The Mekano Set

Watching The 100 Greatest Number Ones. Ian Dury's 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' is on - the first song I ever really liked. It still sounds ace. I was only a year or two old when I heard it on the radio but I remember an Aunt asking me what record I'd like her to buy me, and I was trying to say 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' - but because I hadn't learned to use my face properly she thought I meant something by Kermit T. Frog... and by that point I was too embarrassed to explain.

But at least this explains why everything I do bares an odd resemblance to 'Half Way Up The Stairs'... Believe it or no, there's even a Curve / Ian Dury connection. They did a version of his excellent song 'What a Waste', although I haven't heard it yet.

In the real world we had a recording / mixing session last weekend with a couple of new ideas that have turned out to be really interesting - some nice Cocteau Twinsy bass chords, white-noise-guitar and some more intimate, subdued vocals this time from Finn. "Joy Division meets Kate Bush" apparently. Sounds like a good time to me!

We're still mixing 'Skin Too' and 'To the Dog House'. They just aren't quite ridiculous enough yet. Joy Division meets The Supremes?

There's a lot of stuff we have that hasn't been played live or made available yet. I guess it wouldn't be fair to play three-hour-long sets at this point. But we'll try and get some more tracks online soon.

The nice thing about all this new stuff is that we seem to be getting more tuneful and more experimental. I spent a lot more time last week than usual actually sitting and playing guitar and messing around with fx. Still not entirely happy with the sound but I'm getting there. I need more echo. Or a guitar-synth. Apparently my guitar is so un-guitar-like that some people think it isn't actually plugged in when we play live {basically anything that sounds 'squishy', like feedback, radio noise, or the Tardis, that's the live guitar}, but to me it isn't quite out-there enough just yet. Ask Nodule for help, he knows. If I wasn't actually playing the guitar, I wouldn't just bring one along for appearances sake, I'd leave it behind, because I don't enjoy lugging our stuff around / packing / unpacking all those leads etc.

I've just plugged in this old analog delay / modulator that I've had for years and have never had much fun with. Now, mixed with all the other junk I've got, it seems very musical, very chaotic, and very useful. Petty it's so weighty.

Progress has been slow in terms of gigs and stuff and it's a damned shame cause I've been a bit shocked at how much fun / intense playing this stuff live has been. I understand that what we're doing isn't the 'in sound' right now, but there are loads of people {Ladytron, NiN, Garbage etc. and locally people like Oom, La MoMo, Miss Pain, The Uterus Women, My Rhino, Fenris Wolf, and probably many other bands we just haven't found yet} mixing up soulful / rawk vocals, drum machines, electronic noise, pop sensibilities, dirty guitars etc. We are not alone.

Ladytron's new single sounds like Fripp / Eno era Bowie. Bowie gets in everywhere don't he? We've been told we sound like Led Zepplin a few times. Me and Ade actually noticed you can play a 'When the Levee Breaks' style riff along with Reel to Real... it was funny for about five seconds... It's interesting for me personally to be doing music where my influences are more apparent for the first time. I actually think it's healthy and important - people need and want to know where you are coming from. And what can I say, we might not be the best musicians in the room, but we've got good taste in music!

Sometime Mekano Set member Nodule is now playing guitar in Shrinking Sixpence, with sometime Mekano Set member Jennie H. I'm not going to link to their web site because it crashes too many people's browsers, Mac and PC, fast and slow. And it plays you a song whether you want it to or not.

"Thank you for coming, it's been very useful..."







DH: There's kind of this "Official History of Rock:" the top 100 albums of all time and all this, and I just think a lot of the influences are really tired now. Even if the records are great, I just can't understand it when a band wants to re-create them. And then there's a lot of stuff that's just completely tabboo, that you're just not allowed to like - more or less anything from 1978 to 1989. (But) they're all valid influences and there's just this rocker school of journalism that... It's as if they're afraid of that stuff. And if you're influenced by anything from that period, then they think it must be a joke, that you don’t actually mean it, you don't actually like it. I think that's what I was getting at.

Ladytron

W: Two members of Ladytron are designers, and the other two are a model and a genticist, two occupations which have to do, at least peripherally, with different types of design. In the NME article you said "It's all about good design." What are some important rules of design for Ladytron?

DH: Well, I think in the last few years good design has actually crept back in to fashion. I never used to wear any new clothes, all my clothes used to be secondhand, (and) I don't know whether it's just part of getting older and not wanting to be laughed at in the street as much, but I actually find clothes that I like on sale now, where I never used to five years ago. And the same goes for furniture and for graphic design.

Ladytron

Some good points about influences but I say Fuck design {the art of getting people to buy junk they can do without or already have}.

"Everyone is hypnotised by production and conveniences sewage system, elevator, bathroom, washing machine {iPod, laptop, Widescreen LCD TV, X-Box etc.}. This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has overshot its ultimate goal - the liberation of man from material cares - and become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit {iPod, laptop, Widescreen LCD TV, X-Box etc.}."

Formulary for a New Urbanism: Ivan Chtcheglovt


The Mekano Set