Interviews
From
Cluas.com:
I'm
ushered in to The EMI offices on Ailsbury Road, a fine building indeed for
radio darlings Relish to be hanging out in. Their Press
Officer greets me as she dumps a bust of faulty CDs and brings me down to
a sumptuous conservatory.
Relish are ensconced, believe it or not, listening to
a copy of their own single and wearing their own merchandise. I spy them
before they see me and Ken Papenfus, the guitarist and most vocal member
of the group, is playing air guitar to the track and headbanging his
mini-dreads much to the others' amusement.
We start off
talking about Witnness at which Relish will be playing, and how they like
bigger crowds...
Ken - "A lot of bands say this, but
I think our stuff works really well to a bigger crowd we try and create
a cinema sound, if we can, with our songs."
He's dead
right. 'Let it Fly' is about as cinematic as it gets, a huge guitar riff
driven along by Ken's massive voice, and classic along with it. I have
gotten the impression that Relish are a 'Real Song' band, their stuff has
a classic sound and all, so do they use all that classic
equipment?
Carl - Yeah we do, basically it sounds
better. We went through a phase we had racks and effects and bass pedals
and digitech - but stuff just sounds better through the real gear, if we
ever played with old guys we always wondered how they got such great
sounds and they'd say 'its just my guitar and an amp'." Ken -
"It just kicks the arse of the new stuff - all the new equipment
is made just for dance music, not for what we play." Darren -
"Anyway loads of that dance stuff, DJ Shadow and all is based on
old drum sounds. Old funk you know. At the moment we're listening to
D'angelo and Coldplay, we're suckers for real singers and real songs."
So nobody here is really impressed with dance music by the looks
of thing. Time to change tack... It seems that there's a real scene in
Downpatrick, was it something Relish were aware of when they started
out?
Ken - There was a bunch of guys playing around I don't
know if you'd call it a scene... Darren - Ah it was, I
was outside the town, if you were trying to start a band, it was always
'You should go to Downpatrick you'll pick up
someone.' Ken - There's a big blues thing in
the North, and roots thing, you know from Van Morrison on. Scotland has a
soul thing too. We embraced that more than the punk thing. We didn't dig
that at all. Though Ash did a lot for music in the North, people were
waiting for something after Therapy They gave a lot of bands the
attitude 'yeah we can do this too'.
Unsurprisingly Ken and Karl with the matching mini-dreads are
brothers. They came to Downpatrick from South Africa as kids. Their mother
was a successful singer down there and coincidentally was also signed to
EMI. So the burning question: Did Relish become musicians because of their
parents, and did Mr. & Mrs. Papenfus ever play with with their
offspring?
(hoots of laughter)
Ken
- Their parties would always have lots of jazz, but we just
turned our backs to it. You become your parents at the end of the day, but
we rejected all their stuff at first, we used to play funk mixed with
metal. The kind of stuff that they hated, which we thought was great. Even
then though when we used to send stuff off to American labels - we'd
always be told to concentrate on some blues thing they heard, we were in
total denial of it. It's odd that my Mum was signed to EMI as well. We
never even thought to contact them.
So what common thread runs through the 3 members of
Relish?
Ken - We've just got the same agenda; playing music.
We're not really concerned about styles and genres and things. We grew up
listening to all kinds so we talk about Carpenters songs and Darren says
'I've got that too,' and then we're like 'You've got no life as
well' Darren - I just go along with it
Ken
- We fitted in alright (to Downpatrick), but there was a seed of
difference in it. We got refuge from sitting playing guitars, Darren kind
of felt the same way, he came over from England. We were geeks about
guitars.
It seems to have done them good, and their
blasé attitude is only gas. Listen as the names of top level producers and
studios just fall out of their mouths as they talk about their
album.
Ken - We did half the album with John Leckie
and then the other half with Al Clay. John was really cool. They way he
communicated with us and how he puts things together, we weren't
intimidated, we knew we had to do half the album with the guy. That's what
we concentrated on. Then, because we had different styles, and we wanted
to get to the bottom of all of them we used Al (Stereophonics, Reef) Clay.
We were lucky to have our wish list of producers willing to work with us
and available at the time.
I put it to them that it's a
dream of most bands their age to record at Air studios, Rockford and even
Abbey Road.
Ken - Don't get
me wrong but when we were younger we wanted to be actors or sportsmen, the
music was even too close to home, it was like an academic subject for us.
We knew we'd be doing it eventually.
(Relish were interviewed by
Jack Murphy
)
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