Lazy Habits [Interview]
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The UK-based hip-hop heads amongst you will no doubt be familiar with the funky, soulful, and fearlessly direct Lazy Habits. Even if hip-hop isn’t normally your thing, these guys pack enough stylistic variety into their tunes to keep any fan of remotely urban-related music satisfied. Keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming review of their brand new full-length, The Atrocity Exhibition, and read on for a very cool chat with the band…
Your new album The Atrocity Exhibition is out this Friday. Aside from excitement, how’re you feeling right now?
Good question. Well, we only got back the last two masters this morning so it’s kind of good we have been kept busy. Now I’m just focused on the show Wednesday [tonight, at XOYO in London], and looking forward to people finally getting to hear the new songs.
What’s your earliest musical memory?
Me playing with a piano that was in my grandfather’s house. I couldn’t play it then, and I can’t play it now!
How does The Atrocity Exhibition differ from your previous work?
It’s an evolution of the sound. Some of is pretty similar in texture and theme, but there are lot more strings on this album, and I feel it gives it a wider and more cinematic feel.
It kind of starts off where the last one ended and goes on from there. It keeps moving.
What was your creative process while writing and recording the new album?
After touring the first album, I sat down and went through all my demo recordings, notes, and stuff like that. I’m constantly recording little melodies and sounds, beats, stuff like that.
So when it came time to take stock of what I had, it was well over a hundred ideas. A lot of it was throwaway stuff, but we went through all of these and worked on ones that we liked whilst writing other new stuff on the side.
I went to stay in Taiwan for quite a while to write the lyrics for it, and when all the demos were made we started working on them as a full band. A process of elimination on many levels. Overall, everything that made it through had to fit with the the sound and ideas of what the album was about.
You’re now finishing a tour of the UK – what was the most random thing that happened to you along the way?
We stopped at a service station in Birmingham on the way to a show near Liverpool, and bumped into our friends Too Many Tees, who were on the way to Manchester. Our drummer was asleep in the van, so we just got the Tees to pile in to our van and just pretend like it was theirs.
They started it up and were chatting about their gig in Manchester when he woke up! It’s all on film! The look on his face was priceless!
You’re not afraid to get political, which is pretty rare in music at the moment. How do you want to see the world change? What would you have people do in order to make that change happen?
I think most recently there have been some amazing examples of renewable energy at work in Germany and Portugal, among other places. It’s pretty obvious now that the argument against renewable energy is pretty much non-existent, and any notion of fracking being necessary anywhere in this planet is ridiculous.
What’s the most difficult thing about pursuing a life in music?
The hours are a little antisocial. I’m pretty much a night person, for writing and obviously for shows. Sometimes it’s a lot of travelling. It’s hard to find too many things to complain about, as it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.
What are your passions outside of music?
My first love was film. My parents used to own an independent video store, and although I worked in places like HMV and Virgin it was always in the film department. I’ve been lucky enough to get a little involved in that, through music and writing too.
Beyond the album release, what do you have lined up for the rest of 2016?
We started writing for our side project High Cross Society again and have already started demoing ideas for the next Lazy Habits album. On top of that we are at a bunch of festivals over the summer – Glasto, Secret Garden, etc. – and then after festival season we are heading back to Asia and then a few dates in Europe.
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