The band talk us through the whims of their very suggestible lead guitarist and his beloved CD player

It must be hard to decide on a signature sound when you’re in a band. So many disparate opinions; so many possible routes to tread.

This must be at least one hundred times harder when you’ve got a guitarist who insists on attempting to change your sound to whatever’s kicking around in his glovebox.

Thank goodness, then, Idles seem to have nailed down a definitive sound despite the intrusions. It’s definitively sweat-soaked post-punk tinged with frustration, despair and a dark sense of humour and their MEAT EP (which you can grab here) just launched at a duo of raucous shows in London, and, of course, hometown Bristol. In fact, we premiered one of the videos of the excellent new tunes. See that here.

Here’s frontman Joe Talbot on their impressionable guitarist, Bowen, and the music he’s tried to get them to sound like because he listened to it in the car on the way to practice.

T-Rex

Marc Bolan is a beast, no doubt. We all love his records but the notion that we start going glam on our new stuff is the epitome of Bowen’s ridiculous nature. He once turned up to practice in a purple cape because Labyrinth was on TV.

Haxan Cloak

“Guys! I’ve just heard a record that’s supposed to sound like dying!”… needless to say, that practice was fucking horrid. It was like giving your four year old a violin for christmas.

Excavation is a masterpiece though.

Radiohead

We all know that Radiohead are good but Bowen is the kind of person that thinks there is need for two Radioheads because his attention span doesn’t accommodate for just one. He “wrote” a bunch of guitar lines from Johnny Greenwood’s catalogue, we scrapped them and went back to Idles.

John Cale

I don’t know John Cale, I’ve never listened to him – but Bowen mentioned him about 40 times in one practice. I checked the glove box of the car after and found a John Cale CD. He’s an idiot. John Cale is not.

Marijuana Deathsquads

Bowen decided that we needed synths. Almost in a panic, he announced that this would be our new “thing”.

Bowen: “We need synths, it’ll be our new thing!”
Me: “Why?”
Bowen: “Because hfowewojcbdskcdjbs ahh shut up!”
Me: “What’s in your cd player?”
Bowen: “Marijuana Deathsquads”

Jon punched him in the balls.

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