Interview

SPECTRUM

Samedi 1 septembre 2012

You've been touring Europe for the last couple of weeks...

Peter Kember : Yeah, it's all right. It's always a little tougher in the summer if you're not playing festivals, filling in between festivals is a little tough. We played one festival in Poland and this one and the other shows in London, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Malmö were just regular city club shows.

Do you still play some old Spacemen 3

Spacemen 3

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songs live ?

P.K. : Yeah, we do. It's a mixture of Spectrum

Spectrum

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and Spacemen 3

Spacemen 3

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stuff. And some of the Spectrum

Spectrum

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stuff is from that period, twenty years ago.

© John Gallardo

Are you planning on recording a new album soon ?

P.K. : I'm slowly warming up to it. We've just started doing some recording in Berlin. I would call it demos for twenty year old songs which are the same songs that were recorded but I recorded them over ten years ago and I just didn't feel it was a good time to... I released too many records before, being either released at the wrong time or there wasn't the interest there. I just wasn't really interested in spending a year recording something, put my heart and soul into it. The situation just wasn't right with the labels and stuff. It's a very niche thing, a very small market for what we do.
Also I have a philosophy, I don't want to release lots of records. I'd just rather release a few good ones and keep it condensed because I don't want people to have to be able win their way through fifteen albums to find ten good songs in there or something. I'd rather do some pruning myself, and let time do some pruning. The songs that I write have never really been of any particular time. They doesn't sound particularly eighties, or nineties. So it doesn't matter to me. It's not like "Oh I must get this song out because it's so fresh and cutting-edge and someone else will do it if I don't !". It really isn't like that.
I also didn't like the way the Internet has affected people, bands like me in two different ways. One way it's really good because the information dissemination facto is massive but people seem to think it's acceptable to download stuff without paying for it. I personally don't agree with that. And growing up, I maybe had money to buy one LP every week or something like that and so you invested much more into it. You put more thought and time into it. Just clicking 'Download' on everything to "maybe if", it doesn't appeal to me at all. When I look at friends, whose kids are maybe twentyish, look at their iTunes and see the amount of music, it's good but I don't think they truly really bond with it the same way. I can remember exactly what was happening the first time I listened to that record, or a certain time I heard it. I'm not sure those associations are so strong when it comes so freely. And of course it's a massive stamp on the income source for bands. Luckily my catalogue has always sold consistently, never crazy, but just constant sales. And that just dried up. And it wasn't through lack of interest, I'd be quite happy to accept it if it was but there is more interest than ever for live shows and stuff.
And I have to say I was always very very sad to see vinyl getting cut off by the record stores. The main chains find it easier to stock CD's. It needed less space, it's cheaper and easier to ship. And they're responsible for saying "We're not going to give space to vinyl anymore" and that absolutely killed it. That was the final thing that killed it. To see it come back now... A lot of people have been saying for years it's more, you can't get it over on a CD, what you can get over on a 12-inch or gatefold or whatever. And the possibilities for what you can do for packaging. You do way more with vinyl in my opinion. So to see that come back now is really good. But on a lot of levels it's too little too late. So much cutting rooms and places shut down, it's much harder to find that stuff now. And much more expensive.

© John Gallardo

Has your motivation stayed the same over the years ?

P.K. : Motivation is a strong word.

But you still feel like investing your time into music ?

P.K. : Yeah but I work with other bands and stuff. For me, doing live shows is a lot of fun and particularly Spacemen 3

Spacemen 3

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... I mean the reason I ever got into doing production and mixing is because we found it very hard to find people who were sympathetic to work with and who didn't think it was just something really dumb and stupid. So it's nice to be able to help other people in that way and be able to speak the same language about stuff. Things have changed a lot in the studios, in music over the last twenty years. People's attitude about what you could and couldn't do in the studio have been smashed and rearranged. The range of stuff you can do in the studio as well has become much cheaper. It just massively increased the options for processing.

© John Gallardo

Are you currently involved in other projects, playing in other bands ?

P.K. : I've constantly been doing some bits in and there. There are two records I worked on that are just about to come out. One by a band called Teen from Brooklyn, they're a girl group. I think they call themselves something like psychedelic post-roll or something but I would call it more like tribal pop. The three of them are sisters. They've got really great sick voices. The songwriter Teeny writes really good pop songs, really cool pop songs I think. There is sort of a psychedelic edge to it which is really cool. And then I work with this guy called Cheval Sombre on a LP that's coming out. The LP is called Mad Love. I played on the record. He plays the guitar and I play keyboards and sing and effects and stuff. Those are the next two things.
Working on some mixes for people, I've been doing remixing for a bunch of bands lately. A band called Lightships which is Gerard from Teenage Fanclub

Teenage Fanclub

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's band, doing Panda Bear

Panda Bear

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12-inch, Sun Araw

Sun Araw

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12-inch. I think these are the main things.

What about Experimental Audio Research

Experimental Audio Research

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?

P.K. : I only do it now if people ask me to do it. I don't plan to do any tours. I have one more album coming out. I tend to do one-off shows with that if people ask, festivals and stuff. I'm doing one in Nantes I think in February for a lying-down audience. I'm sure there will be more E.A.R. records but I haven't got any great plans at the moment to do stuff like that. I'm concentrating more on song based stuff like Spectrum

Spectrum

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. For the time to put into it, the E.A.R. thing is for a much smaller audience. When it's a song with lyrics, there's a bigger audience for it. I'm kind of lucky I like experimental music and pop.