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redsoapbox · 4 years

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Mitch Tennant’s Track-by-Track Guide to Head Noise’s Debut album, Über Fantastique

Mitch Tennant, singer/songwriter & keytarist with electro art-punks Head Noise, was kind enough to write this guide to the band’s recently released debut album Über Fantastique, especially for redsoapbox.

1. KINGDOM OF CROOKED MIRRORS

We had a lively debate at Head Noise HQ over which song to open the album with, either this track or the one that follows. We eventually decided on “Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors” to kick-start the debut as we think it encompasses all things Head Noise and has a great splattering of our influences in a catchy, oddball pop song. The title of the track comes from a 1963 Soviet fairy tale film and is loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”. The song reflects our own mantra for creative passion and is also a look at an outsider’s perspective for abstract art and trying to make sense of the senseless. It’s like Alice In Wonderland without the drug references. Ignore the evils of the world and just let the childlike magic speak for itself.

2. 200,000 GALLONS OF OIL

I was on my lunch break one day surfing the web and a pop-up article came on-screen about fuel, oil refining and other industrial processes that I had very little interest in. However, the title of the piece “Pipeline Spills 200,000 Gallons of Oil” really jumped out at me. I wrote it down and put it aside with my collection of other alphabetical oddities that I type up on Notepad. A little while after, Wayne sent me an electropop demo with a bouncy, squelchy bassline which I felt matched up to this wording perfectly! The title of the song has some sort of political or eco-warrior ring to it but it’s always a surprise to people who question what the song is about, and we say “Uhh… It’s just about oil?” What kind of oil do you want it to be? I’ll leave that up to you, but here are some suggestions: vegetable oil, or maybe oil to slick back your hair.

3. JAPANESE BATTERIES

One Christmas, my partner gifted me an Otamatone, which is basically a screwed-up Theremin/Stylophone synth-like device that is in the shape of a musical note, however it looks more like a giant sperm! It’s become a popular instrument on Youtube for fashioning unusual sounding covers of songs, such as Boney M’s “Rasputin” and A-ha’s “Take on Me”. I was totally amazed by the packaging - it had a little Japanese man with fluffy hair, the inventor of the instrument, looking off into the distance, not unlike some surreal propaganda poster art. The song is, basically, a homage to this strange instrument, and it’s played on the track, not long after the first chorus, just to show off the unusual noises that it makes.

4. ANATOMICALLY CORRECT SHUFFLE

This is a song where I feel the bassline really helps to give the song a danceable bounce, that’s why the title of the track has “Shuffle” at the end of it. This is the first of the collaborations that we have on the album. Wayne sent me a demo he was working on with some bass being played by his friend “Monkey” (who I still haven’t met yet) under the working title “Monkey Jam”. When we started putting the album together, we were coming out of that mad scientist stage persona from the Microwave EP run of shows, so I had a whole lot of science stuck in my mind. I thought we’d go gung-ho as a farewell to the bygone days of false nerdy scholarship with a classic Head Noise sound to it. The lyrics for the song are like an amalgamation of a botched surgery, unusual ailments and chronic nightmares. Luckily, we have Brill onboard to give it that fun little jaunty undertone on the synth, to help keep us sane and avoid any potential lobotomies.

5. MYSTERY LIQUID

This is another Notepad scribble title that I just had to make into a song! When you hear songs about drinking, it’s usually either a fun affair (a drunken pub singalong) or a dark, cautionary tale (alcoholism), so we were looking to meet in the middle between jolly and sombre. I was influenced by Spike Jones & His City Slickers and their song “Clink! Clink! Another Drink”, especially for its humorous look at binge drinking from a 1940s perspective. It seems so harmless and funny, but it’s much more morally twisted if you look at it from the outside. With a bassline from our good friend Connor Llewellyn of Math Rock band “Common Spit”, the song turned into more of a fast-paced rocker with some added spoken word and Dada inspired lyrics from Cat Daczkowski who also plays in Rock band KASIA. I really liked her vocal style as it reminded me of Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth’s unique and unbothered singing approach, so we NEEDED it on the album somewhere.

6. AIRSTRIKE 4000

When I was young, I used to love my Sega Megadrive games console! I played games like Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Desert Strike, but I got bored easily with Desert Strike because I wouldn’t always know what to do. I wanted to write lyrics that broke the fourth wall too, so the song starts out as a homage to a made-up Sega game in the style of Desert Strike. Then I get bored about halfway through and changed the theme of the song, just like when I was 8 years old and trying to play the bloody game before turning it off to play Sonic & Knuckles instead. It’s a Lo-fi retro Rock vs Synth song with some amazing guitar wobbles/shrieks from Brill and some wicked retro sounds darted across the duration of the track.

7. NITRO

When we were lucky enough to support “Public Service Broadcasting” last year at the Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd, we wanted to go all out with a wacky elaborate stage show. We roped in our good friend Mark Strange to help us put together some surreal extras in the set such as a puppet show and a battle royale with Mark dressed up as a Ninja Turtle. We wanted to create our own little ‘introduction song’ for this show for when we walked onstage akin to Devo’s “Corporate Anthem” instrumental. So, Wayne put together our own track to help introduce the band as Mark walked out dressed in a lab-coat to inspect the equipment before we came on. There isn’t much else I can say about this track really other than performance is key! We decided to give the song a promotion from introduction song to intermission song which now sits about halfway through the album. In fact, that’s why it is called “Nitro”, it’s just an anagram of “intro” but with some dynamite flair!

8. SHRUNKEN HEAD

We used to open the live set with this song. It’s a song about idiocracy within the musical world, not too far off “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins. The song is stacked with surreal imagery, which also includes a reworking of the “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” phrase from Science Fiction writer Harlan Ellison as a pre-chorus. I think it’s important to have passion in what you do creatively, and you shouldn’t allow others to mistake that devotion for egotism. I went to “Ripley’s Believe it Or Not” oddity museum in Blackpool a couple of times over the years and I got to see a real (or ‘real fake’, you be the judge?) shrunken head in a glass case. Rhys Jones plays some cool guitar lines on this track which is like a mix between Egyptian rhumba and the live dissection of a squirrel. It is an interesting song and we like it very much.

9. INTRUDER-ESQUE

Have you ever had those nights when you’ve gone to bed and looked over at the other side of the room in the dark to see the blurred black outline of a wardrobe or a hanging coat? In a sleep-addled state, this can be terrifying and can lead to “sleep paralysis”. I thought it was an interesting subject to pick up on. We gave the outro to Lloyd Markham of Psych-Electro band Deep Hum to use as his personal synth playground and we love it! I think the entire track captures the vibe of uneasiness that you can get in a sleep-deprived state when you don’t entirely feel safe, with an unknown threat lurking in the shadows.

10. I EAT CANNIBALS

An old friend of mine said the Toto Coelo song “I Eat Cannibals” sounds like something Head Noise would cover, so we just went off and covered it. I think it goes a little hand in hand with “Shrunken Head” and its voodoo vibe. The track features fantastic backing vocals by Miss Cat Southall, singer extraordinaire! I’m a fan of bands who re-work covers to suit their own sound. We always have an unusual cover in our back pocket if things start to go pear-shaped! We’ve previously recorded songs by Sonic Youth and The Bangles.

11. MR. EVERYWHERE

This is a Rocker Wayne had been working on for a little while until we decided to give it more context and “beef” so to speak. It’s basically a punk song that’s been shaved down to a shouty rock song, with a little bit of synth here and there. The song’s lyrics simply reflect how busy we felt after we released the Special Effects EP and how being in a band can be a lot of stress as much as a lot of fun.

12. NO PHOTO | NO FILM | NO TELEPHONE

On a trip to Venice, I stopped by St Mark’s Basilica to see the famed “Horses of Saint Mark”. There was a sign near them saying “No Photo, No Film, No Telephone” which made me laugh. Anyway, the track was inspired by a warning sign, but is about the overuse of modern communication technology and the brief escape that we get from these devices. It’s crazy to see how much the world has changed in 20 years, so we summed it up quickly with a fully Electronic Pop song featuring a fun shout-a-long chorus.

13. COMPLY

Someone said to me recently “music has been intrinsically linked to politics since like forever!” and even though there is some truth in that statement, I refuse to believe that it is the most important reason for someone to enjoy listening to music. This is my own attack against people who like to moan and whine until they get what they want, whether it is logical or not. It’s our own protest song which protests protest songs. We’ve made sure the song is happy and upbeat, because ignorance is bliss, eh?

14. GAMMA GUTS

The spiritual successor to our single “Microwave”, in fact, it’s a loose sequel of sorts. I have a fear that there isn’t enough science behind the use of microwaves. I imagine that there are some harmful side effects, but it scares me to think that we might not have a clue. The song is split into two parts - the first is a goofy little Electro Rock song about the digestion of nuclear materials and then the second part is an electronic instrumental, orchestrated by the band Massa Circles. There are some beats donated by John Barnes and some shouts by Anthony Price too. The song reminds me of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” because it starts off as a fun Rocker and ends with an emotional instrumental akin to side 2 of David Bowie’s Low album. This is one of our favourite songs to play live at the moment because it gives us free rein to experiment musically.

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Visit the archives section to read the album review.

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pardontheglueman · 5 years

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Head Noise / Uber - Fantastique

For the best part of 18 months Aberdare’s Electro Art-Punks Head Noise (Mitch Tennant Vocals & Keytar), Wayne Basset (Synths & Guitar) and Jordan Brill (Synths & Guitar) have been working away on their debut album Über-Fantastique, a record which they describe, in typical Head Noise fashion, as a ‘bombastic, electropop fever dream’. In a detailed, track-by-track guide, Mitch Tennant talked to Kevin McGrath about the record they are about to unleash on an unsuspecting Welsh public.

1. KINGDOM OF CROOKED MIRRORS

2. 200,000 GALLONS OF OIL

I was on my lunch break one day surfing the web and a pop-up article came on-screen about fuel, oil refining and other industrial processes that I had very little interest in. However, the title of the piece "Pipeline Spills 200,000 Gallons of Oil" really jumped out at me. I wrote it down and put it aside with my collection of other alphabetical oddities that I type up on Notepad. A little while after, Wayne sent me an electropop demo with a bouncy, squelchy bass line which I felt matched up to this wording perfectly! The title of the song has some sort of political or eco-warrior ring to it but it's always a surprise to people who question what the song is about, and we say "Uhh... It's just about oil?" What kind of oil do you want it to be? I'll leave that up to you, but here are some suggestions: vegetable oil, or maybe oil to slick back your hair.

3. JAPANESE BATTERIES

4. ANATOMICALLY CORRECT SHUFFLE

This is a song where I feel the bassline really helps to give the song a danceable bounce, that’s why the title of the track has "Shuffle" at the end of it. This is the first of the collaborations that we have on the album. Wayne sent me a demo he was working on with some bass being played by his friend "Monkey" (who I still haven't met yet) under the working title "Monkey Jam". When we started putting the album together, we were coming out of that mad scientist stage persona from the Microwave EP run of shows, so I had a whole lot of science stuck in my mind. I thought we'd go gung-ho as a farewell to the bygone days of false nerdy scholarship with a classic Head Noise sound to it. The lyrics for the song are like an amalgamation of a botched surgery, unusual ailments and chronic nightmares. Luckily, we have Brill onboard to give it that fun little jaunty undertone on the synth, to help keep us sane and avoid any potential lobotomies.

5. MYSTERY LIQUID

This is another Notepad scribble title that I just had to make into a song! When you hear songs about drinking, it’s usually either a fun affair (a drunken pub singalong) or a dark, cautionary tale (alcoholism), so we were looking to meet in the middle between jolly and sombre. I was influenced by Spike Jones & His City Slickers and their song “Clink! Clink! Another Drink”, especially for its humorous look at binge drinking from a 1940s perspective. It seems so harmless and funny, but it’s much more morally twisted if you look at it from the outside. With a bassline from our good friend Connor Llewellyn of Math Rock band "Common Spit", the song turned into more of a fast-paced rocker with some added spoken word and Dada inspired lyrics from Cat Daczkowski who also plays in Rock band KASIA. I really liked her vocal style as it reminded me of Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth’s unique and unbothered singing approach, so we NEEDED it on the album somewhere.

6. AIRSTRIKE 4000

7. NITRO

8. SHRUNKEN HEAD

9. INTRUDER-ESQUE

10. I EAT CANNIBALS

11. MR. EVERYWHERE

12. NO PHOTO | NO FILM | NO TELEPHONE

On a trip to Venice, I stopped by St Mark's Basilica to see the famed “Horses of Saint Mark”. There was a sign near them saying “No Photo, No Film, No Telephone” which made me laugh. Anyway, the track was inspired by a warning sign, but is about the overuse of modern communication technology and the brief escape that we get from these devices. It’s crazy to see how much the world has changed in 20 years, so we summed it up quickly with a fully Electronic Pop song featuring a fun shout-a-long chorus.

13. COMPLY

14. GAMMA GUTS

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