Lyric-less riddles and new directions: TLOBF meets Three Trapped Tigers

“When you’ve built up a reputation of any description, then there’ll be expectations,” Matt Calvert explains when probed about the pressures encountered whilst recording Three Trapped Tigers‘ debut album. Yet with May’s release of Route One Or Die there was much more riding on what to expect from a band that had already produced three outstanding three-track EPs and perfected a live performance that arguably blows most other current electronic bands out of the water.

The first time that I finally managed to watch TTT live was not – as I’d envisaged – in some sweaty, beer-stained basement or sprawling warehouse, but in the rolling green fields of 2000 Trees Festival 2010. Playing the festival’s main stage to a small, but dedicated crowd, the audience remained still yet appreciative as Matt Calvert, Tom Rogerson and Adam Betts impressed with their swooping on-stage synchronicity, their attention to detail, the intricate, yet deafening drumming and the pure chunkiness of the riffs and electronic melodies that they wove flawlessly together.

Fast forward exactly a year, and I witness the band – for the sixth time – playing the same stage at the same festival. Yet one year on, TTT are high up on the bill and their show is the rowdiest, and most evidently euphoric that I’ve experienced during the whole weekend. There’s a huge turnout, there’s dancing, there’s even an uncharacteristic mosh-pit and several audience ejections, much to the Tigers’ visible delight. Something has changed, or at least clicked for the band – and clearly their audience – over these last 12 months.

With this in mind I begin by asking the trio whether they feel Route One Or Die is the perfect accumulation of all that they have produced since their formation in 2007 and whether it was what they had envisaged as the logical next step after the success of their EPs.

“Even though this was our first full length there was almost a sophomore album feel to making it, having made an LP’s worth in the three EPs,” Calvert explains. “But you can’t start worrying about what people will think ­– second guessing anyone is dangerous, especially when you’re trying to make art as opposed to something for mass consumption, and when you’ve been head down in writing and recording something for months, you have no perspective of your own anyway. So I guess all you can hope for is that people like it. Fortunately the overall reaction has been great though and that’s very reassuring.”

“I’d say the album is a summation or synthesis of what we’ve done up until now,” Rogerson continues. “The eight tracks are all pretty different and they all focus on different areas that we’ve touched on previously. So this was a kind of logical next step, although there were many others we could have chosen.”

Yet Calvert is also keen to demonstrate the band’s growth from the gradual transitions of each of the EPs through to the full-length album itself: “I think we’ve built upon the familiar elements but it feels like a progression to me,” he says. “I think there’s less of a Squarepusher and Aphex Twin ‘influence’ for example, and more diversity and originality in terms of grooves, melodies and moods. I think there’s a lot of room to grow in the future though.”

Despite the range of machinery, walls of textured noise and the frankly phenomenal ability of Bett’s drumming that surrounds TTT’s music, at the very centre of all their songs’ foundations lies Rogerson’s piano melodies: the sole instrument through which the band was initially created. I ask him if this current incarnation of TTT is what he envisaged when it was just himself and his piano?

“I always wanted it to be a band, and I had a clear idea I wanted to pursue and some ambition behind it,” Rogerson explains. “Inevitably, that all changed as things got going and the others became more or less involved – we’ve lost one member along the way, for example! As for the success, I had no idea what I wanted, I probably wanted huge success but never thought we’d get it, so in that respect I’m both delighted and disappointed.”

There are no triggers, no samples and no loop pedals used during TTT’s shows, rather all the music is created entirely on stage with their own instruments. In this way TTT continually demonstrate that they are very much a live band in every sense, preferring to keep the on-stage incarnation of the band as a trio of keys, synths, drums and a singular guitar rather than relying on loops to give them a heavier, more advanced sound.

Not that they need it, indeed the three more than prove that individually they’re all greatly talented musicians, both on record and in a live setting, and the sweat-soaked spectators and ever-increasing show capacities are testament to TTT’s energy on stage and the fervency of their audiences’ reactions to their music.

Yet this ease and effortlessness on stage can often be misinterpreted as improvisation, and the band are very quick and keen to dismiss this: “There’s really very little improvisation, other than in certain noise sections, segues and that in some of Betts’ drum parts there’s some room to manoeuvre,” Calvert explains, appearing somewhat frustrated. “Worryingly that means people probably interpret some of the written material as wanking around! Otherwise I feel like the whole thing is pretty tightly scripted – I’m up for exploring the idea of improvisation within structures if it meant making the music more interesting but without ever sounding like soloing.”

With the trio’s older material, lyrics were non-existent, with the occasional harmonising ‘ahs’ from Rogerson and Calvert being enough to satisfy any vocal cravings that the band might have harboured. This is a characteristic that has also lent itself to Route One Or Die, showing a level of continuity across their releases, where – based on the rest of the material’s content ­– change and development has otherwise been at the fore. Yet this inclusion of vocals was something that Rogerson, at least in the early days of TTT, was initially eager to explore.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Rogerson clarifies. “But I think it’s a question of getting it right though, you don’t want to add vocals and lyrics simply for the sake of it. And working it into this material and sound is pretty challenging. I personally have very little idea of what lyrics could possibly add to this project, I think they distract, the same reason album titles and songs distract from the form of the music.

“On the other hand, the voice as instrument is an obvious avenue to explore and one I think is definitely worth looking at in the future,” he continues. “This album has less voice than the EPs, that’s just how it turned out, and as I said I feel it’s a synthesis of this first phase of the band. The next one though will basically require us to revisit all aspects of the band, including the voice, to see what we can do that’s different and new.”

Prior to both TTT and the trio’s previous musical projects, jazz and classical music informed much of their musical influences when growing up. I enquire as to how much this aural education translates into their own music, and whether they see their own material as a modernisation of classical elements? “I’ve never thought of TTT as being classical music, or jazz,” says Calvert. “I have a love-hate relationship with jazz but to most people it’s become a term for anything ‘clever’ sounding or simply unfamiliar to them.”

“I think it’s all in there somewhere along with metal and rock and anything else,” Rogerson continues. “I don’t necessarily think we’re trying to modernise classical elements but I think that we’ve chosen a route that increasingly people previously drawn to classical or jazz are going to choose. The point is trying to find a form that is relevant to us, and I think we were all finding the more academic styles a bit sterile. My plan eventually is to return to classical and jazz having broken in through the rear entrance.”

“We’ve all played lots of different music so of course all that will inform what we do, for better or worse,” Calvert elaborates. “I don’t mean so much that it’s bad that jazz or classical can inform your work, but I’ve noticed in others and myself that thing of having studied music, you then start asking things like ‘Is what we’re doing interesting and clever enough?’ So, I feel like I’ve been unlearning that a little over the last few years and trying to get to somewhere more concerned with emotional content regardless of complexity. I do think though that you can use complexity in subtle ways to widen the scope of expression beyond tried and tested pop and rock harmony and rhythms.”

The band may well be vocal when it comes to expressing their influences and musical upbringing, yet on stage TTT are a band of very few words, preferring to allow their music to speak for itself. Not only does this manifest itself in the band’s apparent lack of stage ‘banter’, but also in the industrial, instrumental nature of their material and the manner of their numbered song names on their numerically titled EPs, which, when live translates into as a series of set-list sign language when reminding each member which song is to be played next. While this may appear to be alienating, or at least confusing, what TTT have succeeded in doing throughout their material is making electronic, industrial music wholly engaging. I ask them what the secret is.

“You don’t sit down and think ‘I must write music that’s completely engaging and captivating,’” says Calvert. “It’s more like we’re aware of what isn’t engaging and captivating and we reject that. We’ve all had our moments of playing in bands or watching bands that failed to engage, and I guess we knew that instrumental music has a higher bar to clear in terms of keeping the audience interested. I actually have always been fairly militant about that – my problem with electronica when translated to a live context is that it’s pretty boring, to me anyway, whereas in real dance music, looping endlessly is absolutely incredible.”

Speaking of electronica, TTT have also been responsible for some of the last year’s most varied and electronic-heavy alternative remixes, from Gallops’ ‘Defbox’ to ‘I Love Turbulence’ by Rolo Tomassi. So far Calvert is the only one to have turned his talent to remixes, but, as he has found, reworking songs for other musicians has actually made the band reassess some of their own existing material.

“I find that they can yield ideas of your own that you may have never come up with otherwise, partly because the initial inspiration is all taken care of,” he explains. “But I find the same when finishing a song that say Tom has started, even if I’m presented with one bar. At the moment I’m up for doing some remixes of Tigers songs, more like re-interpretations. When we write, we feel the material could go in lots of directions, such as purely ambient or more beat driven. So I think there’ll be some re-workings emerging along those lines.”

Calvert has also recently released his debut EP under his one-man moniker Evil Ex, which also features fellow Tiger Betts on drums. Yet despite the apparent time clash between the two recent releases, the Evil Ex record, entitled ‘Bygones’, was actually recorded back in 2007 before any of TTT’s own EPs. “At the time I never thought of it as a ‘side project’, it just got sidelined,” Calvert explains. “Then last summer I reworked it a bit and had it mastered – it was just one of those things that it didn’t make it out until it did. But I’m proud of it and wanted to get it out there ­– I also think Betts sounds incredible on it. Now that the TTT album’s out I feel like I have more room to think about doing some newer material, it’ll be a bit different to both ‘Bygones’ and TTT.”

So, what’s next for Three Trapped Tigers? “Festivals, another single, another video thing, some remixes, and hopefully an ambient release where we kind of reinterpret the album in an opposite way – make it long, placid, ambient, blissful and unrhythmic,” says Calvert. “And maybe a live album. Plus another tour of the UK and Europe in the autumn. And solo projects for all three of us!”

With the recent release of Route One Or Die, plus further festival appearances this summer, a forthcoming tour, single, video, and live album, alongside the album reinterpretation all on the cards, 2011 is certainly shaping up to be Three Trapped Tigers’ year. We can’t wait to see what happens next.

‘Route One Or Die’ is out now via Blood & Biscuits/ Pink Mist.