Interview With: Spiderbait - Kram, Janet and Whitt

Kram, Janet and Whitt, of Spiderbait, discuss the band's progress and their attitude to the US market, how the music scene is changing, the new album - The Flight Of Wally Funk, and keeping fresh. (Recorded August, 2001) The interview is in RealVideo format. You will need a 56K modem or better, and a RealVideo player - click the icon below if you don't have one.

Below is an excerpt from the interview.

Whitt: I think the punk ethic of making music yourself and being in control is more alive now than ever. I've been talking to people about how they make their music and the way technology has changed the way music is being made and is sounding - because of the way it is being made - over the last two or three years.

Janet: We couldn't have done this record in-house even five years ago - there wasn't the technology that could make it come up to a standard you could use.

Kram: I think Pro Tools has been one of the biggest changes in the last five years. For a group like us that's always done a lot of demos, we always found it difficult to get the vibe from that demo onto the actual recording, and got questions like 'Why can't you make it sound like the demo?' Well, it's because it's on a 4-track it sounds like shit and this is on a 24-track that sounds great, but the vibe isn't there. When you're recording digitally you can put the digital stuff off the digitally recorded demo into the actual 24-track digital and mix it all together with stuff you've recorded in a better environment - but it keeps the vibe and the quality is as good.

EN: I felt with this record that you've come closer to what people know of you on stage.

Kram: That was the idea... We've got all these albums where the songs are cool and everything's fine, but you go and see us live and there's always a funky element at our gigs - we just naturally do it. We never got it on record before and we thought it would be good to get down some funky drumming and improvisation. We wanted to be able to play at least 90% of this record live.

Janet: We were putting tracks down and not agonising about nailing the perfect take - that's why it sounds live, it's about capturing the moment.

EN: What did Magoo have to do then?

Kram: He played a lot of tennis with us. Actually, he was really good for me because he had a good sensibility about when to capture a moment and when to move on. He could use technology without getting bogged down in it for too long and understood our thing about the vibe.

Janet: He read the mood, didn't he. He was more like a counsellor than an engineer.

Kram: Exactly. A bit Zen. A bit Yoda.