Perth Music

British musical outfit, UNKLE released their third album ‘War Stories‘ this year after two successful albums: Psyence Fiction in 1998 and Never, Never Land in 2003. Like the two previous albums, War Stories contains a musical feast of collaborations including Ian Astbury (The Cult), Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age), and 3D (Massive Attack). As he gets ready to head down under for the Big Day Out, founding member of UNKLE, James Lavelle talked to Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (4:59 - 1.1Mb)
note: the end of the interview was cut off due to dodgy voice recorder.

I asked James to describe the process he goes through in creating a new album. “It started in LA with Ian Astbury, to do a track with him and (producer) Chris Goss and that was to see how it would work with Chris. Then six months later we went back and spent three months in LA and Joshua Tree recording a lot of the initial songs and ideas for the record. We then came back to London and put it all together really, sort of made it all fit, the pieces of the puzzle over about another year. And then it came out this year. It’s always slightly broken, the process, and then you end up with a really heavy two, three month period at the end trying to finish everything off.”

The name War Stories for an album is a sign of the times but it is also a name that can have multiple meanings. James explained “It’s an internal struggle really. The stories that you tell your friends about the experiences and things you have been through in your life. It’s more of a personal ‘War Stories‘ rather than a political way. Even though a lot of the politics are the things that influence your emotions over the past few years. But essentially it is about a personal struggle.”

The music videos for UNKLE songs are some of the most original and creative videos around with the videos for ‘Burn My Shadow‘ off War Stories and ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights‘ off Psyence Fiction always hot requests on Rage. I asked James if he puts a lot of thought into music videos. “I try to yeah. It’s always one of those weird things that is slightly out of your hands because it is somebody else that is making them, so a lot of it is the initial idea and how that is hopefully going to be translated. (Burn My Shadow) came out pretty well.”

UNKLE have collaborated with a wide variety of artists over the years including members of Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, The Verve, Badly Drawn Boy, Beastie Boys, Metallica, Massive Attack and The Stone Roses. I asked James how he selects artists to collaborate with. “It’s about what that person is saying emotionally and also the interaction that you have between them as friends or whatever socially. You are trying to get somebody to convey something emotionally that in many ways you are feeling. You are trying to work with people that are saying things that you feel are close to your own heart, I suppose in the end. It tends to come from pretty social situations, from meeting up to be into one another’s music and hanging out and sort of getting on really. It tends not to be so pulled out of a hat, if you know what I mean.”

You can catch UNKLE playing live at the Big Day Out Shows:
Auckland - Friday 18 January
Gold Coast - Sunday 20 January
Sydney - Friday 25 January
Melbourne - Monday 28 January
Adelaide - Friday 1 February
Perth - Sunday 3 February

UNKLE - Burn My Shadow

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Big Day Out, Videos, Touring, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.