aaamusic | On 04, Oct 2010

AAAmusic: You have been compared to acts like Animal Collective and The Flaming Lips. Do you think these are fair comparisons and how would you describe your sound?

Mitchell Museum: I think that we might be a hard band to pigeonhole. There are obviously elements of our music that share a common headspace with bands like The Flaming Lips and Animal Collective, and the comparison can be useful as a reference point for people who don’t know our sound. However, I’d like to think that we definitely have a unique sound of our own, and that we draw from a wide range of influences when writing and arranging our music.  If pushed, I’d say we fit into the alternative/psychadelic/sampletronica category (if such a thing exists).

AAAmusic: Do you have a particular process for song writing or do your ideas seem to just progress without a particular tried and tested method?

MM: It’s a difficult question to answer.  I mean, I’ve been writing for a few years now and in the early days, my ideas for songs would be pretty mental or just quite extreme – it’s important for me for our music to be genuine and meaningful but also it’s so important for it to be listenable and accessible to an extent you know? A lot of my earlier stuff was pretty mad I think. So for me it’s really a process of editing and reining in the creative process, trying to hone the ideas into something that makes sense, so I often have to impose structure, and think first of all about, like, ‘what kind of song do I want this to be?’ before I start out, which seems like an odd way to write but it’s helpful for me. The rest of the band help with that as well, with imposing structure and helping the songs to make sense.

AAAmusic: Your debut album received fantastic reviews and I personally think that it’s a brilliant record. Was there a point in the recording process where you though, “this is going to be amazing,” or is there always an element of self doubt?

MM: Ah! That’s very kind of you. I’m glad you like the album. We like it too. There wasn’t really a point where we thought it was going to be amazing, as we’re all quite critical about the music we make.  Although I do have a memory from one of the last recording sessions that I’m very fond of.  There’s a track on the album (Copy and Paste) that has a group of our friends singing backing vocals on it – we drank a box of wine and made a bit of a party out of it.  I listened back to the track the same night and got really excited. We had an excellent time recording the song and I felt that I could really hear part of that excitable drunken energy cutting through the track.  We’re all pretty proud of Copy and Paste, but (as with the all the other songs on the album) we really weren’t sure if other people would like it as much as we did.

AAAmusic: You have recently released the video for ‘Tiger Heartbeat.’ Who came up with the ideas for the video and did you feel any guilt about kicking a robot in the face?!

MM: All credit goes to Kris for the video. He made the storyboard, created a computer game and built a robot.  It’s quite a lot for one man to do, but he doesn’t seem to like sleeping so he’s got to fill his time somehow.  We all felt guilty about kicking that robot apart from Kris.  I think he was going through some kind of cathartic process.  He spent so much of his time labouring over the video that I think he was glad to put an end to the whole thing.

AAAmusic: You will be spending the end of October/beginning of November touring; do you prefer recording or playing live and what can fans see from you that they won’t get from listening to your record?

MM: I think it’s fair to say that we all enjoy recording songs and playing live equally.  We got to experiment quite a lot during the recording process for the album. Andy Bush (Brown Owl Studios) didn’t seem to mind if we wanted to blow bubbles into a microphone for 40 minutes (only for us to mix the end result to an almost inaudible level in the finished track) in fact if anything,  he really encouraged that kind of thing.  That made the whole recording process a lot of fun.  I really enjoy playing gigs – our gigs tend to be very energetic  and normally seem to end with me and Dougie (Kennedy) kicking each other quite a lot.  I’m not really sure why that happens.  Maybe he hates me. You can’t hear Dougie kicking me on the record.

AAAmusic: You have already had some pretty awesome times as a band notably playing at T Break and the radio sessions that you recorded earlier this year. What has been the highlight for you so far?

MM: It’s becoming really difficult to pick a highlight as so many great things have happened in the last year.  Headlining the Saturday T-Break stage at T in the Park is obviously really high up there.  Recording a radio session for Huw Stephens in Maida Vale studios was also kind of amazing. We were almost confused at the idea that we’d been asked to record a load of our songs in the same studio that John Peel used to broadcast his shows from. The reviews we’ve been getting have all been so positive too. The fact that Warning Bells was reviewed by Kate Nash for the NME was a completely bizarre, but pretty cool thing too.

AAAmusic: Where do you see the future for Mitchell Museum?

MM: Hopefully we’ll make about 7 albums, have a massive fall-out that will force us to us to split up the band (citing musical differences), go on to pursue our own solo careers and then get back together again for Live Aid 6 for one last reunion gig that will lead to a three-year tour of our fourth concept album.  We’ll all fall out again midway through the tour, leaving Kris to perform the remainder of the tour with two session musicians and a drunken roadie.

In all seriousness, we hope to be recording and playing in Mitchell Museum for a very long time. At the moment we’re putting an E.P. together  which will hopefully get released in December, and we’ve just started writing some new songs that I think will be on  our next album… it’s all quite exciting really.

Author: Josie Payne