MP3: Health - 'Crimewave' ('Health', Lovepump United)

DIRTY had the opportunity to interview John (bassist, screamer and percussionist) from one of our favourite new bands to emerge from the last few years, HEALTH.

So, you've come to the end of your UK tour...
It's been pretty amazing. It was kind of in two parts; we did the majority of the tour, about 90% of it, once we got here. Then we went to Europe for about 5 weeks, and then we came back for these last few shows in London, Southampton and Liverpool, which we had to cancel because the wheel just about came off our van. We managed to pull over just before it came off but yeah that sucked and we were really bummed. Apparently a lot of people getting their asses kicked in Liverpool so I was kind of glad that we wouldn't have to go through that!

You've been touring around for a really long time, it must be pretty important to you.
Especially for our band, it's really important. Our record took off really slowly and we toured pretty much non-stop and that's probably the main reason why people are paying attention. Live is what we do best and we really love touring.

I know earlier this week you did an in-store at the new Pure Groove shop in London and when I first saw you it was with Crystal Castles and Le Volume Courbe at the then-new Rough Trade East - do you feel it's vital for bands to kind of endorse these new ventures by independent record shops, especially in this 'digital age'?
Yeah, if they're stocking the record then it's a cool gesture to play there. Both of those gigs - at Rough Trade and Pure Groove - I ate shit, right before we played. I'm pretty hurt by that one...

Ha. I was going to ask, actually; when is the best time to eat before a gig?!
Ohh, it's not right before! Which is what usually happens because you'll soundcheck and then afterwards the promoter will give you some shit, like a bunch of Indian food, right before you play... And then it's... Terrible. BJ partially vomited shit whilst playing...

During the show, how do you want your audience to feel?
Oh, fuck. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I don't want to be a dick. I don't like it when bands are like, "why the fuck aren't you dancing?! It's a punk rock show!!" That's not cool. I mean, I want them to like it and I want them to get off on our music but that's it. They can go crazy if they want.

With the album, did you record that live at The Smell?
Wasn't record live, but was recorded at The Smell. People get them mixed up because before we released the album we released a limited live cassette tape recorded at The Smell on this really small boutique noise label called DNT in LA.

With the album we recorded it at a painstakingly slow pace at The Smell, but still at The Smell.

There's been a lot of attention on The Smell recently because of bands emerging like No Age, Mika Miko, yourselves, Abe Vigoda, The Mae Shi, etc. How does a creatively fertile scene like that just... explode like it has done recently?
Oh... I don't know. The scene's been around forever. The LA Scene that this current generation is coming out of has been around since the 90s and way before I moved there. There's scene veterans like the guitarist from Silver Daggers, he used to be in math-rock bands that I've been told about. I barely know all about it. I was asking about the guy from The Pope and the guy from Silver Daggers to people and they would tell me about this math-rock scene "back in 1990-whatever".

The Smell's been around for ten years and I'd say the current generation of The Smell scene now with the bands that are getting attention actually started before we joined in. It really started to gain speed around 2004, really hit a stride in '05 and probably hit its peak in '06 and it's still going. That's why The Mae Shi became this very popular band and Mika Miko too. The audience and the culture seemed to grow and grow into the current vibe that we have now.

So when did you guys start?
We didn't start until early 2005 and we started playing at a brand new venue at the time, called the Il Corral, which was a lot smaller than The Smell, you could drink there and it had a much different vibe. Like a more violent, party vibe. It started out like a noise and sound art venue and they didn't let rock bands play. Then this guy called Sean Carnage started promoting nights there. He moved from Cleveland and started doing Monday night shows with rock bands and that started to lure Smell bands there. We just started playing there many times every month. Then it closed down and we moved to The Smell.

The video for 'Heaven' on YouTube... Is that an official video?
Technically, no... But it pretty much is now. This band, Anavan, from LA are really good friends of ours and the bass player, Brett Burg, called me and showed me it. It was cool - it didn't really fit our aesthetic but I liked it a lot. Then the next day it was suddenly on Pitchfork and it was like "I guess we have a video now!". People really like it though, so it's cool.

"A lot of the songs are written out on a piece of paper with words and arrows."

When I listen to your music I can imagine a lot of visuals, like scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Autobots...
Autobots?

Yeah, y'know, from Transformers
Oh, shit! Yeah, I used to watch that! I was really into it.

I can imagine them flying and stuff. Like, chanting and firing guns or being fired at all of a sudden...
Were you high?!

Haha! Have you ever thought of collaborating with visual artists though, and doing something for your songs?
Erm, well I guess we generally think videos kind of suck. It's a bad thing because you kind of associate the song with the video afterwards. It's like listening to a DVD with commentary on, y'know, like "Oh did you know they filmed this on day four?" and you're like "Who the fuck cares?! You're fucking up the movie!" so with a video I don't want people to see it and look at this 'awesome camera trick' or whatever to detract from the music. With videos, though, they're pretty inevitable and we pretty much have one now so... We might start doing them. We'd want them to fit in with the visual aesthetic we have.

What's the typical approach you take when writing songs? Some of your songs seem drum-lead.
Everyone writes and everyone has different styles in the band but realistically some of the drum songs are built from the drums upwards. Regardless of how much the drums dominate, a lot of the songs are written out on a piece of paper with words and arrows. It's not always that way, but usually it's something retarded like that.

When I read up about Health, a popular thing that comes up when mentioning your successes is the "blogosphere". Is there a particular way that's lead to this kind of online promotion that you're aware of?
We're really stoked that blogs have taken a shine - it's not what I would've expected. We got really into blogs and blog culture at the early stage of the band as we were listening to a lot more dance music and that's how we discovered Crystal Castles. Through that we really wanted to be on blogs and be involved in blog culture.

How did the Crystal Castles remix of 'Crimewave' come about?
We found out about them really early on. We saw them on a blog and they liked us, we liked them so we asked them if they wanted to do a remix. At the time they only had one or two remixes, and then we said we'd do a split together. The remix was out for a year before it was properly released over here on Trouble Records.

This all lead to more remixes appearing on the net and, eventually, the 'Disco' album - which seemed pretty coherent to me, instead of a collection of remixes.
Yeah, essentially we were trying to make an album out of it and we sequenced it, but, we weren't like, "okay, you've got to give me a track in this style because we've got to fit it on this album". When the album was being recorded, we started talking to a lot of the remixers. Some of them came later. Then we just told them that we wanted to release this album, then do a remix one. The plans for the album dilly-dallied for a while, then we put it together to make the best, most coherent album we could.

We're trying to make a masterpiece..."

Releasing a remix album is a bit odd, I thought, for a noise-band like yourselves. I can only actually think of a few remix albums that bands have released so why did you want to release it?
From the very beginning we were going to have remix album, then the plans got forgotten about and people didn't seem to care - we thought they would have downloaded it all anyway, it's over, nobody cares and it's too late, people have heard it before. But y'know, "not really", because the average rock people who aren't on blogs all the time don't have them and only have like two and the rest are going to get ignored and they really shouldn't be because they're really good.

So I guess you're working towards a new album soon. Your debut's pretty distinct so where's this new album going to go?
Yeah, well the first album was 'Kill 'Em All', the second album's going to be 'Ride The Lightning'! We're just going to do everything harder, faster, better, stronger. More everything. More grooves, more noise, more pop. We're trying to make a master-piece but we'll see what comes out.

Will it be longer than 35 minutes?
Ha, well the thing is people get bored and no-one listens to an album anymore. We don't want it to be too long and all the classic albums from the fifties were only like 35 mins usually because you can only fit about 40/45 mins on an LP, I think. We wanted to keep people interested for the whole album, to create this experience. So yeah, I guess it'll probably be 35 minutes... Maybe longer, who knows!

We're going to have a lot more songs though and do b-sides. We didn't know people would give a shit back then and it was hell getting that album out.

Are you all more anxious now that you've got this spotlight on the band?
Yeah, well we're mostly anxious about the length of time this spotlight is on us and people might get bored waiting for the new album. I'd love to give it to them right now, or 3 months, but it's going to take way longer than that, like early '09. That's what makes me anxious though yeah, we never thought people would give a shit anyway.

But we're still going to try and make 'Ride The Lightning'!

Lastly, are there any bands you can recommend us to check out?
I hope they're pretty well known here anyway, but we love Pre (MySpace) from London, Fuck Buttons (MySpace) who I'm sure everyone knows, and this band, Gentle Friendly (MySpace), who played a few shows with us. They're really good.

Then there's bands from LA. There's a shitload of people in the same scene who don't get any attention, mostly because they have this different style and the press has this really good picture of the LA scene being this 'rock' thing, but it's really varied. Captain Ahab (MySpace) are a really, really amazing electronic band. There's a fun band called Anavan (MySpace), sort of a dance band. Lucky Dragons (MySpace) moved to LA recently, so technically I guess he counts. There's millions.

Oh, this guy named Kyle H. Mabson (MySpace) who is like a big scene celebrity there and has 45 bands and they all have some stupid-ass concept. He does sound for all our shows in LA, plays most of them. I don't know what I could recommend you but he has a band called The Red Hot Silly Peppers. It's him and Josh Taylor from Friends Forever, he works in Amoeba [huge record store] and they have this CD in that only has the guitar and bass from 'Stadium Arcadium' so they play the singles from that album and no-one knows (because no-one listened to that fucking album), then Kyle plays live drum machine over it and Josh Taylor raps like Anthony Kieidis with fake tattoos drawn over him. It's fucking hilarious. His solo stuff is like noise/euro dance thing, kind of like a sleazy Dan Deacon.