Black Ghosts Interview at Glastonbury

Black Ghosts Interview at Glastonbury

28 July, 2008
by: Sherbet

Having both been in chart-bothering British electronica bands at the turn of the century, perhaps The Black Ghosts were born for big things. Simon Lord was lead vocalist with Simian who had a smash hit 'LaBreeze' before splitting to form Simian Mobile Disco back in 2005. his band mate Theo Keating, aka Touchѐ, was one half of The Wiseguys, who scored multiple chart toppers including 'Start the Commotion', and 'Ooh La La'.

Now on Fatboy Slim's Southern Fried label, Black Ghosts – despite a name that conjures images of gothic horror – play brooding electro pop that marries banging backbeats with intelligent and thoughtful lyrics.

Hitting the Dance East tent for the last official day of the Glastonbury Festival, the duo played to a smallish bunch of revellers who seemed determined to celebrate the last of the gracious sun. As the set drew on this gathering seemed to grow and grow as they drew in more and more passers-by with their infectious hooks. Constantly pleasing the crowd of happy burn outs, the duo kept the pace high with good bass-lines and high energy anthems.

Cornering them before they took to the stage, I found out how they had created nearly half the album before they even met, and what the whole Gothic theme is all about.

SF- How are you two enjoying Glasto? How long have you been here?

T- Well, we only arrived this morning so we haven't had a chance to look around yet.

S- We've been to a few Glastonbury's in the past and still wear the battle scars from the last washed-out festival. I use to come when you could pay a man ten quid to use his ladder to climb over the fence. It's evolved so much since then. The weather's been perfect today so it might easily change our view of the festival.

SF- Is it true that you met on the internet?

T- Not exactly. It's not like we were in a chat room or anything. I was a big fan of Simian and especially Simon's work so I got his email through a friend and asked if he'd be interested in working on a few tunes together. I was already working on an album for a separate project and thought I could use a few songs collaborated with Simon to add to it. We would send back and forth ideas and see if we could make it come together. There was never any stress as it was basically a sideline project.

S- At the time, we weren't thinking about Black Ghosts.

T- We were creating a few great songs over about three months and realised we had something here. So I put aside the other music I was working on and focused on this.

SF- Was there a bit of a personality clash when you finally met in person?

T- Not at all. It was a chat over what type of music we liked.

S- The problem with electronic music is that you're constantly glued to a computer screen all day. When you have several members of a band playing multiple instruments you can bounce ideas off each other instantaneously and inspire separate parts of a song.

S- I like to write songs quickly - in one go. I feel you loose that spark if you don't write as furiously as possible when an idea comes into your head. Songs seem to work out better if you're not pedantic about every beat and lyric. Good ones just sort of come to you.

T- Simon would often send over a song played on guitar to suit the lyrics he wrote and I would develop the tune. Being apart, doing our own thing, meant there was no sitting around waiting for the other person to finish.

SF- If you were a proud parent sticking one of your songs up on the fridge, which would it be?

S- It's hard to say, they're all so different. Each of the songs has their own sound and so you like them for different reasons.

SF- You're about to launch your debut album together on July 7th, why should we buy it?

T- Because it's fantastic!

S- We wanted this album to be part pop, part electronic. When you say pop you think of Britney Spears and that kind of thing. It has elements of electro so it's perfect for a club scene but there's other songs that are more relaxed and could be listened to at home on the couch. We used catchy choruses that everyone could sing like on 'Anyway You Choose...'. We want to create a buzz from a song straight away and have people dancing.

T- Each song is very different, which makes the album interesting.

SF- How did you come up with the name 'Black Ghosts'?

T- We both loved horror films and the genre of gothic growing up; the name evokes those images of psychedelic horror, streets punk and gangs.

S- We think quite visually when creating an album, what you will see on the cover is very important in the success of the album. Gothic lends itself to fun imagery and aesthetics like the dripping lettering, skulls and such. We have been described as part of the whole emo/Goth scene because of our imagery but we're far from it.

T- We're influenced by the gothic but we're not Goth and there's a big difference.

SF- What should we expect of Black Ghosts for the upcoming year?

S- We're on tour through the UK, America and Japan.

SF- Well, Japan has an enormous Goth-pop scene.

S- Exactly, there's the whole bubblegum goth scene with their teens and it's a big market over there. We were actually told that if we wanted to sell in Japan we would need to change our album cover from the black and white design and add more colour.

T- They came back with a mock cover, which was completely rainbow. We compromised and have put some colours in the parts of the drawings – on the teeth of the skull.

The Black Ghosts' self-titled album is due for release on the 7th of July on Southern Fried.

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Sherbet