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3.5.2009 | 16:32

[MP3] Projekt A-Ko

Nýverið bauðst mér áframhaldandi staða sem gestapenni á breska vefritinu indie-mp3.co.uk. Ég hef nú ekki mikinn tíma þessa dagana til ritstarfa, en tókst þó að hósta upp úr mér núna nýverið viðtali við skosku sveitina Projekt A-Ko, sem var stofnuð upp úr rústum frábærrar sveitar sem hét Urusei Yatsura. Projekt A-Ko varð til árið 2001 og gaf núna nýverið út fyrstu breiðskífu sína, Yoyodyne.

Ég náði tali af forsprakka sveitarinnar, Fergus Lawrie, og læt hér fylgja með viðtalið og tóndæmi. Njótið vel.

ako1 Some of you might remember a little band from Glasgow, Urusei Yatsura. Formed by Fergus Lawrie, Graham Kemp and siblings Elaine and Ian Graham in 1993, the band released three albums, We are Urusei Yatsura (1996) , Slain by Urusei Yatsura (1998) and Everybody loves Urusei Yatsura (2000).

In 2001 the band split leaving Graham to work on solo material while the others went on to form Projekt A-Ko which, incidently, released their debut album, Yoyodyne, just over a week ago. Listen to "Here comes new challenger!" while you read on.

Indie-mp3 got hold of front man Fergus and talked with him about the new album, the Glasgow music scene, the band's obsession with sci-fi and anime, and reveals what Fergus really does with his fans.

Indie-mp3: Hi Fergus. Tell me a little something about the background of the band. Who are you, where do you come from?

Fergus: I was at university in Glasgow and mucking about in a band called Urusei Yatsura. We did a fanzine and sent John Peel a demo. He liked it and came to see us play. After that a van started turning up all the time to take us to do gigs and recording sessions. We did hundreds of shows and recorded about eighty songs, traveled all over Europe and America and met fantastic people and bands. Then one day the van stopped coming. Three of us kept rehearsing every week and called ourselves Projekt A-ko. Eventually we released a new album which came out on 20th April and is called ‘Yoyodyne’

I-MP3: What's your influence?

Fergus: I'm not a big obscurist or anything so you can probably guess my influences listening to the tracks, obviously late 80s/early 90s guitar bands JAMC, Pixies/Breeders, Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jnr, Pavement, Wedding Present, Vaselines, Pastels, Sugarcubes, Stereolab, Galaxie 500, Mudhoney, Drop Nineteens, Throwing Muses, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Radial Spangle also Beck, Velvets and Bowie. When the band started we would listen voraciously to loads of different stuff though, 60s, 70s, Byrds, Astrud Gilberto, Tallulah Gosh, Mamas and Papas, Go Betweens, The Three Degrees, Beat Happening, Monkees, Sarah Records (esp Fieldmice), Moby Grape. Graham had an amazing record collection that he would share with us which was a real musical education for me. UY was a real fan band, we just wanted to emulate our heroes, trying to combine everything we loved with a strong pop element. Up until now I see myself as a songwriter working within this ‘indie’ genre/tradition, whatever that is or was. MBV and Sonic Youth are the two bands I rate most in terms of motivating me to make music and for being true innovators.

I-MP3: Tell me a little about the new album.

Fergus: Well its very much on a trajectory from Urusei, we’re shedding a few things, trying a few new things. Most of the songs were written by 2003/4 and we started recording with Steven Ward who was our guitarist for a while, however he got really busy with work and various other bands so recording and mixing proceeded really slowly, and of course the longer it went on new songs came along and we had things we wanted to change…The whole thing was probably done in just a few weeks of actual time but it got stretched out until December 2008 when the final master was completed, but that’s cool, I’m really pleased with how the record came out, Steven did a fantastic job and its nice to have making music as an ongoing process in your life rather than an overwhelming obsession. Its possibly more coherent than the UY albums since there’s only one principal songwriter (although everyone contributed hugely).

We just released it ourselves, DIY, its how we started out and it just felt natural. After such a long time it seemed more important to just get it out as soon as possible than worry about getting a label involved, plus we were interested to see just how much the internet has changed things. I’ve spent a lot of time stuffing envelopes and writing emails!

I-MP3: The name Project A-Ko appears to be derived from an anime movie featuring "love triangle of three school girls and their confrontations with aliens, giant robots, and women who look like burly men". You have previously (in Urusei Yatsura) made some solid references to manga/anime, Star Trek and, I'm guessing, role playing ("slain by elves?"). Tell me a little more about your influences in this regard. Do you all share this enthusiasm with science fiction, or are you poking fun of nerdism? How is this evident on the new album?

Fergus: Well it started as a kind of tongue-in-cheek-but-serious championing of geeky subjects, just from our own personal obsessions and shared experiences of being outsiders (‘different at school’ as someone posted on one of the old UY videos)—pop culture, comics, videogames, early home computing etc. and this gradually expanded a bit into preoccupations with difference and otherness in general, literature, science, art. On the new album I used a lot of cut ups, random generators, mistranslations, film quotations, archaic language etc. in the lyrics, trying to get as many different modes of communication broken up and crammed together, definitely trying to be courageous with words even if they didn’t always work.

I-MP3: What happened to Graham?

Fergus: These days he’s a roadie for Hard-Fi.

I-MP3: A little while ago I noticed you (Fergus) had a side project of the droning kind, some kind of artistic statement sounding like it could be the opening act for Sunn O))). What's up with that?

Fergus: I got into buying pedals off ebay and one day picked up a Death by Audio Total Sonic Annihilation which introduced me to feedback looping and Noise in general. It was a really liberating experience because it broke the various habits and musical ideas that I felt trapped in after UY and let me just improvise and feel textures and sound again. So I call myself Obscure Desire of the Bourgeoisie and do the odd noise gig.

www.myspace.com/obscuredesireofthebourgeoisie

I’ve also done a piece called ‘Untitled’ with about ten guitars played by office fans, its just the most amazing sound but it takes a lot of work and requires a really big venue, so far its been performed at the Northampton Fishmarket Gallery and Govan Town Hall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nUSKOK3b8

I also recently had a residency at Dundee Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art collaborating with percussionist Jon Adam, we did a recreation of Alvin Lucier’s ‘Music on a Long Thin Wire’ amongst other things. This activity has been an amazing inspiration and I’ve met some great guys like Kylie Minoise, Wounded Knee and Neil Simpson of BuffalobuffalobuffaloBuffalobuffalo and started investigating sound art from a theoretical perspective.

I-MP3: For a while there I thought you wrote Kylie Minogue. But what's currently happening in the Glasgow music scene? You're still based there, right? What other bands should we be checking out?

Fergus: I’m pretty busy so I don’t get out as much as I’d like, the noise scene in Glasgow/Scotland is pretty amazing at the moment with loads of fantastic acts eg Noma. I recently saw Black Sun who are a totally brutal hardcore punk band. Grozny seem really good but they had some technical issues when I saw them, they still rocked though! St Deluxe have a really good album out just now and Sparrow and the Workshop make lovely country folk. Danananakroyd are doing really well, obviously. Should mention Johnny Foreigner too, even though they’re not from Glasgow and I’m sure you’ll have heard of them.

I-MP3: Actually I haven't. But how about Projekt A-Ko touring? Any upcoming gigs?

Fergus: No shows planned just now, we’re concentrating more on getting our next album done. ‘Yoyodyne’ was kind of unfinished business, it was important to feel we could do an album as good as anything UY released and tie up old ideas and habits and I think we succeeded. We’ve moved on a lot since we recorded it and most of the next album is already written and will more strongly reflect our current inspirations especially MBV, Sonic Youth and Noise music…

I-MP3: What's a Yoyodyne and who's Ichiro?

Fergus: Can’t you Google! Ichiro Suzuki is a Japanese baseball star who plays for the Seattle Mariners, I’ve always loved the idea of translation and mimesis and his situation seemed to express a lot of that, at least to me! Yoyodyne refers to Pynchon, Star Trek, dirt bikes and various internet start ups!

From the new album:
Projekt A-Ko - Here comes new challenger! (link fixed)
Projekt A-Ko - Molten Hearts
Earlier demo recording:
Projekt A-Ko - Ichiro on 3rd

More songs on their homepage!

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