August
28
Set List Interview: James Lavelle of Unkle
James Lavelle, who together with Pablo Clements makes up Unkle, points out that the band’s new release, “End Titles…Stories For Film,” is not an album of new music but it functions as an album.
Ten of the album’s tracks were featured in the Abel Ferrara documentary “Odyssey in Rome,” “Broken” appears in “X Files: I Want to Believe” and “Trouble in Paradise” was featured in a BMW advertisement. Among their collaborators are Gavin Clark, South’s Joel Cadbury and Black Mountain. The album, already released digitally, becomes available at retail Sept. 2.
“It’s important to stay active with Unkle,” Lavelle told the Set List, partially explaining the existence of “End Titles.” “There’s no need to do a record every four years as if it’s a big statement that somehow will change the world.”
Lavelle formed the Mo' Wax label in his teens and essentially birthed trip-hop until an attempt to sell the label and still remain a recording artist turned into a giant mess. With Unkle, a band name he has used since the early ‘90s, the manner in which he works has changed considerably and he is starting to see how others function.
“We toured for a year and I want to take that energy into the studio. It’s a real way to write – about 99% of the bands do things that way – and we can make a record we can tour on. I just want to keep the momentum going. I don’t want to wait five years. We’re never going to be a hot new band. We’re self sufficient and at a creative peak. We should keep ourselves there.”
Lavelle is in the studio with his touring band, writing songs based on jams. The new way of working, last year's "War Stories" and the brilliance of Black Mountain were all subjects we discussed.
Q: On first listen I kept imagining a black screen with names scrolling by and tried to imagine what sort of film I had just seen. By using a title as suggestive as this, was there an intention to make all of the songs sound as if they were a resolution of some sort?
A: It was originally titled ‘Film Stories’ because I wanted to show a continuity with previous records. This was a collection of tracks from previous projects and for fun we added to the mix. The concern from a distribution element was that it would be seen as a B-sides record. Struggling with economic thinking, the title was geared toward the moving picture. It’s not too literal — it’s sort of a DJ mix of music for film. It’s name for a track on the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack. It has the sort of feel of a title of an Unkle album.
Q: The album does have a coherence to it — it all could come from one film.
A: A lot is about leaving it to the imagination. There’s an ambiguousness, creating your own picture. Right now we’re doing a version of the record that’s strings and ambient sounds and it’s much more cinematic. The record we have made is juggling two things — certain things are very specifically written for TV shows, trailers and games and people have heard them in that context. We also wanted to gather stuff we had sitting around — the soundtrack genre is pretty broad.
Q: How did you choose the collaborators?
A: Gavin (Clark) was pretty specific when we made the Abel Ferrara film and other projects. With Josh, we did ‘Chemistry’ and it had been used for everything — (the Brit TV show) “Spooks” and “CSI” and it was huge in the (U.K.) car show ‘Top Gear.’ I thought it would be good to include, but not as an instrumental. It was meant to be a song. Josh didn’t have time to finish it for “War Stories’ and eventually he finished it, so we decided to put it on this album and hear it in a different light. Black Mountain music was used in a documentary. ‘Ghosts’ was for a Russian vampire film that I don’t know if it ever came out.
Q: Black Mountain’s music is quite cinematic and varied on its own. How did that work?
A: Black Mountain are an amazing band. The track was done by sending through email. I asked them to do a remix and they asked what’s he talking about? So I did a house mix and I’m not even sure they listened to it. In the end we put it out and it was nice thing for them to let us use.
I was trying to get them on ‘War Stories’ and they sent me some ideas. They’re quite in their own world, a place where time stands still. In six months time, we got a track from them. They were in London and after the gig I met him — very positive, very sweet, hoping to work with them again. When I saw them I noticed how it was very different from what we do. It’s quite restrictive when we perform — we’ve got orchestrations, 20 guitars, samples. There’s so much freedom for bands that can just play.
They’re hip because people get to discover them They’re not on the cover of NME where everything is super young and hip and gone tomorrow. People realize it’s heartfelt.
Q: When you see the pieces as songs that had a specific use, is it crucial to alter them before they make it to record. You had a tune in BMW commercial — did you need to finish it or was it ready to go?
A: “Trouble in Paradise” is probably my favorite sing on the album and that was for a BMW commercial. It’s horrible when you start talking about commercials, but this was a very creative operation. Norm and Mitch are very adventurous filmmakers and this was their first advert. We’re like them in that we use high-tech lighting and the way it came together was something unusual rather than a commercial. We got the attention for it and people requested the song and talked about releasing it as a single but we were a bit uneasy about it. It has become our most downloaded song (since the U.K. release).
Q: How do you divide up the jobs between Pablo and yourself?
A: Pablo is very much studio oriented, constantly surrounded by synths. I tend to be trying to deal with the overall picture. When it comes to writing, we go through everything together. I’m out working all day, he’ll be in the studio all day and we’ll have a kind of meeting in the early evening when we sift through ideas.
Q: You started a label when you were a teenager — what remains the same and what has changed?
A: I’m still searching for the same thing, the interest is still the same, but I have grown as an artist and I’m saying things I haven’t said in the past. Some of it comes out of cynicism. I made a dramatic leap when I decided to not make things so complicated. I’m not an educated musician – it’s all sampling and stealing other people’s music. When we write it tends to be more about beats and sounds. It seems to be a much better working system. It was painful when we started.
When I started, the people making the music were quite global. It wasn’t a very big scene and at the time it was quite a struggle to sell records, a different kind of struggle than we have now. A Mo’ Wax release could sell 50,000 singles and be quite successful — sell 20,000 to 40,000 and become No. 1on the indie chart. As a result we started to do well on the indie charts but it did not translate onto the national chart.
Q: You mentioned that there was record of this material being worked on.
A: When we did the record, half the string arrangements didn’t get used so we just went back and stripped it out and it became rather ambient. We have about eight tracks stripped back. We might do a website only release, maybe repackage it. There’s so much there that’s so different — just weird sounds ands so much beautiful music, much of it from my brother who really came out as a writer on this album.
Q: The next step?
A: We are writing our next record with our touring band, writing songs rather than the usual way. That tour was the first time I had ever played some of my music from beginning to end. I want to make a record we can tour on. … We’re self sufficient and at a creative peak. We should keep ourselves there.
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