as ‘A Futuristic Dracula’ and ‘Nothing Is Impossible In A Cardigan’. Where the hell do you come up with these names and what gives you the inspiration for them?
DP: Some of them are just random sentences that come up in conversation and someone will go “that’s a song title!”
Tom: I think the album is a pretty good reflection of the last year of our lives and all the song titles are part of that’s happened to us.
DP: You hear a lot of bands write about love lives and a lot of bands recently write about things really literally. A lyric in a typical modern indie band could be “I went to a pub and saw a girl I fancied but she didn’t fancy me back”
Tom: I think we can write about what a lot of other people would write about, but we try to wrap it a different way. So many bands write literal lyrics that mean exactly what they say, whereas on something like ‘A Futuristic Dracula’ you wouldn’t really know what it’s about until you read it and work it out for yourself.
RL: So are you telling us that 'Death Star Trucker' isn’t about space truckers from mars?
Tom: Yeah.
DP: (mock serious) No. It’s not... It’s about Darth Vader.
Tom: A lot of the songs have a lot of metaphors, it’s kind of like saying “fuck you and I’ll do whatever I like.”
Have you started gearing up for the release?
Tom: The main thing at the moment is a label to put out the album. We’re looking to get out on tour in October, we’re hoping for a headline tour in November. There’s a lot of plans but hopefully it’ll all come together.
And the last time Rocklouder saw you, you threw out special ‘Viva Machine Shakers’. What are they and is that something you do regularly?
DP: (laughing) That was just for that tour really.
Tom: The palaver!
DP: The night before the tour it was just me and Tom in the rehearsal room making these shakers.
Tom: We must have made about 350 shakers. It felt like child labour.
DP: We used them at every show until they ran out.
Tom: I think we had to kind of stop it because (laughs) Chris was throwing them quite violently into the audience, y’know, hitting girls in the face and stuff.
DP: I wouldn’t mind doing something like that again. Bring ‘em back. Or something else.
Tom: We used to throw out kazoos.
DP: For the shakers we raided Lidls. If you want to make shakers, go to Lidls!
RL: What goes into it or is it a Viva Machine secret?
Tom: Packs of water, full or not, you can get a 24 pack for about a quid! And like a massive pack of rice for like 50p,
DP: Electrical tape, paper and a printer to put VM on.
Okay, and finally, are there any bands that you’ve been listening to that our readers might not know, and really should?
Tom: There’s Sons Of Thunder, they’re here tonight actually.
DP: If you like good heavy rock and roll check them out. Friends Electric are brilliant too.
Tom: Then you’ve got Shiny Toy Guns.
DP: I’m not sure if they’re that big over here yet, but they’re just phenomenal. One of the greatest live shows.
Now head on over to the Viva Machine myspace and listen to your heart's content! We recommend 'Robot Bodyrox'!
Phillip May
Viva Machine Myspace
Buy Viva Machine CDs | Buy Viva Machine mp3s | Buy Viva Machine Tickets | Buy Viva Machine Merch
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