840. - Saint Etienne

26:15basically basically i've been fired and they're just going to carry on without me they're like we got we got another guy actually yeah step in but it's one of those things whenever you record an album you think well maybe this is the last one and um the last two albums came in relatively quick succession and i guess everyone's feeling getting slightly old and thinking well these these ones have gone down pretty well with people and it makes sense in a way if you're gonna choose you know the end of your you know career as it were it's nice to do it in a sort of dignified when hopefully people are kind of into it still.

26:49I agree. Quit at the top, bow out gracefully. It's a rarer thing to do, people usually.

26:54Jason Stewart:What are some other great British bands that went too far and should have stopped but then kept releasing albums? There are, oh, damn, all of them. Because I know The Cure just released an album like a year ago that people still loved. Yeah, it was good. And his voice sounds great. I mean, I guess New Order's still out there doing stuff. the little pet shop boys are still doing stuff orbital and chemical bros and they're all kicking around i guess you know i'm trying to think some names now oasis seems to be doing pretty well right now we just i'm uh i'm friends with steve mason from the beta band and they've they've sort of reformed after years and and suddenly they'd sold out this massive tour of huge venues and that way bigger than they'd ever played before so uh i'm like damn we should have split up i mean well now you did it is it is shocking actually how much people care about about stuff that they didn't think about for the last 20 years and then it was reintroduced and they're like take my money please i'll fly to come see this but i mean we went we saw oasis it was amazing everybody's they're playing they're in america right now everybody's seeing them they're saying it's amazing so it's like i mean you know the the first band i remember doing it was the pixies that was the first i remember being like oh this band that i loved growing up that i never saw is reuniting and it was unbelievable and they were good they were great that's good yeah and now you've seen them 17 times since they've got back yeah yeah more than i need to see them for sure for sure i could do it i could do my name drop thing that oasis support oasis supported us in the 90s if you didn't know that well how i'm sure you guys shared a bill once or twice over the years at festivals yeah it was just two gigs where they were kind of new and we had a demo because we were kind of on creation yeah at that time oh wow so yeah bob said oh do you want to support us and so two gigs it's cool because i feel good i feel like they would be assholes to you in a fun way kind of i feel like they would like make fun of you but they were weird they were weirdly nice and it's i suppose that we didn't know uh anything about them then you know but they were like they were like a fully formed version of themselves even though it's early days and so they were like they were like a kind of rock machine and they were off stage you know it was all going on and uh but they were lovely well they they may have they may have bonded with you over the the connection of being named after a football team i know they're big footballers you know there could be that but i mean they also have you know like a 60s mod kind of vibe going on a lot of your stuff samples you know that kind of sound so there's some through line and they like to party and you make dance music which is good to party to yeah there's a connection yeah the connection is drugs and football i mean that's the connection of all british people actually i think that's the fabric of society so that's the 90s for you yeah if you don't have one or the other we're not you know the conversation's dead on arrival right or goat skin headphones you've graduated and in that era were you guys touring like non-stop in europe um yeah certainly yeah the early 90s this was up to about 94 it was kind of that was a crazy year where we were everywhere and um felt like uh almost like you could actually go nuts and stop being friends with each other but We didn't get to that point, but you can see how it happens.

30:37You're saying it was going so well that you could see how you would hate your bandmates. I get it. I get it. I get it. Well, actually, that's what Bob said. I was having a great time. I don't see what the issue is.

30:50Jason Stewart:This is a dream come true, and Bob's like, I could see how this would ruin me very quickly. Well, you're one of those bands or musicians or artists, correct me if I'm wrong, where arguably your biggest song of all time was on your first record so then you kind of have that little i mean you've had many other popular songs over the years but everyone has their cold play yellow and you know same kind of vibe so what so all that is to say when you come out you're burning very bright you know you come out of the gates kicking so you're you're doing it all and now is back when we had budgets at record labels right downhill obviously now you're on your last album you got to talk to us but yeah at what a what a ride it's been at one point yeah you yeah you were sitting with other people on tv and shit and now it's exciting exciting stuff i got very excited about this it's a local magazine with a terrible name oh it's back to front the hovarian The Hovarian.

31:52How do they name it that? It's a handsome little magazine. It's like a disease, doesn't it? The Hovarian is a crazy name.

31:58Jason Stewart:I found a cyst in my Hovarian. I'm in it. Oh, look, there he is. I was more excited about being in this, even though everyone thinks it's a rubbish. This is your NME. This is your Kerrang. I was like, I've made it. That's actually, I think that is a nice, is this in celebration of this new album? They revisited their favorite resident? Yeah, it's more up. Or did you grow the largest squash in town and that's why you got to grace the pages of the Hovarian? It's my paddle boarding skills. Recognize it. I mean, you should go over to the board of the beach shacks and put that up against the window and be like, does this change things?

32:39Yeah, this is currency.

32:41Jason Stewart:Yeah, I mean, you're kind of drunk with power after showing us that. What do you do down there, though? Do you have a garden and shit? Like, what do you do all the time? Besides make music, obviously. All the time, yeah. Besides make music. But like, you know, what are we doing down there? How are the aubergines looking? Yeah. No, tiny garden. I go to the gym four times a day. Oh, Wigs is in the gym. What are we doing? With my wife. What are you and your wife? What are you guys doing in the gym? That's cute. We got a trainer. A little trainer? A personal trainer. Your trainer's a little person.

33:17Jason Stewart:could you could you scroll scroll that camera down it looks like you're you've got a nice little rig on you so hold on i'm not gonna you're like no i've strategically programmed my camera to not do do not show anything above the nipple you want to be mobile i'm not getting anything on yeah it's it's to stop seizing up basically i you know i go to the gym every day and my wife works out every day but i don't want to do that together that's my time that's my time yeah it's funny because we we really enjoyed that and it's like a bonding it started that's nice covid again just after we're like right this i need to you know not waste away well i think peter needs somebody to drive him to the gym i mean so it kind of works out well yeah hold on i'm coming in for one second babe it's slightly competitive sometimes uh you know in terms of that seat Oh, I feel like, shit, she's doing the same weights as me.

34:15That's what I was going to ask. That was my question. I hope you're putting up a little more weight than the missus.

34:24So what do you wear to the gym? Do you have a look? Are you like an all black guy?

34:32Well, actually, I'm actually wearing what I went to the gym in.

34:37Jason Stewart:It's an audio-based podcast, Peter, so you're all good. Oh, phew, thank God for that. I would love to know what the number one Hovarian has on his feet, though, when he's in there. Like, what's the sneaker story? Actually, I've been wearing tennis shoes, strangely. Oh, they're flat, though. They have a – they're nice. They're not bad for lifting. They seem to work better, yeah, and a bit more stability. Are you a tennis player as well? We started doing that, and then we stopped. Carly keeps injuring herself. The first – a few years ago, she had a spectacular injury where she smashed her shoulder into pieces.

35:11Playing tennis? Yeah, we were just warming up.

35:17I sort of did a... We were supposed to be hitting the ball to each other and I'd sort of hit it, but away from her. She tried to get it, got the neck, so I did a racket caught in the net and twisted like that. And it both dislocated and shattered her shoulders. The famous Peter drop shot strikes again. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, yeah. So we were having a friendly rally with the love of your life.

35:44Jason Stewart:And you said, it's time to get one past this bitch. And then boom, next thing you know, you said the shoulder was both shattered and dislocated. So there was nothing to pop back into the socket. And it's sort of all your fault. Yeah, that's tough. Holiday weekend. So she was in. And this was just after COVID. So the hospitals were full of... It was in there three days before they even operated on it. Three days? Because it was a bank holiday weekend. The doctor couldn't get there. I say three. It was a Saturday. He came in on a Monday. I love that there's no doctors available on the weekend. I don't care if it's a holiday.

36:20I'm getting a doctor.

36:21Jason Stewart:Look, the health care is free, but you're going to have to wait. Also, when you said it was a bank holiday, with your great British accent, it made it seem like I was listening to BBC Radio 3 and we're about to put on the new Calvin Harris for the weekend. It's your bank holiday weekend.

37:02Okay, so did you feel some guilt when she was in? Did you feel responsible? No, really. Because she didn't make me feel responsible. That was good of her. She could have easily gone, why? But you had to take care of her for a year while she recovered. Yeah, it took a long time. I hope this wasn't her dominant shoulder. No, luckily. Okay, well, that's good. That's the one plus.

37:24Jason Stewart:You had to do all the washing and stuff like that. That's fine. Yeah. That's actually a crazy story, though, because that's how you really get hurt. some weird shit like my hand got caught somewhere my body kept going and it was it was one of those things where we weren't going to play tennis that day we were going up to a stay with some friends and then go out to a party and we were like oh we've got that extra hot for now let's do

37:49yeah it was like okay that's when they get you that's when they get yeah we we've hung up the

37:55Jason Stewart:yonix we don't talk about her anymore that's the name of a racket yes yeah that's actually that's the make of her one so maybe there's it wow jason you're a damn clairvoyant yeah i can call it i can call it okay well let's i want to talk a little bit you mentioned earlier that you're kind of like a a gear slut a plug-in junkie you've got all these little synths and equalizers and effects and and a lot of it's software it's often software it's not real stuff because i haven't got a very big studio here but you used to like when you first started i'm assuming you were sampling with analog gear because you know the software didn't really exist in 1990 so you're using you know mpcs or other samplers like that it was mainly yeah at ian cat's place in well croydon where we recorded the early stuff croydon and occasionally we'd buy synths and things and then add leave them there because we didn't have you know there's no point carting them around i think well now nowadays in 2025 for this new record are you using any old gear is it all yeah have you given up and gone soft there is i guess we recorded a lot of this actually in hove as well it's just handy uh for me uh tim powell's place he lives around the corner uh okay well not around the corner but yeah walkable and uh and he's got him's flat is walkable yeah it's good to know good to know he's got he's got a bunch of analog stuff there so yeah we managed to get that on a few of the tracks which is nice so you have you have musician neighbors then you have friends and colleagues that are out in hove with you yeah and then uh So Paul from Orbital, he lives in Hove.

39:44He lives in Brighton, but we bump into each other in Hove. So that's when I asked him to do the collaboration on the Sam's.

39:52Jason Stewart:So you bump into Orbital at the dog park and say, hey. Yeah, it's at the coffee on the beach. Let's hop on track 12, why don't you? Actually, I really like that song with Orbital. It's a winner. Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? Yeah, it took me a while to, because I wasn't going to ask him then. And again, Carly was saying, go on now. Go on. You've got to ask him. And I'd say, yeah, I thought it might spoil our moment. You know, we just sort of met. Right. Having coffee. Oh, that was the, okay, you're saying you just recently met. You didn't meet back in the day. I did. I met him in the 90s, or both of them, through Bob.

40:28We, he didn't, because Bob was a journalist, he'd interviewed Orbital. We'd never done any live stuff, and we were trying to work out how we could take what we'd done and do it live. and and and paul said to him oh come and watch us out and so we went to this venue in brixton the brixton fridge i think and uh cool man and we watched them set out and we were like

40:54Jason Stewart:uh okay here's how you can play all this music live and then you're like i'll stick to uh i'll stick to the whirlitzer we really don't know what we're doing uh and but then yeah so i hadn't seen him since then and then a friend of mine was doing a dj night at a pub in brighton and and paul was there so uh i sort of reacquainted and then and then we kept bumping into each other on the beach that's a great i like that story that's a great that's a real that's how collaboration should happen there were no managers emailing it was you ran into your your old friend at the at the pub and said let's get Let's get in the lab.

41:33Jason Stewart:And you bought him a couple of coffees before you stuck it in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that motherfucker likes almond milk, too. It's not cheap. But I think it's good. You know, Orbital's been around for a long time. You guys have as well. I'm sure it was exciting for him to do something a little different. Yeah, I think. Because I feel like the sound that you guys have created, the modern-day version of Saint Etienne, And I think the timing of it has really aligned with the way indie dance music is kind of currently going, or I should say going back to. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? I know. You hear a lot of young DJs and young producers, and you would think that the first time you heard some of these cheesy trance songs from the 90s, all this stuff that you would brush off as dumb back then, or I'm going to hang out in the cool room where they're playing the real underground shit, and you guys can have fun in the main room with that bullshit.

42:38Jason Stewart:They're discovering it and making it cooler and more tolerable and more interesting so now there's like this kind of like bubble gum trance and you know housey like cheesy kind of music but done in a way that's kind of like kitschy and fun and i feel like that's what you were doing originally back then yeah yes that's my answer podcast over that's exactly what we were doing that's exactly what we were doing exactly well i guess we weren't deliberately nothing's been that deliberate in a way you didn't you didn't orchestrate this whole thing this is just the way the yeah the cookies crumbled in quite a nice way i mean i like the fact that there's kids well what i say kids i mean people in their 20s or whatever but that 26 year old children yeah that have discovered uh senetian recently and you know and then listening to you know we've got quite a lot of stuff you can listen to online so once you're in you know there's kind of a lot a lot to explore you have you have a deep and rich catalog for them to extract.

43:38Jason Stewart:And it's quite varied, so you can find your own sort of pathway through it, if you like. Have you noticed some of these children downloading your music and extracting the stems with AI technology to make dope-ass trap remixes of your music? No, I haven't. Someone told me there's a good one I need to find. It's a guy I like, anyway. I've forgotten his name. Anyway, anyway. He did this really good. He did a really good Tame Impala one. what's his names star hang on star it's got the word star in it he did a really good stevie nicks remix as well you know hmm star lord that's it great name or is that am i getting confused with guardians guardians of the galaxy oops you know there if you look up yeah i mean it's there's too many Tame Impala remixes where somebody named Star something.

44:35Yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't credit the samples. It's called Let It Acid, I think. Which is a pretty good name. That is a good name. Yeah, that's a great track. Star Killer.

45:05Jason Stewart:let it happen hold on let it happen is a song by tame impala tame impala let it happen and uh and they there's a soul wax remix i don't know i mean we could go over this all day there's a there's somebody named disco lines it's like a new person that's not cool peter how do you just how are you how do you find new music do you like go to the record store are you on spotify like the rest of us not so much record stores anymore i'm afraid but yeah it's uh well recommendations for friends and i've got this good uh bunch of sort of music friends and they make playlists for each other and stuff like that so that's a good one and then and do kind of podcast type things but then i uh yeah i do a podcasty type affair show i guess with a friend of mine that's and we uh we play quite sort of left field music and it's a good way of keeping sort of on top of stuff or listening constantly to new things and there's a couple of online stores that I like to find recommendations, one called Boom Cat and they describe they write really good descriptions, quite flowery, I'm quite impressed I'm rubbish at that sort of thing Boom Cat the cat is spelled with a K for our Googlers You're saying their sort of track descriptions are poetic in their delivery.

46:25And so you go, oh, I want to hear that.

46:27Jason Stewart:Well, there's a new Burial 12-inch that just came out. The Boom Cat authors just really write a rich prose. Sometimes I don't know. I don't know what they're talking about, but it sounds good. I like those descriptions are good because for fans of this, this, and this, and sometimes it feels like the the album description was written just for you and your particular tastes yeah yeah and you might normally just skip it over there was a there used to be this record shop in manchester called beating rhythm and whenever we were in manchester we'd go there and it was a kind of soul record shop particularly and they had all these boxes of seven inch records and uh and the people that worked there would write you know they'd make pick out choice kind of records and they'd write a little cards describing it and you know going if you like this so this kind of got this kind of beat and it's brilliant and then you have record players so you could go and listen see take a listen otherwise my memory is terrible this is what they say i mean it's great it's great to have some pointers you know this is what bookstores still do you know the ones that are left standing they'd always have like the staff picks and they try they all try to like out quip each other and you know the fucking three inch plate they have to be creative and it's always a fun read i like being guided towards um you had a zine back in the day called calf c-a-f-f uh so you have a history of journalism what what does calf mean to the uninitiated uh it's like shortening of cafe in a sort of more cockney you say down the calf and you'd write it like that you'd write it got it down the calf i can't remember why we called it that nice pronunciation change yeah yeah that's the real mate i mean it would be weird if your zine had a good name you know all a good zines are supposed to have kind of tongue-in-cheek dumb names i like them that way came from where we used to make kind of things like that for each other instead of writing letters well they went bob was at college and i was at school still with instead of writing a letter because this is the old days before before No, before internet.

48:39So you're saying you guys were like best friends and this was your way of like communicating and staying in touch. Yeah, and we'd do collages and cut out speech bubbles from one cartoon and stick it over and, you know, daft things like that. And then so making a fanzine was a sort of extension of that and writing about music. I did more of the daft bits and Bob then went on to actually be a journalist. That's a great, but I really like that way of communicating. that's an interesting yeah we're probably on some kind of spectrum

49:11Jason Stewart:instead of sending your pen pal a note of what you've done with your life for the last month you're like here's what i think about the new aerosmith album yeah 800 words i remember i i went away for three months traveling around europe and stuff and when i got back i'd written in this massive uh you know a journal type thing but i hadn't posted it i don't think and so i'd been back for about two weeks and i hadn't told him but the only way the reason he knew i was back was i'd sent in this cassette with uh a few songs but had this kind of weird sketch about daffy duck on it or something i don't know how did you make this oh i'm back yeah sorry like like a sketch comedy kind of wow comedy is probably a push but okay in theory to my okay in theory it was comedy that's no but i think that is really like that's a i mean that's how people used to stay in touch i mean jace and i are probably more of a mixed cd generation than cassettes but we we live through cassettes as well i wish i i wish i kept i think i moved house a lot and uh lost all the cassettes bobby's to make for me and it's i've got massive gaps in my record collection because bob used to buy everything and then tape it for me but he'd also make he'd make amazing um uh not sleeves what we'd call it yeah kind of inserts for for the cassettes and they'd all be handmade yeah bob's a good bob's a good fucking friend i gotta say i know i don't know how many i gave him i need a bob in my fucking life i ain't got no bobs i think there's some listeners out there who wouldn't mind being your bob chris they'll do they'll may they'll they'll draw they'll draw a sleeve with a sharpie if it means getting in your good graces but how do you got how do you guys do you guys record in the same room or is it a thing where you kind of do it and then send it to her and she lays it down uh it's sort of used to always be in the same room kind of thing and and what with what with internet and all that technology yeah we now do start things off at least separately obviously you know the lockdown album is a different story we had to do it yeah yeah with this album we were all in the studio together for a couple of weeks kind of thing i i was kind of able to go every day because i live around the corner but yeah but i'm saying do you so you start it you you and bob basically like start it and then when you go into the studio for a couple weeks you know what you're doing yeah so we've all done we all start separately so sarah often works with someone else and then bob works with this guy up in Bradford and and then I just I just do stuff here and then we kind of send things go I've got this idea you know okay and then uh you know we send things back as far as you know we need a melody on this one or I can't think of all the lyrics and things like that so sometimes you do a little bit on a song other times you do a lot of it you know yeah yeah well I mean I'm glad that you asked that because I think a thing about your band is that you've never had you've never seemed to have an issue or like writer's block or anything like that like you've consistently released albums you know you know every few years for the last 35 years like how many records do you guys have some reports say this is the 13th and some say it's the 12th i just listened to what people tell me i don't know i'm gonna clear some reports people are saying the streets are saying it's 13 the streets are saying it's 13 i mean yeah that is that is very consistent yeah what's the secret to being able to really i mean and those are just full length albums we're not even talking about singles and eps yeah it's quite a lot of other things and sort of deluxe editions and soundtracks and whatnot yeah lots of b-sides uh well i suppose some of them had quite big gaps between but then we were always doing gigs and you know other things like film projects and things.

53:07But yeah, I don't know really. It's just having, I think having some gaps is nice and then you get, you're desperate to do something new. But you guys actually, it strikes me as you guys actually get along. Yeah, yeah. Like you actually like each other. Yeah, I know. We have a laugh. I meet some bands sometimes and they just hate each other. It's like, God, I can't imagine going on like that.

53:32Jason Stewart:What are some of those bands peter yeah yeah oh i can't say i don't think the beta band seems to hate each other that don't talk about the libertines like that okay i'm not gonna allow that on this podcast potentially oasis perhaps potentially i've read something about that yeah yeah but i do think that is i i think it's pretty rare but i also think that that there's a lot of people they get to a certain point where the money is just too good and they're like what else would i do i'd rather suffer than find a new job. Most people don't like their job. Yeah, true. And we've not hit that point where the money's too good.

54:11Jason Stewart:I know this is the last record, but so far so good. It is. So far so good. Well, now that this is your last record and then you can quote unquote break up and then in four years you'll be headlining Coachella and Glastonbury. The master plan. We didn't know what we had. We're on to your bullshit, Peter. all right you're not fooling us you're not for us yeah i know you you did glastonbury like in what 94 i think that was the first that was the first time i'm sure you played other times as well of course when was the last time you went to glasto maybe just as a fan or a performer oh i've been going the last five years oh okay every year yeah as a well we played about four years ago i think but we uh i've been going yeah with a bunch of friends and uh just for fun okay so all the all the shaggers get together and you guys fucking camp or what are we doing like let's be honest how do you glasto peter we i do we do camp actually but um we do and the posh bit no and it's a posh bit it's a glam it's well actually this year we glamped because it was our 20th wedding anniversary so we kind of went went for the jugular it was really good actually it's a bit now you're a bit like oh can i go back can we go can we go back it's more fun in the nosebleeds but you got to do it for the anniversary right i like that to celebrate your 20th wedding anniversary you and your wife did ecstasy and watch charlie xdx at one in the morning that's beautiful that's what love is to me so what yeah what are you guys doing there are you are you are we enjoying a delicious meat and cheese platter and then going over the the day's lineup and then bopping around it's well there's a kind of gang of us that go it's part of this people you know they're saying earlier amateurs and the kind of crew that would dj and they all dj at this backstage bar and that's the kind of focus so we hang out there but and i just set in there and then another set at the park at a different stage backstage so just small things but so a bit of DJing is fun.

56:18I just do it because I'm there rather than I'm not getting paid.

56:21Jason Stewart:You need something to do with your hands at Glastonbury. I get it. Yeah, it's to give a focus. You're like, all this music sucks, but I'll DJ for 45 minutes. I'll show up. You're showing up with a USB stick, though. You're not bringing vinyl, right? Yeah, yeah. USB stick. Okay. It's just really good fun. We do a lot of dancing, wandering around. I got to say, you sound like you kind of got it figured out. we talked to a lot of people on this podcast and i gotta say your lifestyle seems very dialed in do you have kids peter you got kids yeah yeah so uh well you know you almost got there yeah although we've got i'll tell you what we had uh i had this moment of uh of a great happiness just before christmas uh so my my son is 22 my daughter's 19 uh i think she was 18 then but yeah uh went to the pub basically and uh we were sat in the pub having a drink as you do and i just suddenly thought and we're having a laugh you know and i was like this is the height this is like the peak of my life in a way i've got kids that want to come and have a drink with me and we're actually having fun and talking i was like god i've you know i'm sickening really yeah no that's big that's big i mean happy most people cannot say i have two young children who would enjoy you know spending time with me going to get you know going to get a beer or two and hanging out with their dad yeah it's not so common i was like i've made it i really thought apart from the the hovarian magazine that was the other time do they think do they think you're cool like do they get it like do they think you're cool yeah i think cool would be a stretch as well but uh you know um but they're they're kind of well i'm speaking for them they they sort of appreciate my son particularly he's really into music my daughter is a bit in a different way but he's really into this kind of 90s music i suppose as well uh so he's he's aware aware now of all these people i've been talking about name dropping over the years yeah you're like dad's the fucking og young young buck like don't forget it he's like what you've met brett and he's a massive suede fan basically okay that's good big suede it's just quite good so do you do you feel i mean obviously i'm sure you and your situation a person who loves and and creates great music when you have kids what did you have a strategy on how you were going to get them into good music or did you were you just like you guys do whatever you want yeah grow organically i tried to do the hands-off approach with my children.

58:56How long did that last? Yeah.

58:59Jason Stewart:But sometimes you just got to hit them, you know? Yeah. With records. Take this. I did used to play my daughter's St Etienne record to go to sleep to regularly. So that was slightly indoctrinating. But then she's probably the one that's least into it yeah sure you you ruined it for her subconsciously although she heard the orbital collaboration the other day she goes huh it sounds good it sounds housey and i was like you would think of loads of housey sweetheart you should explore the catalog yeah yeah i've been i've been making housey music decades before you knew what that word was that's a good story that is your is your son a musician himself uh well my daughter is amazing pianist i'm not but she is uh my son is he's taken up guitar he's he's really into the whole analog world so he's uh i say analog he likes cds you know physical media and stuff really see that's good that's that's reassuring i mean obviously he's got cool parents so he's more likely to do that but that is something we're seeing yeah trend wise Yeah, it's a kind of rejection of a lot of the digital stuff and streaming.

1:00:18Although he'll watch films on stream, but he's also got a Blu-ray player. Oh, wow, he's buying Blu-rays. He's bought a camera that has film and stuff like that. I think it's something to hang on to and slightly envious of us having grown up pre-iPhones, I suppose, in a way. And yet, kind of loving all that stuff as well. or he did but it's a funny mixture of you know feelings it's a best of both worlds situation I mean at least at least if you know about it you can explore it I feel like a lot of people just ignore it completely at that age yeah neither of them like social media which is kind of weird really it's good I mean I'm really happy because of all the stuff you know read about and I'm glad that they sort of swerved that one so that it means they have swerved a lot of the kind of you guys raised him right yeah i don't know what happened that's great who put together the artwork for the i've been trying to tell you like the alistair alistair mcclellan photo because it's really it really struck me when i saw it that's part of the reason i listened to it you know it's very very power is he a fan or was that just like yeah okay it was another it was another sort of good thing about lockdown was uh we were making that record and i got a song on an advert for um um daisy i think perfume oh nice yeah it's quite handy at the time at the time because where are we going to get him i mean all the money was much but it was enough it was enough to go okay breathe easy uh for a bit for a week and uh but alistair directed the video and uh turned out that we found out that he was a fan because you know because of that and um yeah got in touch i don't know if he got in touch with us so we got we probably got in touch with and uh bob sent him the new stuff and he was like do you think i could make a film to go with it and do some photos yeah sounds amazing i'll think about it yeah that's the best that's the best when it comes up like that i mean you can't you couldn't write the script better and you don't

1:02:26Jason Stewart:have to stalk him at the beach over months and months buying him coffee to eventually get the collab and it was like this nice production values that we couldn't afford at all do you know i mean so he's got a he yeah it's amazing and then um and so just after i keep talking about lockdown but just after lockdown uh the bfi which is the british film institute which is it they have a kind of cinema on the south bank in london it's just uh you know been famous for years and uh they they gave us a whole weekend uh i mean they turned over a whole weekend to films we worked on and did a premiere for that.

1:03:05And it was just a, it was another high point that was, I was like, wow, this is, you know, I've been a film fan for years. Because you guys do a lot of, you guys do a lot of like soundtrack and like score work. Yeah, and it's kind of, it's not, no one's really paid us for it yet, but we do. Labor of love, labor of love. Yeah, it's been, yeah, working with friends really and people that are directors and partly because no one else has asked, but also it's a bit like that sort of independent thing where you are doing it for the kind of art side of it and then the creativity. And it feels like a real team type thing where working with a sort of hands-on director who is, you know, shooting and editing and it's like a little guerrilla type team and it's great fun doing all that stuff.

1:03:57so you feel the music is considered a real part of the whole film and the director is treating it as that it's really nice, it's like an extension of making an album really yeah, there's like a mutual respect and they feed each other a little bit.

1:04:18Jason Stewart:I would say a good needle drop in a film is arguably the most memorable moment of a good picture you know yeah more so than an amazing line delivery you know it's the kind of thing yeah so chasing i suppose is to that is to get that in a moment where people will go quiet or stop tears in the eyes you know all the shiver type thing yeah fortunately all the all the songs that make me do that cost too much money so i never hear them in fucking movies that's that's the problem peter can do a replay it'll just cost you 1500 no problem yeah yeah i think i got the chords right here well i i feel like a lot of your songs they they have cinematic intros where i feel like if i was a producer it's ripe for sampling like there's just like a perfect little eight bar melody loop right at the beginning with no drums or vocals on top of it is that something that you intentionally did or was you know paying it forward to the sampler for the djs we probably sampled it from someone else like no no no we we stole that yeah sadly we can't license that to you because we nicked it yeah um i also i'm assuming i wasn't there in the early 90s but that was like when it seemed like there was i mean i was i was there but i wasn't really old enough to be a cultural critic of what was going on um i must i know that that era was when you know the western culture started really falling in love with japan and kind of vice versa i feel like your sound being like you know cute groovy kind of vibes and you guys were all looked to the part when you guys went to japan was it like a were you were you welcomed with open arms was it like a little bit of a cool mania yeah it was kind of amazing yeah we did get we got well i was gonna say chased down the high street by a bunch of school girls but we kind of did another day in paradise peter but they were actual school girls i mean like not sure not ones you'd like literally kids but it was the teacher that it was the teacher that they were following that wanted an autograph that's really funny again i get this straight there's 30 kids run after us oh no it's just the old guy in the back with the tie on wants to it was it was the mother hen was after you and her ducklings were following behind you it was safe but we uh we kind of uh i think we didn't quite realize our show was in its infancy and there's our stage show and uh i mean i think we were quite good but we uh what we didn't realize was that the ticket price was the same as um michael jackson uh but someone told us it's the same price and we were playing in this It's like a small venue at 6 p.m.

1:07:08And we brought a DJ with us because we thought that's what we did over here. We didn't realize we were going to be on at 6 in the year. That's really funny. So Billy Nasty was DJing. He was on at like 5 o 'clock. The sun's still coming in through the windows. I love the idea of being on Ticketmaster.jp and being like, well, I got two choices tonight. I got Michael Jackson or I got Saint Etienne. It's the same price.

1:07:32Jason Stewart:I've got 50 ,000 yen burning a hole in my pocket. who am I going to see tonight? Generational talent, Michael Jackson. Actually, we've got these snippets between the tracks on this album. Some of them are stories from our past. So there's one that's in Japanese, but it was relating, this thing. After one of these gigs that we didn't realize cost so much, someone came up to us and said, you have a punk rock attitude. and uh we were like cool and he went no

1:08:09not cool

1:08:13Jason Stewart:and you're like thanks old japanese guy who seems to have wisdom beyond our lives he's a young person he's like i i i spent all of my yen to see you guys and you had i didn't think you're gonna have such a punk rock aesthetic to you yeah you have let me down yeah yeah basically it was uh it was withering so funny but yeah so maybe our christ japanese uh career didn't really take off so we've been a few times well like like i said before once you once you quit and then reform in four years fuji rock headliner it'll be you in the 1975 i'd love to go back because it's uh yeah it's a great place we did we did we did go back in about what it's probably about 10 years ago now um okay and did a sort of uh it was like a supper club we thought we'll go anyway uh just so we can go you know and it was it was two played a soho house two sessions and in the day it's amazing venue actually with the view but people are eating dinner while you're playing it's quite odd as long as the check clears yeah as long as the as long as the flights get booked i don't care if you're on molly or you have chopsticks in your hands yeah we're playing yeah we're gonna fucking play we're gonna fucking play thank you peter for joining us on how long gone today it was a pleasure um the album is out today everywhere that you get albums featuring uh orbital confidence man any other vince clark oh wow clucks on there um oh there's a minute uh errol can errol can Tom Chemical to name but a few to name but a few the album is called International yeah we called all the homies we called all the homies we appreciate it we appreciate it Peter can't wait to listen to the record and hopefully we see you soon yeah it was fun speaking to you yeah pleasure thanks at all cheers guys toodaloo

1:10:22Thank you.