Liars don’t so much take risks as implement enormous – impossible to predict – stylistic diversions.
Placed on shuffle, the band’s back catalogue moves from Freak Folk to punishing, near Industrial tones within a few moves. True Futurists, Liars simply divorce themselves from the past in order to find new ground to build on.
2010’s ‘Sisterworld’ saw Liars gain enormous critical praise. Relocating themselves to Los Angeles, the album was an evocation of the city itself – grimy, dangerous yet inspirational, the material was perhaps the band’s most inspired yet.
Deciding to remain in Los Angeles, Liars began sessions on a new album last year. Tracking down Liars frontman Angus Andrew, Clash Magazine published an ‘In The Studio’ feature in Issue 69.
Inspired, we present the full transcription…
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You’re known for enormous stylistic shifts, so what next?
I’m glad you say that. That’s basically what we want to do – we want to make a really extreme change. Like you said, we’re known a bit for doing that between records but we all thought it was time we got a bit more radical. So we’re really trying to experiment with everything we’ve never touched before and really trying to do anything which is even vaguely similar to what we’ve done before. It’s all about really, at the moment, it’s about experimenting like crazy with every idea –no idea is too weird. We’re doing everything. We’ve bought a tonne of these ting little microphones and we’ve attached them to everything we can think of – including our pets. Trying to get a grip on some sounds which we’ve never really heard before recorded.
Have you got your own studio just now?
I guess we’ve made it a studio. It’s this big abandoned building which used to be a jail, actually, and now we rented it and we just have this huge amount of space. It’s fairly derelict. A lot of the process so far has just been getting that space in order and I think that doing that is a good part of the music making process as well, just like I said, because it allows us to get into areas and sounds that we haven’t been able to be exposed to before. It’s not really a studio but I guess we’re creating a studio.
Are you working with a producer?
We do have a producer that we’re working with but at the moment I like to keep it on the download because he’s kind of a big name and it’s a little weird at the moment because we’re just getting the contracts done and everything. We’ve got a guy who we all respect – basically a hero of ours, musically – so we’re in the right hands, y’know?
Are there any direct influences you can name?
Well I guess we’re still in the early stages so I guess for me, at the moment, the key word is experimenting. Like you say, we have covered a lot of ground before so that’s why this part is so important so we can experiment and try to find sounds that we’ve never come across before in ways that we’ve never done before either. I mentioned that we’re using a lot of these microphones, attaching them to everything – burying them in the ground and stuff like that. We’re still interested in songs and stuff, so I guess if I was to list two bands: I’ve been listening to a lot of Dire Straights and also some of the earlier Bjork records. So y’know somewhere in between there! With microphones in the toilet basin, hopefully finding the medium between those sorts of styles. It’s very early on and it’s more about finding different ways of doing things. It’s not about picking up a guitar or playing a piano it’s more about building an ant nest. We’ve been making these videos – that’s one thing that’s pretty interesting – what we thought would be cool is if we shot videos so we would get knocked out of the idea of making an album and try to think a bit outside the box. That’s what’s got us going with the idea of experimentation.
Has shifting disciplines changed the way you approach the creative process?
It’s a massive thing to be able to put down the idea of music and to start thinking with other side of your brain. It’s a great fun, relief thing to do. It gets you going in a different way, it gets us all excited. When we work on music it’s got a lot to do with us being shut in a hole individually – we set ourselves up individually, do a lot of work and then come together. Even if we’re in the same space. When we start to do this visual stuff it’s way more of a group thing and something happens when you’re able to get this pro-active thing going a bit more and that seeps back into the music , if you like.
Will these changes affect the way you construct lyrics?
Yeah I would hope do. Like you said, it’s a bit early for that. I mean, in LA particularly it feels really easy to fall back into a similar idea to ‘Sisterworld’. I mean, just in terms of our surroundings – they’re the same. It’s a bit different. A lot of times when we make new records it’s in a new place and what’s different now is that the place where out studio is, is really pretty hardcore with a lot of homeless people living right around it. It’s hard to not sort of fall back into that way of thinking. You assume, but I don’t want it to be that way so it’s a question of directing those thoughts into a different direction. I would think that it’s probably a time to think about those ideas in a possibly more personal way – talking particularly about the individual and not necessarily about how the group works, or assumptions in the city. Like I said, it’s a bit early yet but it’s tough because it’s the same sort of surroundings.
You’ve all lived in several other cities, how are the band finding life in Los Angeles?
For me, it’s still Los Angeles and I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to the idea of having helicopters overhead all of the time. We don’t live in like the super posh part of the city so it’s pretty hardcore. I was in Berlin before which is just like this baby’s room compared to what Los Angeles feels like out in the street. It’s a question of how much that effects me, and whether I want that sort of thing to play into the work. At the moment it’s still pretty interesting and pretty intense but I don’t know how much longer I want to… You can have your phone on speed dial to phone the police helicopter which is circling your house with a spotlight. You’re allowed to call them and they’re supposed to tell you immediately why they’re circling your house. Normally it’s like home invasion, blockage yourself inside your house and stay there. That’s pretty intense to have that happening on a pretty regular basis. As I said, when it comes to the lyrics it’s hard not to be affected by that sort of thing.
You curated Belgium’s Sonic City over the summer, how did that go?
In theory, when we were approached with the idea of curating a festival and putting bands together it sounds like something you’d always want to do so we jumped at the change but it’s a great thing to do. Logistically, it’s a tough project to take on especially when you’re trying to get into writing a record. It’s the beurocratic side of trying to organise something like that, especially when it’s happening on the other side of the world. It’s a great thing, it’s something that if we were to do it again it has to be the number one priority. It’s a bigger deal than you anticipate when you first sign on, you think “yeah we’ll call up a bunch of people and we’ll all meet up in this tiny town in Belgium at this certain of the year” but people have schedules, we have schedules and it’s kind of a nightmare to bring it all together. I feel for all the people who do that sort of thing as a job!
Was it important to play as a band again?
Oh yeah. It’s really interesting, especially at this time as it signified the end of a long touring cycle for ‘Sisterworld’. It was the first time we’d been able to play anything, we could just go up and sort of experiment and because it was a bunch of people, friends who we were really close to it felt really comfortable. Going forward, it’s always nice when you’re making a record to have a show where you don’t have to play any old song. It’s really good to do that.
Do you take your lyrical inspiration from literature?
I guess it’s a good mix. It depends on what that personal point of view is and how much you want to put into it. Between records and projects to. Some scenarios – especially when we were in Berlin – the influence was really about shutting everything out, creating a kind of a vacuum. When you’re in somewhere like Los Angeles it’s really the opposite, it’s impossible to shut stuff out. You’re being bombarded with information. Just getting the LA Times every day and looking at that, the TV – everything that’s going on around you media wise, in itself is like an assault. All of it is pretty inspiring in a lot of ways, so it’s really about picking your poison when you’re in LA. Do I want to be influenced by these crazy news articles you read about people cutting each other up and putting each other in garbage bins? Or do I want to shut that out and concentrate on what it’s like in the soil in my back garden? It’s a vast difference and it’s all about what your focus is and what you want to take from it. At the moment it’s still up in the air for me, exactly how I want to respond at this time. There’s so many things that are going on in the world at this moment in time, I mean the whole sort of Arab Spring thing, that’s such an exciting subject matter but is that really what I want to spend my record thinking about? Am I in the right place to talk about that? It’s kind of about sifting through all the stuff that comes at you and picking out what’s best suited.
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Liars are currently recording their new album.
Interview by Robin Murray
