Twenty-seven years. That’s how long it has been since the last EMF album, 1995’s Cha Cha Cha. Whereas that album had been the band’s third in four years, it marked the end of the party and, with the various singles failing to reach the giddy peaks of that auspicious debut, the band went their separate ways. Nevertheless, in a world where some musical careers barely last twenty-seven months, it’s a remarkable period of time and it shows just how much brighter than most EMF burned during their brief tenure, given how many are delighted to see them back once more. Looking back from such a distance, it’s easy to see that, thanks to the success of the seemingly ubiquitous Unbelievable (an adjective I do my level best not to say over the course of the interview and in which attempt, as you shall see, I manifestly fail), the band lived in a whirlwind, crossing over from rave-addled indie backwater and invading such awards shows as the eminently corruptible Smash Hits. As such, it was not an easy course the band charted, something to which the lyrics of stunning new album Go Go Sapiens (reviewed here) allude, and we caught up with Ian Dench to see what bought the band out of a retirement that long-seemed permanent.
I think I first encountered EMF when I was just starting my journey into music; I must have been eleven when Unbelievable came out and you were on Smash Hits, or something like that, and that song has lived with me ever since; so it was really strange getting the new album and hearing, not only how you’ve evolved, but that so-familiar voice from James… so it’s really nice to pick up with you guys and come back to that feeling of discovering you guys for the first time all those years ago.
It’s funny because Unbelievable was like a gateway drug to the harder stuff, wasn’t it? The Smash Hits audience, I think we pilfered whole sections of it, and they came with us to the darker side, like the pied Piper of Hamlin or something. It’s wonderful.
At the 100 Club show in December, there were various different sections to the audience. There were the older guys that were into the indie bands, who were in the mosh pit, but also, there was a whole section of people who would have been younger – who must have been young girls from the Smash Hits audience as well. Young boys and girls who must have come from that whole era and I love it… I love that it’s something that’s stuck with them for their whole lives.
And I had a gross misconception when I was younger. I thought that pop music was disposable. I thought that they’d be into one thing in pop music and then move on to the next thing, but that’s not what happens. You know, pop music, and I see it with my son, my daughter and even me – the music that you fall in love with when you’re younger stays with you your whole life. Be it pop music, or classical music or rock music or whatever, it becomes part of your being.
That was my gateway – I was already on the cusp of discovering Iron Maiden and Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Nirvana followed in short order, but something like Unbelievable, it’s got those disparate elements – you’ve got that punky vocal, the dance beats and then, underneath, you’ve got that quite hard guitar that’s always brewing and threatening to explode… something you find in Go Go Sapiens as well – there’s this menacing underbelly, although it’s got a pop rush to it.
Yeah, that’s it. At the 100 Club show, we stood on that stage where Steve Jones was stood and that’s so much part of my… they were my gateway drug. Those guitars, they just set me on fire! I just wanted to play barre chords and down strokes and I’m still doing it! That’s how I play guitar [sings like Beavis] just sort of downstrokes and stuff, mixed up with a bit of Bobby Kreiger in there as well, somewhere along the way the Doors crept in there and a bit of Cream and God knows what else.
You can’t beat it – there’s something about the sound and energy of the pistols’ album… I think Pretty Vacant was the first track I heard of theirs, and the way that track kicks in is just unbelievab… [at this point I catch myself and valiantly try to change tack] unbelievably amazing…
[Laughs] Unbelievable, right?
Sorry – that crept in there! I was doing some background reading around this interview and James was saying that you’ve come together periodically over the last decade, and you’ve done some work on his solo material, so it sounds like EMF was always bubbling under the surface, but never quite made it. What was different this time?
That’s a good question. James and I have always got along and always had great chemistry and, you know, once in a blue moon he’d come up to London and we’d write a song, and those songs (or demos) are on a box set which we did – Flip Sides and Bona Fides – but other than that, we’d burn out. We weren’t sure and we didn’t know, and then something happened over the pandemic, when we did those online performances and recorded those (and mixed them) from our own home studios.
So, we did that, and it sounded great, and we did some online engagement with fans, and we were building towards the thirtieth anniversary and the box set, the merch, and those shows… I don’t know, it just felt like there was love growing in the community. Our socials had never been so good, and it seemed like people were engaging, so James said, “let’s do a record.” And I was like “great, let’s do it!”
So, we did a bit of to-ing and fro-ing. I got on a train up to Yorkshire, and he came to London, and it just came together really quickly, because we just decided we weren’t going to worry about it. We were going to write a bunch of songs, record them and there we were at the end of August last year, with eleven songs and they just sounded really good. So, we just put it out but, because with the ridiculously long lead times for vinyl, by the time we’d got it pressed, it wouldn’t come out until June, so we figured we’d put it out in Spring and then it wouldn’t be too long to wait to get the vinyl.
So, here we are! I love it. You just have to jump. That’s really how it was. We closed out eyes and both jumped and it’s great. And it’s strangely similar to Schubert Dip, where we sat at my mum’s piano and wrote a bunch of songs, with a guitar and a mono synth. It’s funny what happens when you just sort of have no plan.
It’s interesting that, when you have not much equipment – you know, like you said, a mono synth and maybe a piano and a guitar… in some ways, it’s a lot easier now, because you have your studio in a box kind of thing, but it’s almost too much choice at the expense of creativity.
Limitations are actually a good thing – when you have too many possibilities, the question becomes what are you? And what do you do? The great thing about being in EMF now is that our sound is defined. James does a load of synthy-techno keyboards, I play a load of punky guitar on it and James’ voice just defines it. It’s great. That really helps in a way, because the possibilities are really hard to deal with – there are way too many possibilities in those boxes. You just want to get out a guitar, plug it in and go: “that’s it!”
One of the things I liked about lockdown was that it forced bands to do something a little different. And you could default to the acoustic guitar and the stool, or you could do something a little outside of that, either reinterpreting songs in a different way, or creating something totally new, but you had those limitations because you’re doing it all to camera, or even live, and you’re having to innovate – it pushed a lot of people to do stuff that they wouldn’t have done in ways that they wouldn’t have done it, and I thought that was really cool.
Yeah, people did do lots of stuff didn’t they? Everything went to Zoom.
Not that I’m a particular fan of Zoom…
…But needs must! [Laughs]
Just to be very geeky for a moment, we were listening to the album for the first time, and we were just blown away by the production – it’s very full and very dynamic and it sounds amazing. Did you self-produce this one?
Yeah – do you know, that’s such a relief to hear you say that because you don’t know! You just do it and, you know, James has done five solo albums and I potter along in my home studio, and you’d think by now that we’d know what we’re doing, but we just did it and we’d send it back and forth a bit; I’d send some guitars, James would edit them; he’d send some keyboards and I’d edit them and we got Adi Todd, our new drummer, and he played some drums on it. So we went into the rehearsal room and tried it with some live drums as well, which was great.
But ultimately, you don’t know what people are going to think. You get so lost in your own little world and, again, I think it’s a good thing that we didn’t have too much time to fiddle with it. We just made it sound right, we got that balance between the keyboards and the guitars, and we made it about the groove, and we made the arrangements work for live. It was so great taking it out for the live stuff because we introduced the live elements in the way that made the arrangements work with the keyboards. So, the moment we take it out live, it’s great because all the keyboard programming works with the live element. So, the thing is, we work off a backing track but it’s working with all the live elements. So, that was so great on Sunday when we played the Water Rat – even the sound guy was pleased because it worked so well and he didn’t have to keep riding it, and that’s because we could structure them in that way. And that’s what EMF is – the live element and the programming. When we did the production, we made the arrangements work like that… sorry, I’m banging on!
I really enjoy this sort of discussion because, when you put on a record and the songs are really great but the sound isn’t quite there, you feel it and there are songs on this one particular, you’ve got songs like Sister Sandinista and Keep It Coming, and they’ve got these great builds – Keep it coming especially, you’re just waiting for the next step up, so it’s really cool to hear how it came together, both on record and live.
Thank you, that’s great. And what works in the recorded environment works differently in the live environment, so it’s great taking it to the band and working on how it’s going to be live, because we worked on things and changed the arrangements and, yeah, I think that comes from playing in bands. And I don’t know about you, Phil, but I started out in a room with my mates – playing guitar and drums and singing… and I think that’s great, because you’ve got to make it work with those elements and it’s a different philosophy with recording and I think it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to make a recording work, but you put me in a rehearsal room and I can make it work. I can take a song and make the emotion work and how to build it… but that’s because I’ve been doing it for thirty-five years and I love that – it still excites me, the idea of being in a room like when I was fourteen… it was just so exciting, and it still is! And I see you there with various pieces of equipment – so I guess it was the same for you?
Yeah, it was exactly that – I remember being in a room with a friend holding a microphone to my acoustic while I tried to emulate Sonic Youth…
[Laughs] I love that!
…and I’m happy to say that those recordings are long lost!
Ahhhh no!
But that’s what’s the most exciting and the thing I like about recording and something I think EMF do really well is that, when you record, you can kind of pull it back a bit and the guitars are there, but they’re kind of clean in the mix; but then you go on stage and it doubles or trebles in volume – I love the way that music live can reinterpret what’s on record so it’s not identical.
Yeah, that’s it and it’s funny how the microphone picks up the subtleties on a recording that you don’t necessarily notice live. It’s very, very interesting how Rhianna – her voice on record is amazing but live it sounds a little… weak. But it’s a whole different thing. For some people, live it’s amazing, but it doesn’t capture the subtlety. So, yes, I think you put it very well. It’s more controlled and it’s layered – you can use layers to make something work, whereas live you can only stick it through a pedal and turn the volume up and that’ll make it work!
Yep – when I got my first distortion pedal, it was like: game over!
Yeah exactly! I remember me and my brothers sticking the guitar amp out the window! The poor neighbours!
Lyrically, a lot of the lyrics feel (when you first put it on) feel very punchy and upbeat, and almost where we left off in the nineties. But the more time I spent with the record, the more it felt like there’s an undercurrent of aging and referencing how EMF, and the music industry, have been over the year – songs like Greatest Day, which feels very introspective and even a couple of the tracks later on feel like there’s a reflection about what it is to be young, to be at the party and then, here we are, looking back on that – am I overthinking it?
No, that’s absolutely right. That’s exactly what it’s about. It’s funny how some of those things are… they are looking back on our younger selves. So yeah, don’t stop now, we’ve started it… soon, we’ll be gone, so we’re doing it right now. You can’t help but feel, as you get older, that you have to enjoy every moment. That’s what it’s about. That’s what the title is about. And there’s so much – like never die, with sparks and flashes of people we’ve lost.
You can’t help having gone through the life of EMF, or anyone’s life, without looking back on it. And when you do look back on the tough stuff, it just makes you even more determined to enjoy where you are and it’s so funny to be so happy. But I look back and how lucky were we to have those success and those experiences. They always say youth is wasted on the young and we never realised quite how lucky we were. We definitely made the most of it, maybe we made a bit too much of the most of it. We really did grab it with both hands, and I think it’s… I think, looking back, it’s a bit of a shame that it got too crazy. I wish we could have found a way for it to become a stable existence, but it all got a bit too crazy, which is a shame. I think my hopes… it’s all got quite busy now – we’re doing a tour, we’re doing interviews, we’re doing a video and this that and the other and it reminds me a little bit of the manic energy back in the day and you just want to manage things to a level where they become enjoyable and you feel like you’re in control in some way, so it doesn’t get too crazy. Because, yeah… that’s what those songs are about. They’re definitely reflections on a life spent making music and what was a crazy time for me and my friends. We were just a bunch of friends that ended up in crazy situations, it was wonderful! So yeah, you’re absolutely right and I’m glad you got it. And there are some love songs, I mean Keep it coming is a love song really, although it’s done in terms of the records that we loved – “I’ve got to tell you that I still love you so – you’ve got to keep it coming” – and James just did this brilliant list, this stream of consciousness of all these punk bands and rock bands.
It’s in a grand tradition, isn’t it, because you think about bands throwing out these self-mythologising rock ‘n’ roll figures into the lyrics. And the first time I heard it I just enjoyed the music, but then you start to unpick all those great names – MC5, The Stooges, Bo Diddly – and it’s like “this is awesome!”
[Laughs] Yeah, it’s funny isn’t it, and there’s so many great bands in there. James did most of it, and then I did the last verse and just stuck in The Beatles and Gene Kelly and, I can’t remember who else… oh yeah, some contemporary ones like Royal Blood. But it was so much fun. It was so much fun to write that. B.B. King – “may your strings sing like B.B. King” and, yeah, Lucille – his guitar!
Yeah, it’s like reading through my record collection! And I like the idea because when you’re listening to a record, it can kind of trigger you to what you might listen to next, and it’s great when you get something that tweaks your desire to listen to more stuff and maybe pull things out of your collection that you’ve not listened to in a while.
Ahhh yeah – I love that.
Good music kind of inspires you to find more music. I remember when I started listening to music, I’d look through the liner notes to see who’d been thanked and to see if I could get something that I could check out… and I still do that!
I remember that too. My son, he trawls Spotify and Soundcloud and stuff and I love that about Spotify that you can go searching and get those playlists. There’s a little bit of that too many possibilities sometimes, it’s a bit daunting, but he loves it and discovers so many things that way. He loves Soundcloud, because there’s a lot of obscure things on Soundcloud that aren’t necessarily released, and it’s so lovely to see that that’s still exciting for a seventeen-year-old – just exploring. I suppose it’s the modern liner notes.
Yeah, it’s cool to share stuff that inspired you.
Yeah, like doing people cassette tapes… you’re probably too young!
No! I wish I were, no, I started out taping songs off the radio and making compilations… and of course, now they’re back again, which is just mind blowing.
Yeah, and vinyl is so popular as well, hence waiting ten months to get the vinyl.
Yeah, that’s really disappointing – and this record is tailor made for vinyl too.
It’ll be with us… late May we’ll have it. We’ll ship it in June.
It’s funny because vinyl coming back has forced bands to think about sequencing again. Because, if you think back to the mid-nineties, CDs took over and there was a tendency to fill them, so albums were getting to seventy and eighty minutes in length. Which was cool in some ways, but sometimes you just want something shorter and more concise. Now, albums seem to be pitched more at a single vinyl, which is great because you’ve got that big build up, you get to the end of side one and then there’s that natural restart and, even on CD, that flow works really well. And that’s totally the case here. It’s a roller coaster through to the end.
Well, we thought about the vinyl! And I can’t help thinking about that. I’m old fashioned and I always think about the two sides. The whole Spotify thing of just releasing a track here and a track there is like “aaagghh!” That doesn’t compute. That’s not how I grew up. You do your record, and you do your ten songs – five on one side and five on the other. It seems we aren’t moving with the times, where people just put stuff out when it’s ready. And maybe that’s a good thing, just get it out there and build momentum. I don’t know. We’ll see how this goes – we’ll have to talk again after this thing is over and see if the whole Spotify things is worth it.
How did the sequencing go for the record? I find, even more than production, sequencing is a bit of a nightmare because everyone has their own vision of what should start and where things should go…
I suppose that it’s always been the case that you have to find something that sets the stall out. Then you’ve got to go bang, bang, bang at the start. Then, you can let it dip a little before the end of side one, you have another impactful song. Then, the start of side two, you need another big one and then, on side two, you can do a bit of weird wondering, and the penultimate track is where you do your weird number or your slow one… and that’s exactly what we did. That’s my concept and it’s always been. Maybe I’m stuck in my ways and some young maverick needs to kick me in the arse and get me to change it, but I don’t know. It sounds like you liked the sequencing, so fingers crosse that it’s working. And it’s like planning a live set. You have to make the live set work, and it’s very similar. You set your stall out, bang, bang, bang and then you give people a breather, because they’re exhausted after three tracks of jumping around. Then bang, hit them again, have a rest again and build up to the end.
It totally works, and I have a very strong mental image of the first festival I went to (it was Reading Festival) and just walking through the gates and there being dust everywhere from people walking down the path, and there was beer and tents. And I have this very clear image of that and walking into the arena for the first time… and when I was playing this record, that image was playing through my head and that’s what I wanted to get into the review, it was like being seventeen again and it was amazing.
Ahhh, I love that! |I know that feeling! Especially when you’re young and you go to a festival – that sense of anticipation and the epic scale of a festival. And I know James will really love that too because on a couple of tracks I know he wanted to do that dancing in a field with a thousand people sort of vibe – Balearic beats kind of thing.
With a new album out, I appreciate this is jumping the gun (and it’s probably the question you dread), but at this point in time, do you see this as being something that may continue?
You know it’s the most fun I’ve had making music for a long time. And I do hope it will continue. James and I are already looking at writing some more things. I love writing with James, we always have a great time, and to feel that there’s an outlet for it and an appetite for it out there completes the circle. So, I think we’ll definitely be doing some more and, as you said, we won’t leave it so long this time.
It’s been lovely speaking with you, thank you so much.
Thank you.
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