The Big Pink

Tue 20th Oct, 2009 in Features

With a truly colossal sound spanning shoegaze, wall of sound noise and euphoric dance anthems, The Big Pink have suddenly become one of the hottest bands in music.

On the eve of the release of their hotly-anticipated debut album A Brief History of Love, Robbie Furze, one half of the band with old friend Milo Cordell, caught up with FasterLouder. Here he discusses his roots in white noise, the band’s time at Electric Ladyland and plans for their first Australian tour.

With the record finally out is there a sense of relief?
Yeah, it’s been really great. It’s been such an incredible trip since we started this band. Everything’s been so special, like signing to 4AD earlier this year was so cool. Some amazing things have happened to us, like doing the record in New York and getting it mixed by Rich Costey [who’s previously mixed New Order and Muse] and Alan Moulder [My Bloody Valentine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs] and getting to amazing places, playing incredible venues, it has just been so special. And now that the record is finally out, it really is an exciting time.

A lot of the media are expecting the record to have a lot of commercial success. Is there any pressure that comes with that, or are you just glad it has such a high profile already?
Well, I guess we started off with such low expectations about what we were doing. We had no idea anyone would really give it a second thought, you know? So everything is just a bonus, really. It’s kind of weird being so well received. Of course, we do really want to sell records and we want to keep these incredible fun times we’re having happening again and again, for as long as possible. We do want to sell records and we do want to be successful, but as for pressure? I don’t know. We’ll see mate [laughs].

You mentioned putting the record out on 4AD (a label that has been home to the likes of The Pixies, The Cocteau Twins and Scott Walker). Did you think of putting it out on Milo’s record label?
Oh, Milo kind of felt he wanted to get someone else to fall in love with the band and the record. Doing the record and putting it out might have been too close to home. And I guess Milo’s is more a 7-inch singles kind of label. I think we’ve put so much sweat, blood and tears into the record that to release it as well would have been too much.

You mostly recorded and produced the record yourself. Was it important to get that degree of artistic control?
Paul Epworth produced Dominoes and we produced the rest of the record ourselves. Mainly when you work with a producer, it’s to give you a certain kind of sound or to help you refine your sound and I think we really already had that. Before we went to New York to do live drums, guitars and overdubs, we kind of had the sound of the album nailed, so it didn’t make much sense to bring another producer to change it. We had what we wanted.

How long did it take you to arrive at that sound? Did you start off a bit more industrial-sounding?
It always flowed pretty easily, really. From the early demos, you’d be surprised how much they are like the finished takes of the songs. We didn’t really think too much about it at all, it just came very naturally. Me and Milo would just lock ourselves in the studio for 24 hours and we’d come out with a song pretty much done. Then we’d sit on it for about a week or so, then we’d come back to it and write lyrics. It was a really unconscious, really quick process. We weren’t making any conscious decisions, really. It was really special, and really nice.

In New York, you recorded at Electric Ladyland studios. What was the atmosphere like there? Did you feel a real sense of the history about the place?
Oh, it was amazing. It must be the coolest studio I’ve ever been in. You’re standing in a room where you’ve got Hendrix’s spirit burning about the place. You’ve got The Clash, who recorded there. You’ve got the piano that Bowie played on Young Americans just sitting there – we actually got that on the record, the same piano he actually played on. And singing into microphones that Hendrix probably used himself. That kind of thing just makes it really special. We were really lucky to get the opportunity to go there. I’d definitely go back for the second record.

Before The Big Pink, you spent some time touring with Alec Empire. Was that a pretty intense experience?
It was amazing. He really opened my mind to the concept of noise and that free-form approach to creating music. Each set would end with 20 or 30 minutes of improv noise and it was just so free, and an incredibly spiritual process.

Is that approach something that continues to influence what you do with The Big Pink?
Yeah, the whole concept of making noise is kind of what The Big Pink is, we start every track with filling the studio with sonics and noise and we would have some kind of theme, a guitar or keyboard. Then we would record and go back and listen to it and there’s always a vibe to the track at that point. We would go back and change things and lyrics later on. It’s a very real and honest way of creating music.

Alec Empire were a famously loud band. Are The Big Pink particularly loud when you play?
We’re as loud as we possibly can be, but when we started off we were a lot louder. Our sound guy is a guy called Evil Eddie, and he gets us pretty loud. But there’s definition to what we do. We’re a little bit more out of control when we play live. When you do a record, you are confined in what you can do. Live, we have a lot more effects pedals and it’s just more aggressive live.

Daniel O’Sullivan (from experimental metal band) Sunn)))0 is part of your live set-up. How did that come about?
I’ve known him for a while. He’s in Gaupho as well, and I met him at a Gaupho show. We worked on a couple of projects and became really good friends, we used to hang out a lot, so it’s fantastic now to be able to get together and make music.

One of the striking things about Big Pink is the visuals. Everything from the videos to the CD covers and your websites has a really strong visual sense. Is this something you have a lot of input into?
Yeah, we’re pretty hands on with that and I think the visuals really dictate a mood and really go with the songs. They really give you the sentiment of what The Big Pink are about. With the videos, we really use those references to give to the directors for their initial inspiration. We’re really hands on with the visual element of the band. With the artwork as well, we work closely with that. We’re very visual people.

Do you incorporate any visuals when you play live?
Not really, but we definitely create an environment. We find that very important and we control all the lights on stage ourselves. It’s on a small level but it doesn’t take much to make a bit of an effort, you know what I mean? It’s not very expensive, you just need a little bit of imagination. So we’ve done our best so far to format the lights so that it’s an organic process where we react to the lights, and the lights react to us.

Did you name the band after The Band record Music From The Big Pink?
Ah, well, I am a big fan of The Band. I grew up with my parents being really big fans of The Band. In fact, they always said I was named after Robbie Robertson. I really became a fan of The Band in my teenage years – The Last Waltz kind of changed my life.

It sounds like you’ve always had really diverse tastes, everything from the Americana of The Band to white noise stuff?
Yeah, me and Milo do have very diverse tastes. We love everything from dubstep to Otis Redding to the Ministry stuff to a lot of hip-hop. We love everything, really. Milo’s much more into a lot of music that I don’t know too much about. In saying that, there are a lot of things we both really like.

Can you tell us a bit about the white noise parties you grew up going to? Is that something that is big in London?
Me and Milo used to go to them and we got into Digital Hardcore records. We used to play at a lot of events, it was such a fun time. We must have played in every squat in Europe. There’s a real kind of Lord of the Flies aspect to that environment, it’s pretty wild, pretty chaotic at times. Imagine DJing noise stuff to 500 people at 5 in the morning, it’s just wild.

You’ve done a couple of remixes so far, is that something you plan to do more of?
Yeah, I love remixing stuff. At the moment, it’s really annoying because we get asked to do a lot of remixes and it’s really hard to find the time. But we love it mate!

Finally, any plans for an Australian tour in the near future?
Yeah, we’re coming out in February or March I think it is. We’re doing our own tour then a festival, don’t know which one, but it sounded really good…

The Big Pink’s A Brief History of Love is out now on Remote Control Records.