Seafood, Y-fronts and Doctor Who - an interview with Chrome Hoof

Seafood, Y-fronts and Doctor Who - an interview with Chrome Hoof

17 May, 2010
by: Tom Jeffreys

The amazing and completely incomparable Chrome Hoof have got a new album coming out. Tom Jeffreys chats with one of their large number.

About this time last year I ventured to the Coronet in Elephant Castle to see peculiary performance artist fellow Marcus Coates don a real horse's head and neigh around on-stage as part of some kind of shamanic ritual with London-based musical collective Chrome Hoof. Mixing funk, metal, electro stabs and blasts of brutal noise, Chrome Hoof were almost a mess. But the band are so tight, and the pounding rhythms – simultaneously shifting and inexorable – ensure that their music never seems simply indulgent.

With a new album, 'Crush Depth', out soon and a big old party on 4th June to celebrate its launch, I thought it'd be nice to have a wee chat with keyboard/synth/sampler guru, Emmett Elvin. Seafood, Y-fronts, Doctor Who and what owls really think about: yes, it's as odd as you'd expect.

Your on-stage appearance has been likened (by, um, us) to what it would look like “if all the baddies from Doctor Who had got together for a bit of a jam”. Can you talk us through your choice of outfits, and the pre-show dressing routine?

Funny you should say that – the original outfits were run up by Davros. He'd fallen on hard times and was running a fabric stall on Walthamstow Market. Ugly as Satan's jobbies he was, but well handy with a needle and thread. These days we have proper designers who make the outfits – they actually measure us and stuff.

What's the most memorable thing you've ever worn on or off-stage?

Our 12ft electric-eyed, chromium ram came on in acid green Y-fronts once. The lighting was really slack, though, so no one noticed. He was a bit gutted.

Were you out-weirded in any way by Marcus Coates?

In several ways. His keenness to walk the streets of the Elephant and Castle dressed in his pants and a badger on his head. It was great working with Marcus – we took each other to some genuinely bizarre landscapes. We found out stuff about what tawny owls and hedgehogs really think, too. Well, maybe...

With so many members, how does the song-writing process work?

We've discovered it's a waste of time bringing anything fully formed into a songwriting session. We'll have a bunch of raw sound-nuggets kicking around and use these as starting points. After that it's usually an alchemical process passsing through the following three stages: 1) confused groping (plus minor arguments/hissy fits); 2) grim cacophany (including walkouts and death threats); 3) sieving out the dodgy bits and seeing what's left. Nothing left at all.

How much do you all hang out together? Ever all go to the grocers en masse in your silver robes?

We hang out quite a bit, usually involving fine booze or massive amounts of mussels cooked in fine booze. The local grocers doesn't do mussels or fine booze, so they've been denied the silver robe treatment.

Will the new album see a new look?

It's always evolving. From chrome, all the way to chrome – and back again.

So what can we expect from the 'Crush Depth'?

It'll be wider, with more knobbles on it.

How will it differ from 'Pre-Emptive False Rapture'?

About 49 weeks different. 'PEFR' was recorded in 3 weeks or so. This monster took a year. It was like giving birth to a 14-pound spiny lobster. Slow, agonising and bloody.

Is there anyone else in the world doing music like yours?

Given the accidental processes we use, it would be bizarre if there was. The Hoof's music comes out of interplay and conflict. We have little or no idea how something's going to turn out when we start, which is one reason it's pointless to bring fixed ideas into a session. When Leo and Milo [Smee] started the band they were at almost polar opposites in the music they made. Each new recruit has added their own weird, new ingredient into the recipe. We don't set out to mash up genres, we just either make it somehow work, or go hungry.

What are you most looking forward to about the album launch party?

We'll have been honing the new songs at various shows, mixing them in with 'PEFR' stuff, but the album launch will be the first, proper, dedicated show where we play everything in one place. It's going to be very much our own affair, too: sound and vision the Hoof way, in the Temple of Hoof – and no compromises. And bloody amazing DJs.

The 'Crush Depth' launch party is at Bocking Street Warehouse, 4th June 2010.

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Tom Jeffreys