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jetskisonyourmoat · 24 days ago

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Alex and Alt J (2018)

An old interview I’ve always loved and wanted to transcribe ☺️

Transcript below ☺️⬇️

Transcript:

Begins with host preamble

Richard: Hey Linda

Linda: Hey Richard

Richard: I've gotta ask you what did you think of this record the first time you heard it?

Linda: Hmm, it was surprising wasn't it? It was so different to AM that I remember hearing the first songs and going no, oh no, this is indulgent, oh no what has happened here. Then I kind of got more songs into it and I feel like I fell into this very cinematic, almost this vampire, hotel sounding world. That I then really liked.

Richard: I feel like it's very Los Angeles, and I kind of feel like he's looking at this like an outsider, being an Englishman, looking at this world. I find Los Angeles a very alienating place and I think, not to speak for Alex, but he's looking at it from an outside perspective as well. So he creates all these characters. Even the artwork reminds me a lot of the architecture of Los Angeles as well, so he's really kind of gone into a world of his own with this record and it really reflects in the music that he's made. It's so different to AM and it's really interesting to hear what Arctic Monkeys fans make of it.

Linda: Here's something that I'll say about it in terms of it following on from AM. I feel like there is this almost typical trajectory where a band will push that even further when they get to the next album where you imagine these stadium shining choruses. So, if the alternative to this album is that they would have made a stadium shiner album, I'm so glad they made this record. I'm so excited that they did something a little bit wacky.

Richard: It's very brave

Linda: Yeah (laughs)I don't know how people are gonna feel about it

Richard: Which usually record companies don't want. We don't want a brave record we want a hit record.

Linda: Yeah

Richard: But listen I'm really curious to hear this interview. You basically hung out with Alex Turner, you got to spend some time with him. He's not an easy person to interview. I've interviewed him twice and I've found him pretty awkward. How did you find him?

Linda: I think it was one of the hardest interviews I've ever done. Honestly, he was there we had a great amount of time together. We were there for about an hour sitting in the Capital Records Studios. So we're sitting where they record the Rat Pack albums and he's using the same microphone as Frank Sinatra and he's ready to go in the morning. And he I don't think has talked about these songs before or talked about the album before.

Richard: I reckon this is one of the first interviews he's done for this record, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. It's out now so lets have a bit of a dive into what this record is all about.

Start of Interview with Alex

Linda: Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, what is it?

Alex: Well it's the record yeah

Linda: Where did that idea, and that model and therefore the album come from?

Alex: The model you mean the record sleeve? That model. I think the title come from, I liked the idea that the record would have the name of a place, because records and songs that I love, when you really fall in love with it it does seem like a place like you go and you can keep going back there and you sort of sometimes me move in there for a while I think.

Linda: Yeah

Alex: I started work on this in my studio in the basement at home and this zone became known as the lunar surface amongst friends. The reason for that, you know there's like the conspiracy theories about Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landing and I think there was this idea I was going in this room on me own and working with these machines on this music. I think there's just this idea of like what's going on in there and there's this idea of like faking a lunar landing. Sort of became synonymous with what we were doing in there. Tranquility base is the site of the first like, the moon landing and I just saw those words written down on these cups that I've got, glassware. And (laughs) and I wrote the line because it seemed to make send to name the record after this place.

Linda: All of these, kind of like you say, records, they are a place and they are a world that that artist has created

Alex: I think so, possibly more than anything else I've done, and that sort of working by me self might have something to do with why it is the way it is.

Linda: Can I talk a little bit about how you not only created that world in the musical sense but that you physically created it too?

Alex: Emma, who works with Ian and I, we were having a meeting when everyone started to hear the music and she's like, I don't feel like- it doesn't feel like we can just cob a picture of the band on the cover and lob it out with the music. And that like stayed with me, that was when we were in London like before christmas and I came back here and just started like becoming quite obssessed I think with the idea of making the artwork. I quickly got to this place where i thought , well if that's the name of the record, an architectural model seems like what should be on the cover. So then I started hinking about how you do that, cause I suppose you can get someone to do that and I don't know. Eventually I just fucking got a load of cardboard and like a knife and started hacking it up.

Linda: Did you know what you were making or did you kind of…

Alex: No it was like a-no not to begin with. I started off, I drew a, it was as simple as it's the sixth record so i drew a six sided shape and it was like- made a right mess from there.

Linda: How long did this take you?

Alex: Couple of months I was at it. It's funny we're having this serious conversation about this cardboard.

Linda: Yeah, i'm kind of picturing you holed up, almost obssessed, like being out at dinner but thinking about using a razorblade

Alex: It's much worse than that, its- yeah it was a strange time. Where it all came together, what do you call that the denouement was. There's this restuarant called house of pies and I was driving back with a car full of cardboard one day. And the house of pie sign revolves and I was like when I'm working on this stuff it's in the studio where I'm working on the record and the machine- the 8-track machine that i recorded some of the stuff on in the beginning, this revox reel to reel A77. I'm driving past house of pies and I'm thinking how can I make a revolving sign, and it's like you obviously turn the revox on its side and stick the sign in that. Cause I think- I remember when I was finished I was thinking we probably don't need to tell anybody that that was me- then cut to me now (Linda: It's so good though) spilling the beans

Linda: Well we can talk about music

Alex: I don't know, we can continue talking about cardboard. I suppose the thing with it- I suppose. I was looking at some of the stuff and I read something or saw something where somebody had said, there's really no course you can take in doing that. You know you just have to try and you learn how you're gonna do that by doing it. Which is like quite a few things I imagine like that.

Linda: Let's talk about the role that the piano plays on this album.

Alex: The piano was a gift from me manager Ian for me 30th birthday. Yeah so that became the centerpiece in the studio and I've pretty much played it every day since it showed up there.

Linda: Had you been drawn to playing piano a lot in the past?

Alex: When I was an 8 yeat old kid, me dad took me to have lessons and it may have lasted a year but I never really took to it. I never remember enjoying it that much be I had. I remember realising that I could hear the difference between the notes. I knew when I was doing it wrong is what I could remember from that. When I were a 15 year old, he brought us a guitar home and I got really stuck into that and didn't put it down. The piano thing I had like, I could play a couple of chords and give the impressiont that I could play it better than I actually could.

Linda: How did that feel, writing in terms of freedom as an artist, or a point of difference. How did it compare?

Alex: I don't know what I would have done without it, I had no ideas and through that suddenly I started to have ideas. I just knew everything I was about to do when I pick up a guitar. And then so you change that, so there's that side of it, I feel like I've heard people say plenty of times. It brought out this character. I like the idea of, it made me like thinking in a different way. I think the lyrics were different as a result of the chords my fingers had fallen on.

Linda: It ends up sounding like a diffeernt and kind of surprising and herefore wonderful album in the end. How did it feel when you brought it to James Ford or to the band and stuff?

Alex: Better than I expected to I think. Jamie came and we worked on stuff together for a couple of weeks. And it was during that time that i was encouraged that i was barking up the right tree. It did seem different to what we'd done before, but his enthusiasm I think for it, was like lets go this way then.

Linda: It feels like it would have been so fun after doing something like AM to do something that just kind of turns off and changes direection.

Alex: Which I think it does in some ways. But then sometime parts of it I hear a quite-

Linda: Theer are some parts that feel quite groove driven in the same way AM does.

Alex: Exactly, I think we've gone a bit deeper down in that direction (Musical break) I think like lyricaly there aren't to many similarities. But to a degree that's always been how we've felt going into these things. I honestly don't know like how we would have done something like that, the AM record I mean. I don't know how thinking about it, we would have done anything other than this.

Linda: When you were mentioning lyrics just then and saying that they're different to AM, are they autobiographical or are you kind of just thinking in a character when you're writing those songs.

Alex: I think it's both of those things and it sort of drifts in between them. Some lines in it are just totally, almost me having a word with me sen, more so i think than before really. I think it was a friend of mine that said to me, you've done the love songs, I'd love to hear you do something that's not that. Or the type of lyrics on AM and what that's all about. There's kind of no more ways I could say that anymore and I think that's what my friend was getting at and it did come across to me. I was like yeah I would like to do that, but I think any time I'd tried to go to some of these places in the past the poetry just wasn't there for me in the past and this time it I think I managed to find it.

Linda: Yeah maybe the piano tapped into it (Musical break) There was a point where I was thinking about this album and I don't know how conscious of this you were when you were doing it, but it feels interesting to listen to it now because we're consuming it in this world that almost feels like it's plummeting towards kind of technology and the future whereas sonically this record feels like it harkens back to something quite art deco, but a the same time it's talking about current things that are going on.

Alex: The battle between the future and the past.

Linda: Exactly, were you concious of that when you were doing it?

Alex: I think that's what- I suppose that's what I'm talking about when I say, I'd struggled to find poetry in that before and I didn't know how to write about that. I feel this way about our first album like the types of things we were writing sbout there a lot of other people were writing about at that time and have done before that. But there's something about the style that makes it work. Hopefully it's the same with this.

Linda: There's such a visual stance with this record because you know, are you going to be making a film that goes with it or?

Alex: There's no plans to make a film with it because it's supposed to be what it is. We're not coming out in space suit or anything or like pretending there's zero gravity.

Linda: You could probably do it.

Alex: Maybe I'll do that.

Linda: You could make it happen.

Alex: Yeah just (Linda: Band in space) Moonwalking subtle.

Linda: The Lunar, what did you call it?

Alex: Surface?

Linda: The lunar surface tour

Alex: Yeah that's it (Linda: This could be the one) Well Bowie had the 'Serious Moonlight Tour' didn't he?

Linda: He did.

Return to hosts

Richard: That is actually interesting Linda, I've been wondering how on earth they're going to represent this record on stage.

Linda: I know and how it would fit in with the back catalogue as well.

Richard: Yeah, I mean obviously the back catalogue is not going to be forgtten but they're gonna have to squeeze this knew world of the Artcic Monkeys in amongst the live performances of those big tracks off AM. I like bands being brave and I think this is a record that by years end all the UK critcs will be claiming how brilliant it is and it'll make a lot of top 10 lists. I think fans will be divided, I think anyway.

Linda: I think that's a good thing.

Richard: Thanks for the sharing the interview with us on the 2018 podcast.

Linda: Hey look I'm glad that I got to do it even though you know i was saying it wasn't the easist interview to do, it was certainly a real one.

#it’s kind of funny to hear how the interviewer felt about the interview and Alex as someone who she found hard to interview #it seems like he did a fairly good job #but she did talk to him for a hour and only got less than 16 minutes worth of an interview so I can imagine there were many long pauses #i really like that Alex felt enthusiastic about describing his creation of the album cover #it truly is a work of art #alex turner #arctic monkeys #tbhc #interview

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