Dots: Having wound up on quite diverse line ups of late, featuring anyone and everyone from James Blake and Mount Kimbie to Caribou and Four Tet, how do you feel you two fit in amongst current musical genre construction..? Presumably you're quite rooted in all things ATP, being named after a Sun Ra track and playing with the aforementioned lot…
Benjamin: I've thought about that a fair bit recently, and I think that we don't fit in at all really… And I think that makes us quite an attractive proposition to people such as Kieran [Hebden], who has genuinely supported us thus far. Watching the crowds at those sorts of shows, they're all waiting for the drop, the 4/4, they cheer for a bit, and then it's back to the build-up, whereas with us there's none of that. It's more a full-on, relentless onslaught from the beginning. I think quite often we're the unknown quantity.
Dashes: Has that proven beneficial, being the outsiders as it were?
Tom: Not necessarily from the audience's point of view…
Dots: Reverting back to Four Tet affiliation, has it been quite bizarre to be hurled quite instantaneously into these sorts of scenarios?
Tom: I suppose it seemed a little surreal initially, yeah, the fact that he offered to put the single out… We toured with him back in May, did about five, no eight shows with him, and then the single came out but obviously with his name behind it, it gave it a bit of umph, it made people stand up and notice. And then we played a Steve Reid tribute earlier in the year after he passed away. Giles Peterson was co-hosting that night, and as a direct result of that he took us under his wing as it were, gave us a session on Radio 1 which was even more surreal. Rocketnumbernine on Radio 1 isn't quite something I'd ever expected…
Dashes: The story of the band, particularly for people coming down predominantly for Caribou, may be relatively unknown at the minute…
Ben: Well we started out as an improv duo, particularly influenced by that particular scene as it was being cultivated in London at the time.
Tom: And it was maybe born of a slightly selfish mentality as well, not wanting to go out and play exactly the same set every night, instead aiming to keep things fresh and exciting for ourselves. Then about a year ago we decided to give things a bit more structure, giving the audience something to go away with and hold on to so we started giving the tracks a bit more form. So now we never play the songs in exactly the same way twice, despite it always being the same four songs within the set. But every night different variations come out, it's got room for manoeuvre, it's not that calculated, clinical or precise, but the tunes are there…
Dots: I guess people expect to be able to jump online and freely and readily download whatever they want these days. With you two, conversely, getting hold of the music itself is quite taxing you might say. How deliberate an action was that in making it somewhat more difficult to get to grips with?
Tom: Is it? I mean there's not that much recorded material available… We put an album out in 2009, a collection of material from the past couple of years which is on Spotify, iTunes, etc. and then the new stuff is out there on Soundcloud so I think we've done what we could given that we've put it all out ourselves. And then the single came out, but at the moment that's the only current thing that is readily available to listen to.
Ben: But the single's all sold out, we've only got about 20 copies left. We've been carting them around with us on this tour, although nobody's bought any yet. I think that even though we're listed as the support for this tour people still don't really know who we are so we've had people coming up to us after the shows asking us the name of the band. People seem to need to be force-fed most of the time, to have things laid out on a plate in front of them really…
Dashes: Sticking with touring, is there more tension or treasure when touring with your sibling?
Ben: So far, so good…
Tom: It's manageable in some ways it being just the two of us, as it seems as though the less people there are involved the better really… We get to do everything on our own terms, and it may make us quite appealing to book and take on tour as we're logistically fairly compact and portable. From that respect, it's going according to plan. We get on alright…
Dots: Recently it seems as though we're experiencing a renaissance in terms of bands putting a fair amount of impetus on percussive aspects to contemporary music. Has such a rejuvenation seemed quite refreshing from your perspective?
Tom: Drums and beats have been there since the beginning of time…
Ben: Well Tom's particularly influenced by jazz I would say, whereas I'm really into Detroit techno, heavy dance music and so heavy baselines and beats seep into what we do from that really. John Carpenter, stripped down atmospheric stuff, that's what I really love and that's maybe why our sound has wound up in its current state...
Dashes: You two don't really sound as though you're stranded between jazz and hefty Detroit house - there must be something else that's been swept in…
Tom: We're into all sorts really, there's no boundaries on our musical influence, and that which we take on board. There's everything in there from minimalist classical, to pure drumming music, African influence, and anything and everything from the Chicago scene. DJ Shadow too, it's all in there somewhere. We've always been drawn towards instrumental music.
Dots: As a purely instrumental band, has the lack of lyrics and vocals hindered your progress thus far?
Tom: Yeah, I think it has. But we've recently discussed drafting in vocals so it's not something we've completely ruled out but it'd have to be the right person, at the right time, with the right ethics. Maybe it's something we'd take on ourselves although it would never be a traditional front person. I think it would definitely be a good thing to have. It would be along the lines of another instrument in the ensemble that the band has become.
Dashes: Do you feel protective as it were?
Tom: Yeah, I think we do.
Ben: I think a fair few singers come with quite a big ego so it'd have to be the right person. We're not looking for someone to come in and attempt to put their mark on the music, more the other way round. Which probably seems pretty demanding…
Tom: We've collaborated with other musicians in the past including a double bass player, a clarinetist, for a while we had a second guy playing electronics so we're open to evolution, getting other artists involved. We want it to grow, reaching as wide an audience as possible without over-commercialising it.
Dots: Have you considered collaborating further with artists you're already aligned with, with whom you've struck a chord of sorts?
Tom: We're doing the BBC Worldwide Awards with Giles Peterson in January, we're going to do a thing with Kieran Hebden, just the three of us playing a 25-minute piece so that's already on the cards. Why not? We're not that precious about it all. We'd be quite keen to continue to work on remixing other artists too…
Dashes: Further afield, beyond further Four Tet collaboration, what lies on the horizon?
Tom: We need to get a new record sorted. It's not worth going into the stories, but we're having problems with the people facilitating its release and so at the moment, we're quite unsure as to what's going to happen. We've got plenty of music, it pours out of us. Two new tunes which we'll be recording with the drummer from Stereolab at the end of December in his studio, but the priority now is to hold off on the live shows for a bit and concentrate on getting this new record finished for the spring, then get out and play some festivals next summer with any luck...
Rocketnumbernine - Matthew and Toby (TEXT008) by Four Tet
Rocketnumbernine's Myspace.
Photo courtesy of Jason Moon.
