Future of the Left

Tue 29th Nov, 2011 in Features

Future of the Left front man Andy ‘Falco’ Falkous is a musician as famous for his sarcastic rants and conversational tangents as he is for his music. He has said in previous interviews that he is more inspired by comedy than music.

During our interview there were two topics in which Falco was at his most impassioned; music piracy and Australia. The Future of the Left Australian summer tour has become a staple in the bands life, with Falco still coming to terms with the fact that audiences would pay over $40 to see them live.

He warns that though heckling may be fun, there is a line and you shouldn’t cross it. He also wants people to know their new record is their best, and if you happen to be the one to leak it online, he will find you.

Their past two records have hit the file sharing sites before the shelves. When their last album, Travels With Myself and Another, leaked two months before its official release Falco took to the bands MySpace blog with a rant that was republished by the UK Music as a full page add across the numerous daily newspapers in the UK, including The Guardian.

How are you today?
Yeah fine. It’s 20 past 10, so this is the time of day I usually feel alive.

Its 20 past 8 here, the time of day I usually wake up.
[laughs] Apologies for that, I have an advantage on you.

That’s alright; you’ve got the upper hand this time.
[laughs] Jesting. I like it.

Where are you speaking to me from?
I’m speaking to you from my bedroom [in Cardiff, Wales], but I’m not dressed comfortably.

That sounds all right. What’s Wales like this time of year?
Oh, it’s fucking freezing. The weather has actually been unseasonably peachy considering it’s the middle of October, but the last few days we managed to remember what country we live in. And it has been absolutely miserable. I went for a run just now and my legs definitely know which season we are in.

You are coming out to Australia for the Meredith festival in December. I remember when you were out here for the Pyramid Rock Festival you tweeted something to the effect of ‘only in Australia can we play to a festival crowd smaller than a club crowd’…
[laughs] Yeah…

… What expectations, if any, do you have for the crowds at Meredith?
Well I’ve played Meredith twice before. Meredith once with mclusky and also Golden Plains with Future of the Left, so the expectations are rather different; I mean Meredith is a festival for music lovers, isn’t it? It’s kind of, without generalising too much, because it definitely isn’t very specific, it’s almost like an outdoor All Tomorrows Parties I suppose. The crowd are excited, y’know, about a particular type of music, you would hope.

Whereas I got the impression with, uh, with Pyramid [Rock Festival] and Falls [Festival] to a degree, when we did that, that it’s something 18 and 19 year olds go to to get drunk and listen to the songs that they hear every day on daytime radio.

Yhere’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not where we fall musically, and it’s never a situation in which you’re going to feel particularly welcome. Unless you have millions of dollars of marketing spend and you’ve been aimed towards a particular demographic with a cunning and shitty focus.

So yeah, basically festivals in the past are things are you use to help fund, you get out there and mix it with the club shows. But something like Meredith is an absolute pleasure; even down to the mad little caravans you have to get changed in at the back…in fact for once I think I’m going to stay for the whole festival after we play. That’s something I never usually do.

How are things going with the new line-up?
Oh fantastically. I mean, the record, as in the album, is one day away from being finished. We couldn’t be prouder about that. We couldn’t be prouder, it’s a very special record and we have considerably exceeded our expectations. It has been a very difficult gestation process and far longer than we would have liked, but as a result we have longer to spend mulling over each song, um, we’ve been able to discard a lot of songs that we first thought were an absolute certainty for the record.

We’ve written anywhere between 70 and 80 songs and the actual record itself is going to be 15 or 16 songs, and about 50 minutes long, so a lot longer than any of the previous records by either mclusky or Future of the Left, and it all sounds fantastic. The whole thing works on every level I could possibly imagine. I know everybody, when they’ve got a new record about to come out, says “it’s the best thing we’ve ever done”, but I will knife-fight to protect the honour of this record.

When you announced the new line-up on your MySpace blog, you wrote that Jimmy Watkins [guitarist] role in the band is to ‘play guitar and act like a fucking maniac’. Has Jimmy lived up to that role?
Well this is the thing with Jimmy; it’s difficult sometimes you don’t want to encourage the already mortally gone, y’know? But it is his natural inclination to act like a, depending on your take, a maniac or a tit. But live performance is in the guy’s blood, not literally, that would be bizarre. But yeah, he has been a – as much as I don’t want it to sound like I’m giving a sports interview, and I don’t want to sound like the manager of a football team who has just signed a particularly wayward forward or something – he really has been a breath of fresh air to the whole process.

The enthusiasm, it’s very healthy because I’m naturally a very cynical person to say the least, I mean that’s like saying water is naturally wet, but if I can surround myself with enthusiastic people, which Jimmy and Julia [Ruzicka, bass] naturally are, then for me it’s a recipe for success. And they’ve both been fantastic and very, very patient with my working methods, which, y’know, are hard to say the least. I’m demanding.

A lot of people are in bands because they want to surrender themselves to the lifestyle of a selection of scantily-clad strangers, but for me it really is about trying to be in the greatest rock band in the world. Whether that works or not is down to the opinion of the individual. Like I say, both Jim and Julia, it has been fantastic experience for me. Jack [Egglestone, drums]’s absolute cooperation is taken for granted as well. Jack doesn’t really do enthusiasm in the traditional sense; he more just sits there like a friendly welcoming bear, with a tray of cookies and the occasional paradiddle.