Zoot Woman's Johnny Blake performs with the band at Hoxton Bar & Grill, 2007

It’s six years since synth-rockers Zoot Woman released their last LP and now they’re back with a new album,‘Things are what they used to be,” which proves the old adage ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it.’ At the Berlin HQ of their new German record label Snowhite, the very affable Blake brothers are already showing some signs of promotion fatigue, but are happy to talk about band dynamics, influences and covers that they just wont do.

How do you write songs as a band? What are your individual roles?

JB: I think 9 times out of 10 with a lot of these songs, Adam will start off. He might have a song title and I might then work on a vocal, lyrical idea, and that’s kind of the start. Certainly on this record, most of them have started off that way

You’re brothers- doesn’t that create huge potential for inter-band conflict during the creative process?

AB:  Someone said to me: “How can you work with your brother? I can’t even walk down the same street as my brother.” It’s funny because the ideas that have gone onto this record or things that actually work, are the ones that we haven’t actually sat down and talked about. Usually the things we talk about doing, don’t happen. If we just come up with something and give it a try or whatever, things tend to come from that. When we sit down and say ‘This is what we should do,” it’s like anything – it’s all talk and no action. It doesn’t matter that we’re brothers, because usually you communicate and argue as brothers. If you let the music do it, it works for itself.

JB: We will do a lot of our work on songs individually but there’s always a time in our band where the actual result only gets done when the three of us work on it together, but a lot of our creative ideas we do separately.

But is not a case of one waiting for the other?

AB: But it’s just like that. We can only put the feelers out, you can just say “Well, I’ve tried this, what do you think?” You can think it’s the best thing ever, but if you get no feedback, you leave it. Johnny will send me something and I’ll think, “Its good but its not as good as the other ideas you’ve had.” It’s the same with Stuart, it’s the same with me. I’ll think “Can’t anyone see how good this is?” If it’s not to be, it’s not to be.

JB: Yeah, and I think, the three of us have been working together for a long time, I think there’s a certain confidence you have in each other’s opinions. And I’ll give an idea, and I know from the reaction I get, if it’s worth pursuing.

AB: Yeah, I think it is quite democratic. We’ve all got respect for each other’s ideas

Do individual tastes in music within the band lead to conflicts in the creative process?

JB: I think I can often go down too songy a road and I think Adam will say ‘You’re getting to songy’. Its important to have that cross-section, because we approach things differently. I’m not really a producer, but I do melodies and stuff.

AB: We’ve all known each other for so long, so no-one holds back. And the phrase that gets used on everyone, by everyone, is ‘who do you think you are?” You come up with an idea and you go “OK, its great but this isn’t going to work.” I think that’s the beauty of it. You’ve done two records before ,and you think, ‘What can we get away with?” and we tend to cut out the crap, because we can talk to each other and say “I don’t understand that. Who do you think you are?”

JB: I think if we didn’t have that, those contradictions, we’d have a lot of dodgy ideas. At the time, when you’re working on it, it can be quite annoying, but you don’t always see the result until you realise that that’s there for a reason.

So friction can produce good ideas as well?

AB: Yeah, if someone says “Who do you think you are? That’s not going to work.” There’s a challenge there. You go back and you try to make it work. You can be quite relentless, in trying to make it work. But there comes a point where you go, ‘Fair enough, let’s leave that” you just focus on what’s working and that’s kind of what we did in the last month of this record. It’s funny, because that doesn’t mean to say that the songs that we rejected won’t appear in the future. It just means that you need to have a bit of an epiphany, production-wise or lyric wise. You just all have to feel the same.

Zoot Woman's new album: 'Things are what they used to be'

Onto the new album… What was the idea behind the cover?

AB: There was a team of artists. ‘Destructed’ is the magazine, and they had some brilliant ideas, which we wanted to include in the booklet, but what actually happened in the end, was that Matthias Krauser and Norman Perker came up with this (shows me album sleeve). I just saw this bust idea and thought “that’s fantastic.” The idea is, depending on how you’re feeling when you listen to the record, if you’re feeling like looking to the future, you have the face, facing forward, if you feel like referring to the past, it’s looking back. We just thought it was a good concept.

And that’s basically the idea behind the new album title?

AB: It’s all related to that. Referencing the past, or moving forward and not referencing the past and moving forward. It’s all about youthful ideas. I feel like I’ve said it too much.

JB: It’s quite a popular feeling, I think a lot of people feel like they want to return to certain points in time. There’s a certain universal feeling about it, I think. Yeah, I’ve said it too much as well (laughs).

Speaking of looking forward, your melodies can be quite optimistic-sounding, especially the more dancey tunes. Yet the lyrics seem to often be fairly melancholic – ‘Taken it all’, ‘Snow White ‘ and on TAWTUTB: ‘Lonely by your side’, ‘Friend of mine’ etc.

AB:  Someone else said that to me, “Maybe its your British reserve”. It’s easier to express the confusion than anything else, isn’t it?

JB: Often what you don’t normally talk about in conversation, you can often find yourself coming up with in lyrics. Whilst some people’s lyrics are quite conversational, and some people can sing a shopping list and make it sound really good, I’ve never been able to do that. I think it’s a theme that lends itself well to our music.

Speaking of contradictions – your music also combines the two opposing ends of the musical spectrum – rock and electronica. Not many bands are able to carry that off.

AB: Yeah, that’s really dangerous territory. I think of things that have done that in the past, and I think,”Hmmmm,is that going to work?” But yeah, it’s one of those things you can’t always help. I think you just do what you do and try and pull it off.

Although the new album does take some new musical paths, it also has what I regard as ZW trademarks, such as building up layers of sound.

AB : It’s funny, because I’m thinking in my head is – I think you are totally right -  next time I don’t want to do that, I want to do something different. I think we kind of tended to try to build on the whole emotional thing with the production.  We tried to create drama by bringing things down and then for choruses, bringing them up. We tried to do things we wouldn’t normally do.

JB: I think we also tried to go a step further with the songwriting, I liked what we put out before this record, but I’ve always thought that we could go a step further with the actual songwriting.

You’ve done a few cover versions. Have ZW ever thought about collaborating with other musicians?

AB: I think it’s the kind of thing where if I did do it, I’d want to do it differently. Speaking on behalf of ZW, it’s important to have a consistent sound, and the thought of giving someone else the responsibility of changing your sound, I find it quite tough.

JB: What’s funny, is that it’s always the most unlikely song that you end up doing a good cover of. I think there’s something in the challenge of doing a song that really isn’t you, and that’s often why it sounds good. If I covered a song by an artist I really liked, it’d probably be awful.

So no David Bowie covers then?

JB: Exactly! Well, I haven’t tried it.

AB: We covered ‘The Model’ on our first record, and we did that out of respect, and it was quite difficult, because if we tried to do it like their version, you just stay away from that, because they got it so right. And it was our debut album and it helped association, to show people what we were doing, but a lot of people think ‘why are they doing that?” It’s dangerous territory, the cover version, unless you do a lot, and you pull them off in your style. I think you’ve got to be quite selective.

So you basically don’t ‘need’ to do covers now?

JB: I think when you’re a debut act there’s quite a pressure to hit people in the face. I think that we have quite a loyal fan base, and when we were writing this, we were thinking of the people who like our stuff. I think you can’t really do it more than once, because you start to look a bit nichey. Well nichey’s good in its place, but you like to think that songs can go a bit further than that.

AB: It’s funny though, cause you don’t really have a plan do you? You kind of follow what works, whether it’s live, or what people say they like.

Could the same be said for your image? Do you think in retrospect, the emphasis on image (when you were starting out) has overshadowed your music a bit?

AB: It probably did, but I don’t think you can have one without the other. If we’d put out one record and hadn’t been given the chance to evolve, then I’d begrudge it a bit. If you’ve got anything for people to get into, then that will happen over time, and I think we’re lucky to have that.

JB: Yes, I think the first time around, the image possibly was eclipsing the music, but there’s nothing wrong with that, I think it happens with a lot of bands. I think it’s quite important to get through that.

AB: I think a lot of people don’t realise how they get turned onto things, and you can see something and wonder why you get into the music. It depends on how your brain works, you can listen to things and get turned onto things, I really think the two go hand in hand. Its important to look like your music.

You gigged a lot in 2008 . You tend to re-work a lot of your songs live. Have you ever thought about releasing them?

AB We’ve never wanted to do songs just like they appear on record. I think there’s always strength in a song when you can hear it in different forms. And I think especially with electronic acts, when people hear that something’s been produced a certain way, people can be quite sceptical about how it sounds, how it is as a song. You hear this thing in an acoustic fashion it makes you appreciate it in a different way.

JB Yeah, that’s true ,and there’s always a part of you that wants to record songs in that way. I think it was Elton John who said that in the days of the 70s, they used to record something and it’d be 15 minutes writing it, 15 minutes playing it, and then 15 minutes recording it, but that was a different thing. And I think there’s a romantic part of you that’s like, “Wouldn’t it be great to do stuff like that?”

AB You can only do what you’re used to. He was a club singer or a piano player. He played piano for blues bands before he did his own thing. And we grew up children of the 80s, and so we grew up with Midi and technology, and the synthesizer. That’s what we’ve always referenced, and you can’t shake that, no matter how much you try and write in a more traditional way. It’s always there.

JB: And a lot of the time, the actual creative idea you have is really quite fast, and I think the labour part is the actual getting the song to sound just how you want it to sound. That’s probably what takes the longest. And I think that more and more – ’cause nowadays there is so much more music coming out. It’s harder to sound individual, so that’s probably what takes quite a lot of time, I think.

Zoot Woman’s upcoming tour dates:

02 October – Melkweg, Amsterdam, 1017 PH – NL

03 October – Rotown, Rotterdam, 3014 GB – NL

05 October – Dingwalls, London, NW1 8AF – UK

10 October – Otto Santral, Istanbul – TR

Zoot Woman on MySpace

Video for Zoot Woman’s new single ‘Memory’

(apologies to the band for this interview’s non-appearance in SP!)

Check it!

The Czech embassy looms out from the corner of Mohrenstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin’s traditional government quarter, like a giant cold war spaceship, ready to suck up passers by and transport them back to the mid-70s. Which in a manner of speaking, it does. This concrete and glass behemoth is a great example of ‘Soviet Sci-Fi” architecture- a term coined by Frederick Chaubin, editor of Citizen K, to describe 1960s and 70s Communist bloc buildings with a space-age aesthetic. These Sovio-futurist structures have been slowly vanishing from Berlin’s cityscape since the Wende, although the Czech embassy looks likely to be around for a while, not least due to its stunning interior.

The (then) Czechoslovakian embassy was built between 1974 and 1978 by architects Vera and Vladimir Machonin (who were also responsible for the Kotva department store in Prague). It initially stood alone in the wasteland adjacent to the Berlin wall, a massive 48×48-metre monolith, with only Hitler’s bunker for company. The area has subsequently been built up, but this doesn’t appear to have diminished the building’s stunning monumentality. The Brutalist design –no obvious entrance, lots of concrete and mirrored glass (a commie fave) – makes the embassy a less than inviting prospect. But if the exterior shouts “be afraid, be very afraid!” then the interior says something more along the lines of: “Harvey Wallbanger, anyone?” It’s a colourful stylistic journey back to the mid-1970s, which has remained for the most part unchanged since the embassy was opened. The dark entranceway, tucked under the recesses of the building, opens out onto to a wood-panelled lobby and various circular anterooms, decked out in eye-wateringly bright reds and yellows. Futuristic glass and metal lampshades hang from slatted orange and red ceilings. Rows of chairs upholstered in red and tan coloured leather are set out in each room, as if awaiting the return of some mutton-chopped, beflared occupants. On the first floor, an enormous conference room with movable walls and huge angular windows provides views of the neighbouring GDR-era housing estate, once home to celebs such as Katharina Witt and the man who accidentally brought down the Berlin wall, politburo member Günter Schabowski. The embassy also houses a small cinema, decorated in a great clashing combo of blues and oranges. The interior’s perfect cold war aesthetic is only interrupted by the unnecessary presence of various etchings of Old PragueTM, and in one room, a painting of the Baltic Sea, a gift from the GDR to the landlocked CSSR (the GDR authorities seemed to have enjoyed giving people views of what they didn’t have – trip up the TV tower to have a look at the West, anyone?). Oh well, you can’t have it all.

Although it’s yet to be given an 8-page spread in Wallpaper magazine, the embassy’s interior has a cult reputation. It’s occasionally used for fashion shoots and parties, and photographer Candida Höfer devoted an entire book to it. Whilst there has been some discussion about renovation, there are no immediate plans to make any changes to the interior, which should be preserved for all time, as a lesson to designers on how to get 70s revivals right. Were this London, the building would have been sold off and turned into a hip members club long ago, but this being Berlin, where there is space aplenty and property is not at a premium, it thankfully remains in the hand of the Czechs

(There may be a little programme to follow soon..)

Berlinchester (nee Berlinshire) has been busy travelling around the former GDR, interviewing DJs. Meanwhile here is a new version of the DJ programme, entitled ‘The Recorded Disk Entertainers’,for you to be going on with… The show will be broadcast on Radio Nowhere 20th November (time TBC)  and Resonance FM on Saturday 22nd November at 21.00

Berlinchester has contributed an article about DJing in the DDR to the latest issue of B EAST Magazine! Enjoy!:-)

Berlinshire gets lost in the cultural desert of Wedding in north Berlin and stumbles upon the Anti-Kriegs Museum (Anti-War Museum). A 15-minute introduction to the life of the museum’s founder, anarchist-pacifist Ernst Friedrich, the man who declared war against war.

In the German Democratic Republic, DJs weren’t called DJs. In order to distinguish themselves from their capitalist neighbours in the West, the East Germans invented their own vernacular for certain things. So, in the East, you didn’t eat hamburgers and hot dogs, you ate grilletta and ketwurst. And in East Germany you weren’t a DJ, you were a Schallplattenunterhalter (SPU)- a recorded disc entertainer, or later in the 1980s, a Diskomoderator – a disco presenter.
Like every other profession in East Germany, DJ-ing or ‘disco moderating’, had to be state-approved. In order to perform in public, you had to undergo official DJ ‘training’, pass a test, an exam, and then you’d get a DJ-ing permit, which was valid for two years.
In Berlinshire at the GDR Disco, I talked to Andreas Vendt-Schmidt, a former SPU from Cottbus in East Germany, about entertaining communist bureaucrats, East German Rick Astleys and music quotas behind the Iron Curtain.

Berlinshire is presented and produced by Maisie Hitchcock, and broadcast on Resonance FM in London

Resonance FM broadcast two bunker-tastic Berlinshire Micro Clearspots on 17th/18th December 2007.

In May 2007, I visited the Story of Berlin, a museum located just off shoppers’ paradise Ku’damm, and the site of a large nuclear bunker. This converted car park and JG Ballard-esque spook chamber is still fully functional, and was one of 11 bunkers built in West Berlin to accommodate a paltry percentage of the population in the event of a nuclear war.

In part one, guide Maritta Horwarth talks to me about living conditions, air supplies, and chances of survival inside the Atombunker. And in the second part of our tour, we chat about plumbing, airlocks, and handy ways of protecting yourself from a nuclear blast.