THE HORRORS INTERVIEW

By Stuart Williams 29/03/07 

Music4m's Stuart Williams talks to Tomethy Furse (bassist) and Joshua von Grimm (guitarist) of The Horrors...

As I walked into the Rescue Rooms, roadies rushed past making last-minute checks on equipment; The Horrors were on stage and a sound check was in progress.

Joshua von Grim (bass) and Tomethy Furse (guitar) broke away from the rest of the band, introduced themselves and led me through a narrow corridor into a dressing room. It looked more like a kitchen, complete with bar – and armchairs.

After being offered, and accepting, a drink, we made our way to the armchairs to talk music. Drums thumped through the walls like an earthquake as, on stage, the sound check continued.

So how are you finding your current tour?

Joshua: It’s been really good. The last one was the NME tour. That was great, ‘cos the thing about that is we were playing really huge venues - but there were only probably ten or twenty people actually there to see us. But here it’s like everyone’s here to see us, and everyone knows our songs – so it’s been a really fun tour for us.

You just got back from the States – what was it like playing at the South by Southwest festival in Texas?

Joshua: Great, very enjoyable. It was just, like, streets full of music and Americans. It was like really psychedelic, man. I hadn’t been to a festival for ages, and that was quite a weird one - it was like taking over a whole city... It was absolutely hilarious - people everywhere in the streets.

One of your New York shows ended in a riot and ten thousand dollars’ worth of damage. How did that happen - was the damage caused by the band or the audience?

Tomethy: It was a bit of both: It was a horrible club, full of horrible people - and we responded. We don’t really go out for that, ‘cos people just end up associating you with something like trashing the stage, and that’s not what we want to be like.
Joshua: People used to go to the Jesus and Mary Chain shows just to get in fights with the band, or with people there - and we’re not interested in that at all.

In just eighteen months, you’ve got a record contract, toured extensively in the UK and internationally, taken part in the Shockwaves NME Awards Indie Rock Tour, released four singles and an album, been praised by Jarvis Cocker as “the future of British rock” - you’ve even appeared on the front cover of NME. Has this rush of success changed your sense of musical identity as a band?

Tomethy: Our initial idea was just to be a garage band, and the thought of even having a record out would have been great, and then it just happened - which is great. Musically, we’ve just kept searching out new music. We spend all our time wherever we go just searching out new music, and listening to interesting records, and we just end up incorporating every kind of music we like into what we are doing. The album was recorded over several sessions, over about a year. The last session was post-production, and I think it was just like a culmination of everything we’ve been listening to and playing since the start.

You write your own songs, but the first track on your album, Jack the Ripper, was written by Screaming Lord Sutch. Is he an inspiration to you at all?

Tomethy: Yeah, kinda, but mainly we chose it ‘cos we really like the song, and we always have.

Joshua: And it’s easy to play...

So you’re not likely to stand for election for the Monster Raving Looney Party?

Tomethy: It could happen – you never know!

What is your goal for this tour – you’re touring aggressively, and this is a serious world tour - are you aiming for world domination?

Tomethy: I don’t think we’re really interested in world domination. We’re just really into making music, and want to keep doing that.

Joshua: We’re playing so many different countries, but they’re demanding us to play there. It’s great, ‘cos we aren’t going out to convince people to let us play – they want us to play; they’re inviting us to play; playing live’s good.

How do you write most of your stuff – do you write when you’re jamming, or in the studio?

Joshua: It’s really spontaneous. Someone will just start playing something, whether it’s a drum beat or a guitar or a bass guitar, and we all start playing, and we’ll all listen to it, and if it’s something we all like...

Tomethy: The songs all happened really quickly. We were doing two songs a day, writing two songs a day most of the time. So, we’d write ten songs or so a week, and then take them and record them the next day. It was really spontaneous. We’ve tried different ways of writing songs, tried to find a method, and this, for us, is definitely the best one.

Joshua: It’s like our live show: Everything’s really spontaneous, nothing’s really, like, thought-out. That would ruin the fun of it.

Tomethy: I enjoy playing live - but I equally enjoy being in the studio as well. They’re two almost completely different things. Our main thing, obviously, is the live show. But we do enjoy being in the studio as well.

Is it true you saw a UFO on the way back from a gig?

Tomethy: Yeah! We were doing a gig in Derbyshire. We got in the tour bus, and found out we were playing at six o’clock in the morning in London. So we weren’t prepared for that at all. We didn’t do any drugs, didn’t drink anything. We ended up playing a really great show. On the way back to London, at like three o’clock in the morning, we saw a U.F.O. It was just this thing, like, flashing in the sky - and then it disappeared! I would love to have a close encounter.”

So what can fans expect from this tour, and why should even non-fans come along?

Tomethy: One thing I learned, or realised, from being on the NME tour – playing shows and then seeing what we were doing played back to us - is how different we are to pretty much anything else that’s going on. Everything else that’s going on is so different from us. We spend all our waking hours trying to push it further and get new sounds and new ways of making more exciting music. So come to one of our shows if you want to see something new - it’s a really great show.

THE HORRORS SPACE:
www.myspace.com/thehorrors

THE HORRORS SITE:
www.thehorrors.co.uk

THE HORRORS

Biography

Loog Records

They might be the most exciting British band since the Sex Pistols, but there’s very little that could’ve prepared The Horrors for what’s happened to them since they played their first gig in September 2005.

A mess of sharp elbows, big hair, feedback and monochrome clothes, since that gig at The Spread Eagle in Shoreditch, the band (who all met at Southend’s super-fashionable Junk Club, run in the basement of a decaying Victorian hotel by keyboardist Rhys ‘Spider’ Webb) have played gigs everywhere from LA to Hull and Tokyo, been tipped by Jarvis Cocker as the future of British rock and appeared on the cover of NME after only two singles. They’ve scraped knuckles and cut knees. They’ve made a video starring acclaimed actress Samantha Morton with legendary director Chris Cunningham and then had the same video swiftly banned by MTV for excessive strobe use and general gruesomeness.

They’ve been chased down the street by teenage girls trying to tear out locks of their hair in Rome. They’ve seen UFOs at 3am on the way back to London from a gig in the grounds of a stately home in Derbyshire. They’ve caused $10,000 of damage during a near-riot at a gig in New York after signing to Island Def Jam (home to Kanye West and Jay-Z) in America. And they’ve released a four dark-hearted singles that have annoyed as many people as they’ve enthralled – as well as the New York show, they had to cut short a gig at the last-ever Junk club because of an over enthusiastic crowd.

“It’s weird, because when we do gigs we just set out to play our songs and not annoy or wind up anyone - but we often cause loads of trouble in the process”, explains keyboardist Rhys ‘Spider’ Webb evenly. “Still, we’re not interested in pleasing everybody. And we certainly don’t have a problem with pissing people off in the process. We don’t care what people think of us. If we upset people we’re not bothered in the slightest.”