*Photo by Alexander Bradley
Opinionated punk band Flats have been together for barely a year and have already divided people with their abrasive attitude and raucous sound. I spoke to them about what hardcore means to them and why Morrissey is such a big fan.
This is your first UK headline tour, so how is it going?
Dan- Yeah it’s alright. Could be better, could be far worse.
Samir- The London show was totally packed.
Dan- The London show was amazing. Although a good friend of mine got glassed from another friend of mine which isn’t cool. Kyle get better.
Craig- We just do not condone that at all.
Dan- At our shows especially. I want the attention on me.
Some people have said the punk elements of your music are reminiscent of bands like Black Flag, what would you say your influences were?
Dan- Yeah I’m a big Black Flag fan. As far as that Washington stuff goes I’m a big SSD fan. As for the British stuff, Discharge are one of our major influences. Like on the album there are two songs specifically wrote to sound like Discharge I suppose. But there are a lot of metal influences in it. When people think of metal you think of like Slayer and Metallica but I mean there is more obscure weird stuff like Hellhammer. We’re really big Hellhammer fans, a lot of the sludge stuff and slower stuff. When the Black Flag album ‘My War’ came out that sort of spawned that whole era of sludge bands like Eyehategod are a massive influence on us.
Craig- Bands like The Melvin’s we like. There’s a great band called Pentagram, like bands who were way ahead of their time.
Dan- They’re like the American Black Sabbath that no one knows about and nobody knew about them for years.
So what does hardcore music mean to you?
Dan- I don’t know, I mean we’re in a bit of a weird situation because some people would say that we’re a hardcore band but we don’t really move in hardcore circles. The hardcore scene in Britain at the moment is all about boys with sleeve tattoos and a pair of vans on. My definition of hardcore is like when Discharge came out and it was just about playing the hardest music you can and just going nuts but now it has become just this sort of, as much as in any other genre of music, it’s just become this sort of horrible pastiche caricature of itself. ..Anyone can start a hardcore band if you have a pair of glasses with no lenses, a pair of vans and some skinny denim’s on.
I mean do you think punk is still alive in the 21st century?
Dan- I think it is but I don’t think what people perceive it to be is what it actually is. I really like a band called Diet Pills from Leeds. They’re sort of my interpretation of hardcore at the moment but they don’t necessarily look like hardcore kids. They sound like The Jesus Lizard mixed with something like Iron Fist.
Craig- Current stuff that is quite popular in the hardcore scene, like last year Trash Talk was quite a big record for us...but it literally seems to be that unless you’re taking the cream of that scene a lot of the bands are sorting of painting by numbers really...Hardcore gets branded around as a description of our music but to be honest it’s not hardcore which is our main influence. It’s a lot more sort of punk stuff you know.
Dan- Yeah like a lot of anarcho stuff. I like The Damned. I like the Sex Pistols, just because it’s funny classic shit.
You’ve said before that you’d be happy if this band released six albums by next year, are you seriously aiming to release as much music as possible?
Dan- We’ve done two EPs and the single. We’ve got the album ready but before the album even goes off to be mastered we’re recording another two EPs to be released within six weeks of each other. Then a live album which we’re recording in London over the next two months but yeah by the end of the year I want another four releases. I don’t see why we can’t. A lot of bands don’t have a work ethic and by all accounts we don’t have a work ethic but we’ve talked a big game.
So when will the album be released and what can we expect musically?
Craig- September, if not early October but yeah it’s in the bag.
Dan- It’s got a lot of different styles in it that we’ve tried to compile seamlessly, I don’t know whether it’s worked. But we always planned for it to sort of spawn from straight fast punk numbers to really down tempo sludge numbers but then also trying to merge the two seamlessly. I didn’t want it to sound like ‘Oh right, now they’re doing a punk song, now they’re doing a hardcore song...’. I wanted it all to move together quite well and the album’s going to be quite long, it will be a good 40-50 minutes long we hope.
Craig-We’re quite conscience of trying to make a record that works as a record rather than just 12-15 songs.
Dan- We wrote it in two sessions. We’ve spent a month in the studio, which is hell like every single day. We’ve only had four days off in 30 days then we’re going back in for another three weeks. I want it to sound like it’s coming from the same session, like in a lot of albums you can hear when they’ve worked with different producers or they’ve gone to different studios. I don’t want that to happen.
After the song ‘Rat Trap’ which slates Pete Townshend and Paul Weller, I’ve got to ask...why do you hate mods so much?
Dan- It’s not necessarily that I hate mods, it’s that I hate what mods have become in this day and age. It’s like weekend estate agents with Paul Weller haircuts, suit off Carnaby Street. Everyone’s got the same records, everyone’s got the same ideas. I’ve been to ‘60s parties and in one there was a clock on the wall stuck at September 16th 1968 and everyone thought it was so kitsch.
So what do you hate about music today the most then?
Dan- It’s lost. There’s no music around at the moment that really cares what they do. People might interpret that that you have to be political and people think that means that you care about what you do. Being political in a band is just as much of a vehicle as dressing up to go in the NME. It’s a tool to make yourself something. There aren’t any bands just on their own doing something for no one else. I can’t think of a single band who does something just purely for their own taste.
You’ve said before that you don’t think bands are scary anymore and that they don’t really try hard, so are you trying to change that then?
Dan- I don’t think we’re trying to be scary, I mean I’m not trying to be scary.
Samir- We don’t need to try.
Dan- Bands that are scary, like Alice Cooper. There hasn’t been anyone that’s worried the public that much for a good 20 years. Shaun Ryder was the last person to really wind people up and I hate the Happy Mondays but I love Shaun Ryder so we need another Shaun Ryder.
You played the NME radar tour with bands that were nothing like you so how was it?
Dan- Chapel Club were really lovely, they’re nice boys. Quite good bands, not really something I’d put on but I definitely appreciated what they were doing far more than most other stuff. The NME tour was weird, no one was into it. Out of that entire tour probably about 20 people bought the record who came to see us and the rest of the people turned their noses up and scoffed.
Samir- We’ve done some shows recently in the same cities and we’ve been speaking to people and when we asked how they got to hear about us, they said they saw us on the NME tour and thought we were the only good thing on it, so it’s always worth it.
Dan- It was just fun to be on tour. It was the first time I’d ever been on tour, I mean we’d only been in the band for four months.
Did you expect airplay on BBC Radio One then?
Dan- Not at all. I mean when we wrote the single we sort of never wrote a song with the intention of it being a single with a hook but this is the first time I have tried to write a hook and I don’t know if it worked but we got played on the radio. I personally think it’s quite odd that we got played on the radio. My mum’s definitely shocked.
So what do you want this band to be remembered for then?
Samir- For being heartbreakers
Dan- Yeah, heartbreakers and love makers.
Craig- I think what we’re trying to achieve and what would be a success for us is to be a band that warrants some kind of conversation away from just the music we’re making. As long as we warrant some kind of reaction, whether it’s a positive or a negative reaction, that sort of means quite a lot to us.
Dan- 90% of bands we’ve played with have just been middle of the road. You can’t really fault it that much because it’s relatively alright but it’s not good enough to be exciting. Then theres a small demographic of bands who are really exciting but because they’re so exciting a lot of people are afraid of it. I think that’s the sort of category we might fall into.
Craig- I mean it doesn’t really matter what music you play as long as you’ve got some sort of integrity
behind it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of bands who have got a great deal of integrity . They map out a plan on a bit of paper and just stick with that plan and it’s just crowd pleasing. We’re really lucky that we’ve stuck with what we wanted to do.
Dan- There’s a band called Sunsmasher from Glasgow who are amazing. It’s US hardcore crossed with real sort of sludge, mental drone and some of their songs are like nine minutes long.
So tell me about your next few shows and why people should be there
Samir-Well we’re supporting Morrissey in June.
Yeah, how did that come about?
Samir-I think he was having a bath surrounded by scented candles.
Dan- And vegan products.
Samir- And he instantly got on the phone and rang up our manager.
Craig- I dunno, it’s bizarre. He’s actually got a Flats tattoo I don’t know how that came about.
Dan- I think he saw a sign of me standing in front of a fox hunting parade.
Craig- Apparently just on his arm he has the Flats tattoo.
Are you Morrissey fans then?
Dan- I’m a massive massive Morrissey fan yeah, really taken aback when we found out. When I first met Craig he had a Smiths t-shirt, I had the same the Smiths t-shirt.
Having formed the band barely a year ago, aren’t you nervous?
Dan- I’m never nervous, I’m always cool calm and calculated.
Craig- Probably not as nervous as Morrissey to be honest.
Samir-Meeting us is going to be quite a big deal for him I think.
Dan- I think he’s going to be quite in awe.
Craig- He’ll probably try and cover up his tattoo because he’ll be embarrassed.
www.myspace.com/flatsofcourse
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