Stereo MCs are currently on tour with Parklife, doing DJ sets across the country, showcasing tunes from their previous albums and forthcoming as-yet-unnamed record. ITM chats to Nick Hallam about the tour, about playing in 44 degree heat, and about the pressures of the music industry.
Do you have a name for your next album yet?
We do have some pretty good ideas for the title of the next album, but it’s still pretty early to set it in stone. We’re pretty close to finishing the record, but we’re still writing tracks, and when we finishing mixing the new tracks we might get a new vibe and think let’s call it that.
Is it going to be along the same lines as your previous stuff, or is it going to be a total new direction?
Well I’m hoping it’s going to be a little like when the guy is in his spaceship in Star Wars and they suddenly hit light speed and wiz to another universe but they’re still in the same space ship, you know? [laughs] I think a lot of the tracks that we’re writing now we write a lot quicker, and we’re trying to get a slightly more naive vibe to the way we’re putting down vocals. I think we’ve taken a radical step along our path, almost a jump. Some records are like a step, and some are a jump over a hurdle, and I think this record is one of those records.
What do you mean “more naive vibe” exactly?
When you make your first record you haven’t been through the process of the whole music business, the routine, and you don’t really know who you are. Your identity isn’t locked down and you’ve just got a flavour of who you are. I think when you’ve made quite a few albums and you’ve been through the whole machinery, people start saying your tracks sound just like you. You start to get confused about what you are doing because you’re getting all these mixed messages, and I think with this record we’re really getting down to the essence of what we are feeling. We’re not thinking about it too hard, we’re letting it materialise in its own manner.
If this next record blows up like ‘Connected’, will you be more wary of the fame and pressure this time around?
I think in some ways I’d try and be less wary of it, because when ‘Connected’ happened I was too scared of getting burnt by it all, and I didn’t stop to enjoy it. Looking back on it, some brilliant things happened and I was too scared of letting it change me that it changed me in the wrong way. I became paranoid of changing. You’ve got to change with each thing that happens to you, it is part of nature that you change. So this time around all I’d be wary of is over-doing the touring. It can be quite gruelling mentally and physically. I’d be wary of getting too wrapped up in it, I have a family now and whilst we obviously work hard at promoting everything we do, I’d be wary of getting too wrapped up in the whole music industry thing and forget why we’re making music.
Speaking of hard work and gruelling, how did you cope with the intense heat at Field Day the other year?
To be honest, I wondered how the audience were doing because they didn’t have any shade and they were drinking beer in the sunshine, and I was thinking, ‘I don’t know how they’re coping’. For me personally to perform in those conditions it was pretty gruelling and it slowed me down a bit because obviously the heat was pretty oppressive, but at the same time I think sometimes those things they squeeze a little bit more out of you and I think that makes the show a little more memorable. You know all those shows where you’ve really had to work against the grain, it squeezes that little bit extra out of you which is that little bit you’re looking for. When everything’s the same and you don’t have to try so hard, you’ve got to do different things to get to that level.
This time around you’re DJing, so what do your DJ sets involve?
We like to make people realise we’re not doing a live set; it’s more traditional and we might pick up a microphone and flavour up the crowd a bit and play some of the stuff we’re working on and some of the stuff we’re digging at the moment.
The Stereo MCs continue their Australian tour for Parklife this weekend.
