A Delightful Encounter with the Correspondents - an interview

The night was cool, and there was a chill in the air, but not of cold as one would expect, no this chill came from the excitement I felt as I sat in the station waiting for the next train pull in. 

I heard the whistle from the station master and started reapplying my rouge in anticipation. I straightened my blouse, sipped my tea and checked my hair in the mirror from my handbag. But as I was reapplying  my lipstick I caught sight of something in the reflection and it wasn't just my face... As the steam from the train cleared, they came perfectly into view, I wasn't sure at first but then I was certain... it was them... They entered the cafe, took the corner table and started perusing the menus.

Goodness, my heart fluttered in a way it hadn't for many a month... It was Mr Bruce and his MC DJ Chucks, also know as the The Correspondents. I took a big bite out of my jam rolly polly, a large sip of tea, took a deep breath and walked over to the pair and smiled.

I  was so terribly, terribly nervous, but I introduced myself and sat down, they seemed very friendly if a little surprised at my welcome, and so terribly, terribly handsome. I enquired as to if I might ask them a few questions... They shrugged and said it was fine... Gosh I thought, this was to be my lucky day.

I started with an easy one to lighten the mood... So, how did you fellows get together? 

Mr Bruce: It started by complete accident really, both of us were at separate universities, we came back to London, We’d both done bits and bobs of music but then um… we started making beats in his [Chucks] bedroom.

Chucks:  At Uni I used to make kinda Jazzy hip hop and then started with something with a bit of swing and then made it faster, a bit more double time with a swing beat. Then we both came back from Uni and Mr Bruce was doing some MC-ing – general dance music and then we started doing sets at friends parties, things like that, recording a few tracks and then it all just kinda went from there… we didn’t really do much we just …

Mr B: We didn’t really have an aspiration to be in a band, that’s for sure…

C: Yeah, it was just a happy accident!

Mr B: Then we suddenly found that we were in a full time job doing it.

So who discovered you? Who picked you up as it were…?

Mr B: Well we were very lucky, one of our very first gigs as the Correspondents was with a theatre company called Punch drunk… We just sent in a CD of our stuff and a few other things that we would play in a set and they said “oh this is great, we’ve got these after parties going on” and we became a residesident act and I think the second gig we played with them was with Basement Jaxx! So we sort of peeked to soon really! Then they invited us to do one of their nights and then off the back of doing these gigs, as a lot of promoters came along, we ended up with a lot of festival gigs…

And how do you describe your music?...  Can you describe your music?

Mr B: Uh… This has actually been a bit of a problem, we don’t actually have a tight little PR-able title… Because the album is [turns to Chucks] Well you describe it as ‘genre blending’…

C: Yes, it’s multi genre, alternative dance music. It’s got everything from Blues rock to 60s organ soul, from drum and bass to hip hop…

Mr B: Via electro…

C: So yes… It’s whatever tickles our fancy…

And how do you develop a song?

C: Production is a bit trial and error, just what happens to be working… You just keep on going down that train of thought, so that can take you were ever and then when I’ve got something I’m vaguely happy with I’ll send it to Mr Bruce who’ll write …

Mr B: The lyrics on top…

So do you work in a studio then? 

C: Yes, a very small studio… A domestic studio…

Mr B: We’ve spent a bit of time in a bigger studio, a proper one with the big recording desks and everything but actually we often found that we didn’t get the sound we wanted… We understood our little space with the two mattresses at the back…

So do you think technology has changed that as well?

Both: Yeah Yeah Yeah…

Mr. B: because it’s so simple, because we’re just recording vocals, we don’t need all those drums, that’s also I think part of the reason why are so multi genre… I mean, if we were a four piece band we’d have to have four people playing those instruments…

C: yeah

Mr B: Where as it is Chucks will just make a little funk track, or something that is slightly disco or house and it doesn’t need to involve 4 people.

C: You don’t have to have Jimmy on the xylophone on every single tune…

So who are your influences? Because the scope must be wiiiide….

Mr B: It’s really difficult… I think we could both say who we listen to at the moment and who we have listened to, but I don’t think there are any direct influences… I think it’s more that we both listen to a lot of music and it filters in in a lot of weird ways… I mean there are certain tracks that sound a bit like 'Justice', but there are others that sound…

C: More straight hip hop… It’s really whatever isn’t boring us… ‘Cos we’re on the road so much we listen to new music and different stuff and old music… So we enjoy it all really… I would say one of our large influences are our clubbing experiences when we were teenagers, because we would always go drum and base clubbing and I would go to those all male hip hop clubs where all those white students would stand there in hoodies pretending to be alpha males…

We all laughed at this one, myself not so loud as I wasn't quite sure what a 'hoodie' was, maybe something to do with monks I thought, but didn't think it polite to ask and I didn't want to seem stupid. 

And from having a jazz background…

So has your music evolved since you met?

C: When we started it was fully swing remixed with hippy hoppy drum and bass stuff and now there are still elements of swing, but very little… Just on a couple of tracks.

Mr B: And the album has none…

C: I would say there’s always a element of jazz which is run through the whole thing…

Mr B: We were at customs once in NewZealand and someone asked what we did and we said… “Ahh it’s really complicated… It’s kinda multi genre, jazzy sort of thing…” and she went “Oh so it’s dance music, but with jazz chords” And we thought “That’s perfect!” because it’s not jazz necessarily, but it’s jazz chords…

C: But I would say it’s continually evolving.

So where will it go from here?

Mr B: Well I’m somewhat reliant on what Chucks makes and passes on to me…

Over to you then Chucks, I said with a coquettish grin, So how do you make it?

C: Well it starts with a blank canvas, then I lay down some drum beats and add some chords and see where it goes from there… Or maybe start with a sample, but I don’t think we really use samples anymore…

And does the music always come first… and then the lyrics?

Mr B: Pretty much, there’s been once or twice when it’s been the other way round, but on the whole it’s what Chucks comes up with and then me… But once we had a body of work together and we thought ‘right we’re going to be making an album now that’s when we started shifting things around and maybe changing a track either lyrically or in terms of the instrumentation.

My favourite track of theirs had to be Fear and Delight, I always find myself humming it while

cleaning the silver... What do you consider your best track?

Mr B: Probably the tracks that we haven’t performed yet and that are on the album are the ones that  we prefer because they are fresh in our mind… so… and lyrically some of the stuff that’s on the album is a little more introspective and a little more personal..

C: The mid, final third self-indulgent album tracks are our favourite ones which the bands always like but they’re never the kind of radio ones…

And how long do they take to make?

C: Fear and Delight has been through so many revisions, I mean that track has been on the go for two years, trying to mix it in different ways and get it, we originally wanted it to sound a bit like ‘Love cats’ [The Cure] That’s the sound we wer going for.

Mr B: The bass line

C: But then it kind of failed so it turned into a rolling 60s thing, but um… my favourite tracks tend to be the ones that happened quite quickly…

Mr B: There’s a fine line, we’ll start making something and then think this is sort of over taken the track and so we’ll have that as something to either react with or align ourselves with…

Now I had to talk to Mr Bruce about his look, it was so dapper and stylish... So what came first, I

asked... the music or the look? 

Mr B: I ‘m a very aesthetic person, I studied fine art at art college, so ive always been very aesthetically inclined but the decision to wear round glasses wasn’t conscious one, it was kinds going into a shop and going “Oooh, they look nice!” … I think very carefully about what I’m going to wear on stage  and then a great costume designer called Carly Hague makes all the outfits.

The black and white one, very David Bowie…

Mr B: You’ve said exactly the right thing to me there! But I used to be far more peacocky in day to day life…

Do you have a style icon?

Mr B: I don’t think I have one… erm… I went to the recent Bowie exhibition, which I thought was amazing and to see the construction of some of those pieces was incredible... But there were some pieces that were really awful… So I don’t think you can pinpoint someone and say ooh yeah, everything they wear is amazing. There are certain artists that I love, I mean I love the way the school of London used to dress, David Hockney, people like that.

OK, I've asked influences, but who do you guys like, musically? Who would be in your dream band?

C: Urrm…. I’d probably have Cut Chemist, a guy from Jurassic 5 on the decks… This rapper called Edan, He’s my favourite rapper… and singer? Who do you pick singer wise?

Mr B: David Burn would have to be up there I think.

Interesting mix I thought, a pharmacist, paper and what appears to be some kind of dinosaur on a boat? I do hope these clean cut boys weren't on drugs....

C: We are talking about separate bands here…

Mr B: Yes, David Burn and Edan…?

I dunno… I said laughing... But I really didn't...

Mr B: Lyrically I think the Arctic monkeys are great and Jarvis Cocker is incredible…

C: I love the bassist from Jamiriqui

Mr B: But only the bassisit…

C: Yeah… [laughter] Erm… Bernard Perdy on drums [James Browns drummer]

Mr B: Theres a guy who’s not really up chucks’ alley… Is it ok to say that? Is a guy called Gerod Bishoff who I really like. He’s a Seattle based composer…

C: We both loved Janelle Monaes first album as well, that was actually slightly influential on our album. Certainly in its eclectic-ness and it’s movement through the album.

C:… And Steps….

Now I did get this one and we laughed like drains!

So where have you been, or going to?

Mr B: We’re going to Australia… actually we’re going to random places… Copenhagen, Slovenia then on to Australia…

Do you have a good fan set out there?

MR B: Well we went to Australia and New Zealand in march, playing with Womad, they organise it very well and they obviously did a fair bit of promotion on our behalf and we were expecting to play to 20 people in a field but I think our smallest crowd was about 3000, so it was really amazing and quite over whelming!

C: We play everywhere in the UK, we were just talking on the way here, the only place we haven’t been is Glasgow… they don’t like us in Glasgow for some reason…

MR B: We’ve played a lot in Eastern Europe weirdly enough. It’s not just like going travelling or going on holiday, you do get funny little insites into the places you’re going to because you’re with promoters…

Any good stories?

Mr B: I think our most rock and roll was in Guernsey…

C: Oh god yeah Guernsey…

Guernsey? This better be good…

Mr B: Yeah, that’s why it’s so funny… It was in this hotel and we had a really, really drunken evening with The Buzzcocks..

Mr B: They drunk us under the table, quite literally…

C: Yeah and into the flowerbed!They were really nice… Hammered the minute they got of the flight… how they’re still alive is very impressive!

Mr B: It’s amazing those people can still attain that punk life style. I don’t touch a drop before I go on.

So why after all this time is this your first album?

Mr B: Because we’ve never quite been happy enough with a large enough body of work to release an album, because the way the set works is that things get rotated all the time, so we’ll be into these three or four tracks and then think, no we’re getting a bit tired of them and those will disappear and we’ll bring in some more stuff… and think it’s only in the last two years that we’ve really been happy with a body of music that we could call an album.

Ok, good idea... and now, tell me about the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS-mlep5rY

 Mr B: now that’s down to a very talented fellow called Naren Wilks. The actual filming took about 5 nights, we had to do it at night time to get even light as it was in this studio with sky lights. It’s in this perfectly cylindrical green screen space and had eight cameras set along the top, all symmetrically pointing inwards and all the footage is overlade onto one piece…

So it’s not just repeated?

MR B: No, it’s not CGI… It’s completely manual, the whole thing. If you look at the second scene of the video, I’m being viewed from eight different perspectives, so you can’t do that in CGI. So every single scene is made up of eight pieces of footage. It’s just mind blowing what he did…

And was it all the film makers idea? Or did you have a say in it?

Mr B: I mean we talked about story boards, but our main interaction with him was saying remember this is a music video, not an arts piece.

It does have a wonderful George Méliès feeling…

MR B: We’re about to release a Making of video which will explain the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzVWUYjGoDg

You have a natural presence on screen, do you think this is part of your artistic background? Or do you have a theatrically background?

Mr B: Well as I always say, I like being centre of attention, especially on stage that is… and if there is a camera in front of you, you might as well play up to it.

I couldn't agree more, I so terribly terribly agreed... Then I noticed their expressions change and a awkward silence hung in the air like thick cigar smoke... What could it have been I thought to myself? I had been charming and polite, what could be wrong... 

I wiped my hands on my apron, picked up my ordering pad from the table, stood up and smiled at them... Maybe their train was due? Maybe they had missed it because we were talking? Maybe they had the wrong tickets?... Maybe.... Oooh....

Then it came to me, gosh what a ninny I had been, what a terribly, terribly inconsiderate ninny... I smiled at them, I knew what was wrong and why they were looking at me in that peculiar way...

"Hello" I started "My names Mabel, may I take your order?"

                                                                                                                                                                     

For more info go to http://thecorrespondents.co.uk/     
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheCorrespondents?ref=ts&fref=ts
And watch the Video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABS-mlep5rY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

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