Following on from our interview with Pandas and People last week, we also managed a quick chat with Is I Cinema, who will also be playing for us this Wednesday supporting US rising stars Gardens and Villa …
You’ve probably been asked this question before, but what’s in the name?
I used to regularly visit friends studying at various south London Universities and I found myself alone, one evening, travelling the DLR line out ofGreenwich. I was trying to avoid making eye contact with a group of boys opposite, but on looking up at a stop my vision locked with one of the lads who, quick as a flash (there is real wit on the streets) spat ‘What you looking bruv? Is I Cinema?’.
How long have you known each other / how did you all get together?
Olly and Tan were in a short lived band together at Birmingham Uni, myself and Helen were at uni together but began writing together after moving to Birmingham in 2008. I drafted Olly in to project manage the songs that Helen and I had written, which at the time had a distinctly twee-bedroom-indie feel, as he had experience with a series of bands (including the fondly remembered Bourgeois Four). He brought in Tan and Carl, a mate from work who he spent afternoons chatting shoegaze with whilst they should’ve been marketing catering companies… We’ve been performing live together for just about four years now, which makes us middle aged in local band terms I suppose.
Could you briefly explain the song writing process for your band ?
If only it were a brief process in itself. Lamentably, but necessarily, our songwriting process is protracted and drawn out. From initial idea from Helen and/or myself, we go through a jamming process, then things will get cobbled together on Ableton and I will try and formulate some kind of structure. We then go through a painstaking ‘crafting’ process where every quaver and nuance will have it’s individual appraisal. Parts will all be played in isolation, re arranged and then put back into the whole. Helen once remarked that our creative process ‘crafted the joy’ out of the songs. Though I assure the audience beaming smiles in performance.
Your music seems to be quite ‘genre-less’ in a way, and very progressive. Is this born of a mix of musical influences or is it something you actually go for?
It’s certainly due to a wide range of conflicting musical influences. Our band/influence venn diagram doesn’t really overlap as much as I’d imagine other bands do. There’s no ‘brand police’ though, any sonic influence is equally regarded and assimilated, and we are still quite a conservative band if you read Wire and scout for Capsule… I think ultimately we are searching for a more defined and recognisable aesthetic, but it has been illusive so far!
I’ve seen you reference Alan Moore’s comic series Watchmen onstage before – how much does fiction influence your music, and what other literature is currently on the reading list?
We have been described as ‘bookish’ in the past but, in all honesty, I think that undersells how seriously we all take literature; you’d find a number of well thumbed Nobel prize winners on all of our shelves. Olly and I are also known as ‘Forrester & Fletcher’ and have won competitions with our playwriting, recently having work performed as part of a monologues and duologues festival in Cambridge. Here’s a monologue we made earlier: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIiFVFPHMzQ)
Initially the lyrical content of all of the songs was taken from literature – from Watchmen in the song ‘Nite Owl’, but also Marlowe’s Edward II in ‘Edward’ and Joshua Ferris ‘The Unnamed’, but this isn’t something I’m doing as much of any more; there comes a time when you’ve got to find your own voice. Right now I’m reading ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and a novel by Jonathan Lethem called ‘ChronicCity’. And watching Chekov shorts while I type this…
If you could soundtrack any film in cinema history, what would it be?
Goodness me, what a poser. So many great films already have a fitting soundtrack it’s hard to imagine we could do something better. Olly has mentioned ‘Blow Up’ to me in this regard, but rightly questioned what you would do with the bloody Yardbirds when they pop up at the end, it’s Jimmy Page ffs! Perhaps, going back to what I was saying before about not quite having an ‘aesthetic’ we would be best soundtracking something that has a more ramshackle look, like a 50′s Powell & Pressburger, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ perhaps, or ‘Black Narcissus’ if we were feeling rockier. Some of my favourite soundtrack work is by Angelo Badalamenti, ‘Twin Peaks’ for sure, but the jazzier soundtrack for ‘Fire Walk With Me’ is a little bit cooler I think, and I love ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘Wild at Heart’.
You’ve always stood out as being one of Brum’s few unisex bands, but never really made a point of it to anyone. In an age where bands are expected to very self-conscious and market savvy, is this something you ever think about, what are your thoughts?
Considering two of our number work in advertising and another works for the Arts Council, you’d imagine we would be much savvier when it came to self promotion. We once dressed the girls in powder pink tee-shirts and the boys in baby blue for one gig, but that’s as far as it’s ever gone. I’m not sure it’s just gender either, we all have very different personalities and there are different ages and family setups involved too, but we don’t really put it out there, we are more concerned with the creative job in hand, it’s a shame that that may be to the detriment of people hearing about us – can I use this forum to appeal for a webmaster?
There’s a lot of talk lately about the death of the long player / album. Do you agree?
It’s funny, I was talking to Olly in the car last night about an article about the second-album-cliff-drop syndrome that seems to be affecting bands at the moment where next big thing groups sell hundreds of thousands of first records but the second album bombs. I suppose that it is a flip side of the same coin. Perhaps it’s similar to our current socio/economic crisis – things need to be different, but there is no offer of any creative alternative. Nobody has times for albums any more, but there isn’t the offer of anything else, apart from buying individual tracks from iTunes. It certainly is becoming a less appealing format, but some artists still work well in that field, and ultimately most of my music is still acquired in that way.
Where do you see your sound going in 5 years time – i.e., do you ever think about how your equivalent ‘album no 3’ might sound in the future?
Album number one still seems like a while away, I’m nowhere near thinking about number three! At the rate we write, by the time that comes along all our music will be made by hyper intelligent computers appropriating any aesthetic you desire. So in that case I’ll simply type Cocteau Twins, HEALTH and Kuedo in an see what it gives me.
Finally, what can we expect from Is I Cinema on the 9th November?
Potentially a finished new song which has a bit of a Wild Beasts feel to it, but don’t hold your collective breaths. We’ll also be playing two songs, ‘The Unnamed’ and ‘Testarossa’, which we recently recorded with Gavin Monaghan atMagicGardeninWolverhampton. Aside from that? Readings from trade press publications, quotations from Robert Mitchum or HR questionnaires have all formed parts of our gigs in the past so that is a genuine claim to expect the unexpected!
