An Interview with The Chap

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It’s not been a good day for The Chap. The quirky, pseudo-pop avant-garde rockers from North London arrived at The Fly venue on New Oxford Street and have been told completely out-of-the-blue, The Kooks have hijacked the evening, and their gig, because their own Apple in-store gig fell through. To make matters worse, they’ve got to move their tour van parked in Covent Garden and found out they’ve been issued a ticket claiming their road tax has expired, even though it was still clearly valid.

Oh dear. I caught up with Johannes von Weizsäcker, Panos Ghikas and Keith Duncan from the band in their own tour van to talk about the upcoming release of their rather excellent “smash-hit techno/R’n’B” (their own words!) 3rd album, Mega Breakfast amongst other tasty nuggets of info, all whilst navigating through Central London to find a decent parking spot.

So there’s a new album coming out called ‘Mega Breakfast’ (19 May 2008). I have to ask, why the title?
JOHANNES: We’re, well, obsessed with food. It’s one of the reasons we formed a band. The three of us (and Claire Hope – not present – Panos’ partner, away on ‘maternity leave’) would meet up in cafes and plot The Chap’s future, in around Holloway Road and Seven Sisters.
PANOS: I should also mention that having a ‘Mega Breakfast’ with Keith was an interesting experience for the first time, because Keith was a vegetarian for how many years?…
KEITH: 15 years…
PANOS: 15 years. And I would order like a ‘Mega Breakfast’ and Keith would order like some veggie shit and then went “Oh no, wait a minute, I’ll have what he’s having!”. He actually had everything apart from bacon. But I converted a vegetarian!

Actually I’m a vegetarian too…
JOHANNES: Oh you should hang out with us then!

So how long have the songs on Mega Breakfast been in the works?
JOHANNES: Some of them are just sort’ve just after Ham but quite a lot of them came together just in the last year or half or so. For mastering, we got a few places to do a test track and compared it to what we done with our own amateurish ways of mastering and we just preferred what we did. We always compare our things to other albums and they sound more in-your-face. We do record mostly at home and it’s really hard to sound big with the guitar tracks and multi-layered vocals.

What’s the recording process like for you guys? To me it sounds like the songs are built on improvisational musical ideas first before the lyrics are added. Is that a fair assessment?
JOHANNES: It usually starts with a musical idea. Usually it’s one idea of music and then put some lyrics on top. But that may spawn some further part of the song and then that may change.
PANOS: And one of the 11 tracks from the album, the last one called ‘I Saw Them’, there’s another early version of the song we did 6 months ago. It was used on a Discovery Channel programme about Aero GP pilots!
JOHANNES: Yeah we write music for TV sometimes. The lyrics came quite spontaneously about a band called They Came From The Stars, I Saw Them, who are old companions of ours. We’re actually doing an album launch gig together with them (at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen 13 May) because they’ve got an album coming out too. Basically, the songs about them and going to their gigs alot, hence the title ‘I Saw Them’.

I first caught you guys live supporting 13&GOD randomly and without knowing your music and you really stole the night that evening. Was really impressed with your live show so went and picked up your back-catalogue. I was taken aback just how different and studio orientated the music was. Do you see playing live as taking a new angle on things?
PANOS: It’s impossible to play in the studio. So we see playing live just a way to rock out and release adrenalin, because that’s the only way to kind’ve make up for a lot of detail in the studio.

You recently played a free gig at STATE 51 – and it was recorded too. Can you shed any light on what that was about?
JOHANNES: Basically it was for setting up a live video, because you made the point of made a point of the discrepancy between studio chap/live chap and label said you’re albums are great but we like to show people your energetic thing that you do live which isn’t as abstract. We like the fact that there’s this difference, it’s good to be different live. We like both sides. So they said, let’s set up a gig which we can record with a 16 track mixer and video it and capture the live chap experience. We spent some time mixing and some people have edited. It’ll be on Youtube or the website.

You just shot the video for ‘Fun And Interesting’ in Hackney I read. You posted an add for males aged 20-40… Can you tell us more about it?
KEITH: Well, years ago I saw a Adam Leiber video he did for Trencher while at university (‘Mouth To Anus’). It’s really good. it’s just this 9 year old girl headbanging, recorded with a fast camera and slow-mo’ed so her hair’s in time with the music. It’s really simple but really good.
PANOS: He had a really good idea about using a gym so we needed lots of fit people there. And there was some beasts!
KEITH: Yeah one champion body builder called Robbie turned up who was amazing! quite short. he has real trouble if he drops anything, because all his body mass is on his top part so he can’t pick up anything up!

One thing that surprised me to hear was that you’ve remixed Beck (‘Nausea’ from ‘The Information’) – Did he personally handpick you?
JOHANNES Yes we got an email from his people. His management saying that they’re client is interested in us doing this remix. So he did handpick us. Later we found out he was playing one of our songs (‘Baby I’m Hurtin’) when DJing. We got sent some tracks and went about it. We basically just used his voice and added our own music to it.

Are there any collaborations in the pipeline?
JOHANNES: Well, we were going to do something with Thee More Shallows. A split 7″ on Anticon Records, where we’d have an original song each, cover one of each other’s songs (Thee More Shallow covering ‘Caution Me’ and The Chap covering ‘Knight At The Knight-School’) and a remix but they’re going through a band restructure at the moment and may not even be called Thee More Shallows anymore, so that’s all up in the air…

Are you connected in anyway with The Chap magazine?
JOHANNES: We’re actually named after them. When the magazines started it was quite a small thing. We’re definitely fans of the magazines, and they know we exist. We’ve added a link. They’re cool with it.
PANOS: It was the first issue and it had the a feature on ‘Symbiotics of the Enema’ and it was really our subject matter. We thought it would be a good name for a band. Very catchy.

So I have to ask, what are you currently listening to and what would you recommend to the readers?
JOHANNES: The Dirty Projectors is the first one that comes to mind! we’re playing with them in Manchester at the Future-Sonic Festival. Also Supertramp is always good. ‘Breakfast In America’ is a classic album.
KEITH: I really like the first Gwen Stefani album (‘Love.Angel.Music.Baby’). Seriously. I really really like it. Great pop album. Infact I recently got some new headphones and I’ve been listening to everything I had before and the Gwen Stefani sounds the best.
PANOS: I’ve been listening to a lot of things that send my son to sleep. So Calabrese (SP?). So some nice funky stuff which is very nice to listen to and dance to but also to send babies to sleep. And Jini Muhammed. There’s Omar Souleyman, a Syrian popstars. check on YouTube, the videos are great but the music is really nice. Big hit in Syria, Egypt, even Israel.
JOHANNES: Actually I was in a new bar in Berlin recently and they played him…

Do you guys get to get out to check out any gigs in London?
JOHANNES: I live quite close to Barden’s Boudoir. I saw The Coughs there, and they were absolutely amazing. They’re from Chicago and it was their last ever European show. A few friends from France were going and came all the way especially to see them and asked me to go along. There’s 6 of them and 2 are percussionists with oil barrels and one guy with fake tits playing sax and one girl just screaming her head off… really intense but really very good. And then they disbanded. But I’m really glad i caught them…
PANOS: I don’t get out to gigs much but the last gig I went to was Wolf Eyes at Barden’s and that was quite disappointing. It was very anticlimatical. They were looking like they were making this gut-wrenching noise, but really it sounded like some plumber was making some noise behind the wall.
KEITH: I saw Stinking Lizaveta and Weedeater at the Camden Underworld.

What’s the anticipation like running up to the album? What are your hopes or ambitions for it?
JOHANNES: well it’s a lot of build up. we actually finished the album in September. but with the baby we delayed it because we couldn’t play. I’m mostly looking forward to getting on with it. See when it’s released and if any one cares and what it leads to. And just going on the road again, playing shows.
PANOS: More travelling, playing shows, eating nice food together. but what would be really nice if some one came up to us and said “hey we like the music, how about you don’t do your other day jobs for a few months, record another album and go touring and we pay you. that would be an amazing thing. we don’t expect any luxurious. we just wanna be able to do what we do now, without have to work in the day and do this in the night.

So tell me then, what do you guys exactly do during the day when you’re not making music?
JOHANNES: I write for some newspapers in Germany. Mostly about music and some other things.
PANOS: I’m a music teacher at Goldsmiths. I teach music compositions.
KEITH: And I’m a computer programmer.
PANOS: Claire’s a music therapist.

How do you find it touring Europe? And are there any places you really want to visit?
JOHANNES: France is always the nicest. I think it’s because there’s cultural funding over there. A lot of the venues you can play even though you’re not a mainstream band. They have very nice venues, nice sound systems, lots of people looking after you, feeding you. Sometimes it can be funny. I mean this Kooks thing would never happen in France. Everything would be exactly sorted out the way it’s supposed to be. Just every time you play in the UK, something always happens. The sound-guy doesn’t turn up or the PA doesn’t work, or the promoter tries to do a runner with the money or pay you less. But you get these punk-rock experiences and it can inspire you to get you in a mood…
PANOS: …And when you play and finish the song over there, no one talks. And it’s sometimes unnerving. but it’s not weird, because they’re just listening and paying attention and waiting for you to play. The way it should be.
JOHANNES: I’d love to tour various Eastern European countries. And we would love to go to States and play and there’s a small chance we may. We have a label there now (Ghostly International). They serve big portions in the America… so Panos will be happy. Panos will love the food in America. Order a burger and it’ll be the size of a Frisbee! Hah!