Officers
On their debut album "On Twelve Thrones" How did the band form? We formed a few years ago. Mat and myself had played in other bands together and decided to do something a little bit different. Stu and Mat were family friends. Up until that point Mat hadn't actually sung before. We just demoed various ideas and I put them all up online. Very quickly things started happening for us... Before we had even played live! Within a month we had been asked to play at some really prestigious London club nights, put a full live band together and started gathering some airplay. We then spent a couple of years working on our live sound, writing and learning before thinking about going into the studio properly. How was the recording of "On Twelve Thrones"? We have always been very focused on approaching things in an a pretty unorthodox fashion. Whenever we have tried to follow unwritten band rule book things haven't really worked out for us. From a guitarists perspective I have always been interested in making things sound different to what they are supposed to and pushing them to their limits. I'm obsessed with pedals and trying new things and I find it pretty boring when new bands and artists try and sound exactly like the past. Everything obviously has a time and place and I still enjoy looking retrospectively for influence, but personally I can't
see why if you are a new band you would try and create a Xerox of it. When you listen to stuff like Competition Winner, Co-Ed or Mosquito the FX chains going on and the modulation required was so insane that I was playing the parts and operating pedals while Mat and Stu had to operate others. We'll never get it to sound like that again but it's a perfect stamp in time. There are loads of moments like that on the record. Parts that sound like they are played by Guitars that are actually synths and vice versa. It made things more interesting and challenging to do it, but it makes it more satisfying and contributes to what makes us sound like us. Once we took that decision to do everything ourselves it made it harder financially but easier in the fact that whatever we did it was down to us. If we got it wrong there was no one to blame anymore. It was liberating especially for Mat I think, but all of a sudden he had this responsibility to produce the record and separate himself from the chaos that was fun about being in a band with your mates. He had to deliver results from not only himself but he had to get the best out of us too. That must have been really hard when all you want to do is run riot.
If your music were to be adapted to film, what story What was the concept behind the album? would it tell? I always wanted to attribute some physicality back to the way A story of Insanity, Euphoria, Loyalty, Betrayal, Anxiety, records are released to show that music isn't just a piece of Aloofness, Accomplishment and Celebration. digital code, but that the work is a real physical thing often created from a lot of peoples hard work but also because -What are your favorite albums at the moment? people should feel like they are getting something pretty Death Grips "Ex Military", Austra "Feel it Break" Death In special if they are parting with their cash and putting their Vegas "Trans-love Energies", Horrors "Skying", Burial belief in a band. I used to love pouring over the sleeve notes "Untrue" and Radiohead "King of Limbs". and artwork of my new and favorite records trying to find out who did what and getting fully immersed in it. It was also - Would you like to come to Portugal? important to me to have some sort of document of the process so everyone including ourselves could see and enjoy Of course, we'd love to visit as many places a possible and what it took to put together from start to finish. When the idea Portugal is somewhere we have already said we'd love to go. I've had some amazing times there in my youth and would for running a line of cassettes came around I remember love to come back. thinking about it, and us having a conversation about how cassettes were the first form of peer to peer music sharing. Design & Interview: Rick Things haven't changed so much with intentions of doing it, Words: Jamie Baker people can just bypass the effort now with the internet. There Photo courtesy of Elias Scott is definitely a contrast to the material and we consciously wanted the record to sound like a cohesive body of work from start to finish. I hadn't listened to it until recently when duplicating the cassettes. Mat and I always said we wanted the album to sound like a bit of a journey rather than a bunch of songs or singles stuck together. I was sat in my room copying side A and B like a teenager and thought to myself we've actually cracked it for the first time, it really works. How does it differ from your debut EP "Co-Education"? It's definitely more of a journey, tracks that were on the EP like "The Competition Winner" and "Co-Education" feature on the album, but they will make more sense in the 'Long Player' setting. It's a more immersive jump into our world really.
"On Twelve Thrones" is now available for purchase at: http://www.officers.uk.com/ You can also LIKE! them on their official Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/officersmusic