Stereoboard Talks With Dance Rock Outfit Losers (INTERVIEW)
Sunday, 01 August 2010
Written by Adam Simpson
Stereoboard interviews Tom Bellamy, the ex Cooper Temple Clause guitar player, who having joined up with XFM’s legendary trailblazer and producer, Eddy Temple-Morris, formed electronica group, Losers.
Tell me about the debut album, Beautiful Losers.
“It’s coming out in September and yeah, we're well happy with it and can’t wait to get it out, it’s been sat on my laptop for far too long talking to nobody, so it’s nice that we can finally get it out.”
Is it true that Brian Molko from Placebo sang on one of the tracks?
“Yeah, Eddy always had it in his head that the last track on the album was going to be a cover, so we got together and got the music laid down and then we needed someone to sing it. We had a couple of options, one of which was Brian and the other was Robert Harvey from The Music. So Eddy gave him a quick call and that was that, he played the track and absolutely loved it, so he came down the studio and banged it out in three takes and that was that.”
And is it true that Brian said he would have anyone killed if you let them sing on the track?
“Maybe, we have got a couple of guns lying around the studio.”
You have a new single coming out, tell me about that.
“Sirenna comes out a week before the album, we just did the video for it a couple of nights ago down in Brighton, it’s just a lot of fun it was my first midnight video which was interesting. Down by the beach getting attacked by an octopus, so that was fun and should be out in a few weeks and the single comes out the first week in September."
How easy was the transition for you from The Cooper Temple Clause to Losers?
“Yeah it was awesome, we’d split up and basically the day we’d split up I got a phone call from Eddy asking me if I wanted to do a remix and it was just perfect timing I didn’t know what to do, I thought I’d just give it a go so me and him started doing some remixes. I couldn’t have asked for a better transition, from sort of not being in a band to be back in one in a couple of hours. We did quite a lot of remixes and it went well so we said, 'why don’t we do an album?' We started cracking on with that a couple of years ago and got it done and dusted pretty quickly. We just couldn’t find the right people to put it out with, but we’re now with Gung-Ho!“
So are Losers now a permanent project?
"Oh yeah definitely - its building and building really, really nicely. We’ve only done about a dozen gigs or so but every one's getting better and better and we’ve now got a girl drummer (Camilla Morris) who's amazing so basically we're a three piece live now and she’s on drums and I play guitar and sing and Eddy plays bass. The gig we did last week was Secret Garden Party and the weekend before that was Latitude. We were playing Latitude at midnight headlining the new bands stage and it was just unbelievable, one of the best gigs we’ve done, the last two gigs there are the best I’ve ever done, the energy was just amazing.”
You took on the studio, Bleak House, after The Cooper Temple Clause split, why was that?
“I did, I bought it because I wanted to write music and I didn’t know what else to do, I took it on and realised that I wanted to do remixes and Losers is obviously a dance outfit with guitars and I couldn’t do that in my back room and I wanted to move to London anyway. So I got rid of that, because that was holding me to Reading and I moved up to London and set up in my back room, got a nice set of speakers and just did it all on my laptop in the back room.”
How much easier was it to have your own set up?
“Much easier, there’s just no stress you just wake up in the morning and go downstairs, it’s all set up how you want it. You put a cup of tea on, think about making some tracks, read the newspaper, it’s just very chilled out so it helps with creativity and you don’t have to think about spending time in a big studio and spending money you don’t have, which has definitely helped the music.”
What have you got coming up apart from the pending releases?
“The next gig is 333 in London in a couple of weeks, we’ve got a show in Manchester in October and we’ve got a gig at Brownstock Festival, in Essex in September and we're playing with Dan LeSac vs Scroobius Pip and DIOYY who are friends of mine so that should be amazing.”
What are your thoughts on the dance music scene?
“To be honest, I come from a rock background and every time Eddy talks to me about dance music it goes completely over my head. I never understood it and I still don’t understand the genres and stuff but that’s probably helped us to make the record how it is because I’m engineering it and I don’t really listen to dance music that much. I listened to dance music when I was growing up, Chemical Brothers, Leftfield, Prodigy and I suppose when I left the band I listened to more like Soulwax, Justice and Boys Noise and stuff when I was DJ'ing, but I decided to give up the DJ'ing and concentrate on production and I don’t really listen to a lot of dance music but I kind of like it that way. I think you can get too immersed in trying to match where the fads are and before you know it they're out before you’ve even started.”
So how easy has the transition from rock to dance been?
“It wasn’t easy at first I saw it as a challenge. I tried to bring an electronic side of things to the group before, so coming out of it I didn’t really want to play guitar again and this was something that I hadn’t really challenged myself with and Eddy was the perfect partner to have, because he had all the influences, he’d come in and play me tracks and inspire me in that way so it was nice to not really know what I was doing. I always like that in music. It was like when I used to play guitar, if somebody tried to show me how to play a scale or play it in a certain way I wouldn’t really enjoy it as much. I like to find out how to make things good by my own experimenting and I think it becomes stale if you get told how to play a certain way so suddenly I had a laptop and my synth around me and I just wanted to see what happens, twiddle some knobs and go from there.”
Who would you regard as your influences then?
“I think in this record and when we were starting we listened to a lot of Soulwax they’ve always been a big influence.”
To sum up your sound for any new listeners, how would you describe the Losers?
“I guess it's Eddy’s phase with his remixes which is dance music that rocks so it’s basically dance music with guitars, as simple as that. We're trying to put a bit of edge into classic dance tracks I suppose and music that’s full of melody and full of texture, with my old band it was all about textures, so I’ve obviously put that into this record as well, so it’s quite textural.”
Losers material hits the shelves in September with single Sirenna (Today We See Colour) released on the 6th of September and their debut album, Beautiful Losers to follow on the 13th September. Losers are performing at 333 in Hoxton, London on August 13th and at Brownstock Festival on September 4th.
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