Flipron - Dogs D'Amour!
Last Updated on Monday, 04 June 2007 16:52 Written by Ken Foster
Described as 'brilliant but frankly unclassifiable' by The Daily Telegraph, 'Eccentricity of the highest order' (Classic Rock) and the "most creative collection of enigmatic delights I have heard this side of Halloween" (Spill Online) you'd be hard pushed not to be intrigued by the world according to Flipron.
Remember the 'void' in that old 70's show 'The Tomorrow People'? Well it's the nearest thing I can think of to experiencing Flipron. Once inside you may not want to come out, not only that but you may not even be able to get out! Jesse Budd (2nd from left in pic above) was kind enough to let jump in a carriage and take a ride on the Flipron ghost train or was it Alice in Wonderland with dogs instead of a rabbit?
Strummer: Hi Jesse, it's been difficult to think of appropriate questions. The album is SO different that the usual formula seems inadequate somehow. Anyway as strummer is focussed on the unique and unusual can I begin by asking what drives your passion for music?
Jesse: That's a big question! As a fan of music, I suppose I'd say that listening to music can give a form to emotions that you might not come into contact with otherwise. It releases feelings. Like all art it can put you into contact with elements of yourself that you can't just switch on at will. I'm not just talking about serious stuff, though. Fun things too. It is, after all, equally a form entertainment as well as a form of art. It's hugely potent & hugely versatile. That's why it is such a passion for so many people, & that's why peoples tastes vary so much. But I love sounds too. Noises of objects & their interactions, the sounds of different voices & words. Their variety pleases my ear.
As far as making music goes, I stopped questioning that creative drive a long time ago. I really can't help but make music. I grew up in a musical family. I've been writing songs since I was a child. I know it drives other people bananas, but I'm always tapping out rhythms, or humming harmonies or alternate melodies to music that's playing somewhere. I'm not the sort of person who joined a band to become more attractive to women or anything, I formed Flipron to make the music I write happen. There are new tunes & words hatching out from some ill-kempt corner of my psyche constantly. Turning it into something that other people might actually want to listen to is another thing entirely! That's where a lot of the hard work comes in.
S: There's an element of Music Hall Storytelling to some of the songs, where does that come from?
J: Music Hall? I suppose if there's an element of Music Hall in our sound it has to come from listening obsessively to the Kinks as a teenager. Or Jacques Brel. Or even The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. As far as the storytelling goes, well, I've always been disappointed when songwriter's can't go beyond simply writing about aspects of love relationships. I'm always intrigued by people who are looking underneath all that to see what's really leading us as human beings into the emotional situations in which we find ourselves, what the real fears are that we all share, what we're hiding from ourselves. Stories are good for these kind of examinations. You can populate them with whoever or whatever you like & see what happens. That's fun to do. I usually don't know what a song's actually about until it's finished. I'll sing a new song & surprise myself when I stop again to consider it's content, -like I hadn't thought it might be trying to say that, as if the song had a life of it's own. But then again you never know what you're going to find when you start looking under stones & peeking into cupboards....
S: I believe you experimented with household objects and unusual locations during the recording of the album. What and where and any interesting anecdotes.
J: Well, we didn't record the Biscuits For Cerberus in anything resembling a proper studio! Greg Shepheard, who we'd worked with on the first album, set up a mixing desk, his macintosh, various machines, cables & microphones in our drummer Mike and his partner Jill's house, way out on the Somerset Levels outside Glastonbury. We took over the house completely, cables running from one room to another, mattresses propped against walls. We had a guitar amp set up in the toilet, a drum kit in the front room... We had to wait for tractors to drive past the house so as we wouldn't get the sound of rumbling agricultural machinery bleeding into the drum mics. But it was a great place to work, -very quiet, (apart from the tractors!) & we could look out across views of the moors as we played. We then moved a scaled-down set-up into keyboard player Joe's flat, recording vocals & a couple of overdubs using cupboards under the eaves for vocal booths, with sheets hanging over like a spooky little tent. This time having to wait, not for tractors, but for the churchbells to strike the quarter hour every fifteen minutes. Finally we did little bits of odd recording at Greg's house, percussion in the bathroom, accordion in the bedroom, before mixing it all. It probably sounds complicated, but doing it this way was much, much cheaper, which meant we could afford to spend time getting the right sounds at source, getting the performances we wanted & experimenting with different arrangements & instrumentation. If we'd been renting a studio it would have cost a fortune!
S: I see AIM made you album of the year in 2006, what response has the album had commercially? Is your goal commercial success or just to reach out to a wider audience?
J: Well that was Alison Wenham, CEO of AIM writing in Music Week, which was fantastic! Having people of her stature say nice things about us really helps. Sales of Biscuits For Cerberus have been pretty steady, which is encouraging. Of course we'd like a little more commercial success, who wouldn't want to make a great living out of doing what they love doing? But as you say, reaching out to a wider audience is a real goal for us. If our music plays a meaningful part in anyone's listening then we're happy. Songs are, of course, communication as well as being snacks for the eardrums, after all!
S: I believe the video to 'dogboy' was showcased at Sundance and shortlisted for Cannes? Whats the story behind that?
J: Ah, that was the cartoon video to Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead. It was actually shown at both the Cannes Film Festival & Raindance last year. That's really down to the director, Alex De Campi from Lot 49 films. She contaced us with an idea for a cartoon video short for our song. So we said 'Yes!' of course, & she roped in her friend Ryan Parker, an animator from Texas who'd just been working on A Scanner Darkly to transform her ideas into cartoon form. We couldn't believe our luck, having these amazingly talented people making a video for us! It's a sort of surreal Max Fleischman/ Betty Boop type thing, really unusual. She entered it for various film festivals, so it got shown all over the place. Anyway, we were so pleased with it that we asked her to make the video for the Dogboy Vs. Monsters single too. This is live action vaguely in the style of a 1950s Ealing comedy, but with giant monster crabs marching across the Somerset countryside in a threatening manner. It's been having good airplay or whatever you call it on MTV2 & E4 among others, so we're equally delighted. You can watch both videos on our myspace profile .
S: How did the deal with Tiny Dog come about and what's in the pipeline? 3rd album, tour?
J: Well we recorded our first album, Fancy Blues & Rustique Novelties, off our own backs really. I took out a loan from the bank to pay for it. We'd imagined that we'd just release it ourselves, but thought it couldn't hurt to send out a few copies to some indie labels to see if anyone was interested in helping us out, really. We knew about Tiny Dog Records because of Scott 4 being signed to them, & we liked the name, so sent them one. They agreed to release it, & they seem happy to let us carry on making more records, which is great for us. Certainly we're relishing the opportunity to develop our music. We have a fabulous new bass player too. Greg Shepheard. The same man as recorded the albums. As far as plans go, we have some Festivals over the summer, including Glastonbury & Secret Garden, & then we'll be recording a third album in the Autumn with a view to release early next year. The songs are nearly all written. We're already including some of the new material in our live set.
Listen to a track from Biscuits for Cerberus ('Cerberus is as Cerberus does') on the ipod. Just select the Tiny Dog Sampler playlist.
(Copyright Flipron and Tiny Dog Records)
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