From static@prometheus.hol.gr Thu Oct  5 18:43:43 1995
From: Tassos Nickogiannis <static@prometheus.hol.gr>


Out to munch (taken from "Future Music", issue 12, October 1993)

Mixing crunch guitar and electronic soup, Pop Will Eat Itself get a powerful
sound. Nigel Humberstone digests the gen.

You get the impression the Poppies (as they're affectionately termed) do not
take themselves seriously, and likewise do not expect their audience to
either. It's partly to do with their appearance, attitude and apparently
shambolic collection of influences.
	Formed in 1986, they originate from Stourbridge, a hitherto obscure
Midlands town now famed for PWEI, The Wonderstuff and Ned's Atomic Dustbin.
In interview they're none too forthcoming about their use and abuse of
technology in creating their mish-mash of sound.
	Aurally it's a frenetic fusion of guitar dub, techno grunge and white rap,
all interspliced with a fair degree of sample piracy and dancefloor fervour.
Commercially it's gained them a fair chart success and the usual "cult
following". An acrimonious split with RCA at the beginning of the year has
left them operating independently on their former head of A & R's new label
Infectious.
	So what do the band feel about the categorizations that the music press so
frequently attach to their music?
	"Our style is eclectic," admits Richard, "which, if you didn't like us,
could be construed as thrown together." "But it isn't - honest," counters 
Fuzz.
	I'm sat between Richard March (bass and guitar) and Fuzz (drums) from PWEI.
They're both clearly unsure why anyone should be interested in their
approach to music and jokingly offer to discuss the merits of "rolling
technology" in preference.
	"I find all this equipment as a necessary evil," explains Richard. "We're
not techno boffins, really - we just mess around with all the buttons; not
really knowing what we're doing - and try to get away with what we can."
	A frank admission, but PWEI's adoption of technology has not been
immediate. Their brand of chainsaw pop was originally guitar based and only
around the time of Love Missile F1-11 did they embrace the new
dance-orientated technology. This integration surfaced with the subsequent
release of their debut album The Poppies Go Box Frenzy, produced by Robert
Gordon at FON Studios in Sheffield.
	"We've tended to use the cheapest stuff possible," explains Richard,
"starting out with an Akai X7000 sampling keyboard and Roland drum machine.
We have to do things on a real tight budget, so when we buy something we
usually have to sell something. All the gear is stuff that we use live, and
it's shared out between the band. There's enough for everyone to have a
sampler, keyboard and sound module - along with a portastudio and 8-track."
	So who initiates the ideas for tracks? Richard explains: "We all sit at
home with our little computers, sketching out ideas. Then we'll pull all the
gear together and work on everyone's ideas together."
	Isn't it hard with so many individual inputs? "No, never," Richard insists.
"We never have too many ideas. I suppose everyone exercises a certain amount
of quality control over the material. When you've got ten ideas, you may
only show two which are actually going somewhere, rather than include the
others which are rather just pointless doodlings.
	"What I like about technology is the fact that it's all at your fingertips
and you can therefore move things around. While you're working out
arrangements you can sample guitars or vocals and it enables you to work on
your own more easily. The other way is to set up as a band and play it live,
which takes for ever and ever."
	Fuzz, a dedicated double-decker bus fanatic, is a new addition to the band,
joining last year. With him he has brought a new sense of dynamics to the
Poppies's sound. So how does he integrate his playing with the
machine-orientated side?
	"Well generally, rather than using loops so much nowadays, I just come out
with a drum line that suits the whole track instead of having to patch two
or three together. That's where I come in and it just adds a different, and
I suppose tougher, sound.
	"When recording, the way that I prefer it is to work on getting a decent
set of sounds myself - sounds that I like - then try to badger the engineer
into allowing me to keep the sounds like that and get him to work it as much
as he, or she, can. And have a big hard stoney room to play in, catching a
lot of the ambience rather than the specific drums themselves, because you
can always boost the sound by sampling your drums off and triggering them
off tape.
	"I use Yamaha DC10 head triggers, which are taped on to the drum heads, and
put those through an Alesis D4, which is just used as a trigger box - and
the sounds are fired from an Akai S950."
	The 12 built-in audio triggers are a useful inclusion on the D4, making it
a strong contender with other stand-alone units such as Akai's own ME35T.
	"I use the D4 essentially as a trigger interface and don't bother with the
sounds," explains Fuzz. "Although it serves a dual purpose, 'cos while we're
writing we can use some of its sounds without using up sample space.
	"When we're playing live there might be a percussive loop but not generally
any 'beat' loops as such. On the old tracks I've replaced most of the drum
loops, if not all of them."
	Live, the Poppies use an 8-track tape machine (Teac 38) with separate
tracks for bass, assorted sequences, vocal samples and click track.
	Fuzz: "Which is played at an irritatingly high level cos I'm nearly deaf,
and it pisses everyone off because it's a big, thick, ringing cowbell, which
permeates the whole stage area. I don't have it in headphones cos I like to
move around a bit, you know - I want to have a good gig as well. So
headphones would quite quickly find themselves dislodged from my ample 
ears."
	The Poppies' sound is infiltrated by obscure and random sampling - anything
that fits the mood. Cue the stamped logo on their Cure For Sanity album
which read 'Sample it, loop it, f**k it and eat it'. Richard: "People in the
group sit in front of their TV's with the tape machine constantly on pause,
snatching interesting sounds - stuff off of adverts too. I suppose you could
call them soundbites, if you like."
	Other artists' records are also fair game for lyric snatching - the last LP
The Looks Or The Lifestyle included the subtle use of vocal lines from
Holidays In The Sun, No More Mr Nice Guy and Bohemian Rhapsody. Another
track, Harry Dean Stanton, has some suspiciously Smiths-like guitar...
	"I know what you mean, but it's not actually," announces Richard. "It's
simply tremolo guitar being MIDI triggered. The track's title comes from the
fact that we originally used a vocal sample of Harry Dean Stanton talking in
Paris, Texas. That has since been replaced and we've stuck with the name
because nobody could think of a better title.

Sampling sore point

"Sampling's a strange issue really. On one of the new tracks we've sampled
something and everyone's arguing about whether we should declare it or not."
	The pair are obviously cautious about letting the cat out of the bag on
this one, but Richard drops his guard. Is it an obvious take, I enquire?
	"No, but it's quite along bit. It's just a little part from the end of a
Black Sabbath track."
	"You've said it now!" reprimands Fuzz. "But at least we're being honest. Do
you declare it or not? Every case has a different outcome. Five years ago it
was generally recognized that if a sample was less than 8 seconds, it was
OK. But now that's changed and it can be just one second, but if that second
makes the basis of a song, or is a significant part, then it has to be
declared. It also depends on who you're dealing with."
	The home set-up housed temporarily in Fuzz's flat is pretty much typical of
those used by the rest of the band. It includes an Atari computer running
C-lab's Notator and Unitor, Akai S950, Yamaha DX21 keyboard, mixer
(Studiomaster Pro Line 16-8-16), Jupiter 6, Yamaha SPX500 and Alesis D4, all
run through the hi-fi.
	Richard: "We've all got little multi-timbral sound modules, such as the
Roland Sound Canvas and Dr Synth, because they're easy to use. They're used
for basic presets before we start to refine the sounds. There's nothing
really spectacular that we use - Graham (Crabb, one of the vocalists) has
got a little cheap (35 pounds) Tandy 'toy' keyboard, and he spends hours
putting sounds from that through a Zoom FX processor, then sampling off that
so that you end up with these weird nasty sounds."
	Do you consider yourselves to have any different attitudes towards making
music?
	"I don't know," confesses Richard. "We don't really hang out with any other
musicians. I guess everyone's got their own way of doing things, but I don't
think there can be too many radically different ways of putting something
together, whatever kind of technology you're using."
	So, to what level do you prepare your tracks before going into the studio?
Richard: "Well, hopefully they're all pretty much prepared. On the last
album all the programmed stuff was done, so it was just a question of
putting it down on to tape with the live bass, drums and vocals. We do work
pretty quick - the last album took four-and-a-half weeks recording and three
weeks mixing. However, we do spend hours and hours messing with one
inconsequential sound in the background of a drum loop. And at times we're
in danger of disappearing up our own backsides."

Listen to that production

The Poppies have been lucky to work on a number of occasions with the
well-respected engineer/mixer and producer Flood. His work is evident with
the likes of Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb and U2, but as Richard recalls, PWEI
were initially impressed by his work with Renegade Soundwave, which led to
his input on their second album, This Is The Day, This Is The Hour, This Is
This.
	"We liked that stuff and felt that it was going in the same sort of
direction that we were. We didn't know much about him but he took over the
project. At that stage we were all computer illiterate and didn't really
know how to work a sampler and stuff like that. He did all the programming
and it was like, if you sit around with someone in the studio for long
enough, watching what they do, then you learn so much.
	"The last album we did with him [Pop Will Eat Itself's Cure For Sanity] was
like a nightmare for us, 'cos we weren't prepared enough before we went into
the studio and made it up as we went along. We had this wall chart of like
how bad things were going! There were three extra sheets at the bottom for
when Flood started smoking again! We'd like to work with him again on the
new album, but he's kind of busy."
	Does the new material mark any change of direction soundwise?
	Richard: "Not really. Of the two new tracks one is pretty musically laid
back with a hard vocal, while the other is more thrash." Fuzz: "Yeah, laid
back, just relaxed with a marked absence of any loud guitars. It's very
gentle although lyrically tough."
	Richard: "On one of the new tracks, while Fuzz was recording drums, we went
to the pub and when it came to mix there were some bars that weren't in
time. It wasn't really Fuzzy's fault, he'd played it really loose and then
we'd gone back in and piled loads of sequenced stuff on top. It sounded
dodgy so it ended up having to be patched a bit."
	As a parting shot I enquire what the two think they would be doing now if
they weren't involved with PWEI.
	"Probably signing on the dole and trying to do this," admits Richard
realistically. Fuzz: "And I'll have been made redundant, cos the place where
I used to work [Dudley Bus Garage, in fact], as a mechanic, is closing down.
I used to own my own double decker bus - I suppose I could start up my own
bus museum..."

Men and Machines
Clint Mansell     Vocals/Guitar
Graham Crabb      Vocals
Adam Mole         Guitar/Keyboards
Richard March     Bass/Guitar
Fuzz              Drums

Equipment run-down
Atari 1040 (C-Lab Notator & Unitor)
Akai S950 (x2)
Akai S1100
Akai S2800
Studiomaster Pro Line 16-8-16 Mixer
Yamaha DX21 Keyboard
Roland Jupiter 6
Alesis D4
Cheetah S6 Synth Module
Yamaha SPX50D
Boss RPQ-10
Roland MPU-103
XR300 SMPTE Unit
Marshall guitar amplification
Zoom FX processors