LOV3 MOT3L Interview
PD. What type of artist are you?
LM. I try to think of myself as more of a human being first. Whatever happens after that needs to occur organically. There was one time when l found myself in a storeroom of a Chinese takeaway staring at the roof and wondering how l would best interpret that into a new stage persona. My ego called this pretentious and that kind of only proved to me that l was on the right track. Everything needs to be natural. I like the word holistic
PD. Tell us the brief history of yourself
LM. As long as l can remember l have always felt alone. Music has always felt like a counterpart. You can be alone and still have a counterpart even if it isn’t something you can hold onto or define with words. I’m fascinated by the idea of songs floating around the cosmos just waiting to make their way into our world through humans. Once that has happened anything is possible. In that sense you are never alone, even in death, as you can transport this energy with you wherever you may end up. It keeps me warm.
I’m fascinated by the idea of songs floating around the cosmos just waiting to make their way into our world through humans.
PD. Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
LM. I always find this question amusing. I’m always more inspired by things more so than people. For example I found a spoon at a thrift store a few months back and the engravings were exquisite. I went straight home and wrote a letter to myself outlining my ideas for what would
become Outside’s Broken.
PD. What are your dreams and goals?
LM. I never learnt to ride a bike. It seems like such a simple dream but to me there is so much l need to overcome before it can become my reality. One day however l will be in Amsterdam riding an old rusty bike over canal after canal. I can sense the pedals moving. The tension building as l push myself. I just can’t imagine how to balance on the contraption as that is where my core issue lies.
PD. Who writes your songs? What are they about?
LM. The songs usually start with Alf coming up with some inspiration after going through some kind of catastrophic meltdown (dinnae worry, he’s fine). Then we’ll bounce them back and forth, adding bits, taking bits out, fretting over those bits, putting them back in until they take shape. Sometimes Alf will have another meltdown in the middle of this process and redo the whole bang shoot. Then it all starts again. So basically, when we finally sell enough records to build a swimming pool, Alf will own the deep end. And we’ll all fight over sun loungers. Except we don’t like the sun. Oh, the lyrics are mostly about weird people we meet. They kind of make the stories for us, simply by being who they are. And we love them for it. Even though some of them are genuinely terrifying people. We did try our hand at politics too, and touched on the idea that Tory politicians might be rodent eating lizard monsters. But we’ll probably go back to seeking inspiration from everyday weirdos now that ship has sunk.
Oh, the lyrics are mostly about weird people we meet. They kind of make the stories for us, simply by being who they are. And we love them for it.
PD. How do you promote your band and shows?
LM. We promote our band through mass emailing cool and not so cool blogs, pretending we’re really into what they do by subtly altering minor details in each email. Out of every five hundred emails we send we might get one review, which gives us a tickle, but is often read by nobody. But just occasionally someone will discover our music through this whole scheme, and that’s enough really. The swimming pool would be nice though. We recently found a website which does some of this stuff for you for a small fee, and the blogs have to tell you why they didn’t choose to feature you. Some of those rejection messages were worth the admission fee alone.
As always,we’re genuinely surprised and grateful to learn how many weird people there are out there. We really have no idea what we’re doing. But I don’t think any of the labels or alternative media types we’ve crossed paths with do either. Which is nice.
PD. What do you think about downloading music online?
LM. It’s just what happens, isn’t it? No sense trying to stand in the way of progress. Unless it’s like 1984 or something, and then you’re fucked anyway. It’s obviously changed the way the whole record industry shebang works, in that it’s possible for bands with very little support to put music out there through things like bandcamp, and for fans to discover music from potentially anywhere in the world. On the other hand, with so much choice it’s easy just to be overwhelmed and not bother at all, and go back to listening to Del Shannon. There’s also this thing that people don’t really listen to albums any more, just download tracks they like. Maybe that’s just progress. But there’s something still to be said for browsing for music in a shop, taking the album home, reading the inlay card on the bus, getting excited about getting home and playing it. Do people still do that? It would be sad if they didn’t. Also, the quality of mp3s a lot of folk are downloading is shite, and that’s OK if they realise that, but if people start to think that this is what music is, we could be heading for a mass extinction event,you know? So, overall we’d give “downloading music online” 5/10 And you really should download our album, Outside’s Broken,from Bad Bat records. Or even better, buy it on tape.
But there’s something still to be said for browsing for music in a shop, taking the album home, reading the inlay card on the bus, getting excited about getting home and playing it.
PD. What’s your outlook on the record industry these days?
LM. Well, in the world we operate in- selling the odd album on download, working with labels that are basically just a hobby for some lovely, but not particulalry business minded people, doing music as basically a distraction from life- the whole megabucks record industry behemoth thing is pretty irrelevant to us. And given that we’ve sold about six albums, I’d say the feeling’s probably mutual!
Still, that swimming pool would be sweet.
PD. What’s your claim to fame?
LM. I once had to mop up certain elements of body discharge from a bog in a Soho Club that a certain politician had left behind. Let’s just say he works in Europe but he doesn’t like it very much.
PD. What are some of your pet peeves?
LM. In no particular order: selfish people who don’t know they are selfish, girls who don’t know how lucky they are that I am speaking to them. Whiney heartbreak songs people write when girls don’t talk to them. Manspreading on the bus, woman spreading on the grass and butter spread that isnae butter.
PD. What are the biggest obstacles for artists?
LM. Lack of a private school education and inability to consume molehills of coke seem to be frowned upon. Not really knowing what you want to achieve or what you want. People don’t seem to want to search for new music and are stuck listening to the same shit they did when they were at school moaning about the fact that all new music is worthless. It is pathetic and blatantly no true. I just aim to create the most perfect three minute pop song and then piss in my own mouth by throwing in a 20 second sax solo at the end.
People don’t seem to want to search for new music and are stuck listening to the same shit they did when they were at school moaning about the fact that all new music is worthless.
PD. Tell us about your next shows and why we should be there.
LM. Although we live in 3 countries far far far away from each other we have scheduled a small Scottish tour for the end of this summer. We are going to begin at the legendary Powmill Milk Bar and end a week later end at the no less legendary Wee Willie Winkies in Auchtermuchty. The final show coincides with the 2017 Fife and East of Scotland Agricultural Awards. Should be grand. So expect angry, dirty pop and hopefully an angry dirty boy to go home with.
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Band location – Perth, Seoul, Cadiz, Melbourne
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