Fanzine 29 doc - soapforall.co.uk

LADYTRON_
SPEEDING_
UP
"We still feel like we're a new
band…looking back and listening to
our first records, it takes a while to
realise that it's been eight years since
we did that. It feels like we've been
around a lot less than we have
been."
As though in a waking dream where
Larry T is influential and Freezepop
are credible, Reuben Wu is getting
all nostalgic on us. This time next
year he and his bandmates Danny
Hunt, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo
will have been testing the dynamic of
electronic pop for a decade. Ladytron
were there at the start of the 00s
fascination with the synthetic style,
and they're here now having endured
its highs and lows. By the time you're
reading this they'll be half way
through a thirty date trek across
fourteen
America on an international tour that
won't stop until October. Could they
have imagined this back in 1999?
"No, we never had any expectations
at all," Reuben admits. "I'm happy
with where we are though; we get to
play all these amazing places that
other bands don’t like China,
Columbia and Brazil. And yet we've
retained quite an underground
following."
Strangely enough it's true and no
more so than here in the UK. Every
visit from Ladytron to Manchester is a
sold out but modestly-sized date –
a fact emphasising our enthusiasm
for their cold New Wave but also
underlying the scale of their success;
"It's only in the UK that we're playing
small venues; everywhere else we're
in three thousand capacity arenas.
We're much bigger outside of the UK,
especially in the States where people
really have a connection with us. It's
a great place to play gigs, being so
big that people will travel for days to
get to venues. We sold out this huge
place in Mexico City and we don't
even have any kind of distribution
there whatsoever."
Exactly what Mexicans identify with in
Ladytron is unclear, but they've
always been right up our street with
the industrialised, brutal confidence
of their records, streamlined by their
twin ice maiden frontline. In the
beginning they shaped the minimal
electropop sound of 2000 before
recently moving to veteran Canadian
imprint Nettwerk, home to such
electronic innovators like Skinny
Puppy and BT. Given their
transatlantic base, the move made
sense marked by best-yet third
album, Witching Hour. "It was a bit
of a milestone record for us," says
Reuben, "like a converging point
between our touring career and our
studio career. Now we've used that
as a bit of a foundation, like a
springboard for the new album
and I think there's a considerable
improvement in its production."
So much is the change that you'd
hardly recognise them from their
pre-2003 carnation, and not only
in sound. Since their early days as
robotic-mannequins on the forefront
of electroclash fashion (albeit
indirectly), the look of Ladytron has
significantly darkened. The music has
followed suit, songs moving from the
subject of playgirls and blue jeans to
ghosts and nervous tension.
"As people we've always been into
dark music," explains Wu. "There's a
lot more soul in sad songs than
happy songs. This album is definitely
more aggressive and that’s part of us
pushing the sound, wanting it to be
punchier and more immediate than
the last one."
The result is a proactive, hyperstylised
shadiness cooler than
The Matrix Trilogy. But steady
development has been the course
of things, something owing to an
insatiable drive for this "more" of
everything that Reuben constantly
goes on about; "We realised that
we've starting seeing and hearing
our music in a different way, thinking
about it in terms of how it will be
played live, so we started writing
music in that dimension. Witching
Hour was a lot more powerful, richer
and more wide-ranging in sounds
and we've only made it stronger
for Velocifero."
Velocifero is the title of Ladytron's
fourth long-player, definable as 'the
bringer of speed'. "Literally," Reuben
interrupts, "although it's nothing to do
with drugs. I'm not a Speed kind of
guy. It's just a nice word – it's also the
name of an Italian scooter and a
really primitive version of the bicycle."
Life in this globetrotting group must
be turbulent to say the least. Last
year, for instance, was mostly spent
touring Europe with the
aforementioned Nine Inch Nails,
before having a single day off and
jetting out to Paris to start on the new
LP. Why the hip-capital of crossover
dance? To rendezvous with one of
the Ed Banger label's best; "We met
Vicarious Bliss after he submitted
remixes of our stuff which we were
really into, so we went to work with
him in Paris whilst Alessandro Cortini
was working on stuff we sent to him
in LA. This is actually the first album
we've produced ourselves though.
Instead of working with a producer,
we've asked for musicians to come
up with pieces to add to the tracks.
We're very hands on and we've been
more the architect of our own album
really."
Big and boastful in its militaristic
sound, you're never quite sure
whether what they've made is a rock
album or an electronic one. Either
way the pull of a robust song
beneath it has only got stronger, and
as impressive as the volume of 'I'm
Not Scared' or the boldness of
'Predict The Day' is, there's no
undermining of substance. "It fits
together more as an album," agrees
Reuben. "The writing for this record
was quite straightforward this time
around. We'd write apart in our spare
time and when it came to production
we'd work on each other's tracks.
I mean, we've always liked albums in
the truest sense, but here each track
has its own identity and there's no
repetition in attitude. There're no
missing pieces and not too many."
Out this month, the time has come
to take the Velocifero to the world.
Starting in the town where it all
began, Reuben's been making the
most of home's comforts; "I've been
at home all the time lately," he
laughs, "sat on the sofa for days on
end, watching The Hits TV and
relaxing." The break is a welldeserved
but rare one. When not
touring or writing with the band,
Reuben and Danny are nurturing
their local scene, having co-founded
essential clubnight Evol in 2003. The
amount that Ladytron have done for
their music community is not to be
understated. "At the time there was
definitely a hole which needed filling
in Liverpool," recounts Wu. "There
were clubs and bars playing indie
music, but it was just Stone Roses,
Chemical Brothers, typical stuff.
We wanted a particular type of band
– more new wave, gothier, grittier
stuff that people might not expect in
a club. We got in some great DJs
who hadn’t played Liverpool before,
and obviously we put on Arctic
Monkeys before they were big."
Not before High Voltage booked
them we might note, but nevertheless
Evol has become one of the finest
new music institutions in the UK,
and is pretty much synonymous with
a good night out in Liverpool at
Korova, the bar part-owned by the
Ladytron men. Reuben might not
have much to do with business when
on the road with the band, but what
he helped start now brings the most
exciting indie/electro to a home for
the city's most discerning drinkers.
Having hosted giants like Vitalic and
CSS in the last year, what's been the
key to a successful clubnight?
"It really is down to a good
combination of good programming,
good music when you're DJing and
how cool the venue is. If one of those
factors is missing then you don’t get
the chemistry happening."
The Toxteth lad remains Liverpoolbased,
but nine years ago when the
Glaswegian Helen and Sofian Mira
joined the local boys, they were
hardly a Liverpudlian band in the
most common sense. Did the four
feel up against to begin with? "Not
really, no," shrugs the synths-man.
"When we started there was no real
scene for our kind of music, but over
the years it grew to be more
acceptable. Using keyboards and
electronic music in bands just
became more and more common.
Now it's just another part of any indie
band. People don’t see you playing
a synthesiser and assume you like
Kraftwerk or The Human League."
Given the saturation of bands taking
in these influences, is that
necessarily a good thing? "Yeah
definitely, because when we started
off people were obsessing about the
instruments we were using and
compared us to bands that really
didn’t have much of an affiliation with
us. We might like Kraftwerk and The
Human League, but we weren't a
tribute band." He laughs, "I think
we've passed that stage now."
Yeah, just a bit. But even if in another
ten years time the four are still
playing Academy 3, you can bet their
tenth album will still be pushing limits.
And who knows? Maybe the rest of
the country will have caught on by
then.
Words: Fran Donnelly
www.ladytron.co.uk
Album Velocifero is out June 2nd on
Nettwerk
fifteen