“I’m Blaine.” “I’m William.” “I’m Kai.” “I’m Erol.”
That’s the introductions sorted then. On the back of completing their second album together, three members of The Mystery Jets caught up once again with producer Erol Alkan to quiz him on the band, what they were like to work with and what it’s like to be a dance producer with fingers in an indie band pie. Sitting on the table next to them in a greasy spoon in Old Street, London, Clash sneakily turned on its tape recorder and had a little listen in…
William: Did you enjoy making the Mystery Jets album?
Erol: Yes, very much so. I enjoyed it massively.
William: Thank you.
Erol:If I was to delve in a little deeper, I think that with the creation of anything as intricate as an album is or can potentially be, then you go on a pretty intense rollercoaster ride. I think that’s pretty healthy though. I’d be kind of surprised if it wasn’t something like that.
William: You expect it to be hard work don’t you?
Erol: I expect it to be hard, it’s a general honesty and general truth of what people want to say is the most important thing. At the moment there is a massive cult of people just going in and bashing stuff out – I think a lot is lacking in those records. There are also records that are just made to a formula, a current formula. And what I mean by that is that people are making albums where people don’t actually need to play on them. I think striking that balance where everybody [artists and producers] feels like they’ve put themselves into it and got themselves across is quite a tightrope. When it’s well balanced you come out with something far greater than anyone really expected. I think with this record everyone is really happy with the outcome of it. I know I am – I’m really proud of it.
Blaine: I think one of the most interesting things for me was looking back to a year ago, when we were making demos of everything. On the first record, we didn’t really do demos. We’d write the song, then do a bad recording of a song, and then do a good recording of it. I feel with this record we really got our teeth into the process much deeper, I mean for one song ‘Hideaway’, there’s something like seven different versions of it.
Erol: I think that’s really important that you did that. When people are on their second record, they’re sometimes not allowed to do the things they did in order to make their first. I mean when you made your first record you probably sat in each other’s bedrooms loads, learning and honing it and developing each detail. By the time you hit your second record, you’ve probably been on tour for ages and are sick of the sight of each other. You know what I mean? All these things change the dynamic within the band. So when it comes round to actually being creative again and listening and being honest to one another, and getting across to each other what you want to say, it can be quite hard to do that because there’s all these other factors that are getting in the way of making music. Plus most of the time people are tired.
Kai: That’s one of the things about being in a band – before you get into it it’s some kind of dream. Like a utopia where life will be better, but you never really make it – you might write a great song, but then you have to write another great song. You can’t really stop.
Erol: Even if you have massive success, by the time you come to your second record you’re a bit like ‘how are we going to top that?’ If you haven’t had it, then it feels even harder, you feel like you’ve got to reinvent yourself.
Blaine: I was reading something the other day that said second albums fit into this thing where they’re more serious but with less tunes. I think with our second album it has been us realising what kind of band we are. I feel like on our first record we were a bunch of kids who’d been playing live for five years with a bunch of songs. Having had the last year or eighteen months to write the second record I think we really found within ourselves who we are as songwriters and what we want to say about stuff.
William: This feels like more like a debut album to me. I really feel like our second record is like our first proper record. I don’t want to discount ‘Making Dens’, because I love that album to bits, but it’s all over the shop and this record is a much more focused effort and feels more substantial. ‘Making Dens’ was more the growing up album. When you’ve had five years to write the first one and then you’ve got just one to write the next one, you’re like, ‘Shit! What are we gonna do?’ These songs just came to us. They had been building up over the last two or three years while touring, and luckily they all seemed to fit together.
Erol: I think the poppier moments on this record are poppier than what you’ve done before, and the darker and intense bits are much darker and more intense as well.
Blaine: A lot of that has come from the responsibilities of writing in the band, and changing quite a lot between records. With Henry I think we’re very good at reading each other’s minds so writing lyrics can be quite an easy process as we’re both totally on the same track. We’ve all got a lot better at getting our heads together.
Kai: It’s been a massive learning curve of writing from the first album, song-writing wise and lyric wise.
Blaine: Can I ask you a question that’s a little bit off the subject of our record? If you could choose any artist or group from the past or present to create a one-day long dream studio session with, who would it be? And where?
Erol: I dunno. I’ve always said that. I find it really, really hard to work with people or bands that I don’t already know. I’ve had offers to work with bands that I absolutely love and have grown up loving… I won’t name names, as it’s not really appropriate, but their last few records haven’t been stuff that have naturally excited me. I think if I agreed to do it, it would be working off the past a little bit. I like to work with people who I can see their current way of thinking or their approach is something that excites me. I prefer that more so than doing something that relates to the past, just because they’re a name. I don’t really have any ambition to work with anybody. I just like working with people that I know and I like.
When it comes to working with bands, instead of going in and doing what people are expecting this record to be; something that’s slightly dance edged, which it obviously it isn’t, it’s song based. It’s timeless – if I make records with bands, people have to get up on stage and play these songs. I’d like to think they could do that and do the music justice now, and do the same in twenty years. It’s all about capturing a sound.
William: Is that a conscious decision you made as a producer producer? Some remixers or DJs go on to produce but stay within their ‘ponds’. For example Switch working with M.I.A. is logical, but you working with us or The Long Blondes isn’t as logical.
Erol: The thing is I think that the qualities that are inherent in dance music are actually subliminally in your songs. It’s a different kind of rhythm. It’s a way of making people move in a different way. With dance music there this kind of thud that links people together. When people are writing songs the focus has to be on what words are coming out the speakers and what they’re saying and how they’re being said. That’s what part of my job is, is to make sure what you’re trying to say is being understood. How can you say that Roxy Music are less danceable than The Chemical Brothers or vice versa? They’re both brilliant and when you put them on you want to move. My reference points with working with bands is not dance music or what I do as a remixer. Far from it. What I feel I do with bands is more of a continuation of what I did at somewhere like Trash (famous indie night in London) rather than what I do with dance music.
Blaine: How receptive do you think your fans are gonna be of the work you did with say ours, or The Long Blondes’ records? Do you think they’ll buy them because you did them or that they’ll see qualities about them that they’ll like as listeners?
Erol: I think the latter. For me it would be some kind of victory if all the people who like listening to the dance music I do say that they really love the Mystery Jets album. So what now for The Mystery Jets? Are you looking forward to going on tour?
William: Yeah. We haven’t been on the road for about a year, other than a short stint in America. Personally I can’t wait for it – I can’t wait for my time to be organised for me and my meals spoon fed to me. It’s going to great.
Blaine: I just want to find a way of delivering this record live in a way that, you know, when we first started we thought a lot about putting drama into our set – and Kai provided a lot of the drama, with his dance moves and stuff… It’s not just about going up there and playing it; I want it to be as exciting as we can possibly make it. I want us to get to the point where the sound physically penetrates people. I also think we should not just rehearse songs that are already written; I think we should jam more. It’s something bands don’t really do nowadays. It seems to me that a lot of bands write a tune, learn how to play it and then gig it for a year, and then do the same again.
Erol: What was your favourite memory of making the record?
Blaine: I think the peak of it was Henry driving his Harley into the middle of the recording studio and revving it until he reached a top G on the engine. And Ray Davies walking in and having a chat about acoustic guitars.
Erol: I think Ray wanted to add a couple of tracks with us!
Blaine: I actually remember Ray Davies coming in and walking round – he was there because he was rehearsing for a gig he was doing at the Royal Albert Hall. I remember walking in and filming him rehearsing on my phone through the window and he had the lyrics to ‘You Really Got Me’ in front of him on a sheet of paper… I mean I don’t need the lyrics to ‘You Really Got Me’ to sing it!
Erol: He had like a red rinse in his hair as well.
Blaine: Lavender. I would say he had a lavender rinse.
Erol: So any other questions you got for me?
Blaine: I think I’m all out actually!
William: We’ve run ourselves dry.
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INTERVIEW BY JOSH JONES
