30 May 2005 // An interview by Shade
Thanks to Luke for answering the following interview questions:
1. What inspires you the most when coming up with your lyrics?
Things that would perhaps seem mundane if you heard two people discussing them a couple of seats ahead of you on a bus, but what interests me is coming up with an interesting way to portray, or maybe describe a scene that accompanies the afore mentioned mundaness .... I also find inspiration in other peoples writing styles and in hip hop lyrics especially! There is so much attention to detail in rap verses, indie and punk rarely if ever comes close to the same out amount of skillfull wordplay/perspectives per song that hip hop does... but they really are completely different animals, each has it's charms. (disclaimer: I'm not talking about hip pop/bling bling)
2. What is the best part of playing live in front of an audience?
Pretending that they are having as good a time as you are! Sometimes playing to an unreceptive crowd is the best - the challenge of winning them over, also unexpected improvisations that work out.. I guess I thrive off the
fear that everything could, and often does go terribly wrong..
3. What is the best thing about being in one of New Zealand's top
punk bands?
i'm not sure if 'punk' is the best way to describe us without some kind of definition of the term first.. but along the lines of the question, we are part of a scene which was formed before we existed - we (along with heaps of others) have helped shape that scene since we began playing in bands.. - so I think people feel vested in it, they care about going to shows - they are passionate about promoting their own gigs making music etc. I guess the best thing about this scene is bearing witness to its creative fruits .. excuse the pun.
4. What is it like to be recognised for your music?
Do you mean like in the supermarket? Or do you mean by our peers, I think a lot more people have heard our name than have heard our music..
which is kind of cool, I always feel some kind of unessecary resolution when I see a band I have heard of but never seen.. so maybe we can be that useless resolution for people.. they can walk through damp carparks saying '...so thats what they sound like - I thought they were gonna be more like _________'
5. Do you think that TNC will eventually move overseas to further
your career?
I'm trying to save up to move from Raglan to Hamilton at the moment, but it's gonna be a while yet before I can get together the bling! ...I don't feel moving overseas is gonna help our 'career' to us success is making our music the way we had envisioned it, living overseas where there are bigger markets etc. is probably not gonna help.. I think there's a lot of ideas that we'd like to try out and that would have to be our main priority - touring is secondary, I mean like you've got to have the goods to go on the road anyway.
6. How do you feel now that The Noise of Music has been released?
I'm interested to see how it's recieved, it already feels like it's reaching
out to an audience we haven't previously captured. but only time will tell...
7. Who else worked on the album with you?
Our brilliant engineer Dave Tiplady, it's great to work with someone who has
technical know-how, but puts creative technique first. we also had additional musos, Ricky Kimber - bell added violins to a couple of songs, Beth Tibo sings on 'The Dancing Mania' and Sam Tremworth plays sax on 'Inner Space', it's great having the time to play around with extra instrumentation, these guys were all amazing.. we had a fair idea of what we wanted, pointed them in the right direction and yelled STOP! when we heard something we liked.
8. Where did you get the idea for the cover art?
The cover art is made from the exploitation of errors in downloaded movie files. We were all flimed seperately for our 'photo' and then the movies were processed various ways to arrive at the images in the inlay. How things are made is often important when considering 'why' they are made..
9. Which member of This Night Creeps has the worst habit and what is it?
Mark B's worst habit is not having as many bad habits as the rest of us... ...Wurzel probably has the most 'habits' ...!
10. What rumour would you most like to start about yourselves?
Perhpas that the gay one isn't actually gay...?