Steve Whitfield is a busy man at the moment. In addition to being a member of post-punk band Klammer, he has also embarked on a new venture as one half of Scenius, a more electro-influenced band than the guitar heavy Klammer. Having released some singles throughout the year, Scenius are gearing up to release their debut album 'Enough Fears' on the 4th December. Whitfield, in collaboration with Fabrice Nau who handles the vocal parts, has helped to craft an album which cannily displays the influence of bands such as Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, and the Human League without descending into an outright pastiche of those groups; rather the music of those bands provides inspiration for Whitfield and Nau to create their own take on electronic music. The pair work well together with Whitfield’s musical textures providing a suitable foil for Nau’s lyrics and vocals; a collaboration which is all the more remarkable for the physical distance which separates the two musicians as Whitfield is based in Leeds and Nau resides in Angers in France.
Steve very kindly took some time out to discuss the upcoming album.
How was Scenius formed?
I worked with Fabrice a long time ago, recording with a band he was in. I got on with him and stayed in touch. A couple of years ago he came to visit me for the first time in about 10 years and I showed him my studio. He then went home and emailed me asking about my analogue synths, whether I still use them. I said I did and sent him some music I’d created on them and then he added vocals to one of the tracks and when I heard it I thought, ‘We’ve got something here!’ It all sprang from Glass Rain [the band’s first single release, not on the upcoming album]; it stoked a fire in me and it all came from that. I’d say the vast majority of the music on the album was done within six months.
What was the origin of the name ‘Scenius’?
When we were thinking of names, we were both clear we didn’t want a band name with ‘The’ before it. Fabrice found the video of Brian Eno talking about ‘scenius’ [Eno said that ‘genius’ doesn’t come from isolation, more from a community or group or scene of fellow people and artists, what he termed ‘scenius’]. I love Brian Eno and pretty much everything he’s ever done has been amazing. I saw the video and liked the idea of what he was talking about, it very much encapsulated what we were about. We liked the idea that Van Gogh did what he did because of other people. It was applicable to us, it’s hard not to be influenced by things you love. Even The Beatles were influenced by other people.
Is there a separation of Scenius from Klammer for you?
Aside from the obvious where in one band I pick up a guitar and the other I play I synth? Not really. It’s funny but once someone said that I play guitar like a keyboard and keyboard like a guitar, so maybe that explains how I’ve got both Klammer and Scenius on the go. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on playing the ‘key-tar’ anytime soon! I got into music via punk and Kraftwerk – noisy guitar music and synth music have been present throughout my life!
There were things with the Scenius album which we decided, such as it being as analogue as much as possible. I started each song with similar sounds and would mutate and change over time into what is on the album. I’ve been in electronic bands before where I’ve not done that and as a result, because there are so many different electronic sounds now, every song sounded like it was from a different album. As an artist, I’m keen to create songs that sound, and are ordered, as a coherent album. When I’m writing, I have an effects pedal with four sounds and I used those sounds to write the songs so they have a definite sound. On both bands I’ve tried to ensure that happens. With Klammer, I feel we’ve progressed and changed. With Scenius, we’ve only done one album but I hope that we’d change from album to album. With Kraftwerk, there’s similarities from album to album but across their career they ebbed and flowed and changed.
Would you say that one of the lyrical concerns running throughout the album is around kicking against modern popular culture, particularly with songs like Cookie Cutter and Superposes?
Fabrice’s English is very good but he uses words which English and American bands wouldn’t ordinarily use in lyrics. Nothing has been consciously written about the COVID thing. Fabrice always sends me the lyrics to check and I hardly ever change anything. Like most lyric writers, he is keen that people take their own thing from it. While he can’t be with us in person, I do actually have something he has emailed to me so he can provide some input into this interview:
We released our first single in February this year, just before it all changed. For us, as for most of the world, it’s been a rather weird, unexpected period since then. And it’s in these very peculiar times that we went on releasing 3 new singles and continued working on the rest of the songs to have an album ready. None of the lyrics were directly meant to deal with anything related to these strange times. In fact, I guess we’re seeing creation more as a way to open other perspectives than a way to comment on current events. Still, when we had to choose a title for the album, 'Enough Fears' seemed to connect somehow with this special period during which the album was made. The lyrics of that song are about dealing with the fears that often come along with the lack or loss of certainty. So, in fact it connects with most of Human History. Especially when its associated with this great street artwork painted by Banksy in Naples, featuring a Madonna and a gun [used as the album cover image]. For better or for worse, religion and weapons have been two of the most universal ways of dealing with different types of fears. The third one being creation / art / music. So who knows, maybe making this album was in the end our way of handling these times when fear was even more on the daily news than it usually is!
Electro-pop seems to be making the latest of a series of comebacks this year, with The Weekend’s big hit single ‘Blinding Lights’ and the Number 1 album Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. What are your feelings of current electro-pop revival and do you feel this bodes well for the timing of the album’s release?
In the last year and a half, I’ve purposely not listened to any electronic music. What I’m hearing from other bands is that electronic pop music at the minute has too much of this ‘four on the floor’ bass drum. I purposely tried not to do dance beats; no pre-sets on the synths. We've tried to keep the amount of tracks going in each song reasonably minimal, it's just too easy to throw the kitchen sink in there. I get a lot of songs to mix from other bands that can have upwards of 80 tracks in the song, so I consciously decided to go the other way. Quite a few of the synth parts were recorded into Pro Tools live by hand - no Midi- and I think it has helped keep a bit of an organic, human feel to it.
Timing wise? I’ve no idea. I don’t really feel that my head is in the electro-music scene at the minute. We’ve just done what we’ve done. We’ve had to do it all ourselves, promotion and so on. I’ve experience from Klammer but this is a different scene from them. We only released the first single in January/February. We’re happy with the response and can push further with the album. There’s still a lot of kudos with webzines and magazines for albums; some of them will only review anything that’s an album. Not everything we record is a single, but we threw a spanner in the works with ‘Held’ which Fabrice wanted as a single. It’s quite an ambient song but I’m never really thinking ‘let’s do a Brian Eno song,’ when I’m writing, I don’t purposely set out to copy another artist’s sound or style, it’s more that I filter the influence out as I work.
With the physical distance between you and Fabrice, how do you record? Has the COVID pandemic affected your work?
Most of the basic ideas of the songs were written before COVID. Lockdown and restrictions haven’t really affected us at all so far. Fabrice and I haven’t even been in the same country, never mind the same room, through the process of writing and record of the singles and album. We both have studios at home and we’ve been sending files, emails and Face Timing to write, record and mix the songs. It’s really just been a case of finishing off and mixing during lockdown. I have a Pro-tools studio and do my mixing here. I do a lot of mixing for other bands too. The studio has enabled both my bands to exist and means that recording and mixing is minimal. With Klammer we record the drums in another studio and everything else is done here. With Scenius, Fabrice records his vocals and sends them to me and I mix them into the song.
What are your future plans?
We’re releasing 'Make It Shiny' as a single to help promote the album. We’re still learning how to promote the album ourselves. 'Make It Shiny' was the last song written for the album and was written during lockdown – it was the only song that didn’t have an initial idea, pre-pandemic. We’re cracking on with getting the live stuff underway; while the pandemic has seen our plans for live shows go on hold, we do have a show booked for October 2021 in France. I’m hoping to get some new keyboards for the tour as I don’t want to risk using my analogue synths outside of the studio. I also don’t want to be stood there onstage pressing a button and then waving my arms around like Fatboy Slim! It would be brought into the modern world. I’ve taken songs into Klammer’s rehearsal rooms and played the songs through the PA to hear how they sound live and they sound very good! We’re also cracking on with the next album, we’ve got the kernels of new songs that we are working on. This isn’t a solitary album, which it could easily have been, Scenius is more than just a one-off experiment, it is a separate band to Klammer. I’m happy with both bands going side by side. I enjoy having these two musical sides going on in my brain. I find writing the music easy. When the guys in Klammer and Fabrice get the demos for new songs they are pretty much formed and just need refining and adding to by the others to help get them into shape.
Many thanks for taking the time to speak to us, Steve.
Scenius’ debut album Enough Fears is released on December 4th.
Interviewer - Andrew Marsden
Steve very kindly took some time out to discuss the upcoming album.
How was Scenius formed?
I worked with Fabrice a long time ago, recording with a band he was in. I got on with him and stayed in touch. A couple of years ago he came to visit me for the first time in about 10 years and I showed him my studio. He then went home and emailed me asking about my analogue synths, whether I still use them. I said I did and sent him some music I’d created on them and then he added vocals to one of the tracks and when I heard it I thought, ‘We’ve got something here!’ It all sprang from Glass Rain [the band’s first single release, not on the upcoming album]; it stoked a fire in me and it all came from that. I’d say the vast majority of the music on the album was done within six months.
What was the origin of the name ‘Scenius’?
When we were thinking of names, we were both clear we didn’t want a band name with ‘The’ before it. Fabrice found the video of Brian Eno talking about ‘scenius’ [Eno said that ‘genius’ doesn’t come from isolation, more from a community or group or scene of fellow people and artists, what he termed ‘scenius’]. I love Brian Eno and pretty much everything he’s ever done has been amazing. I saw the video and liked the idea of what he was talking about, it very much encapsulated what we were about. We liked the idea that Van Gogh did what he did because of other people. It was applicable to us, it’s hard not to be influenced by things you love. Even The Beatles were influenced by other people.
Is there a separation of Scenius from Klammer for you?
Aside from the obvious where in one band I pick up a guitar and the other I play I synth? Not really. It’s funny but once someone said that I play guitar like a keyboard and keyboard like a guitar, so maybe that explains how I’ve got both Klammer and Scenius on the go. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on playing the ‘key-tar’ anytime soon! I got into music via punk and Kraftwerk – noisy guitar music and synth music have been present throughout my life!
There were things with the Scenius album which we decided, such as it being as analogue as much as possible. I started each song with similar sounds and would mutate and change over time into what is on the album. I’ve been in electronic bands before where I’ve not done that and as a result, because there are so many different electronic sounds now, every song sounded like it was from a different album. As an artist, I’m keen to create songs that sound, and are ordered, as a coherent album. When I’m writing, I have an effects pedal with four sounds and I used those sounds to write the songs so they have a definite sound. On both bands I’ve tried to ensure that happens. With Klammer, I feel we’ve progressed and changed. With Scenius, we’ve only done one album but I hope that we’d change from album to album. With Kraftwerk, there’s similarities from album to album but across their career they ebbed and flowed and changed.
Would you say that one of the lyrical concerns running throughout the album is around kicking against modern popular culture, particularly with songs like Cookie Cutter and Superposes?
Fabrice’s English is very good but he uses words which English and American bands wouldn’t ordinarily use in lyrics. Nothing has been consciously written about the COVID thing. Fabrice always sends me the lyrics to check and I hardly ever change anything. Like most lyric writers, he is keen that people take their own thing from it. While he can’t be with us in person, I do actually have something he has emailed to me so he can provide some input into this interview:
We released our first single in February this year, just before it all changed. For us, as for most of the world, it’s been a rather weird, unexpected period since then. And it’s in these very peculiar times that we went on releasing 3 new singles and continued working on the rest of the songs to have an album ready. None of the lyrics were directly meant to deal with anything related to these strange times. In fact, I guess we’re seeing creation more as a way to open other perspectives than a way to comment on current events. Still, when we had to choose a title for the album, 'Enough Fears' seemed to connect somehow with this special period during which the album was made. The lyrics of that song are about dealing with the fears that often come along with the lack or loss of certainty. So, in fact it connects with most of Human History. Especially when its associated with this great street artwork painted by Banksy in Naples, featuring a Madonna and a gun [used as the album cover image]. For better or for worse, religion and weapons have been two of the most universal ways of dealing with different types of fears. The third one being creation / art / music. So who knows, maybe making this album was in the end our way of handling these times when fear was even more on the daily news than it usually is!
Electro-pop seems to be making the latest of a series of comebacks this year, with The Weekend’s big hit single ‘Blinding Lights’ and the Number 1 album Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. What are your feelings of current electro-pop revival and do you feel this bodes well for the timing of the album’s release?
In the last year and a half, I’ve purposely not listened to any electronic music. What I’m hearing from other bands is that electronic pop music at the minute has too much of this ‘four on the floor’ bass drum. I purposely tried not to do dance beats; no pre-sets on the synths. We've tried to keep the amount of tracks going in each song reasonably minimal, it's just too easy to throw the kitchen sink in there. I get a lot of songs to mix from other bands that can have upwards of 80 tracks in the song, so I consciously decided to go the other way. Quite a few of the synth parts were recorded into Pro Tools live by hand - no Midi- and I think it has helped keep a bit of an organic, human feel to it.
Timing wise? I’ve no idea. I don’t really feel that my head is in the electro-music scene at the minute. We’ve just done what we’ve done. We’ve had to do it all ourselves, promotion and so on. I’ve experience from Klammer but this is a different scene from them. We only released the first single in January/February. We’re happy with the response and can push further with the album. There’s still a lot of kudos with webzines and magazines for albums; some of them will only review anything that’s an album. Not everything we record is a single, but we threw a spanner in the works with ‘Held’ which Fabrice wanted as a single. It’s quite an ambient song but I’m never really thinking ‘let’s do a Brian Eno song,’ when I’m writing, I don’t purposely set out to copy another artist’s sound or style, it’s more that I filter the influence out as I work.
With the physical distance between you and Fabrice, how do you record? Has the COVID pandemic affected your work?
Most of the basic ideas of the songs were written before COVID. Lockdown and restrictions haven’t really affected us at all so far. Fabrice and I haven’t even been in the same country, never mind the same room, through the process of writing and record of the singles and album. We both have studios at home and we’ve been sending files, emails and Face Timing to write, record and mix the songs. It’s really just been a case of finishing off and mixing during lockdown. I have a Pro-tools studio and do my mixing here. I do a lot of mixing for other bands too. The studio has enabled both my bands to exist and means that recording and mixing is minimal. With Klammer we record the drums in another studio and everything else is done here. With Scenius, Fabrice records his vocals and sends them to me and I mix them into the song.
What are your future plans?
We’re releasing 'Make It Shiny' as a single to help promote the album. We’re still learning how to promote the album ourselves. 'Make It Shiny' was the last song written for the album and was written during lockdown – it was the only song that didn’t have an initial idea, pre-pandemic. We’re cracking on with getting the live stuff underway; while the pandemic has seen our plans for live shows go on hold, we do have a show booked for October 2021 in France. I’m hoping to get some new keyboards for the tour as I don’t want to risk using my analogue synths outside of the studio. I also don’t want to be stood there onstage pressing a button and then waving my arms around like Fatboy Slim! It would be brought into the modern world. I’ve taken songs into Klammer’s rehearsal rooms and played the songs through the PA to hear how they sound live and they sound very good! We’re also cracking on with the next album, we’ve got the kernels of new songs that we are working on. This isn’t a solitary album, which it could easily have been, Scenius is more than just a one-off experiment, it is a separate band to Klammer. I’m happy with both bands going side by side. I enjoy having these two musical sides going on in my brain. I find writing the music easy. When the guys in Klammer and Fabrice get the demos for new songs they are pretty much formed and just need refining and adding to by the others to help get them into shape.
Many thanks for taking the time to speak to us, Steve.
Scenius’ debut album Enough Fears is released on December 4th.
Interviewer - Andrew Marsden
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