Simian Mobile Disco are an ever-evolving musical experiment that threatens to take over the world. In between producing a myriad of other groups, crafting some expert remixes and touring the planet Jas Shaw and James Ford have found enough to time to pin down their belting new album, ‘Temporary Pleasure’. Working at their home studio on some rare days off, the pair gathered a slew of star names to work on perhaps their most impressive statement to date.
ClashMusic tracked down Jas Shaw to talk about ‘Temporary Pleasure’ and touring the world…
You’ve been touring almost constantly, how have you adjusted to this?
It’s gone really well, actually. To be honest when we started it we only wanted to do about a dozen gigs. It’s sort of taken on a bit of a life of it’s own, and it’s kind of affected the way we record. The live rig has almost become an instrument in it’s own right it has such an effect on the way you play.
Have you found playing live a suitable vehicle to debut new material?
Definitely. There’s quite a few tracks that we’ve put into the live show which I think are better live. Usually it’s something like an accident will happen one night…. I guess it’s that slow evolution. I’ve got a feeling that with some of them, because there are better live versions, that we’ll end up trying to record something live in order to capture it.
Has the increase in the size of venues forced you to consider the way you approach your sound?
To a certain extent yes, actually. It’s something that we’ve only recently come up against. I guess the original rig was made for five hundred to one thousand capacity venues, and we’re just edging out of that at the moment. Not everywhere but in some cities. It’s weird, you know, that transition you do when you have to play for a larger place. Less musically than in terms of the whole show, as I think musically I don’t think you need to change how you play for a larger audience. But in terms of translating, the experience that you have when you see us, trying to make things work in a bigger venue is something that we are only just bumping up against at the moment. Our sound guy is working like a maniac.
I’ve read that you would play a series of dates then go into the studio – how did the album form?
At the very end we had a good three weeks to compile and mix and finish off stuff. Actually we ended up writing a bit of stuff in that period as well. But most of it was done in a couple of days here and there, back from touring or whatever. Gaps in production schedules. It worked out really well for us to be honest as it meant that it wasn’t something that we laboured over, we would have a couple of days there and make some tunes simply because we wanted to.
With all the remix work and live variations, is there ever a danger in your own mind that won’t know when to draw a line, and say when something is finished?
Yeah, to an extent it’s continually evolving. I think it’s an interesting point that we have to draw a line under things because I think that a record really is drawing the line. If someone had said, “right we’re going to push the deadline for the album back eight months”, maybe some tracks would have stayed in a different format alongside some new ones. Most people I know need a deadline to force them to make decisions, otherwise things can just go on and on. Having that impetus to say “OK we’d better make a decision now otherwise we can’t move on to the next thing and we need to move on to the next thing”. That sometimes is actually a positive form of pressure.
There’s a huge amount of guest stars on the album how did you go about assembling the cast?
It was touring that did it. The majority of people we met at festivals – at catering, watching other bands. All that. At festivals everyone is in the same boat, we’re all away from home, having a laugh with people, talking about music. The amount that we toured on the last record hooked us up with a huge amount of people. That wasn’t planned I guess it was just part of our existence, we would write a track that would need a certain type of vocal and we’d think, “oh well we met so and so at that festival, why don’t we chuck them an mp3 and see if they’re into it”. The response was surprising.
Are these guest slots true collaborations, or was the music created beforehand?
In all cases we had written instrumentals that needed a certain vocal and we would identify people who could maybe do that. I suppose the tracks were written but all the lyrics were entirely down to the vocalist. In many cases when the vocals came back we re-edited the instrumental in light of them – adding stuff or taking away, changing structures around.
Many of the singers are from indie music, is that indie rock structure still evident in your music?
Certainly not consciously. We did want to choose a fairly wide palette of vocalists, but it wasn’t a conscious thing to choose indie bands. It was more just a case of the music just needing a certain type of vocal. Generally speaking the bands were indie bands, because vocalists are such a focal point they have to have strong singers.
Does it take time to re-adjust to each other after working apart?
Not really, no. Most production things aren’t for ages, it’s not like a six month thing. Obviously we’ve done a bit of production together, and a bit of stuff apart but it’s all good. Often you get back and you’ve been in some studio and you’ve heard this bit of kit and you think it’s amazing. James’ll be the same saying, “oh I’ve been here and they’ve got this trick on the desk”. It’s all kind of like good tips and tricks that you’ve learned going through it. Obviously if you’re doing like a straight up indie band it doesn’t directly filter into what we’re doing but they’re all musical situations where you’re looking for solutions and you’d be surprised at how much techniques are useful in both spheres.
How did you create a sense of unity on the album? Is that what you used the three week period at the end for?
Yeah. Each day we’d have a look at a track and try to mix it by the end of the day. I think that consecutive mixing process results in a much more cohesive sound than recording in different environments over several months. It wasn’t that we were worrying about the album being cohesive because even with the rough mixes we had, it felt like listening to it as a whole. It all held together, it felt like a single statement. I think that while people talk about the album being an irrelevant format now that people listen to music on an iPod or whatever, musically speaking the process of looking at something as an introduction, building through and having peaks and troughs, tracks that are less immediate, a bit of variation… that’s useful because if you treat every track as something that has to live on its own it can make you tend towards making things that are less deep. It makes you tend towards things that are less immediate.
How important is the role of the home studio to you?
Both of us have got laptops, which are great to sketch ideas down, but nothing ever really gets finished on them. They’re great for knocking down little patterns or melodies, but we share a room that’s got our studio in it. It’s ours, so you’re not working so much to the clock. It’s something that both of us have been working towards for a long time, probably since we first moved to Manchester to start college. It was in the back of our heads to have our own, proper studio.
Is there a risk of burn out?
I’m not sure. Actually I sometimes worry the other way as I do think that keeping busy is inspiring, the more you do the more you can do and the more ideas you have. I don’t think that there are finite ideas in the world, or a finite amount of get up and go. But we have both definitely burnt the candle for quite a while. It’s weird the other day we had a day off and we just went into the studio.
Words by Robin Murray