FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Pop. 1280 on Life in New York City and the "Marilyn Mansion-ification" of Their Sound

Expect a new album from these dissonant aggressors later this year.

This article originally appeared on Noisey France. Photo by Yann Le Flohic

Just like the guy you knew in high school who had no choice but to take over his granddads slaughterhouse, Pop. 1280 have been unable to resist the urge to follow NYC's sleaze-noise-punk tradition. The situation’s pretty weird, considering Pop. 1280 isn’t the kind of band who sells out clubs in a second and doesn’t peddle elaborate concepts over super-dissonant sonic mindfucks. If you were expecting a Super Gods Of Fire package, complete with full Michael Gira support, you’re wrong—dead wrong. Pop. 1280 are just a bunch of regular Joes with a weak spot for The Birthday Party, who released a couple of badass records, and are definitely some of the coolest, most no-bullshit people you could ever spend 45 minutes with. We actually spent 40— including a photo shoot in the club's bathroom— just before their gig in Paris, but, you get the idea. Noisey: Okay, so the good news is I have no questions about China (guitar player Ivan Lipp lived in China) and no NYC bands to compare you to.
Band: [applause] This is already the best interview we've ever done. So when it comes to songwriting, what’s your M.O.?
Ivan Lip: At first, one of us used to come up with an idea, a beat or a riff and we’d flesh it out altogether, but we’re right now working on new material for a new album and it’s totally different. We’re working in a studio, which we never did before, so we’re basically writing the songs while we’re recording them. We don’t play the songs live.
Chris Bug: There’s improvisation but it’s not "jamming."

Advertisement

Can you tell us about your collaboration with Martin Bisi ?
Chris Bug: That was cool. He’s a great guy. What was interesting is that he isn’t a producer, he’s an engineer, and he really knows about agressive music, so he was perfect for us. And we got to know him, he became a friend. His advice was always good. He really understood what we were trying to do.
Ivan Lip: It was also kinda cool to be in the studio where he recorded all these great records and the space itself is actually very nice, it’s like a cave, it has a great natural reverb.
Chris Bug: That’s where he recorded the Swans, Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, Herbie Hancock…

Herbie Hancock, really?
Ivan Lip: Yeah, he did Rocket, his hip-hop record.
Chris Bug: The difference is that.when you record in that studio, you have to pay each day, which is a bit stressful. But now, we’re recording by ourselves, because Andy is a recording engineer himself, so we can take more time now anddo all the weird stuff he always wanted to do, which is new to us. With Martin Bisi, we had to finish everything before entering the studio.
Ivan Lip: With Martin Bisi, it was forty dollars per hour, so we couldn’t afford to lose much time. If a song didn’t work, we’d throw it away. If an idea didn't come together in an hour, we’d throw it away. We’d skip anything too weird or too difficult because we couldn’t afford to lose time. But now it’s different. We can experiment more.

Advertisement

Pop 1280 is always compared to so many bands, even more than the average rock band. There’s always those weird pitches calling you, like, "The best from Suicide mixed in with some early Liars on codeine with an industrial feel."
Chris Bug: Well, that’s positive to me. I mean, at least they don’t say, "Oh, another hardcore band," you know ? That’ why they feel the need to pick up all those references, which is fine.
Ivan Lip: It’s a media thing. People at shows don’t really care about that. Nobody ever came to us yelling, "Hey, you don’t sound like the Swans at all!"
Chris Bug: It happens in some kinda way, though. I sometimes feel the audience is somewhat disappointed that we’re not that hardcore or that noisy. You don’t like it? Get the fuck out.
Ivan Lip: We got some backlash from the people who liked our early stuff, that noise rock sound. I came across some shit on the internet, saying that we "Marilyn Manson-ified" our sound! I took that as a compliment.

There’s always been a robotic, mechanical element to your sound. Is electronic music something you’re into?
Allegra Sauvage: Yeah, absolutely. We like electronic music, EBM. I’m pretty much into house music. We never been remixed but I’d love that.

Pete Swanson would be great.
Allegra Sauvage: Oh, the guy from Yellow Swans ? That’s a great idea.
Chris Bug: I guess it’ll be easier with our new tracks, since they’re much more drum machine-based. There was no click on our previous stuff, wich would have made the whole thing much more difficult. What's your day-to-day life like in NYC?
Chris Bug: We all have full-time jobs cause New York has become a ridiculously expensive city. You can’t just live there anymore. You survive. NYC is only for very rich people and tourists. We work our asses off, drink tons of coffee, then lock ourselves in our practice space. And of course the job thing makes the life of the band always more complicated. Last year, we only toured for eight weeks, between the USA and Europe. And Vice Media bought most of the venues we used to play in, so we can’t play in NYC anymore [laughter]

Did you ever have any weird demonstrations of affection at a show?
Chris Bug: Last night, in Nantes, I signed an autograph on a cigarette. Oh, and there was this guy who came with a French paperback of Pop.1280 by Jim Thompson and we all signed it. I thought it was pretty cool, actually.
Andy Chugg: In the Netherlands, one guy came to me. He couldn’t speak English, so he mimed everything. Like. "Oh ! [air guitar] Joy Division! And oh! [air drums] Swans!" That was fun. He was trying to express how much he liked it but it ended up being even more intense without words, you know ?

So, when is this new album coming out ?
Chris Bug: Autumn 2015, I guess. We have six or seven tracks fully finished; two of them are on a 7" we’re selling on this tour. All I can tell you is that it will be more drum-machine and keyboard-based than our previous stuff. Definitely.

Adrien Durand is on Twitter - AdrienInBloom