Planet Notion interview (2011)

I defy anyone reading this article who denies listening to Ladytron at some point during their lives. Personally, my seminal Ladytron moment was using their song 'Seventeen' as my profile song on MySpace when I turned, you guessed it, twenty-one. No, joking; I did actually put it on my profile and kept it there for the seventeenth year of my life. Back in the day, everyone was listening to a bit of Le Tigre, and possibly downloaded a couple of New Young Pony Club mp3s, and up there with those femme-pop disco gems were Ladytron. Part of the whole electroclash era (at its most widespread around the late '90s to early '00s) that has continued to influence a variety of music today such as Crystal Castles and The Whip, Ladytron continue to be one of the most influential electronic acts of the past decade. To celebrate their cult success, Daniel Hunt, Reuben Wu, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo have just released their Best of 00-10 album, as well as a brand new single, "Ace of Hz". AND they've got a brand new LP, Gravity the Seducer, coming this year too. Us lucky ducks got to have a natter with Mira about the past ten years; here's what they had to say:

You've been away for 3 years as a full band even though you've been doing a few individual DJ sets. Where have you been?

We have been DJ'ing all over the world, but also writing and working on our 5th album as well as putting together a 10 year retrospective album with a couple of new songs on it and also a little photo booklet for the limited edition package.

Throughout the years you've been compared to acts such as Kraftwerk and The Human League but who are your influences?

They are very varied, from '60s girl groups to My Bloody Valentine, from '70s prog and folk to obscure disco, from '70s german bands to pop and R'n'B. We have never been interested in recreating anything. There are elements and sounds we have taken from all over the place but the main thing is that we have always wanted to have our own sound and I think we have achieved that.

As figureheads for the 'electroclash' scene, how would you describe that sound?

We never saw ourselves as figureheads of any scene really. The main thing we have in common with other musicians lumped under the same banner is use of synths. We don't really make dance music however, are a band, perform live in a very traditional sense of the word and make albums that are to be listened as a whole, as opposed to a few songs destined for clubs. I also think our music is quite a bit more layered and not as minimal and clean.

You started over 10 years ago. How has Ladytron changed since it began? How have you guys evolved since then?

When we started out we didn't really know where we were going or what we were doing. Everything evolved very instinctively. Our music has become thicker and more layered and varied, as we have learned a lot of things along the way. We have toured all over the world and playing live has had a huge effect on how our music developed. 604, our first record, was written and recorded before we played almost a single gig so it kind of sounds more fragile in a lot of ways. Playing live toughened us up in a lot of ways.

As artists you've seen a rise from cult status into deserved commercial success. But you've always had this aura of remaining on the fringes. Do you see yourselves as trendsetters?

I wouldn't say we are trendsetters in any way, but when we started out there weren't many people making the kind of music we were and we had to justify why were doing it quite a bit, where as now it seems to have seeped into the main stream. There weren't many bands using synths in the way we were 10 years ago and now you hear certain sounds and production everywhere.

Why do you guys prefer to use old school analogue tech rather than go digital?

We don't really use only old school analogue stuff. We record digitally and use all sorts of digital instruments when we need to too. We are not purists in any sense. We just like the sound of old synths and organs and the way you play them and work with them, so we end up using them a lot. They give you a much warmer sound and we like the element of unpredictability you get and also the uniqueness of the sounds. Often we cannot recreate sounds that we have used once on a record. It's a case of you get a good sound, use it and record it as you might not be able to get it again.

Your songs feature in loads of computer games; what do you think makes Ladytron so popular for these soundtracks?

Computer games have evolved so much in the time we have existed as a band. They are much more cinematic nowadays and so look for creating an atmosphere and a mood. I guess our music gives them that. Also we probably have fans amongst the people compiling these soundtracks and so they use our songs. In a way our music is also very universal as it is quite melodic. We really enjoyed writing music specifically for The Sims game and look forward to doing more of that.

I've read that you're all currently living in separate cities. Do you guys still hang out when you're not touring, or is it now more of a professional partnership?

It's a bit of both. We see each other socially every now and again, but because we spend so much time together anyway, it's important to have a life outside that relationship too. I don't think we would have lasted as long or developed as much otherwise. It's good to bring new influences into the equation and also to feel refreshed when we do get together to work on music.

What were the last 5 records/artists on your collective iPod?

Caribou - Swim; Tame Impala - Innerspeaker; Squarepusher / Shobaleader One - d'Demonstrator; Bot'Ox - Babylon by Car; Jacques Dutronc- L'integrale.

How did you come around to working with Christina Aguilera last year (on her album Bionic to write the songs "Birds of Prey" and "Little Dreamer")?

She was a fan of our music and seemed very familiar, not just with the famous songs like "Playgirl" and "Destroy Everything You Touch", but with the whole albums. She wanted our kind of sound and luckily she just went straight to us as opposed to asking someone else to write and produce in our style, which has happened in the past.

Any more collaboration on the cards?

Hopefully. We look forward to writing and producing with other artists.

What's the plans for 2011?

Releasing 2 albums, more DJ gigs, more live shows.

Source

Ladytron - Seventeen (Live)

IGN interview (2002)

Ladytron is an analog lover's band. These guys and girls have more cool, obscure gear than Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman combined. OK, maybe not, but I can guarantee you that Keith and Rick didn't pick their gear up cheap in the 80s like Ladytron's Daniel Hunt did.

I spoke with Daniel recently about how he and the rest of Ladytron (Reuben Wu, Helen Marnie, and Mira Aroyo) put together their retro-futurist pop songs.

Your music is sequenced in a rather simplistic way. Is that because you're using vintage sequencers?

Partially, but stuff ends up in Pro Tools or whatever. I often listen to electronic music and think things have been made over-complex. Mainly, that's probably because we're just learning how to use the equipment. We've never read a manual in our lives. The whole sound of the album 604 - the sequencing, the production, everything - is just us learning how to use the equipment. We didn't actually aim for any particular style.

What sequencers did you use?

It's just drum machines, and we sequenced some stuff in Cubase. We did a couple of basslines there, but the sequencing on a whole was drums. And we played the keyboard parts by hand. It adds that tiny bit of unpredictability to it and you're more likely to end up with a happy accident. Sequencing is useful when we're actually writing, for getting an idea down quickly. And obviously for stuff that can't be played by human beings.

What kind of drum machines do you use?

The main one I use is not very glamorous at all, it's the Yamaha RY-8. If anyone had one they'd be able to recognize the sound straight away.

I thought I heard a Roland TR-707 in there.

Yeah, I've used some samples of the 707 as well. We use quite a lot of sample kits. As a reliable workhorse, the RY-8 does it every time.

Have you played with the RY-30? It has filters and stuff in it, it's pretty weird.

I bought the RY-8 on a whim and found it's got a rap kit and stuff, it's great. I picked it up really cheap. "He Took Her to a Movie", that's got it all over it. I've also used 505 sample sets as well.

The Korg DDD-1 is cool too. You can get them for around $100. You can actually sample into it - it's got one second sampling - so you can do weird, percussion samples. Nobody wants the mid-80s digital stuff so it's super cheap.

I'll look out for one of those. I'm just starting on the second album now, so we're wondering where to look for some new gear. We've already got some new stuff but we're not going to use exactly the same sounds on the second album. I read an interview with Air where they said they didn't want to use any of the same sounds at all from Moon Safari and I don't really agree with that. You arrive at a sound you obviously like it; you make a record and people like it - I don't see the point in abandoning the whole thing.

What were some of the keyboards that you used on the record?

I'll reel them all off for you: Roland SH-09, that's my favorite, it's really tactile and fat; the Crumar Stratus Polysynth (I'm sitting amongst them right this second), the Crumar's quite useful and the organ sounds are nice as well; Korg Micro Preset, there's a really nice control called Traveler on it which is a bit like a filter.

I used to have a Mini Korg and it had that. All of the names for stuff were different, like decay is called Percussion.

Yeah. You can get nice white noise stuff with it. Moving on, I've got a Logan String Synth.

That's some weird stuff. Is a lot of it European? I know the Crumar's from Italy.

Yeah, I used to be really lucky here in Liverpool. There was a shop called the Keyboard Corporation about seven or eight years ago, and it closed down because I was the only customer. When it closed I inherited a few keyboards, like the Crumar. So I've got this Logan thing, it's got a really nice, ghostly sound and a really great orchestra sound. I play some riffs on "The Way That I Found You" that are very Joe Meek-like, "Telstar". I've got a Sequential Circuits Pro One, which I used with a MIDI to CV to play the bassline on "Discotraxx" and stuff like that, stuff with fast, sequence-based lines. It's really tight. I've got this Casio CT 630 and that sound is all over the album. I think it was the first MIDI Casio. We had them when I was at school in the mid-80s and I thought it was useless until I picked one up for like 20 pounds. It's got all these amazing stock sounds on it that, when the keyboard was made, were probably a bit long in the tooth. Every keyboard sound you'd need if you were making a record between 1976 and 1980 were there, which were obviously dated when I last used the keyboard. Really big, sweeping pads and great synth strings, organs, and harpsichords. In fact, the atmosphere in "He Took Her to a Movie" is completely done on that keyboard. I've got this old Korg organ sitting here and there's a couple toy keyboards as well.

Wow. So when you're doing a live show, you obviously don't bring all that gear with you.

No, me, Mira and Reuben have two keyboards each and Helen's got one. Obviously Helen and Mira are singing. We put the drums on a DAT because it's the safest way of doing it. We were toying with the idea of going with convention and having an actual drummer but everyone talked us out of it, because it would have diluted the whole essence of what we were.

It's much more Kraftwerk just to have four people playing keyboards.

Exactly. And if we brought a computer or a sequencer, it would just be something else to fail. I don't want to be shouting out to the audience, "Has anyone got a copy of Mac OS 9?" [laughs]

It's nice to hear that you play live because I've been to so many shows where, it's cool but it's a guy sitting behind a computer.

Our attitude was, we might as well not do it at all if we were going to do that. We've avoided playing in England - we played in London once but we were on a tour with Solex in February. We played in Europe when we were invited to get a free holiday but the live thing now is developing into a real thing now that the album is out. We wanted to wait until the album was released and there was a market for what we were doing and people wanted to see us.

Are you going to come to the US?

Yeah, we should be coming over in September.

Do you feel an affinity with other synth revival bands?

No, because we scream and run away when people start using the word "revival". It's like, we're using these instruments and influences to generate our version of modernity. We don't dress in the clothes or have the haircuts or wear the makeup. We've separated the elements of the sounds from the image and all of the baggage that went with it. People like Daft Punk, I feel affinity with them. I was really proud because someone said we were Daft Punk's more tuneful cousins. I probably feel more affinity with someone like Air than I do with, say, Zoot Woman [the new band from Les Rhythmes Digitales guy Jacques Lu Cont]. I feel like they're more of a stylistic snapshot of 1984 whereas we're slightly harder to categorize.

There's a few American electro groups like Le Car and Dopplereffekt that you remind me of. The big difference is you have vocals.

I spent some time over there at the end of last year, in LA, and the thing that was weird was, we seem to have all of these punk kids into us in San Diego. It's like, we're like this thing that punk's evolved into over there that doesn't really exist in England. That's quite strange. There's definitely punk in what we do, it's just not immediately apparent. I think that when people see us live they'll understand that we've got this subconscious desire to subvert everything we've created, in a way. We can't really help it, it just seems like the natural thing to do. We enjoy confounding people's expectations of us.

There's nothing more boring than going to see a band and have them recreate the album on stage.

Exactly, we play the songs in a different order. No, I'm only joking [laughs]. Live it's a lot edgier. There's a definite live sound - some of the songs do sound very different. There's obviously a balance, because if we messed with it all people would get on our case about it. "Zmeyka", we start with that normally. The harsher stuff tends to work better live so we gear the set in that direction.

Source

Unboxing of "Best of 00-10" deluxe version

The Times interview with Ladytron & Depeche Mode (2009)

When Depeche Mode met Ladytron

When you meet someone famous for having taken the path to excess and tripped over on it a fair few times, you wonder if the demons can really have left them.

Dave Gahan, lead singer with Depeche Mode, famously nearly died after overdosing on drugs at a Los Angeles hotel in 1995, when his band had already enjoyed a decade and a half of hits, in more than one sense of the word. The synthesizer music that made his pop group so famous in the 1980s, with thrilling singles including "Everything Counts", "People Are People", and "Enjoy the Silence", saved him from a life of car-stealing and juvenile courts in Basildon, Essex. Yet it also led him to a life of highs and lows on the road, including that near-fatal overdose.

Meeting him now though, with his bandmates Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher, it's striking how astonishingly well Gahan looks, with his dapper pin-stripe suit and glowing bronzed skin. In fact, all three of them are looking remarkably healthy after three decades on the road. "There were always vitamin shots in the bum, but you can take that how you like, ha ha", Gahan says. "Life keeps changing, as always, but yeah, I do enjoy a lot of that fitness stuff. I get a kick out of it. I'm disciplined now". They are preparing to release their 11th album, Sounds of the Universe, and go on tour with a younger synth band, Ladytron, whose glacial keyboard pop sound is finally breaking through after several years of underground cult success.

The two bands are gathered together for a drink in London before their tour. They don't know each other really but there is obviously mutual interest, with lots of discussion about the equipment they use, how they verge between computer software and clunky real keyboards — and guitars too, since both bands feel able to use a broader sound than just electronic. This should be a good time for them all: synth music may have taken a back seat while indie guitar bands such as Kaiser Chiefs and the Kooks ruled the charts in recent years, but now it's back. While sexy strummers such as Razorlight see their sales plummet, new pop acts such as La Roux and Little Boots are bursting into the Radio 1 playlist with their 1980s-inspired synth-pop sounds.

Younger bands such as Ladytron look up to Depeche Mode as perhaps the founding fathers of that sound, yet both bands admit that they owe an awful lot to the German masters of the whole genre, Kraftwerk. And both turn out to have encountered disaster when Kraftwerk started taking an interest in them.

"Our most embarrassing concert ever was in front of Kraftwerk, in a little club in Germany", Gore recalls. "Probably the worst concert we ever played. Everything broke down — and we were supposed to be the new electronic geniuses around".

"But that happened to us too!" says Reuben Wu, from Ladytron: "One of the first gigs we played was in Paris at a bowling alley. We had only just started out, so we had keyboards borrowed off people, but they weren't plugged in, we really just had a backing tape. One of Kraftwerk was meant to be there so we needed to be amazing, but the gig was sponsored by Chupa Chups, massive plastic lollies everywhere, and people were still bowling while we were playing. We had to dodge the balls as we were walking on to the stage". Sharing these disasters seems to bring much mutual relief.

Wu tells Depeche Mode: "We've just heard your new album and I love the way it starts up, it's almost like an orchestra tuning up". The older band are pleased. "That was the idea", Gore agrees, "an electronic orchestra. I actually had a dream. Start with a synth orchestra tuning up like an orchestra tunes up".

Fletcher tells Ladytron: "I think it's very brave of you to use analogue keyboards live because early on in our career we had so many problems with them". "Like what?" asks Mira Aroyo. "Like being able to play 'em", Gahan smirks.

Depeche Mode are interested to hear about the nightclub that Wu runs in Liverpool, but they warn him not to let it turn into a Hacienda, referring to the legendary Manchester nightclub, which was managed so hopelessly by Factory records that it drained bands such as Joy Division/New Order of their profits.

Depeche Mode used to play a club in Southend called Crocs. "It changed its name to the Pink Toothbrush — but there were these actual crocodiles and there was always a big debate whether they were alive or not", Fletcher says. "I think one of them was dead", Gahan says, "or it just didn't move much. Yeah, we played there a few times". "A few times? We had a residency there!" Fletcher corrects him. "We did?!" Gahan is shocked. He admits that he can't remember large chunks of their past.

Back in 1995, after their fourth band member, Alan Wilder, left, things looked bleak for Depeche Mode. There were major doubts if the band would record again, especially since Gahan's overdose. (Scars on his arms are the legacy of two drug-induced heart attacks.) Gahan has said that it was that second chance, after nearly dying, that made him turn his life around, as well as setting up home in California and adopting a healthier way of life.

Still, he doesn't seem weighed down by regret. "I just liked getting high. It was fun for a long time. Drinking, getting loaded — that's how we did the first 15 or even 20 years of what we were doing. We toured Songs of Faith and Devotion for 18 months solid and Fletch didn't even finish that tour; he had a nervous breakdown".

"But I had to stay in America", Fletcher explains, "because it was our year off. Tax purposes". "Which is even more nuts when you think about it", Gahan adds. "A year into the tour our American manager told us that we were spending more than we were making, and had been for a whole year, so we would have to stay on the road for an extra six months to break even. It's crazy. But some of it was fun as well. Some of it wasn't! It went on and on. And even when the tour ends, you don't stop".

Ladytron agree that coming back down to earth after touring is a major feat. As Wu puts it: "I find it had to get to grips with reality when I get home. You want to call the tour manager asking them to feed you". Gahan nods, recalling one time he tried to reintegrate into normal life in a shop on Hollywood Boulevard, trying to buy cleaning products, "and there were way too many detergents, too many options, and I was like 'Waaargh'. This woman came over to help me and I was pathetic, I was like: 'Which one of them is good?'"

"But let's face it", Fletcher says, "you wanted to take the detergent. It wasn't for cleaning". Everybody falls about laughing. "Oh, it's probably true", Gahan says, smiling.

As for the music industry now, they have mixed views, though all agree that the actual record is no longer the main event. "Record sales are dwindling but we have to remember that music is popular. It's more popular. It's just that people don't buy it", Gahan says. He sees the changes through two sets of eyes, since his son Jack is working in music too. Having done work experience at a PR firm and in recording studios, Jack is now working for a tour promoter (though his dad suspects that he would like to make his own music eventually).

"The live scene is very good, there are still opportunities there, and I think things are going to get better. You do still spend a lot of money making the records but you make it back touring. Our strength for the past 20 years has been our touring income. But I always tell my son that it baffles me that people complain that CD prices are still too high but they think nothing about going into Starbucks and spending five quid on a cup of coffee. I just don't get it — that seems pretty ridiculous to me".

Depeche Mode's music continues to resonate. They didn't even know that Johnny Cash had covered their song "Personal Jesus". "I think when you're somebody of Johnny Cash's calibre", Gore says, "you don't ask for permission". They were, of course, thrilled. As were Ladytron when they came off stage after a recent Oxford gig and a nice young undergraduate started chatting to them about their Mini car they arrived in. "And after a while", Aroyo tells them, "she said: 'I don't mean to sound boastful but my dad is Brian Eno'". Next thing they knew, Eno himself was asking them to play with him at the Sydney Opera House, which was pretty exciting for a band who had named themselves after a Roxy Music song.

As for the resurgence of keyboard music, both bands insist that it's the songs that matter, not the instruments on which you play them. "You ask us the secret of our longevity, but we'd be nothing without good songs", Fletcher says. Gore adds that he has recently gone back to collecting old keyboards, but that the band also record in a high-tech studio where he once did his backing vocals through a plastic water bottle that was cut in half.

Technologies come and go but sometimes it's the simple things that work best.

Source

Clash Music interview (2011)

Celebrating a decade of ice-cool-but-catchy futurism, Ladytron have numerous reissues and a best-of on the racks. Mira Aroyo guides us through her trials and tribulations.

My worst hangover

"They seem to be getting worse all the time. The worst recent one was after a DJ gig in Miami. I think there was some Mescal involved and though I love it, it never bodes well. Packing my bags in the hotel the following morning seemed like an insurmountable task".

My most memorable trip

"A trip around the Yucatan peninsula. Lots of ancient ruins, spider monkeys, fresh fish, white sands and margaritas".

My most painful injury

"I broke my knee and ripped some ligaments skiing. I was in a place where I shouldn't have been skiing and paid the price".

The strangest situation

"Hmm, there have been a few. Last week Reuben [Wu] and I DJ'd at this house party where Adam Ant busked live with an acoustic guitar. Very strange indeed".

The hardest I ever laughed

"Curb Your Enthusiasm usually throws me into fits".

The worst gig I ever played

"We played this one gig in Amsterdam that was pretty big and for a national radio station. It was when we just started out and we didn't get together to rehearse together. It was a mess".

Best childhood memory

"Learning how to ride a bike and knowing my dad wasn't holding onto me by the seat and I was still going was pretty amazing. I couldn't take corners though".

The last time I cried

"I tend to cry when I'm tired over nothing. When I'm really tired and just need my bed".

The biggest turning point

"I guess when I decided to do Ladytron full time, as a career".

The best advice I can give

"Follow your heart".

Source

The Portable Infinite interview (2000)

Ladytron are from Liverpool. They hit the scene about a year ago when they released the single "He Took Her to a Movie". NME picked it as single of the week, as they did their next single "Playgirl". Soon there was a bidding war and international interest. They were signed to Emperor Norton a few months ago. Their first EP Commodore Rock was released this summer. Now they just released their first album, 604, last month. I have heard it and it's an amazing record. It expands upon their singles and has many instrumental tracks, showcasing the full palate of their sound. I met Daniel Hunt in New York City during CMJ. I was disappointed that they didn't play, we will have to wait a few months for that. Others members are Reuben, Mira, and Helen.

Do you do a lot of DJ-ing?

The label we are on runs a club. I DJ there most weeks. Me and Reuben go out and DJ as Ladytron as well. We did one club in London a few weeks ago.

What's it like in Liverpool? Are you influenced by the city or is the music of Ladytron a work of the imagination?

Liverpool has changed a lot in the last five years. It doesn't feel like England. It feels more like a colony. When I go down south I feel like I'm visiting another country. But that is true probably going from state to state in the US as well.

I feel more comfortable in Manchester than in London. Manchester and Liverpool have a complete hatred of each other. A genetic rivalry. The population of Liverpool has gone down every year for the last forty years, but recently it stabilized. There's been a lot of redevelopment. In a way, what we do reflects how Liverpool has changed.

There is also a lineage with the musical past, especially the early 1980s, like The Teardrop Explodes. People in England have a fixed expectation of what Liverpool produces, specifically Beatles influenced guitar bands, which is sort sometimes true but there's a lot more out there than that.

Do you like Liverpool or Everton?

People in the band are taken aback by how much I'm into football. It doesn't fit in with the image of the band. It's complete therapy. You can't be doing music all the time. I have looked so long for a place to watch games live in LA, and I found a place in Studio City. I got a fax of my schedule for Thursday from Emperor Norton. It says that Danny watches soccer game at 12. Liverpool has one of the most supported teams in the world, but everyone you meet in Liverpool seems to support Everton. It's weird.

How did you meet the other members of the band? Are they all from Liverpool?

Reuben has always been from Liverpool. I've known him for a long time. Mira is Bulgarian and she lives in Oxford. Helen is Scottish and didn't live in Liverpool till very recently. Helen introduced Mira to the band. It was all quite organic. We didn't put up any adverts. We just met people. We fell over each other at a bar. I was working on stuff with Reuben anyway, so it sort of became a band about two years ago. We started working as a band.

Did you write all the songs on this album?

I wrote most of this album because I was working on it first and I had built up quite a lot of material. So that everyone has equal input we will make the next album more evenly. It strikes me now why people's second albums are so difficult. The first album has been long since finished. Now there's a bunch of stuff we have to do, and there's a barrier for us before we can record again. We have stuff ready and I want to get on with it. The live shows are not that important to the band.

How many shows have you played?

Less than ten. I've been in bands before where they spend so much time rehearsing and carrying amplifiers around that they haven't actually achieved anything. I thought it would be better to sacrifice the physical fitness. We have our own studio. We do about ninety percent of it there, and then take it somewhere else to finish it.

Is the studio near Strawberry Fields or Penny Lane to get that good vibe?

No. We took part of the wall and put it in the studio. People actually do that. They take a piece of the gate of Strawberry Fields. Where the fuck do they think they can actually sell it? There's only about three hundred thousand people in Liverpool. There was about a million in the 1930s when it was a thriving port, before we were fucked up by Rotterdam. All the Beatles stuff is south Liverpool and we are south Liverpool as well. North Liverpool is predominantly white and working class. Culturally they're a bit backwards. South Liverpool is where all the immigrant communities are and it's a bit more cosmopolitan.

Ladytron got the attention of the NME right away. How did that happen?

It was the single of the week. It had actually been around for six months. It had been sent out and it didn't get reviewed or anything. It was sitting on the shelves for six months and it was re-promoted. Then it landed on the right person's desk, and it became single of the week. That got a lot of attention and we had a load of major labels chasing us. At first we were tempted because it would be an easy thing to explain to my mum and dad. They understand signing to a big label, but wouldn't know what an indie label is. So we resisted that temptation and hooked up with Emperor Norton. I think that if we went with a major label and a worldwide deal, they wouldn't have done as good a job.

Are you more interested in the DJ scene or in being a pop group?

Ladytron is supposed to be a pop group. I'm into the idea of subverting things from within. We want to make pop records and not records for pure collectors. The music were into will never come out straight. I think that you can make pop music out of anything. Any instruments. As long as it has a good melody and is regular, then it's pop music.

Do you have Arps and Moogs? What other gear do you have?

Yeah. I've been collecting that stuff since I was about seventeen. Liverpool was lucky to have this shop that was only open for a year, because the market was obviously quite limited. About seven years ago they were selling analog synths. I bought loads of stuff from there and from other sales. So I have about ten analog synths. I have had a few stolen. And I've stolen a few myself. I don't have any old ones. Mini-moogs you are supposed to leave on for half a day. They are brittle. I broke two when we played in Spain. They just didn't work anymore. I use Pro Tools on a Mac. Keeping the programming to a minimum, and play live as much as possible. Someone in Spain described it as Electronic music with skin, because it's not completely pure.

Bands like Kraftwerk and Detroit Techno guys like Derrick May were imagining the future with their music. It was cold, robotic and the human body was close to being eliminated.

It's not like we're anticipating the future anymore. It's strange that people associate those sounds with the future. That people said "This is what the future sounds like". There's a lot of Sci-Fi connotations to the sound. There's no reason why the future should sound like that. I have a friend who built me a ring modulator. It sounds a bit like a theremin. It has limited usefulness. Kraftwerk has become a self-parody. They have an enormous influence. But Kraftwerk 2000 sounds like Kraftwerk trying to sound like Kraftwerk. That happens to a band a certain point in their career: they attempt to recycle what they have done "Free as a Bird" style.

How do you feel about Napster?

I'm into it. I think it's like playing on the radio and people taping your song. But someone hears about you they check out your stuff straight away. If it does impact record sales in the long term, that's just tough shit. There's nothing you can do about it. I was really pleased to find our stuff on Napster because it was like we were getting played on the radio. I was really pleased that someone had taken the song from the CD and put it up.

I sent an email message to the person who did it and asked them if they had any more Ladytron stuff. They said, "No". Then we had a series of messages back and forth and I told them that I was actually in the band. And they wouldn't believe me.

I checked back on Napster a few weeks later and the content had multiplied. One song appeared off of this Japanese mini-album we had done. Some of the tracks off this will be on the album coming out in January. Well, I saw one track and thought that's weird. Then a few minutes later there were two more songs. So this guy was in the process of ripping off all the songs on the CD. This panicked me because it wasn't out yet. It was out in Japan but we deliberately kept it away from the rest of the world. We didn't want to take any of the impact off the album. I thought that was scary. I felt that someone had gotten into my computer and taken these songs out.

The cover of the Commodore Rock EP makes you look like a Japanese band.

Right. Well, Reuben is Chinese and he does the illustrations. We all work on the artwork. We try and keep it all in house. Many people thought we were Japanese because we released our first record over there. We haven't played over there yet.

What is the live show like?

Well, there's the four of us with a keyboard each. Then there's these two guys who help us, who do additional stuff. They're not in the band but they play with us. I suppose it looks a little like Kraftwerk as well. I wanted to take it into a whole rock show direction, but I wimped out because the whole sound is based around drum machines. We don't want to confuse people when they first see us. All the keyboards get routed to the two guys in the back, white-coated technicians.

Source

Prefix Mag interview (2008)

Following three successful studio albums and a bunch of now-classic indie-dance tunes ("Destroy Everything You Touch", "Playgirl", "Seventeen"), Ladytron's fourth full-length, Velocifero, took the Glaswegian-Liverpudlian-Bulgarian foursome several giant steps forward. The album, released on Nettwerk in June, is a cohesive, more-immediate effort that injects dynamism into every track while still incorporating Ladytron's trademark melodic vocals, pulsating grooves and moody, almost menacing atmospherics. Here, band members Helen Marnie and Daniel Hunt talk about the new album, ABBA, their love of bicycles, and "fanpires".

I read somewhere that you wrote most of Velocifero while you were on the previous tour. Is that true?

Hunt: No, no. Writing on tour's a really bad idea. [laughs]

Marnie: If you had to live on a bus for a few months, you would realize that you aren't going to do anything productive at all, whatsoever.

Do you enjoy touring?

Marnie: It's a double-edged sword.

Hunt: It's good, but you just have to know where to draw the line. Some bands just kill themselves touring.

Marnie: My favorite part is obviously going on stage, making some music. [But] you go to bed on a bus and wake up somewhere new -- which does sound like a good thing, but then you have your strict routine.

Hunt: There's people who go -- and this is the common thing -- "Oh, wow, you've been to 'wherever'". And it's like, "Yeah, we saw a restaurant".

Marnie: The hardest part is obviously you leave people back home, and you miss your friends and family and lovers or whatever.

Hunt: Yeah, that's the hardest part. That's why it's very easy when bands are young and kind of naïve to just be convinced that they need to tour forever and never take a break. They end up having no life at home and nothing to write about. It's pretty classic: You get these bands' second albums, and they're all just complaining about being on tour. [laughs]

How do you find touring the U.S. in particular?

Marnie: If you're coming over here, you have to try to fit in as much as possible so you can get to places that you might not have been before. We played New Orleans on this tour and a few other places we've not played before. We'll be coming back again, [but] no point just coming back for a few gigs.

Hunt: It's a classic British band thing. They think, "We're doing really well in America because we played New York and L.A. and Chicago". Our label's always been based in L.A., and our management, as well. They work us hard, but we have an understanding of how you have to do things, so we respect that. We prefer to coming over here than doing Britain. We don't want to slag off Britain too much … specifically England -- that's gone! [laughs]

Marnie: I prefer North America.

Hunt: I suppose you get spoiled as well. We accept the shows over here as like a norm, then we have these really amazing shows in Latin America and stuff. Then we go home and just play a normal gig somewhere in England, and it's just, "How did we go back to this?"

Let's talk about Velocifero. Was there anything specific you were trying to achieve with it?

Hunt: It's just what we had really. Like, let's just try to make something better than the last one.

Marnie: We toured the last one for a long time -- over two years, I think. In between gigs we'd go home and get some headspace and think about writing things.

Hunt: We toured for two years, but there wasn't like a nine-month unbroken spell. It was like two months here or there.

With this album, you switched labels, from Rykodisc to Nettwerk. What's the official reason for the move?

Hunt: We don't want to dwell on it, but... we never signed to Ryko -- they bought our label. We were left in a situation where they had the rights to the album, and it was either let them release it or have it sitting on the shelf. We had to let them do it, but the only reason anyone knows about that record is because we toured it for two years.

Marnie: We made the most of the situation.

Hunt: We've seen more or less every permutation of why the system of labels is in so much trouble, and we've also seen the alternatives. We're in a good situation now, because Nettwerk are a really logical label. They're a big label, they have an infrastructure, but they don't have all that bullshit that comes with major labels. We're happy.

Marnie: It's a worldwide simultaneous release.

Hunt: First time we've ever done that as well.

With four albums now under your belt, do you feel like the process is getting easier, or is there more pressure to "top" the previous one?

Hunt: I think it's getting easier.

Marnie: When you're writing music, you don't think, "I really have to top Destroy Everything You Touch" or something.

Hunt: That's what other people think.

Marnie: It's whatever's natural.

Hunt: "Can you just give us a couple more Destroy Everything You Touches?"

Marnie: I think if you feel pressure, it wouldn't work out very well.

Hunt: I think it's easier, because you're obviously more experienced. You know what not to waste your time on. There is an internal pressure of wanting to make a better record, I suppose, and not wanting to repeat yourself, but I think it just got easier.

All four members of Ladytron write. What sorts of things inspire you?

Marnie: When you write, it's very personal. We don't really go into what stuff is about, but it can be things around you or things you've seen.

Hunt: It seems to be that if you write, you write personally, and it's almost like some weird exorcism or something. As long as you don't spell it out, it remains subjective and it's then the listener's song and it's whatever they want. That's quite a good situation, because you've got something out there that's personal, and it affects you in whatever way, and it doesn't have to be about that for the listener as well. That's why we always get coy about it, I suppose. It's like Bruce Springsteen introducing a song for like 15 minutes, explaining what it's all about. Which is cool in its own way -- let's do that tomorrow! [laughs]

You've been playing together for nearly 10 years. Why do you think the band dynamics work so well?

Hunt: Because we're not musicians.

Marnie: Speak for yourself! [laughs] I don't know, I think because we're not in each others' pockets all the time. Because we've been together for so long -- a lot of bands wouldn't last this distance.

Hunt: Touring-wise, we came in on this sort of level.

Marnie: Yeah, we didn't actually have to do that much shit stuff. We never played any pubs or bars or that kind of thing.

Hunt: We're so spoiled! Our crew would take us to one side and say, "You do know that this is not the way it normally happens. You normally have to do this shitty back-of-the-van [stuff] and play in spaces to nobody". So I suppose we're lucky with the way it all turned out. That definitely added years onto the life of the band, not having to do that stuff.

Marnie: I think so, because I wouldn't do that. [laughs]

Hunt: I don't think we could tolerate it really.

People seem to have this image of Ladytron as very aloof, mysterious, and ultracool, perhaps because of the way you're portrayed in your videos and press photos. Does that at all relate to what you're like in "real life"?

Marnie: How can you get what you're really like from a photo?

Hunt: Well that's it, but people are so visually absorbed now. People think they understand the personality from looking at a photo of somebody. It's really weird.

Marnie: People haven't even seen us live and have seen the cover of the album or whatever. It's kind of annoying.

Hunt: I don't know, if you meet people and they expect you to be a certain way based on a photo or something, it's really strange. But then again, maybe to some people we are how they expect us to be -- unless we get really drunk! I think it's because of the whole delivery of everything -- Helen's not acting, she's singing a song. It's like our last video director said: "You're just singing: There's no histrionics, there's no acting, you're not pretending to be anything. You're just actually doing it".

Marnie: He said, "I usually try to get people to act a bit more and really go for it, but I like what you're doing". And I'm like, "I'm not doing anything!".

Hunt: I think that might be part of it. Being onstage is a completely unnatural situation. You try to be as natural as possible within it, and sometimes that means not really that arsed. It's like a symbiosis with the audience: If the audience is really high energy, you get more into it, and vice versa. So that's natural as well -- it's not like you can just switch on the showbiz. We're not very showbiz.

All that said, compared to a lot of indie bands today who show up on stage in rumpled T-shirts, you definitely have a more stylized look.

Marnie: We make the music, then we put some thought into what we're gonna wear, for example, on stage.

Hunt: I feel like other bands actually put way more thought into it than we do. At the beginning people didn't like us and just dismissed us as a haircut band. By today's standards, every single band we ever meet is a haircut band now.

Marnie: We don't actually put that much effort into it.

Hunt: I don't.

Marnie: We can see. [laughs]

Do you think it's a compliment that people think you do put that much effort into it?

Hunt: More people will use that as something negative and dismiss the music for these reasons, and that's the most frustrating thing. When you've done something purely musical and someone dismisses it as style over content just because they looked at a photo -- I suppose in 20 years it won't matter. It's difficult to see how it's perceived and it's frustrating when you come up against that, but obviously it's just part of the process and you end up just not taking any notice.

Marnie: In the beginning everyone wore these stupid uniforms.

Hunt: They weren't that stupid. We didn't want to be typecast, so we stopped doing it. Everyone was like, "Why aren't you wearing the uniforms anymore?" Like we betrayed them!

Marnie: I've got a friend who makes some stuff for me [now]. It's not like we put that much work into it.

You've been frequently compared to ABBA. I've even heard Ladytron tagged as "ABBA noir". How do you feel about that?

Hunt: I can live with that.

Marnie: We quite like it. I like ABBA.

Hunt: I'm suspicious of people who don't like ABBA -- it's like not liking music!

While we're talking about your similarities to ABBA, have band members ever been romantically involved?

Marnie: Never.

Hunt: Well, Mira and Reuben for a while.

Marnie: Shut up! [laughs] That's the number-one reason we're still together.

Hunt: [We] would have been one of those classic one-album bands if that had been the case.

The video for Velocifero's first single, "Ghosts", is pretty surreal: The four of you clad in black suits and dresses in the desert with a wolf, baseball bats, tumbleweeds and dustclouds, a yellow car, and a zillion rabbits. What was the filming process like?

Marnie: It was in the desert in California. I've been in the desert before...

Hunt: But it was the first time we've had to stand around for two days in the desert.

Marnie: I loved it. Actually, it's my favorite thing that we've done. I love animals and I got to hang out with a wolf and rabbits.

Hunt: All the juxtaposition. It was like, we should really not be there, the car shouldn't be there...

Marnie: We pulled up 5 A.M. on the first day of the shoot in a car. We passed this little house with a cactus tree outside. I turned to him and was like, "Oh my God, that's the Kill Bill house -- the church where she gets married and shot!".

Ladytron's fanbase seems to be growing rapidly. Any weird obsessive fan experiences?

Marnie: They're mostly cool. In the last couple of years we've gotten more younger kids, so that's nice to see. Generally everyone's been sweet, but then there are the odd occasions fans try to stare you out. "Why do you like us? Because I'm not feeling any warmth from you at all!" [laughs] But maybe that's nerves or whatever, I don't know.

Hunt: I think the term is "fanpire". "Really like your band, but I have to say something negative to you to somehow qualify that". It's really weird -- it's such a minority, I don't want to give the impression that it's like that. But you do kind of have to be on your guard, because there's just a lot of dickheads out there who just want to suck your energy in any way they can. It's not just people in bands; it's anyone.

Is there anything you think people would be shocked to know about Ladytron?

Hunt: Mira's really heavily into guns, actually. We're trying to get her on the cover of Guns & Ammo, her and Ted Nugent together.

Marnie: Shut up! We're not into guns! Don't write that please! No, not guns!

Hunt: Reuben likes classic cars. Where the rest of us buy groceries, he buys classic cars.

Marnie: We all bought bikes on this tour. Most cities we arrive in we try to go for a cycle. It's like E.T. -- there's like four of us in a row!

Hunt: Sometimes when you ride away from a venue there's already people there -- these four bikes come barreling out.

Marnie: Usually we get bike appreciation as opposed to band appreciation. Like, "Hey, nice bike!".

Source