Photographer: Miguel Reveriego
Fashion Editor: Grace Cobb
Make up: Maki Ryoke
Hair: Robert Lyon

(Image above: Michelle wears paint-splattered print dress by Dolce & Gabbana)

Check out Ben Cobb‘s full interview with Michelle Williams, first published in Wonderland #12.

The post FLASHBACK… MICHELLE WILLIAMS appeared first on Wonderland.

When Oliver Payne and Nick Relph left Kingston University in 2000 without their degrees – just some spray cans and a few “shitty” videos they’d made – their fine art tutors presumed it would be the last they’d hear from them. No such luck.

Armed with a video camera, a love of hardcore punk, rave, skateboarding and graffiti, and a ballsy swagger, the pair set to work on a series of films. The results are witty, provocative and underpinned, as Payne puts it, by “a ‘fuck you’ to corporate intervention in youth culture”.

2001’s Jungle featured a sword-swinging warrior in chain mail armour doing battle with a WWII soldier dressed in a white t-shirt and tin helmet, clutching a machine gun. Divorcee line-dancers are intercut with suburban bedroom DJs to the tune of Terry Riley’s Motown classic “You’re No Good” in 2002’s Mixtape. And in Comma, Pregnant Pause (2004) random text messages run below a suited Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars and two figures in ludicrous mobile phone costumes and Scream masks.

By 2005 the London double-act had exhibited at the Serpentine gallery, won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion Award, signed to Gavin Brown in NYC and were being heralded as the young gun saviours of film art. Not that it went to their heads – at 2007’s Frieze Art Fair, Relph sat at a card table burning bootlegs of their films on a MacBook Pro – “£20 each or six for £100”.

Payne and Relph (aged 32 and 35, respectively) are now based in Los Angeles – “it’s reeeeeally sleepy here… just the way we like it”. This month sees them return to London with a specially commissioned film for the revamped Whitechapel Gallery. The two took time out from this site-specific project to chat online from their Hollywood homes (Relph lives “just near The Bowl” and Payne in Koreatown). The following is a transcript of that Sunday evening encounter…

Ben Cobb: Where did you first meet?
Oliver Payne: At an abandoned warehouse in West London. We were vandalising it. Doing graffiti.
Nick Relph: Stencil art… just kidding.
OP: There should be stiffer penalties for stencil art. Lock ’em up. I hate street art. Tagging is the pinnacle of the graffiti world.
BC: Why go to Kingston University?
OP: We thought it would be full of kids that couldn’t get into the cool schools.
BC: Couldn’t you get into the cool schools?
OP: No chance.
NR: I couldn’t get into Middlesex, which isn’t even cool!
OP: I think we both might have been turned down from the same ones. I couldn’t get into Middlesex either.
BC: I heard you hated Kingston… why?
NR: We probably talked a bit of shit about it but we didn’t hate it all that much – we had each other. And you’ve got to be a bit antagonistic in art school. It’s part of it unless you’re gonna be really pally with everyone and hold hands, which is not really where we were coming from.
OP: It was actually quite fun in an odd way. I remember some kids getting upset that there wasn’t a kettle in the studio! Like somehow an interesting dialogue can be opened up through a shared interest in tea.
BC: You were on the Intermedia course… what on Earth is that?
NR: Hahaha. Exactly! It means you don’t want to paint.
OP: Nobody ever told us.
BC: So you just got on with your own thing?
NR: Yeah, from day one. We sealed ourselves off and locked the doors… not to make it sound too romantic or anything!
BC: Is that why you got asked to leave Nick?
NR: I got asked to retake the year… like a ‘special’ student.
BC: And you failed the course, Oliver…
OP: Yes. I’d love to say it was for something more exciting but basically I refused to do some coursework that related to business and professional practice because I was at art school for fuck’s sake!
BC: Why did you decide to work together?
OP: We had no choice. It needed to be done.
BC: Had either of you made a film before?
NR: Ol had made some great ones…
OP: I had made a really shit one called The West Four Days Of My Life. It was about growing up in London W4.
NR: Which is now lost.
OP: Yeah, I lost it. It was rubbish.
NR: I have the poster.
OP: Do you? I’d like one of those!
BC: A poster? That’s business and professional practice!
NR: Hehehe.
OP: Hahaha.
BC: Have you ever wanted to go under a collective name?
OP: I don’t like it when people go under those sort of collective names…
NR: But if we had to… Moral Poverty 3.
OP: … they will call themselves The Doubt Configuration or something silly… when really it’s just two blokes called Keith and Steve.
BC Have you ever lived together like Bert and Ernie or Morecombe and Wise?
NR: Hahaha. Yeah, we lived together in NYC. Shared a bed – the works.
OP: It was well Bert and Ernie. Or like The Beatles in “Help”… or do I mean “Hard Day’s Night?”
BC: Who does what in the partnership?
NR: We press the record button at the same time.
BC: Do you ever argue?
NR: Never.
OP: And if we did… it would be about which is the best Fugazi record or something of that nature.
NR: But it wouldn’t come to fisticuffs.
BC: If it did, who would win?
OP: Nick… with a swift left hook to the nuts!
NR: I’m Willow The Wisp, me.
OP: It’s true… Nick is more a lover than a fighter.
BC: If one of you was too ill to work would you both get credit?
OP: I’m too ill… I represent Park Hill… See my face on a twenty dollar bill… Sorry, impromptu Wu Tang lyrics! Yes, we’d both share the credit.
BC: What do you think of most film art?
OP: I’d have to see some first.
BC: Why can’t you see a lot of your work on the Internet?
NR: Because you have to afford the work some respect, which it doesn’t get as a window on a PC somewhere.
BC: What effect does your work have on the public?
OP: Absolutely zero… ziltch times nothing plus zero times air.
NR: Almost none at all. I mean it’s good to show at the Tate and the Whitechapel cos you get more casual visitors but we’re not so concerned with ‘reaching out’.
OP: That’s true. And they’re free.
NR: Art isn’t for everyone, clearly.
BC: Do you care what people take away from your work?
OP: I was a little miffed when someone took away part of one of our sculptures in Miami. It was a series called Ash’s Stash – we’d bought the entire contents of our gallerist Ash L’ange’s basement and made 35-40 pieces from it all – and someone pinched a floppy disc that was sticking out of an old Mac.
NR: It was a Mac from the mid-90s… with a big Nike basketball shoe on top.
BC: What was on the disc?
OP: It was a disc that came free with a toy from the film…
NR: Independence Day! Hahaha. It was a hot item…
OP: … probably on eBay.
BC: Did you take it as a compliment?
NR: I just felt a bit depressed for that person to be honest.
OP: Yeah, it’s not quite the same as nicking a Monet.
BC: What message is behind your work?
NR: We’re not too big on messages. We do say things and we stand behind those things…
OP: … There are recurring ideas that pop again and again.
BC: Such as?
OP: Navigating the area between reluctant acceptance and defiant resistance to the capitalisation of counter culture.
BC: Right. This conversation is getting like the text messaging in your film Comma, Pregnant Pause.
NR: You mean awkward and full of misunderstanding?
OP: Hahaha.
NR: Speaking of that film… did you see the boss of Ryanair dressed up as a cellphone because you can use your phone on their flights now? The costume fitted him so badly…
OP: I loved that picture!
NR: He looked insane. And they’re charging one pound to take a piss… it’s fantastic.
BC: How much to go for a shit?
OP: Hahaha. In the same article he said if you try to sleep they will wake you up to sell you something! He’s fucking amazing. He fires his employees for charging their phones at work!
BC: Do you have a favourite piece of work?
NR: I like Swoon a lot because we used something very modern and throwaway – those little animated giffs that probably won’t exist in five years – and did something with them. Created a world with them. It’s about being blissed out and in love with today.
OP: Word.
BC: What inspires you?
NR: The ecstasy of walking past a JC Decaux bus stop.
OP: When kids took that high-pitched noise that only people under twenty can hear – it’s used to stop kids from loitering outside shopping centres – and turned it into ringtones for their phones.
BC: How long before an exhibition do you decide what to do?
NR: About six months and then we make it about two weeks before the show… when people are waiting outside at the opening. OP: It makes it ‘hot’ for ourselves.
BC: Tell me about your new film for the Whitechapel…
NP: Well the Whitechapel are expanding into the old library next door and we were commissioned to make a piece that related to the history of the building. We had been thinking about libraries in that area a lot anyway.
BC: Really?
NR: Because of the ‘idea store’, which is a New Labour creation – libraries but with considerably less books and more big colourful panels of air. It’s just really insulting.
OP: Like a crèche for depressed people. Somewhere to write your CV.
BC: Have you started the film?
NR: Yeah, we shot it in an abandoned library in Hollywood and used mates as extras, as usual… It’s a proposal for a public library where you can also drink.
OP: A bib-libation-oteque, if you will. Nick worked in a library for eight years.
NR: I loved it. I mean, for a crappy job when you’re 18 years old it’s fantastic. You get to meet different people from your community.
BC: Did you steal any good books?
NR: Not at all. I cleaned and repaired them. The three places you are never allowed to steal from are hospitals, libraries and schools. Anyway, for the film we used the aesthetic that a lot of regeneration projects have – the artist’s impression of a finished building with people pasted in. But the proposal is grounded in something deeply human and civilised… learning and drinking.
BC: Great. That’s everything. Thanks so much for your time.
OP: Thanks… that was fun. I’m going to skin up now.
NR: Yeah, spafe.
BC: What does ‘spafe’ mean?
NR: It’s from that Nissan ad campaign where they created new words. ‘Spafe’ is spacious and safe. ‘Modtro’ is modern and retro.
OP: ‘Jazzual’ is jazzy and casual.
NR: Just a failed attempt at buzz marketing.
OP: Start dropping spafe in jazzual conversation.
NR: I’d better dust – gonna get kicked out of my home in 30 mins! Bye.
BC: Thanks Nick. Bye.
OP: OK Nick, see you here shortly. Hey, Ben…
BC: Yes?
OP: What are you wearing?
BC: Hotpants. You?
OP: Hahaha. A smile. Cool – I’m out. This spliff isn’t going to smoke itself.

Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #18, Apr/May 2009

The post Oliver Payne Nick Relph appeared first on Wonderland.

Moments later the lift doors part again and the unmistakable voice – that Pepé Le Pew cartoon French accent – of Jean Paul Gaultier booms around the space: “Bonjour!” A quick chat with the chef about what’s on the menu today, followed by a raucous laugh, and the 56-year-old designer appears around the corner, in black from head to toe, hand outstretched and an unstoppable smile across his face. “Bon!” he blasts, plonking himself down at the head of the table. He delicately unpeels a napkin, places it on his lap and pours himself a mineral water. “I em zo ‘ungry!”

Not many fashion designers become household names. Fewer still become household faces. But Gaultier is both. Since launching his first solo collection back in 1976, he has consistently provided the industry with wit, eccentricity and outrageous headline-grabbing moments: macho sailor pin-up boys; fetish all-in-ones with eye and mouth slits; men in dresses; an entire show based on Hasidic Jews; and his most enduring stamp, underwear worn as outerwear.

Even away from the catwalk, Gaultier could never be called a shrinking violet. During the 90s he hurled himself with gay abandon into the public consciousness. He dressed Madonna in corsets, a breast-exposing pinstripe suit and that conical bra for her iconic Blonde Ambition tour. He turned up at the 1995 MTV awards in a floor-length skirt. And throughout the decade, dressed in his trademark kilt and Matalot shirt, he co-hosted Eurotrash, Channel 4’s late-evening lavatorial flesh-fest. He and the even more absurdly accented Antoine de Caunes giggled about “penizes” week-after-week, like a pair of schoolgirls.

Gaultier hasn’t changed much. The peroxide crop might have been replaced by longer mousey-brown hair and the numerous earrings have gone, but the puerile humour remains. The chef brings over two bowls of Topinambour soup, an old WWII favourite made from a white root. Gaultier starts to explain that the dish’s nickname is ‘Tapine à Hambourg’ and disintegrates into hysterical laughter. “The ‘pine’ in ‘Tapine’ is slang in French for penis!” he guffaws, pounding his fist suggestively into his palm.

“C’est bon!” he says, slurping from his spoon. “I need to learn how to cook. I can only make simple things like pasta. To make good food takes time and I enjoy eating more than cooking. My grandmother was a super-good cook; she fed me well when I was a boy.” Gaultier’s grandmother, Marie Garrabe, did more than just cook for little Jean Paul, whose dream job back then was to make patisseries (as an adult he is a self-confessed cake addict). She opened his eyes to another world.

“I was very close to my grandmother,” he explains. “I was fascinated by her clothes and fabrics; all from the beginning of the century. Hats with feathers and things like that. She lived in an old lady’s apartment surrounded by objects that sparked my imagination. My grandfather had lived in England for 12 years – he was supposed to become a Protestant pastor – and he brought back objects like a long shaving razor and a sepia photo of himself from 1914. I liked all that, not because it was old, but because it was different. I love difference! I was more attracted to things that weren’t of the modern day: it was like they weren’t from reality.”

Gaultier was born on 24th April 1952, the only child of book-keeper Paul and secretary Solange. The family lived in Arcueil, a bleak, working-class suburb, three miles from the centre of Paris. School wasn’t a pleasant experience: he felt “ugly, boring” and, useless at football, remained a solitary figure in the playground. “But I lived in my own world so I didn’t feel embarrassed about not having any friends,” he shrugs. “I was curious and learning everything by myself. It’s stupid but sometimes I would look at the clouds and see faces. It was a game for me. I think all that educated me in ideas.”

Thursdays, the day he stayed with his grandmother, were the highpoint of Gaultier’s week. He’d often pull a sickie on Friday to avoid school and stretch his visit into the weekend. Her home offered rare treats like central heating, a fridge and, most importantly, a TV. But they weren’t the only draw. “Nana did faith healing, beauty treatments and gave Tarot readings for the local women,” Gaultier explains. “Once she did my Tarot and said, ‘You’ll be famous and do well in life.’ She always told me positive things; I think she did it to help my confidence.” Granny Gaultier also encouraged her protégé to express himself creatively: “I remember rolling and cutting up some paper to make the first pointed bra for my teddy bear!” he laughs. “He was flat-chested and I wanted a girl to play with. Et voila! I turned him into a transvestite.”

Gaultier recalls hours spent quietly sat in the corner of Marie Garrabe’s parlour, studying the gestures of Arcueil women as they had homemade perm solution administered, and eavesdropping on their gossip. He began to draw her clients in evening gowns, jewellery and extravagant hair-dos – “as I wanted them to look”.

Sketching was fast becoming an obsession. One night, aged nine, Gaultier sat crossed-legged on the floor in front of his grandmother’s TV set. It was late but she always let him stay up to watch whatever he wanted. A documentary about the Folies-Bergère came on and he was immediately transfixed by the dancers in their “fish-nets and feathers” – and not much else. At school the next morning, Gaultier sat at the back of his class feverishly drawing the glamorous women of the Folies-Bergère. His teacher caught him and, incensed, pinned the artwork to his back and made him parade down the corridors for his fellow pupils to humiliate him. The punishment backfired. “All the boys cheered me,” Gaultier says excitedly, still amazed. “It was the first time they had a positive reaction to me. I instantly thought, ‘Oh! By drawing, people like me.’ It’s only now I realise that was a super-positive moment for me… it gave me a passport to make people smile.”

Gaultier was hooked. He began skipping school to draw costumes for imaginary theatre productions. Aged twelve he saw Falbalas, the 1945 drama about a Parisian couturier, featuring the designs of Rochas. It’s a movie Gaultier has now seen hundreds of times, and it is no exaggeration to say that it set him on the path to fashion. “I love that film,” he says, tucking into his main course of sea bream and artichokes. “The details of the couture house, the description of the people working there… incredible! I met the actress Françoise Fabian once, the wife of Jean Becker, Falbalas’ director. She told me that he was a close friend of Marcel Rochas, so he knew all the inside stories of couture… And then I was in Robert Altman’s film Prêt-à-Porter, because he was a close friend of Sonia Rykiel. But his movie was very, very bad. It was a catastrophe, non?”

With Falbalas as his bible, Gaultier launched into his teenage years hungry for all things Haute Couture. “At that time couture was in all the newspapers,” he remembers. “I especially liked Yves Saint Laurent and Cardin because they were very Parisian. I started drawing my own collections, sometimes up to three hundred sketches, and even wrote my own show reviews!” By now, Mr and Mrs Gaultier – whom their son describes as “simple people, but open-minded” – had accepted that he was not going to be a Spanish teacher, as they’d once hoped.

Gaultier began designing dresses for his mother, who had them made up by a seamstress friend. Another of his mother’s friends worked in the Dior design studio and took in his drawings to show to its director Marc Bohan. The verdict came back that Gaultier’s work was “too gaudy” for Dior’s delicate tastes – “It may have been the fact that the faces of my models were bright orange!”

Undeterred, Gaultier began mailing out his drawings to other fashion houses. “It was my eighteenth birthday and I came back home from school,” he recalls. “I walked in and my mother said, ‘We had a phone call from Pierre Cardin and he is waiting for you.’ I said, ‘You have to come with me. I’m too scared to go by myself.’ So we took the Metro together and she waited on the pavement while I went inside. I was so nervous that all I can remember Cardin asking me was what I did. I told him I was at school. He replied, ‘What days can you come in?’ I said, ‘Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons.’ It was the only time I didn’t have classes.’ He said I would be paid 500 francs. ‘A day?’ I asked. ‘No. A month.’ Et voila! That’s how I started.”

What did Cardin – the man behind 60s space-age womenswear – see in his drawings? “I don’t know! To be honest they were awful,” he winces. “I’m embarrassed just thinking about them. But Cardin was incredible; I hadn’t been to college, I didn’t have any references and he still gave me a job. He judged everything by himself. I suppose he could see I loved fashion and recognised my obsession and energy.”

In July 1970 Gaultier should have been studying for his Baccalaureate. But instead he was living out his childhood fantasy, slaving away in Cardin’s studio in the run-up to the couture shows. “It was my summer holidays, so instead of just doing three afternoons a week at Cardin, I worked for a month and a half flat-out.” Needless to say he flunked his school exams. Then, eight months later, he was laid off. “There were too many people in the studio,” he says, handing his cleared plate to the chef with an appreciative nod. “I was the last person in, so I was the first person out!”

Gaultier was unfazed by his sudden unemployment: “I had begun my fashion life.” He was armed with an outlook that has served him well throughout his thirty-year career. “I learnt to have pleasure and fun from Cardin, and to enjoy fashion,” he says. “The most important thing with him was freedom. He was very open creatively. Everybody criticised him for doing so many licences: from chocolate to toilet paper. But he believed everything could be art. He was a businessman. I am not at all business-minded. I am only creative.” This from a man sat in a $9.5 million beaux arts building, who oversees a vast fashion empire with ready-to-wear and haute couture collections, the youth-orientated JPG By Gaultier range, a denim line and almost a dozen fragrances. “It’s a lot, non?” he giggles. “But I never did it for the money. I mean, I enjoy the comfort, but it isn’t my //goal//. If it all went, I would be fine. I started with nothing so I’m not frightened of that. As long as I have my eyes I am happy because my eyes are my most precious thing.”

The chef delivers two small glasses filled with lychees and cherries. “Oh-la-la!” Gaultier chirps and digs straight in. “I just do what I love, which is to play,” he says. “Work is my game. I love it. But there are so many collections that sometimes there is more stress than fun. To think about designing, I have to find space away from all //this//. I have to find a place for myself. Somewhere that I am truly alone. Just like when I was a child.” Gaultier sits back with a contented grin; an empty dessert glass in front of him on the table. “Et voila!”

Photographer: Simon Thiselton
Illustrator: Peter Quinnell
Fashion: Way Perry
Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #17, Feb/Mar 2009

The post Jean Paul Gaultier appeared first on Wonderland.

Sunday, February 20th 2005. Owl Farm, Woody Creek, Pitkin County, Colorado. 5:15pm. Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson is sat at the worktop in his kitchen, clutching a glass of Chivas Regal whiskey and dragging hard on a Clove cigarette with a TarGuard filter. Taped to the fridge behind him is a stern reminder, scrawled in his own handwriting: ‘Never Under Any Circumstances Call 911. This Means You.’ As always, the television is tuned to CNN. Thompson’s only son Juan is visiting from Denver. He, his wife and their seven-year-old boy Will are in an adjacent room. Thompson rolls a blank piece of paper into his IBM Selectric typewriter. He should be writing his regular Monday column ‘Hey Rube’ for ESPN.com – but the 67-year-old has something more important to do right now… He picks up the phone and calls his 32-year-old wife of two years Anita, who’s a half-hour drive away taking a yoga class. He needs to set things right. Last night, they had an almighty bust-up after he waved an air rifle at her. “Come home,” he mumbles gently into the phone. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. I love you more than ever.” At the end of the call, Anita hears Thompson place the receiver on the kitchen worktop and then hears a clicking sound. She presumes her husband is typing and hangs up. He isn’t. He’s just cocked a .45 calibre semi-automatic handgun… At 5:42pm Juan hears a noise from the next room that sounds like a book hitting the floor. Two minutes later he wanders into the kitchen. His father is slumped in his chair: a pistol on the floor by his feet; and a bullet lodged in the stove hood behind his bloodied head. Juan notices the sheet of paper in the typewriter. On it is the last word from Hunter S. Thompson – the booze-guzzling, drug-hoovering anti-hero of American literature. That word is ‘counselor’.

“Hunter said to me early on, ‘I’d feel trapped in this life if I didn’t know that I could commit suicide at any moment’,” says Ralph Steadman, mimicking his dead friend’s laconic mumble perfectly. “I knew he would do it one day. It just came sooner than I thought.” The 72-year-old is speaking on the phone from the studio at the back of his sprawling Georgian mansion in Kent. It’s six in the evening and he’s tired. But within five minutes of being asked about past fast times and the uproarious new documentary Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, he is unstoppable.

In Gonzo, Thompson’s first wife Sandi Conklin delivers a powerful speech to camera about the spineless nature of her estranged husband’s suicide. Steadman doesn’t agree. “It wasn’t a cowardly way out,” he insists. “It was a matter of fact. Hunter was undergoing constant physiotherapy because he went off to Hawaii with Sean Penn and broke his bloody leg. He’d already had hip operations and had to learn to walk again. He told me, ‘This is the death of fun’. And he was sick of it.”

//BREAK//
It was an all-together less stricken animal that Steadman first met, back in 1970. Frustrated by “the terrible Englishness” of assignments for The Times, Punch and Private Eye, the cartoonist had taken himself off to America in search of some “over-the-edge” work. He’d only been there a week when the fateful call from Scanlan’s Monthly came through. One of their writers was heading down to Louisville to cover the Kentucky Derby, a Southern equestrian institution billed as ‘The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports’. Would Steadman tag along and do some drawings?

“I’d never heard of Hunter Thompson,” laughs the Welshman. “I wrote a postcard home to Anna, who is now my wife, and said that I was going to be working with a guy called Howard Johnson – which is actually the name of a hotel chain.” Another thing Steadman didn’t know was that Thompson was returning home to Kentucky to settle some old scores. “They didn’t like him because he was a troublemaker,” he explains. “He wanted to go back and fuck them over.”

Steadman was waiting outside Louisville International Airport when Thompson pulled up in a red convertible, beer in hand, and yelled, ‘Ralph Steadman? I’ve been looking for you for two days.’ They drove two miles down the highway in silence before Thompson pulled over, produced a can of Mace, sprayed his passenger in the face and threw him out on the verge with his bags and the words – ‘You make it to the Derby and we’ll have a story going.’ Well, that’s how Thompson used to tell it. Steadman remembers things differently – in his version he was Maced over lunch. Steadman did make it to the Derby, albeit minus his pencils, pens and inks. He used lipstick and rouge borrowed from a generous lady in the betting tent to transform the great and the good of Southern society into grotesque slobbering monsters.

“What a person to meet on your first trip to America,” Steadman bellows. “It was like hitting a bulls-eye first time… Hunter and I got on instantly because we were so different. If we’d both been tough guys it wouldn’t have worked. He could be mean. But it was a meanness we both understood. Hunter triggered something. Suddenly I knew I could draw with a reckless point of view.” Thompson, though, got writer’s block. He had to be locked in a New York hotel room and supplied with “drink and whatever else he wanted” before he would start to type. The result, a scathing article titled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, read as follows: “Unlike most of the others in the press box we didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come to watch the real beasts perform.” It heralded a new reporting style that Thompson named ‘Gonzo’, in which the writer was bigger than the story; more, the writer was the story.

Steadman heard nothing from his new friend for three months. Then Scanlan’s Monthly called again, this time with an assignment for the pair to go to Rhode Island and cover the biggest event in sailing, the America’s Cup. They took to the water on a rented three-mast sloop in search of a story, Gonzo-style. Steadman, crippled by seasickness, took one of Thompson’s pills. It was Psyclocybin. By the time they made it back to the harbour bar, he was seeing red-eyed dogs. “Hunter produced two cans of spray paint and asked me what I wanted to do with them,” sniggers Steadman. “I said, ‘Let’s spray ‘Fuck The Pope’ on the side of one of the million-dollar yachts. Tomorrow the boat’ll come out into the harbour – all the rednecks on board, standing proud with their arms folded – with ‘Fuck The Pope’ on the side… That will be our story.’”

Thompson maneuvered a dinghy in-between two yachts whilst his accomplice, spray can in hand, readied himself. A security guard caught them before Steadman had depressed the nozzle. Thompson knew the only way out of the situation was to create a distraction. “He set off two distress flares and set fire to some boats,” Steadman remembers, now hooting with laughter. “We managed to escape to a nearby coffee bar. The following afternoon we found out that Scanlan’s Monthly had gone bankrupt… the story never appeared.”

The America’s Cup trip had been a heroic disaster. But not a complete waste of time. “Hunter knew it was a dress rehearsal for something,” Steadman continues, warming to his theme. That “something” came in March 1971, when Thompson took off into the Nevada desert loaded down with two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. He returned with his undisputed masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

This time around, Steadman – back in England, still suffering from “flashbacks and scoured innards” – didn’t accompany him. “I would have liked to have gone,” he says thoughtfully. “But Hunter said, ‘Ralph, you can’t handle a thing like this. I need a lawyer with me.’” Fear and Loathing told the ‘fictional’ story of Raoul Duke (Thompson’s thinly disguised alter-ego) and 300-pound Samoan Dr. Gonzo’s drug-crazed journey into oblivion. Rolling Stone wanted to serialise it. Random House wanted to publish it. But there weren’t any pictures. “Hunter had brought back a few bits like beer mats and labels,” Steadman adds. “Nothing of any use. He said: ‘Get Ralph on the phone.’ They sent the manuscript and a photo of Oscar Zeta Acosta – the real Gonzo, over to me and three days – and a lot of beer and brandy – later, I’d completed it all.”

Steadman’s deranged drawings were instantly iconic. Arguably more iconic than the book itself. In the Gonzo documentary, a wine-soaked Steadman is seen sticking this very point to Thompson in the latter’s Owl Farm kitchen. The writer sneers back, wrestling between amusement and rage. “I wasn’t joking,” explains Steadman. “The truth is that, without my drawings, Hunter’s work wouldn’t have been so easily noticed. The pictures drew people’s attention to it. And Hunter knew it. He was always slightly bitter about my cartoons.”

Nothing had changed by the time Alex Cox attempted to bring the book to the big screen in 1997. The mere mention of incorporating Steadman’s cartoons blew the deal. “Hunter said, ‘I don’t want any fucking cartoons in my film,’” Steadman giggles. “He got really angry about that.” The following year Steadman’s friend Terry Gilliam made the movie. His version starred Johnny Depp – who moved into the basement of Owl Farm for four months to study Thompson – as Raoul Duke. And contained no cartoons.

With Fear And Loathing on every bestseller list, Thompson and Steadman were now a hot double-act. Rolling Stone flew them out to Africa to cover the greatest boxing match of the century, ‘The Rumble in The Jungle’. The magazine’s founder and editor Jan Wenner would later describe it as “the biggest, fucked-up story in the history of journalism.” On October 30th, 1974 world heavyweight champion George Foreman was defending his title against former world champion Muhammad Ali at the Mai 20 Stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire. Come fight night, all the heavyweights of the writing world gathered ringside – George Plimpton for Sports Illustrated and Norman Mailer, who would turn the history-making event into his bestselling memoir The Fight. But, as the first round bell rang, the seat next to them – reserved for a Dr. Hunter S. Thompson – was empty.

“I wanted to see the fight,” Steadman claims. “But Hunter had given our tickets away. He said he had no desire in watching a couple of black guys beating the shit out of each other.” So, whilst Ali punched his graceful way to an eighth round victory, Thompson was down at the hotel swimming pool, drunk on Steadman’s Glenfiddich and pouring marijuana down the filter system. Steadman caught the last couple of rounds on TV. Back in New York, Thompson failed to deliver any written material and Wenner didn’t like the drawings. On the upside, though, Thompson did manage to get his $300 elephant tusks through customs.

It’s perhaps no surprise that the one Thompson adventure Steadman cherishes above all was a rather more low key affair. He joined Thompson for two months on Hawaii in 1980 while the writer was preparing The Curse of Lono, a novel on the Hawaiian god. “My wife and daughter Sadie came as well,” he says, his voice lifting at the memory “We all had Christmas there in big ocean-side cabins. That’s the one I think of most because it was full of joy.”

Thompson and Steadman’s final collaboration was also one of their most spectacular: the writer’s 2005 funeral. Throughout the 35-year friendship, Thompson had raved constantly about plans for his final send-off. He wanted his ashes blasted out over Woody Creek from a 150-foot tower in the shape of a two-thumbed fist clutching a Peyote cactus button. In Gonzo, Steadman is seen in 1978 sketching the design for the anxious boss of the Reed Bros. Tapley & Geiger Mortuary in Hollywood – “I’ve told you a thousand times for ten years, you’ve got to put // two // thumbs on the fist!” growls Thompson, before grabbing the black marker and correcting the drawing himself.

With the help of Johnny Depp’s bank account, Steadman made sure Thompson got his wish. On Saturday, August 20th 2005, a crowd of family and friends gathered on a gondola-shaped deck overlooking Owl Farm. Amongst them, Senator John Kerry and former Senator George McGovern – who Thompson had tirelessly championed in his Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 reports; Hollywood elite Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and, of course, Depp; Rolling Stone’s Jan Wenner; and the long-suffering bar staff from Hotel Jerome in Aspen. In front of them stood the pyrotechnics-rigged monument – with two thumbs. Parked at its base was Thompson’s beloved red convertible, a blow-up doll behind the wheel.

Steadman’s toast consisted of reading out Thompson’s lengthy faxes sent to him over the years, including one that demanded an immediate loan of $50,000 – ‘Keep your advice to yourself,’ Thompson wrote, ‘and send the money.’ “The thing I miss are those messages and the weird phone calls in the middle of the night,” Steadman sighs. “I wouldn’t hear from him in months and then suddenly he’d call. ‘Ralph, you filthy little animal. You dirty little beast. I need some work, Ralph.’”

At 8:46pm, as Bob Dylan’s voice sang out ‘Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to…’ through high-decibel speakers, thirty red, white, blue and green fireworks rocketed Thompson’s ashes into the night sky. True to form, he had the last laugh. His ashes floated back down to earth and settled in the drinks of his mourners. As local Sheriff Braudis took a sip of his Chivas Regal he was heard to say, “Goodbye, Hunter… Motherfucker.”

Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #16, Dec/Jan 2008/09

The post Ralph Steadman on Hunter S Thompson appeared first on Wonderland.

Aged 14, St Albans school friends Ed Macfarlane, Edd Gibson and Jack Savidge formed First Day Break. “It was all guitars, no vocals… far too serious,” says Gibson. University changed all that. Thanks to a student diet of German techno and Prince, in came romantic melodies, propulsive drumming and rib-rattling bass. In 2006, three months before graduating, the trio met in The Beehive – “St. Albans’ most depressing pub” – and reinvented themselves as Friendly Fires. Their self-titled debut album – recorded in the garage of Macfarlane’s parents using “a laptop and a crappy mic gaffer-taped to a stand” – is out now on XL Recordings.

Do you have a post-show routine?

Ed Macfarlane: Champagne and forget all the mobile phones, jackets and things that we’ve left on stage.

Edd Gibson: Maybe a short informal debrief. ‘How was that?’… ‘Yeah, it was alright’… ‘Good, see you later.’

Jack Savidge: I was backstage straight after an Iron Maiden concert and the singer and drummer were hanging around in dressing gowns two minutes after they’d walked off stage. I saw Nicko McBrain putting his robe on as he was walking out of his dressing room and there was the faintest glimmer of a penis. He was decently hung.

Who is your musical nemesis?

JS: We need to get one of those!

EM: I’m trying to think of a shit Indie band… Someone like Pigeon Detectives. Pretty bollocks.

EG: If we’re going to start a proper Blur/Oasis rivalry with someone then it might as well be Pigeon Detectives.

JS: Who’s No. 1 at the moment?

EM: Actually someone like Late of the Pier because we play gigs a lot with them. They copy our every move. Their synth player Sam Potter said, ‘I don’t like Friendly Fires… I see them as competition.’

What’s the worst show you’ve ever played?

EM: Barcelona. We were playing at the Razzmatazz event and there were only about ten people in the room. After about five minutes they just turned around and looked the opposite way towards the bar. We played our set to their backs and then after we’d finished they put the Spice Girls on the sound system and everyone went crazy!

EG: If we’d have known that was the magic formula beforehand we’d have just got up and played “Wannabe” and cashed in.

If you had to kill one of the Spice Girls, which one would get it first?

JS: There’s something about Sporty Spice…

EG: No, she’s my favourite. And Baby.

EM: I’d put a cap in Posh.

Funeral song?

EG: “Ed Is Dead” by The Pixies.

EM: Yeah, has to be.

JS: I can’t have that one.

EG: You’d play “Sparklehorse,” wouldn’t you?

JS: No. The last two minutes of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. It’s really cheesy but it sounds like you’re going into another world.

EM: Played on an organ would be good.

Which song do you wish you’d written?

EM: “Happy Birthday.” We could do with the royalty money!

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, Oct/Nov 2008

The post Friendly Fires appeared first on Wonderland.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, etc. Seasick Steve can cheer himself up by remembering a few of these…

Food Oatmeal. I have it every morning. My favourite restaurant is Arnold’s in Nashville. Meat and three veg. It’s like greasy but for real Southern food.

Drink That’s easy. Jack Daniels. Straight. The best thing to come out of Tennessee.

Person in the world My wife Elisabeth. Oh yeah! Ain’t no question about that. She’s my best friend.

Place in the world The Big Sur coastline in California. One time me and my wife and my first boy, we didn’t have nowhere to live and we just driving in Big Sur and we all slept on the side of the road. It was just one of those magic nights, you know, where we didn’t get bothered and it was real beautiful. It was almost kinda like camping. Real special. But I don’t like holidays. I always seemed to be in jail on holidays. I don’t have no relationship to holidays.

Possession My pocket watch, which I have on me right now. But if I had to choose between that and one of my guitars, I’d keep my old beat-up brown acoustic guitar. Someone gave it to me a long time ago. It didn’t even have a name on it. It’s real old, I think from the 1800s.

Body part My hands because that’s what I use the most. Without the hands I couldn’t play the guitar and then I’d be very bored… My favourite tattoo is my rolling dice. That’s how life is for me. I never know what the day will roll.

Item of clothing My denim overalls. You English call them dungarees. I’ve worn them my whole life. I started wearing them when I was a little boy.

Animal Dog. My German Shepherd died last year. He was called Boss because he was the boss.

Proper job I never had many jobs that I liked. But I used to like working in the carnival when I was a kid. I set up the bumper cars.

Film I like that old cowboy film Shane.

Movie star Clint Eastwood.

TV show I used to like Wagon Train back in the 50s, with Clint Eastwood. Actually, you know what? I take that back. Rawhide was my favourite when I was a kid. I didn’t watch TV too much over my life though. Rawhide… that was it!

Work of art I ain’t so much into art. I don’t go look at art much but one time someone took me over to one of these museums in London where the Van Gogh pictures were. I was impressed with the light coming from them.

Book Jim Grim by Talbot Mundy. It’s kinda pulp adventure set back in the 1920s and 30s. Some of it takes place in the British time in India and Afghanistan. People keep asking me if I ever read On The Road. I never read a book about none of that stuff. It’s only in the last few years that I even heard of this Jack Kerouac character. I doubt he ever rode a freight train, anyway.

Sport I played baseball when I was a kid. I was a catcher. I also liked playing first base. I used to like watching baseball a little bit, too. But now I kinda like watching football, which y’all got over here in England. At least there’s lots of action going on so I’ll watch it if it’s on the TV. But I don’t know nothing about no teams.

Comedian My kid played me a little bit of that Bill Bailey. I like him. He was pretty funny.

Musician I’d have to say Mississippi Fred McDowell. Helluva nice guy. I never played with him but I could’ve and I blew it! He said, ‘If you wanna come down here and play you can’ and I was doing something else so I didn’t do it. And now he’s dead.

Song “You Only Hurt The One You Love” by The Inkspots.

Gig I’ve seen James Brown. 1963 or 64. Oakland, California. Ain’t no-one ever even come close to him.

Gig I’ve played This year at Glastonbury. 65,000 people is a lot of energy comin’ atcha. It was like getting hit with a wave.

Motto It’s all good. Cause These days it’s the stayin’ alive cause. That’s a good one for me.

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Lousie Brealey and Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, October/November 2008

The post Seasick Steve’s Favourite Things appeared first on Wonderland.

Stephen McBean, Amber Webber, Matt Camirand, Jeremy Schmidt and Josh Wells are five longhaired Canadian stoners on a crusade. When they’re not unleashing epic psychedelic rock on bleary-eyed revellers as Black Mountain, they’re busy helping out at Insite – a Vancouver-based charity for the chronically poor, drug addicted and mentally ill. Not many bands can mix a punishing schedule of tour hedonism with a keen social conscience. But Black Mountain have a knack for straddling extremes: they’ve managed mainstream success – their song “Stay Free” was featured on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack and they supported Coldplay on their 2005 US tour – whilst still retaining their hard-rocking credibility.

Describe your sound in one word?

Josh Wells: Wide.

Stephen McBean: Ecclesiastical.

Jeremy Schmidt: Minus the really heavy religious connotations.

Matt Camirand: But with the gold leaf.

Any rituals before a show?

Amber Webber: I pee like five times.

SM: We don’t do soul circles – no group hugging and apologising for all the bad things we’ve said to each other.

AW: I would actually like a soul circle.

MC: OK. We can try it sometime for you.

JW: I try to get my blood moving around my body so there isn’t such a harsh contrast between sitting around all day and then suddenly playing the drums.

Are you going to do any short songs?

SM: We’ve got one on our new record, which is only a minute and a half. But we never play it live because somehow we always fuck it up.

JW: It’s too short with too many chord changes.

MC: We’re used to taking a long time to make a statement.

AW: Plus it’s on acoustic guitar so Steve would have to switch guitars. It would take like 30 seconds just to swap guitars and then the song is only a minute and a half anyway, so there doesn’t seem much point.

What’s playing on the tour bus stereo at the moment?

AW: We haven’t played a single tune yet. We’ve only been on the bus for two days.

MC: Our driver isn’t part of the usual touring crew and he doesn’t seem too predisposed to listening to music on the bus.

JW: We don’t have any idea what kind of music he’s into yet.

SM: I think we’ll have figured it out by the end of the tour.

MC: It’s going to be like Rammstein or something.

JS: Yeah, it’s definitely some Euro industrial metal shit.

MC: We’ve got to get in there before he gets in there.

If you had to have one extra member… who would you pick?

AW: We could definitely use someone to dance round the stage and add some theatrics.

SM: What about Stacia, the topless dancer from Hawkwind?

JW: Or Bez from The Happy Mondays?

MC: A laptop might be useful.

This article first appeared in Wonderland #15, October/November 2008

The post Black Mountain appeared first on Wonderland.

Thomas Moen Hermansen is disciplined. He has to be. When he’s not in his studio – producing, remixing and running record label Full Pupp/Internasjonal – the 33-year-old father-of-two DJs all around the world as Prins Thomas. “I have a strong work ethic,” he insists. “If I didn’t, I’d have ended up just a grumpy local DJ in Oslo. I really don’t believe in sitting around and waiting for inspiration. You have to go into the studio and record and record and record.”

Hermansen’s studio sessions are often free-form affairs that give him the opportunity to play with conventions. “I was doing some work on a track for Justus Köhncke, a producer on the Cologne label Kompact, and I wanted a string quartet on the record but I didn’t want it to sound very good so I got my younger brother and some friends in to play it.” Even his two sons (Edvard, 13 and Olav, 4) have ended up on a Prins Thomas record. “I was playing drums and they were banging around on some cymbals in the background,” he explains. “They’re not exactly /talented/ but they enjoy music.”

His own childhood in Hamar – a town on the shores of Norway’s largest lake – was infused with every musical influence imaginable. Aged ten, Hermansen combined cello lessons with mixing his own hip-hop at home on two mismatched turntables and a tape deck. His stepfather played him Iggy Pop and Bach. As a teenager, he taught himself guitar, bass and drums, and in 1992 he started playing in bands, the “coolest” of which was a punk group called Kefir Killers.

“The best parties are where people come to have fun and dance and not just check out what the DJ is doing,” reckons Hermansen, who began his own DJ career playing techno and The Thompson Twins at a friend’s club. “It’s always been that way in Norway, where it’s about catering for all kinds of people, of differing ages. I guess some of the diversity in my music comes from this.” He’s tried the same open-minded policy on foreign dance-floors – with varying degrees of success. “Once I was playing in New York to a crowd of 4000 people… I put on T Rex’s Get It On and cleared the entire place.”

It was one such off-kilter selection that initiated his first meeting with Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, his disco partner-in-crime. “I was DJing in an Oslo club in 2001,” he recalls, “and he came up to compliment me on playing Wham!’s Club Tropicana.” Since 2004, the duo has released a crate load of singles and remixes together, as well as their self-titled debut album in 2005. They are currently working on material for a follow-up album, II.

Hermansen’s close alliance with Lindstrøm (“He’s on the other side of the wall!”) allows him to indulge his teenage passions. “I run around the room playing drums and bass while he concentrates on the melodies and chord changes,” he explains. “I always think of our music as the result of happy mistakes. And if our studio sessions produce less-than-happy results, we can always blame the other one.”

PRINS THOMAS’ TOP 5 PICKS:
1. Afro Punk Reggae Dub by Steel An’ Skin – “Really amazing reggae disco.”

2. Try To Find Me Vol. 1 by Unknown – “Just bought this and I know I’m going to be playing it a lot.”

3. Love Is On The Rocks by Lama – “High energy Italo-disco.”

4. Last Dear by Siriusmo – “It’s from earlier this year but I missed it the first time around.”

5. One Nation Under A Groove Remix by Timmy Regisford – “A really tacky house version.”

Hans-Peter Lindstrøm hasn’t made any new music for months. “I’ve been expanding my studio,” explains the 35-year-old sheepishly. “I needed more space because I have become obsessed with old 70s equipment: vintage synthesisers and reel-to-reel tape machines. Plus I’ve moved a whole new drum kit in here. I need to get organised.”

Lindstrøm likes to take his time. “Finishing music has always been hard for me to do,” he says. “I can write a track in one day but it can take months to get it to the mastering stage.” He is clearly not a man to be rushed: the title track on his second solo album – “Where You Go I Go Too,” released earlier this year – runs at a leisurely 28 minutes. Happily, though, since blazing a trail through the world of dance music with his laid-back synth-disco sound, Lindstrøm is now able to cherry-pick new projects. It’s a turn of events that still makes him smile: “I never expected to even make a living from music… it was just a hobby for 20 years.”

Like his friend and collaborator Hermansen, Lindstrøm spent his formative years exploring all that music had to offer. At ten he was a classically trained pianist and choirboy at the local Lutheran church in the mining town of Stavanger. In the early 80s he discovered a love for pop music through British acts like Nik Kershaw, Limahl and Japan. In the 90s he played piano in an Elvis-inspired gospel act; the Hammond organ for a Deep Purple cover band; and the guitar in a series of folk and country groups. Then in 1999, aged 26, he decided to take a sabbatical from music, sold his record collection and moved to Oslo to study literature. It didn’t last.

A friend lent him some 12-inch dance records, he started DJing, bought a sampler and got to work. “I had no idea what dance music was supposed to sound like,” laughs Lindstrøm. “I was more used to song-writing than arranging repeated bass lines. But I guess that’s why my music stands out.” His 2003 debut EP and his first 12-inch with Thomas in 2004 – both released on Lindstrøm’s own label Feedelity ¬– ushered in a new genre of expansive, slow tempo disco. His first live show, though, was a disaster. “I was in front of 16,000 people at a festival in Poland,” he squirms. “I was supposed to be playing on my laptop with a live drummer and bassist accompanying me. At the last minute the crappy laptop packed up so I had to play a CD on a portable machine and look like I was doing something on the laptop. But the CD suddenly started skipping.”

Miraculously Lindstrøm wasn’t permanently scarred and still relishes performing live. After giving up DJing four years ago, he has now decided to put remixing on hold – previous commissions include Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem – and focus on his own material. “Thomas is itching to get back to work on our new album,” he laughs. “He knocks on my door and says, ‘Can we record something yet?’ I’m /almost/ there.”

LINDSTRØM’S TOP 5 PICKS:
1. My Bloody Valentine – “I’m rediscovering them now because I spent the 90s listening to folk and country.”

2. Queen – “One of my favourite bands of all time… Every album they put out from the early 70s to the mid 80s is perfect.”

3. Bob Ezrin – “He produced Kiss’ Destroyer album and Alice Cooper’s The Nightmare. I love them both.”

4. They Don’t Know by Tracey Ullman – “It’s a great track but it has a very fuzzy 80s sound… I’d love to do a remix.”

5. The Evil Eye – “I listened to them at high school but I didn’t understand it then. Now I’m ready for their minimal sound.”

Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, Oct/Nov 2008

The post Lindstrom and Prins Thomas appeared first on Wonderland.

Stephen McBean, Amber Webber, Matt Camirand, Jeremy Schmidt and Josh Wells are five longhaired Canadian stoners on a crusade. When they’re not unleashing epic psychedelic rock on bleary-eyed revellers as Black Mountain, they’re busy helping out at Insite – a Vancouver-based charity for the chronically poor, drug addicted and mentally ill. Not many bands can mix a punishing schedule of tour hedonism with a keen social conscience. But Black Mountain have a knack for straddling extremes: they’ve managed mainstream success – their song “Stay Free” was featured on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack and they supported Coldplay on their 2005 US tour – whilst still retaining their hard-rocking credibility.

Describe your sound in one word?

Josh Wells: Wide.

Stephen McBean: Ecclesiastical.

Jeremy Schmidt: Minus the really heavy religious connotations.

Matt Camirand: But with the gold leaf.

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Ben Cobb

Any rituals before a show?

Amber Webber: I pee like five times.

SM: We don’t do soul circles – no group hugging and apologising for all the bad things we’ve said to each other.

AW: I would actually like a soul circle.

MC: OK. We can try it sometime for you.

JW: I try to get my blood moving around my body so there isn’t such a harsh contrast between sitting around all day and then suddenly playing the drums.

Are you going to do any short songs?

SM: We’ve got one on our new record, which is only a minute and a half. But we never play it live because somehow we always fuck it up.

JW: It’s too short with too many chord changes.

MC: We’re used to taking a long time to make a statement.

AW: Plus it’s on acoustic guitar so Steve would have to switch guitars. It would take like 30 seconds just to swap guitars and then the song is only a minute and a half anyway, so there doesn’t seem much point.

What’s playing on the tour bus stereo at the moment?

AW: We haven’t played a single tune yet. We’ve only been on the bus for two days.

MC: Our driver isn’t part of the usual touring crew and he doesn’t seem too predisposed to listening to music on the bus.

JW: We don’t have any idea what kind of music he’s into yet.

SM: I think we’ll have figured it out by the end of the tour.

MC: It’s going to be like Rammstein or something.

JS: Yeah, it’s definitely some Euro industrial metal shit.

MC: We’ve got to get in there before he gets in there.

If you had to have one extra member… who would you pick?

AW: We could definitely use someone to dance round the stage and add some theatrics.

SM: What about Stacia, the topless dancer from Hawkwind?

JW: Or Bez from The Happy Mondays?

MC: A laptop might be useful.

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, Oct/Nov 2008

The post Black Mountain appeared first on Wonderland.

Joel Martin, aka DJ Zeus, is a former film editor and one of London’s best respected record collectors. Matt Edwards is the man behind the moniker Radio Slave and Berlin-based label Rekid. The pair met at Sir Dunstan’s College in South East London but it took a car journey to drum’n’bass club Metalheadz one Sunday night in 1995 for them to realise a shared love of pillaging car boot sales for oddball vinyl. As Quiet Village, Martin and Edwards proved themselves early on as remix wizards for The Gorillaz and The Osmonds. With their debut album Silent Movie, they take Italian soundtracks, down-tempo disco and exotic rock samples and create a series of Balearic wonders, complete with screeching seagull sound effects.

Who is your music for?

Matt Edwards: We’d love everyone to get into it. It’s the first music I’ve made that I can actually play to my parents and they appreciate it.

Joel Martin: My mum trainspotted one of the samples. I was really pleased by that.

Do you ever argue in the studio?

ME: Not really. We’ve known each other long enough that things run pretty smoothly.

JM: Actually, didn’t we recently have an argument about the tempo of music?

ME: It was a discussion. I make a lot of dance records so with the Quiet Village project I’m always saying, ‘Let’s leave out the drums.’

JM: And I want to hear some drums.

Are you competitive about your record collections?

ME: Joel digs a lot harder than I do.

JM: Not harder. I just have more time than you. I love sharing music. That’s what friends are supposed to do.

ME: We were both going to the same car boot sales back in the day but didn’t know each other. After we met through mutual friends, I’d pick Joel up every Sunday at about six in the morning and we’d go hit the booters together.

Where do you find your records now?

ME: Touring is good for finding stuff. But I always think, ‘Do I really don’t need any more records in my life?’ And suddenly I’ve got one hundred records in my hotel room.

JM: We’ve been to The Record Show in NYC for four years in a row. At one, Matt walked up and whispered, ‘I need to go and buy a flight case. There’s a guy over there who just sold me fifty Japanese super-amazing, high-end audio sound effects records for $30!’ These are now items that we’ve come back to time and time again for Quiet Village. If you want the sound of a humming bird, it’s on there.

Worst gig?

JM: San Francisco. It was peak time on a Friday night with an up-for-it club crowd. We were slightly confused as to why we were asked to play as our show was this weird audio-visual extravaganza. We got asked by the promoter to end the set early. He said, ‘I wouldn’t want to come and see this!’

If you could teach the world to sing, what would you teach them?

JM: The theme to Sesame Street. We’d like to do a mix of children’s records at some point.

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, Oct/Nov 2008

The post Quiet Village appeared first on Wonderland.