Pourquoi il faut aimer Art Brut

Parce que la première chanson qu’il aient composé après avoir formé le groupe est « Formed a band ».

Qu’ils commencent le concert avec celle-ci.

« Formed a band, we formed a band, look at us, we formed a band ».

Parce qu’ils ont écrit une chanson obsédante sur la frustration voire l’impuissance des débutants au niveau sexuel « Rusted Guns of Milan ».

« I know I can I know I can, I’m fine when I am with my own hand, never use my rusted gun of Milan »

"It’s nothing to do with anything I’ve had to drink. There’s something wrong with the way I think."

Parce que chacun se reconnaît dans le petit frère d’Eddie Argos

"My little brother just discovered Rock and Roll There’s a noise in his head and he’s out of control"

Parce qu’Eddie Argos échange sa chaussette avec la chaussette d’un gars dans le public qui crie ensuite « You are wearing my sock!!! »

Parce qu’ils nous encouragent à former un groupe

« Go Home and form a band »

Parce qu’ils ont formé le groupe pour passer à Top of The Pops

Et qu’ils finissent par crier Art Brut Top of Pops!

Photos prises à La Route du Rock, 2005.
www.artbrut.org.uk

Love, Sleep, Death, an interview with Maximilian Hecker

Maximilian Hecker seems not to belong to our world. A little like a Ingmar Bergman film, there is an invisible border between his environments and ours. A bracket out of time. The collision between its universe and ours was not easy. The room where we discussed was parasitized by goes and come and by the taps which flee. Each interruption causing a difficult and long reconditioning which is finished fortunately by the heart of what animates Maximilian Hecker in his relation to the music. A total abandonment with another reality.

The birth of Lady Sleep
Rose , its preceding album was a difficult passage for Maximilian Hecker. He applied to himself a pressure and came from to an introspection which, with the passing days, disturbed him. The opposite was carried out with Lady Sleep .
" I had a particular pressure for Rose. I wanted that it to be successful. But the principal difficulty came from the singing process. It is the hardest part of the music. With Lady Sleep it was easier. I was better prepared and I knew which problems I was going to have to face. I felt better to do it, it was even easier to sing. I was just more trustful and I knew what I had to do . "


"I am not a songwriter"
Lady Sleep seems to be the work of a traditional pianist who, having rediscovered his compositions decided to put words on his music. Moreover for Maximilian Hecker the words are additional in the composition.
" I am more a musician than a poet. I need to sing something so I write words. I am often categorized as a songwriter but it is not the case. What is a songwriter? Everyone is a songwriter even people who play electro music. It is always the same misunderstanding. All that because I am called Maximilian Hecker. If the name on the small pocket was not Maximilian Hecker but The Heckers no one would think about me as a singer-songwriter. My sound is not like Nick Drake’s. Im am no a songwriter ».

Escape to the purity
Maximilian Hecker expresses with Lady Sleep his desire to reach a state of purity, removed from any reality, in a search without end.
" Art is a mean of creating a better world, purer, which delivers a happiness that you cannot obtain in reality. For some people it is like a religion. Each one seeks a particular state, a kind of st in utero state where the constraints of the body are not felt yet. This state is found when something is intensely wished. But we quickly realize that it is not the exact thing which we want, which we seek. At the time when I believe to love a girl for example, it is not really love, because when I am finally with her, I am not any more in this same state. There is always this need to reach it. It is similar with everyday things, we believe that when we have the object of our desire all is perfect. Then we realized that it is not a quesion of object. It is a state that you find only that when you die. Lady Sleep is in fact a personification of sleep, a state close to death. In the song which has its name, I have an intercourse with her. This intercourse finishes at the morning but I want it to remain forever . "

Maximilian Hecker with this album strips us from our carnal envelope, makes us leave the contingency. As with Sleep Lady , the adventure finishes, at the end of the album. Unless we press Play again.

www.maximilian-hecker.com

Pour la version française: http://www.benzinemag.net/musique/itv_hecker.htm

I Am Kloot about Gods and Monsters

"I'd never thought we'd last this long". I Am Kloot. A group romantically rough. Reflected in the words of Twist, "There's blood on your legs, I love you". Today they release their third album, Gods And Monsters which they define as their best. It is. A mysterious way which makes us reach the grace. Its Creators speak to us about it.

I Am Kloot is not a group, it is a universe. It is perhaps there that the secret of its longevity resides. A group who does'nt care about what's fashion or not in a country where a group per week is elected best group of the world.
John Bramwell, the singer: "in fact, we were all in a period of excitement, as at the time of the recording of our first album, our first gigs. This album I believe, is our best album. We have found our way of working. It is more sophisticated. For this album we have rejected
all that could resemble laid down pre rules. Moreover, when one bears a name like ours, I Am Kloot, one can do what one wants! We do nothing that's in. We're proud of that! There is a distance, a large gap between what the other groups do and us, full stop."
The bass player Peter Jobson adds" I don't care about what the others make. I do not judge their work. It makes us trustful not to be concerned with this kind of things "
John adds concerning the statute of the group" I think that we have our own world. When we play all disappears around us. The good groups manage to create this effect. If that does not
happens then I do not see the interest. "

The entry in studio

The third album of I Am Kloot is definitely less intimist than Natural History and I Am Kloot. John: "The first album is as when you join your friends to drink. This one is more expansive" Peter: "the producer is a friend, he gave us freedom in the studio, called Moolah Rouge. We knew this place by another artist of Manchester, Badly Drawn Boy. There was full of interesting instruments in this studio. We could experiment. I do not know large things in music, theorically. We could make kinds of happy mistakes "
John adds: "In the studio we did not feel intimidated at all. We did what we wanted. We did not say oh my god the world is looking at to us now! Sometimes this laxism can be risky. We did not
have a crisis of confidence but in the middle of the recording, we put ourselves in question ".
The drummer Andy Hargreaves: "In fact we did some rehearsals before going to the studio"

Gods and Monsters, a strange arrangement of colors

This album is rough. Its spontaneousness appears as if the group
were at its beginnings as John explained. The group has just to spend less time in studio.
Peter: "the comparison between the groups is not a good thing. But to compare ethics of work is interesting. Many groups recorded in Manchester at the same time as us. They spend a lot of time in the studio. We could during this time make at least... five albums! We recorded ours in one month, very quickly. Fortunately we quickly found the sound which we wanted. Groups can spend one year to record. It's incredible!"
John adds: "It is as if you spent six months to prepare your interviews! "


Gods And Monsters, in addition of being rough is crossed by different moods. Stripped arrangements, as if John were alone, in an empty bar, singing his despair. Then there are intermittencies with Hong-Kong Lullaby, an instrumental song. Lastly, I Believe and this
sentence, "I would never have thought that we would last this long".
John: "I say I in this song but the group thinks it too. Then I wonder how I could live this long! "
John has travelled a lot. He seems to have drawn from these travels the musical
inspiration. The drummer acknowledges being inspired by Spanish sonorities. But what counts before all is the melody.
About the color of the album, Peter expresses himself: "When you see a group which has very popular songs, that their album have ten of these songs and that they all sound similar, it is boring. The mood changes through the album, you feel various emotions. It is funny to do that and you have to do that if you are a little talented. If you can go from an extreme to the other, that is interesting "


Gods and Monsters

From one extreme to another. A contradiction which characterizes the group, its world and ours. John: "contradictions are human. It is part of everyday life. From the moment you believe in something. It can be something in which you believe, a doctrine, a philosophy, anything. From the momen you are completely absorbed by something, it is the moment when all fall into pieces. It is as when youfall in love with somebody, that will decline inevitably if you do not keep it alive! I Believe summarizes that. From the moment you believe in something, it begins to fall into pieces "
Peter:" You have to live with contradictions. You have to be aware of it. If you live without any
problem, that you are trustful, that you do not have any idea of the true nature of the world, and then something bad happens, you cannot face. These contradictions exist and that prepares you at what will happen afterwards "


It is a remarkable summary of the career of I Am Kloot. A group which accepts contradictions, even play about it. Charm, brutality, truth, illusion. Gods and monsters.

www.iamkloot.com

Pour la version française: www.surlering.com/article.php/id/4955

Photos taken at the Nouveau Casino, Paris, May 2005