TMC Interview : Nedry on filthy bass and coconut sponge

by Fairy Cake, photos by Holly Falconer

I have my friend Mike to thank for this interview. Whilst packing my bag in July for Oxford’s Truck festival, he put a link on my Facebook wall to Nedry’s track Apples And Pears.  ”Saw them at Roskilde really early in the morning.” he said,  ”You will love them.”  THANK.  YOU.  MIKE.  You were not wrong.

Nedry are Ayu Okakita, Matt Parker and Chris Amblin.  They are an electronic outfit hailing from London.  And they are doing something very special with music right now. The kind of special that makes you whip your head around at their gigs to equally dumbstruck friends, mouthing like a guppy and dancing like an idiot (there was a lot of that).

I’ve seen many an electronic act die on their feet live. But Nedry manage to keep hips moving and eyes fixed.  Their visible delight in and fixation on what they’re doing is really wonderful to watch, especially in vocalist Ayu, who, upfront, shifts between siren, seraph and someone who might be about to start a bar fight.  Since so many popular acts seem to shun enthusiasm like it’s some kind of disease, it’s nice to see a lovely bunch of people making lovely music and not being dicks about it.

Their latest release, Condors, is a subtle coup of delicate electronics, arresting vocals, and heart-stopping drops, and has won them high fives and hugs from the likes of 6muisc’s Tom Robinson and Radio1′s Rob Da Bank. So, after bumping into the trio at Truck, covered in UV acrylics and pretty far gone (#donttellmum), I was rather glad when they agreed to meet a marginally more sober me, and Lemon Tart, at the ICA for a natter and some piccies.

Their performance that night (following Anticon’s Baths, who was equally wonderful) threw them up to the top of my ‘Tell Everybody About This’ list. So yeah. Say hello, folks.

Right. 3 words to describe Nedry please!

Chris : I’d say…live electronic music.
Matt: Am I allowed to use any of those words in my description? No?
Ayu : That’s so difficult!
M : Modernised… trip hop.
A : Erm..I don’t know. Mixt…Mixture…erm. 4 words?
M : Deep banging tunes?
C : Throbbing bass line *laughs*?
A : Hahaha…okay. I’ll go with throbbing bass line.

You folks are off to the Netherlands tomorrow to tour with 65DaysOfStatic, who you played with earlier this year too. What’s it like playing to a room of metallers with beards?

M : Particularly with 65dos’s musical audience, there are people who like a mixture of really heavy guitar music and electronic music. Y’know, lots of different stuff, so we were generally really well received.
C : I think their fans seemed pretty open-minded to what we were doing. Loops Haunt was on the tour as well, doing pretty mashed up electronic stuff and he went down pretty well every night so…He’s from the same school as Clark. Aphex Twin-y glitchy stuff. We definitely gained a lot of new friends and fans from that tour.

You don’t strike me as a band who exclusively listen to electronic music. What did you all grow up listening too? And who are your favourite non-glitchy artists?

C : I grew up listening pretty much exclusively to metal. Up until about the age of sixteen, seventeen. Before I … stopped being a teenager *laughs*. And my favourite bands who aren’t electronic…I really like the Blood Brothers, they’re really good.
M : I would say Radiohead but that doesn’t really count ’cause they’re kind of electronic now. But massively, massively Radiohead. Again – I really like heavy sludgy metal. Deftones are pretty good. I like Tortoise as well. Jazz post, a lot of post rock.
A : For me, it’s post rock more than metal. And I really really really like Slint. That was the best gig I’ve seen in London.

When did you move over here Ayu? What’s the difference between the scene here and the scene back home in Japan?

A : Well, I moved about 5 years ago. And now I realise there’s a really good underground scene in Japan. But when I was doing music there, I wasn’t really paying attention to the underground, so it was more mainstream, J-Pop…really shit. I was really sick of it – that’s why I came to England. At the moment, I don’t really know about the underground scene in Japan. But I really like Devilman, and there is a band called OOIOO.
M : They’re awesome….
A : I think Boredom’s drummer is in it? And there are four girls. It’s more percussive. Like “Aheeehheehehee!!!” *hits imaginary cymbals*

How do you write, with such a strange set up?

M: Erm…yeah. It’s really hard! Someone will come up an idea. Ayu might mix stuff or just start with her piano and Chris and I will be sat at our computers. Individually we’ll make something then we’ll send it around, with a “what do you think of this?”. In a way it’s a bit like file-sharing. Ultimately it’ll just go around and everyone will get an idea of a song, and then we’ll meet together and try it.
C : Yeah, by the time it comes back to the first person, it’s been through the filter of everybody else’s tastes and ideas and it’s never the same. Then, once each of us have done something we can approach it in a live context, and that’s when the song will form. It’s a really long process.
M : A reaaaally long process *laughs*
C : And we’ve spent a lot of time doing that, getting something to the point of being able to play it live, and then thinking ‘This isn’t good enough’ and scrapping it. If you’re in a 4 piece guitar rock band, you jam it out and you find out in one day that it’s not very good. For us, it doesn’t work like that

Ayu, you’ve obviously got a pretty big role in the music side of things, but at the mo you seem to be just concentrating on singing. Do you think you’ll ever take more of a physical role on stage with your instruments?

A : I think I’ll keep it simple. Not like playing the instrument too much. Actually I used to play guitar and sing and loop things and .. it’s fun. But when I start singing, just with a microphone, and be able to dance and be free, I though ‘Wow‘. I like it that way. I’m happy just singing and dancing. But if there’s a need for playing a piano or something, I may do it…
M : I kinda like Ayu being free. Firstly if you had a keyboard in front of you I think it’d be hard for you to be as expressive in the way you dance and stuff. It would be a barrier. It’s something I like about us, and something other people have said they like about us too. That Ayu is completely absorbed in what she’s doing, whilst we’re noodling.
C : The dynamic works well.

So how much of what you do is “live”?

C : That’s a good question. The first important thing to say is we don’t use timelines. There no recorded start and end to the song. So if any point we choose to change things in a performance, we can. It is as live as we can possibly make it with three people. I’d say it’s about 80% live. It’s a lot of practice to get to that point. And that’s what we’re conscious of now. Not tracking something up to a point that you can’t play everything. So, you can’t have two guitars in a song, unless there’s nothing else going on…
M : Yeah, I mean the only way that works is if one of us was to record a loop that keeps running. I think it’s a difficult thing to explain now – what is ‘live’? With computer music there’s a difference between a DJ playing a record, and someone playing a guitar…but there’s a middle ground with computers. Because we’re still playing recorded wave forms, but it’s about what we’re doing with it.
C: It’s like you press notes on a piano, and it makes the sound of a C chord, or you press a sample of a C chord – it’s essentially the same thing, but it could be treated very differently in the eyes of an audience.

How’s the new record coming along?

M : We’re gonna play the third song that we’ve made so far, tonight for the first time…

You look terrified!

A : No, that’s Matt’s face!
M : Well, we had a bit of mistake with our sound-check….
C : No, let’s not go into that…
M : We were going to rehearse it in our sound-check but we weren’t able to so…and we’re not headlining tonight so we can’t be devious…
A : But I like this kind of nervousness, y’know? To try out the first new thing. It’s kind of…you never know what’s going to happen. I like that.

Okay so, Ayu. Your voice is insane. In the best way possible. How do you warm up?

A : Ahhhhh, come on! I don’t know! I don’t really warm up.

You don’t warm up?

A : Yeah, it took a while for me to be able to manipulate as I wanted. I kept just singing and singing and making songs, then recording and hearing how I’m singing. And yeah, getting better and better. I think. I hope!

And what was the Japanese reception like when you toured back home?

A : I don’t know how people were…accepting? Because the bands we were playing with were not really the right bands. Really different kind of music, more pop. And our stuff is more…not physical but…how do you say…?
C : It’s more abrasive.
A : Like dance music. Not like erm, song songs. So I think for some people it was difficult to get. But then, I heard that for the other people it was something new and they were like ‘Wow, what is this?’ so…
M : I remember we did one show in Tenmado, where the billing was completely wrong. It was like a sat–down thing, and we were at the back saying “Oh, this is the worst one we’re going to do, it’s fucking shit blah blah blah”, and then we went out and we played and everyone just completely zoned in. For me, it was the best show we did on the tour. And it was the one we thought was going to be the worst by miles.
A : Yeah, that was great…
M : The thing is, there the audiences are really patient.

Is that better for you, the laid-back response? Or do you like dancier audiences that are really going for it?

A : I really like it, because I really like to go to see a gig and dance. But I think if it’s only that we get bored. So we do like atmospheric stuff, more like…really getting into it. With that atmosphere, where everybody’s listening and paying attention, we felt that we could do a really nice long introduction. Like “oooohhh”. *mysterious gesticulating*
C : The more gigs we’ve done, the more we’ve learnt about ‘Okay, this is this type of gig, we can’t do a slow set, let’s do a heavier set’.

There’s a good lot of filthy bass on your record. What are your favourite dirty bass lines? (Fo’ the record, this is FC’s)

M : I really like Skittles by Andy C. Just the bit before the main drop in the build up, there’s the bit where you’ve got the Samuel L Jackson quote “Tonight, we’re gonna launch…”…and there’s a little ‘sub-drop’ there. I absolutely love that…so much…
C : I’ve always been a big fan of this Clark song, Growls Garden?
A + FC : Yay! *resounding applause*
C : …and when the bass comes in on that is it FILTHY. That’s what I go to for dirty bass. If only we could ever come up with something like that…it’s still surprising to me.
A : There was a time when I was really into Daft Punk, when I was just listening to it on my headphones and doing my own clubbing, you know? I’m pretty sure there were some nice bass lines in there.

And finally. Favourite cake?

M : When I was younger, on my birthday every year I would always get a dark chocolate forest gateaux. It was mega full-on cake. Though I guess I don’t really have that anymore…What I haven’t had for quite a while, but I would say is currently my favourite cake, is that cheap £2 Lyon’s coconut sponge? It’s a simple cake but it’s got like a creamy layer of coconut and a bit of jam. Simple.
A : Cheesecake!
C : Cheesecake’s not really a cake though, it’s a desert. I’m a fan of carrot cake…if it’s done well! *laughs*. Actually, my mum’s coffee and walnut is the best cake ever.
A : Yeah, but, I really like it somehow. But…I mean…I like all the cakes!

hfdgd

Nedry will be playing White Heat vs GodDon’tLikeIt @ Madame Jo Jo’s on the 14th of December, making gorgeous music for you all to cut a rug to.  Check out their record on Spotify then go see them.

Also, Fairy Cake got all excited after this interview and spent an entire weekend eating too many seaseme seed Rivita and listening to a lot of IDM.  And then she compiled this playlist of lovely electronic music that will make you feel all warm inside.  She would be very happy if you listened to it.