This April Motor will release their fourth studio album, Man Made Machine on CLRX. This album sees Motor shifting gears from their familiar distorted techno sound to a more song-oriented style featuring guest vocals from major stars such as Martin L. Gore of Depeche Mode, Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, and Gary Numan. We caught up with Bryan Black in New York ahead of Motor’s gig at the Mayday Festival in Germany to speak about his experiences performing on the world stage and how he stays ahead of the game.
photographer : Daniel Martinez
art director & stylist : Ariana Paoletti
interview by : Ariana Paoletti
I saw recently that you worked on a track with Julien K, “We’re here with you”, did you write the track together?
Bryan Black : I did the drums and the synths and the bassline, I sent it to them and they did the vocals and the rest… they arranged it. So it was a collaboration.
Do you see yourself becoming a shadowy producer behind other acts in the future?
BB : Yes, there’s lots of projects coming my way and I do things once in a while, but I don’t do enough because I’m so busy focusing on my projects… I don’t get to collaborate too much at this point. But I love doing it, it’s fun doing different projects outside of the genre I’m in.
The new creepy horror inspired video from Santa Hates You is a visual treat. The song is an inspiring motivational ballad off their last release Jolly Roger. It’s neat.
It’s been eight years since you’ve released an album, Blue in 2004, now eight years later you’ve got Wonky coming out, welcome back and I loved it… but why such a long hiatus between releases?
Phil Hartnoll : Well thank you, very much! Well we said we thought that that was the end it was the end of us, it was a culmination of things, with a lot of things going on, personally, creatively. We thought we came up against a brick wall. And we started questioning everything. I think if you took the last two Orbital albums of that period, that you’d get one good one out of it, you know what I mean. And it was like I wasn’t comfortable releasing stuff that I wasn’t into. I mean you’re forever changing in your music, nothing ever finished, but when you have to commit it to a record, we just weren’t feeling it, we kinda lost our mojo. We sort of lost our connection with each other. We could of continued and done it cus of our position, but it didn’t feel right, it wasn’t right and when we said we were splitting up we kinda meant it. And we thought that was it, and we’re never going to go back to that again, because you never wanna visit a dark cloud as dark as that again. And that was it we were gonna do a few farewell gigs and that was it, that was the end of it.
I went off and did some DJ gigs and got back into DJing and thought right I’ve got to get my mojo back, get my feedback and what a better thing to do than to really feel and search for the music and it was really the best thing for me. I did a lil project in Brighton called Long-range, and that was really enjoyable. Working with some fantastic musicians. And Paul always had this ambition with working with an orchestra and string arrangements, and he could only do that on his own. So he went of and did that, we went and did our own things, so it was like five years of things on our own separate. But the Big Chill approached us to do a reunion gig. Enough time had been spent away, and I had gotten my mojo back, in our own ways and had no master plan of getting back together or putting together and album or anything like that. I was very skeptical about that, we have no new music and do people really want that. But let’s try, we felt nothing ventured nothing gained, and the warmth and welcome we got back from the audience blew my mind to be honest, and was really encouraging. That one reunion gig turned into two years of touring festivals, and after one year and half we came to a point and we can’t just be doing just this anymore, we need some new music, or we stop it and that’s it and we really mean it. Or we need to inject some new music into the live set and create some new tracks to put into the live set cus that what it all about. What gaps do we need to fill in. We started to write again and we started to write again live, all the enjoyment of working together live, moved us into writing live and back into the studio and thought about, let’s write some new material. Cus we’re in a different time period now. It was fun again being back with my brother again. It was like when we first started. There was no record company restraints on you anymore cus there weren’t any new albums. We were more focused on the live set, we love playing live, and we wanna perpetuate that and we need to write some new material. And maybe the way of doing that was the old fashioned way of getting out an old LP and get it out there and then play those tracks live and what we did and it was really positive and really good.
I think it is now safe to say that Trust’s debut album TRST is my favorite album so far this year. A new video for “Sulk” off the album has just been released and I think it reflects what I like so much about TRST. The video is simple and shows how Trust’s music is perfect for dancing and driving but has depth to it. Perhaps a simple depth, but an honest one, as embodied by the unity, exhilaration, and transcendence that comes from dancing and partying all night with friends, ending on a roof overlooking the city together. Is the fashion in the video meant to be ironic or condescending? I don’t read it that way, it’s honest. Enjoy the video and be sure to give this album a listen.
Mindless Faith’s latest album Just Defy was a superb industrial album and now they have a music video for the song “No Saints Allowed”. Dark and grinding the song matches up with the video, band members get right in your face to instill some fear and the dancer at the “peep show” has this sexy yet apathetic feel which will entrance you but might leave you feeling a little guilty.
Liars: Still weird. Still unpredictable. Check out the video for their first single “No. 1 Against The Rush” from their new album WIXIW. A little bit of post punk, a little bit of Krautrock, a whole lot of stuff that sounds like nothing else.
Perhaps my most anticipated upcoming release for May is Squarepusher’sUfabulum due out on May 14th /15th (depending on where you live). Squarepusher completely fell off my radar for a few years and now I have been digging back into his vast discography and re-falling in love. Anyways… check out the new track “Dark Steerling” from the forthcoming album!
With the new album World of Faderhead just around the corner, the onslaught begins with this video for “Fistful of Fuck You”. Anyone who grew up through the 90s can instantly recognize the nod to Capcom side-scrolling fighting games and will be wishing that they could actually play. Watch the video and find if Faderhead can win and hope that there will be some sweet story ending if he can!?
Recently releasing mind.in.a.box’s fifth full length album, Revelations on Metropolis Records in the US, and starting their own brand new label Dreamweb Music in Europe, we take the seven deadly questions to the man who has entranced us for the past eight years, Stefan Poiss, the master behind the music and vocals of the Austrian electronic music band mind.in.a.box.
Envy – You have the ability to examine the past “Crossroads” of your life and see where they would have lead you, would you want to know?
Stefan Poiss : No. I like the way how it is going and I wouldn’t want to change something and I wouldn’t want to know how it could be. I think I’m a lucky guy to live in Vienna, one of the best cities in the world, with maybe the best water in the world that you can drink from the tap, only two minutes to the supermarket, the electricity is working, the internet is fast, our waste disposal has it’s own Facebook page, I have my own studio at home and can also work at Adam’s rehearsal space (Adam is my live guitar player). And with my motor scooter it’s fast to get everywhere. So it feels good like it is. Only too much dog mess on the sidewalks here.
Greed – Do you feel the ever evolving internet world and the hording of digital friends will leave individuals feeling “Lost Alone” in the end?
SP : Yes, maybe more than ever. It is something different to have a conversation on the internet than to talk in real life. We all have a body and we are built to use it. We can’t separate the brain, the mind from us. Our mind and the body is a whole and if you only use one part too long you will start to miss something in the world… and then you are starting to be lost alone.
Hot on the heels of their sophomore album, We’re Here With You, released January 23, 2012 on Tiefdruck-Musik, Julien-K brings us a new video for the title song. They partnered up with Bryan Black of the group Motor for this song it is just drenched with cool. The video works well with the song, keeping things simple and crisp while showcasing the band members as they rotate about.
