| Interview: CULTS are excited for [Summer Camp] Laneway Festival 2012. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Saturday, 26 November 2011 15:46 |
 Just two minutes after coming off-stage while on tour in Italy, BRIAN OBLIVION of CULTS called Coup De Main for a catch-up chat while on-tour in Italy to discuss the band being announced for LANEWAY FESTIVAL, "some bros" and country-music band Colts... COUP DE MAIN: I last talked to you just when Cults' debut album had been released and you promised me that you were going to try and get the band to come to New Zealand. You made good on your promise... Laneway Festival! CULTS - BRIAN OBLIVION: We did keep our promise, didn't we? We are going to be in New Zealand in about three months! It's always really surreal when you go to a place for your first time. Like this is our first time in Italy right now, and the whole [time before the] show leading up, MADELINE [FOLLIN, vocals] was really anxious and kept asking: "Is there anybody out there? Is there anyone coming to the show?!" And you can't really wrap your head around [the fact] that people are aware of your music in a place that you've never been before - and the show tonight was awesome, and I'm sure the shows in New Zealand are going to be amazing! It's a pretty surreal, cool thing. CDM: Are you looking forward to seeing any of the other bands on the 2012 Laneway line-up? BRIAN: Yeah, absolutely! When we saw the line-up we were all laughing because it's going to be... have you ever seen that movie 'Soul Plane'? Are you aware of this movie? Alex the dog and Cedric the entertainer! Basically, the premise of the movie is that it's this gangster plane, where everybody is just partying non-stop and I have a feeling that's what the flights are going to be like on this tour, because we're with some of our really good friends on this tour, the ones that when we hang out with them we party the most, like Yuck and Washed Out and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Girls. It's going to be ridiculous, it's going to be the most fun tour ever! CDM: Sounds like it's going to be an awesome Summer camp for Cults? BRIAN: Absolutely, we've always fantasized about that Motown thing [Motortown Revue] where eight or nine bands go out and play one song at a time and play at County Fairs where everyone shares buses and everyone's just partying the whole time. That's our dream, so I guess we'll be living it in New Zealand!  CDM: What was your recent tour with Foster The People like? BRIAN: It was cool, it was pretty surreal, we've never played venues that big before. Every single show was sold out on the whole tour and they were all like the biggest venues in every city. It was weird for us to adjust to being a support band again, because we had done so many headlining tours. I think it made us step up our game a little bit because we were playing to more of the regular radio-rock audience, rather than our own audience which is a little bit more alternative, so it can be a fresh perspective I guess. CDM: Cults recently filmed a music video for 'You Know What I Mean', what can you tell me about that and when will fans get to watch it? BRIAN: I'm really excited about it, we just watched the final cut yesterday. It should be out sometime this or next month - probably next month or the end of this month to be honest. It's centred around... it's a story about a stuntman and Madeline plays the stunt-coach's daughter and everything starts out really nice and then ends up getting really convoluted. It's like a little movie, it's not even really like a music video but I got to do some really cool stunts in it which was really fun - I got to jump off really high stuff into air bags and stuff like that! CDM: Since you and Madeline were both film students, how involved are you with coming up with the storyline for your videos? BRIAN: The process of this band... because it started with just Madeline and I making music in the house - and we enjoy doing that but it's not really enough people - we need more people! <laughs> You just don't have enough time and energy to do everything all the time like we want to. So a lot of the process of this band has been about finding people that we believe in, that we trust and as far as videos go, we will only work from now on with this director Isaiah Seret. He did our 'Go Outside' video and he also did the 'You Know What I Mean' video, so once you narrow it down to find someone that you believe in, the process is a lot easier because we just call him on the phone and we brainstorm: "What is this video going to be about?" And he'll ask us what we want it to be like and we'll tell him: "I thought it'd be like this..." And we talk it out which is amazing. Way better than having to sort through a bunch of crappy treatments from... some bros. CDM: Another band that originally started out as a two-piece was MGMT and now their touring members are actually official members. Could you see that happening to Cults as well, or do you think you will always be a two-piece? BRIAN: Yeah, absolutely! We are working towards that, the band as it stands has become a very essential musical unit, I think everybody brings something to the table that's different from the recordings which it makes it more exciting and makes us almost want to go back and change things on the record. We are really happy with how we are playing it live now... and <laughs> MGMT rules! We love that band, I just want to say.  CDM: How do you think Cults' live show differs to how the record sounds? BRIAN: I think a lot of people come to our shows expecting that we are not going to be able to pull off all the sounds that are on our record, because they are so used to seeing bands playing backing tracks or playing extremely stripped-down versions of their songs live, but I think we are really kind of the opposite. There's a lot more going on live then there is on the record, the drums are more dynamic they're more aggressive, and I think there's more noise and more moments where people shine in spots the recorded song didn't have. We try to make it more entertaining altogether because as far as recorded music goes, we like to listen to the kind of music that our album sounds like - that's ambient, repetitive and kind of dreamy - but when we go see shows live, we like to see something that's more in your face, so we try to pull that off as well. CDM: What ingredients go into a live Cults performance? BRIAN: A lot of samplers! <laughs> I guess we have the ingredients of a standard rock-band - a drum-set, two guitars, a bass and vocals. I'm playing a keyboard, the other guitar-player is playing a keyboard, I'm playing a sampler, the guitar-player is playing a sampler, the drummer's playing a sampler and triggering drums. We are all doing five things at once which is difficult, but makes it way more entertaining for us to be busy, so yeah a lot of electrical voltage. CDM: Do you have a favourite song to play live yet? BRIAN: It's really whatever song goes the best I find. Sometimes it's 'You Know What I Mean' because it has that really anthemic-ending and people get really excited by it, sometimes it's 'Oh My God' because we play that last and we end it with a kind of crazy noise-wall and it's really fun to do, sometimes it's 'Abducted' which is our first song. It's whatever really clicks with those people when we walk off-stage, we'll remember that as our favourite one for the evening.  CDM: Have you and Madeline started working on or thinking about your next album yet? BRIAN: Actually, only over the last three weeks have we really started working on it. When we were making our last record we were on-pace writing a song a day and throwing out songs all the time, but for the last six or seven months we've been touring so much and we've been so obsessed with making the live shows perfect - I mean not perfect... I hate perfect... <laughs> but close enough to what we want it to be - that it has taken any creative energy left for music. But now that we've got it kind of got it dialled in, we are back to writing a song a day for the last couple of weeks and that for me is like heaven, not having to worry about anything but writing music. That's the dream, so it's coming along. CDM: What are the new songs sounding like? Is it similar or different to your self-titled debut? BRIAN: I don't know, honest! I think that the vision for the next record is... our last record played towards a lot of the music that we like, one section of a lot of music that we like, which is a lot of early sixties pop. I think that this next record is going to move a little bit further down the timeline towards late sixties, early seventies kind of soul music a lot more, because we've been out playing live and the way that we think about music is so much different now. But I think that it is going to be a lot more danceable and a lot more minimal, like Curtis Mayfield meets Nancy Sinatra. <laughs> CDM: If you didn't have to worry about clearances at all, are there any songs that would be on your sampling wish-list? BRIAN: Personally I love sampling culture, and anytime that people have sampled our songs I've been a total supporter of it, and I've never even dreamed about asking for a dollar for it. But personally when I'm inspired by a song, I don't necessarily think: "Let's take this little part and let's turn it into our song." I kinda think: "Oh this part's cool, we can do better than this part." You know? I don't think I'd ever really resort to sampling music, but as far as people or spoken words or effects for movies, there are a million! But that'll never happen because that's a lot harder to pull off.  CDM: If C.U.L.T.S. were an actual acronym, what would it stand for? BRIAN: Oh man, we thought about this once, what is it? We always talked about us having to change our name at the beginning of our band and we came up with something... I don't remember what it was! <laughs> No, I can't think of anything. The only thing that we were thinking about is if we ever had to change our name because Ian Astbury from The Cult decided to sue us, then we would change our name to Colts and then we'd start writing a country [music] record. CDM: Heaps of your songs have been popping up on teen TV shows lately - thoughts? BRIAN: I think it's cool man, I mean we are very picky about... we've gotten a lot of offers to be in commercials and I don't know... I just feel like when you're in a commercial it's kind of a tough situation because the reason that they are buying your song is because they want your credibility to back their product and that can be a sketchy situation. Especially considering a lot of the practices that big companies have, but when you're working with a television programme, everybody's just doing art all together so it's always kind of a joyous occasion. Especially considering that what we studied in school a lot of it was making music for television and for film, so it's always kind of exciting for us to see our songs synced up with picture. CDM: Do you have any guilty TV pleasures? BRIAN: I'm not sure if it's a guilty TV pleasure - it kind of is - but we've been watching a show on FX called 'American Horror Story' and it's from the guys that made that show 'Nip/Tuck', but for some reason it's really, really terrifying. It's more like a soap opera and a little bit cheesier with it's thematic content, but if it really evolved, it could kind of be the new 'Twin Peaks'. There is something about it that is really deeply upsetting and we're all really addicted to it. Other than that... we watch so much TV that most of it is either fanatical or peripheral. <laughs>  CDM: Lastly, if you had an entire day off in New Zealand, what would you want to do and why? BRIAN: Oh man, I don't know! I think that the really lame and simple answer is... go golfing. <laughs> CDM: Really?! BRIAN: Our drummer has been playing a lot of golfing video games and he's never been golfing! I grew up golfing all the time and I think that if you went golfing on a really beautiful golf course in New Zealand, we could catch some nature and kind of kill two birds with one stone! <laughs> Read our original interview with BRIAN OBLIVION from earlier this year HERE.  |
