GOGOL BORDELLO - Interview with Eugene Hutz by Christine Leonard-Cripps

Full-Tilt Punk Rock Polka Party

Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello get their kicks at Brazilian Carnival

Thriving on the infinite variety of cultures found in their home state of New York, the ragtag group of gypsies who make up the multi-ethnic punk rock sensation Gogol Bordello bring a black market of musical influences to stage with every explosive performance. The band, famous for their dynamic musical arrangements and bizarre theatrical performances, formed in 1999 under the direction of lead singer Eugene Hutz, who had lived the life of a refugee in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy after being evacuated from the Ukraine in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Settling in the U.S. in 1993, Hutz joined forces with a group of like-minded musicians largely of eastern European descent. Their collaboration would result in a folk-punk experiment that’s taken the world by storm.

“Big crowds, small crowds it makes no difference to us,” says Hutz, who recently performed a Tom Waits tribute with Primus bass player Les Claypool and Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett at the Bonnaroo music festival. “We purposefully make a point of playing smaller gigs just so we can bring back that atom-smasher mentality to the big stage. We believe in transforming negatives to positives by getting people to voluntarily take part in the creative process and switch their masks. Some critics keep comparing us to a circus act, just because we wear costumes and have an accordion, which is complete bullshit! We have nothing to do with fucking circuses; everything we do is in a minor key. If anything, what we do is more like a Brazilian carnival.”

In fact, Hutz has been pursuing a newfound love of all things Brazilian. He recently travelled to that country, where he spent some quality time with his friend, composer-musician Manu Chao. While abroad, Hutz discovered a variety of indigenous Brazilian instruments, which he eagerly purchased for his ever-growing orchestra back in New York. Next to hanging out with Sepultra’s Max Cavelera, Hutz reports that the highlight of his South American spree came when Manu Chao introduced him to his favourite band, Mundo Livre.

“I’m already planning my next trip to Brazil,” Hutz reports. “I’m ready for another full-on collaborative vacation. Winter is usually the time when I like to go into the studio to record, and I’ve already written the next album based on the material I worked on in Brazil. That is not to say this will be a bossa nova or samba album. I believe in influences, not flavours. There will be no flavours. It’s more about studying the connections and the textures of being in a place. It is like a documentary taken firsthand and turned into music. My journeys become part of my experience. The universe is expanding and so is me, baby!”

Pushing the envelope and venturing into new artistic realms comes naturally to the intrepid vocalist, who has been tapped by none other than Madonna to star in her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom. The singer’s charisma makes him a natural choice for movies (there’s already been a film character loosely based on him — the Russian rocker Eugene in 2006’s Wristcutters: A Love Story). Combined with his band’s cathartic sense of humour and an energetic cast of players who deliver a dizzying barrage of musical styles and sensibilities, Gogol Bordello is a folk-punk juggernaut of epic proportions.

Christine Leonard
Originally published October 9, 2008 in Fast Forward Magazine

Bloc Party : Dance Like Everyone is Watching

Intimacy issues

Dance-rockers Bloc Party get confrontational

Published October 16, 2008 by Christine Leonard

Creating dance music that can’t be danced to is a totally counterintuitive idea. Yet, as strange as it seems, it is a working formula for Britain’s Bloc Party. Equipped with a distinctive sound that incorporates elements of indie rock, pop, ’80s new wave and ’90s electronica, the London-based quartet has worked hard to carve a niche for themselves in Europe and North America. Cultivating a style built on heartsick lyrics and heavenly guitar runs, Bloc Party’s efforts led to their debut album, Silent Alarm, which broke on BBC Radio in 2005 and was soon certified platinum on the U.K. charts. Garnering comparisons to bands such as The Cure, Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins and Joy Division, Silent Alarm was voted the year’s best album by leading Brit music mag New Musical Express. Perhaps more significantly, the album also featured the track “Helicopter,” which was used in the movie Grandma’s Boy and appears on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero: On Tour.

Propelled into the international spotlight by the unprecedented success of “Helicopters,” Bloc Party began to lay the groundwork for their second album, A Weekend in the City. Upping the ante with the addition of electronic samples and multiple overdubs, singer-guitarist Kele Okereke, guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong turned to producer Garret “Jackknife” Lee in order to perfect their old-meets-new aesthetic. Their collaboration paid off big time. The album’s first single, “The Prayer,” became the band’s highest-charting single, confirming both the appeal of their ’80s-inspired sound and their staying power as a group.

“Some people might think of our style as being nostalgic, but really we’re just looking for what’s strongest in a given type of music,” says Moakes. “While we are conscious of the music we grew up on, it seems backwards to try to re-create it. There were really only a handful of acts that I could really stand — that whole retro-Beatles thing is boring to us.”

Aiming to entertain themselves as well as their audience, Bloc Party has continued to add new instruments and skill sets to their ever-expanding repertoire. Pushing themselves to new limits on their recently released third album, Intimacy, Moakes and company dug deep to write material that challenges them even as it reaches back to the raw, unguarded innocence of their earlier compositions.

“If our first album was a pastel and our second album was a black-and-white, then this new album is definitely neon,” Moakes says.

“In the past, we’ve battled with our ideas by piling them on top of one another. It muddied the waters. People thought it signaled that we were a band that wasn’t necessarily interested in guitars. And, in fact, that was the case. With Intimacy, we set out to do something more vibrant, immediate, confrontational and visceral. The whole record was a challenge; we tried to keep it simple…. It’s made me a much better musician.”

Wolf Parade Bites Back

Principle players

Despite frustration over a leaked album, Wolf Parade take the high road

Published October 16, 2008  by Christine Leonard

Growing up in the tiny West Coast island town of Lake Cowichan, British Columbia, Dan Boeckner dared to dream big, but even he is impressed that he has come so far in a relatively short time. Cutting his musical teeth in Victoria’s underground scene, the intrepid singer-songwriter and guitarist cultivated his triple threat of talents with a handful of indie bands, including Atlas Strategic, with whom he recorded Rapture, Ye Minions! in 2000. Atlas put Boeckner on the map, so to speak, and upon the band’s dissolution, he made the move to Montreal where he connected with fellow British Columbian Spencer Krug (Swan Lake, Frog Eyes), who was studying creative writing and music at Concordia University. The two joined forces in early 2003 to form Wolf Parade, a keyboard-infused, indie-pop dynamo that threatened to redefine mainstream rock ’n’ roll once and for all.

“We’ve always just jammed out when it comes to songwriting,” Boeckner says of the band’s freewheeling approach to composing. “Things just kind of happen automatically when we give ourselves the absolute freedom to explore and feel the sound out. It’s not good enough if we’re not playing what we want. In that way, we have become more esthetically focused than ever as a band. We don’t ever want to ‘agendize’ our recording process. We want to deliver a product that’s real, and that usually means refusing to decide on the arrangement for a song until we’ve taken it on the road and tested it in front of a live crowd. ”

No strangers to public exposure, Boeckner and Wolf Parade were thrust into the spotlight shortly after their formation when they booked their first gig as the opening act for Arcade Fire. Taking it all in stride, Wolf Parade strutted into the studio, where they laid down their chivalrous debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, with Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock behind the mixing board. Remarkably, the hard-working members of Wolf Parade still find the time to dabble in multiple side projects including Islands, Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown and Boeckner’s own Handsome Furs. 

Delighting in variety for variety’s sake, Boeckner has donated his time to the satirical North American Halloween Prevention Initiative and contributed to the UNICEF benefit song "Do They Know It's Halloween?" The fact that both Krug and Boeckner are so willing to give of themselves only emphasizes the gravity of a recent debacle that overshadowed the official launch of the burgeoning Canadian act’s 2008 full-length album, At Mount Zoomer. Like many artists, Wolf Parade’s album leaked before its official release date. Unlike most artists, the band was vocal about their frustrations.

“I know how speedy the hype is; isolated obsessive nerds [talk] to each other every day on forums that know more about what I’m doing than I do. And, they’re eerily accurate, too. It’s so fucking wrong,” he chuckles. 

 “It’s not passing judgment, that’s just the way I think it works. People don’t line up outside record stores to buy albums anymore, and that’s what happened with At Mount Zoomer. Some fucking so-and-so uploaded a watermarked promo copy of the album a couple of weeks before the release date. Never mind that making that record cost the band a lot of money, but how could someone be so arrogant as to take someone’s personal work and rip them off like that? It’s fucking annoying. Especially for an indie band like us, we’re not fucking Timbaland here — we don’t get those $2 million advances! I’d love to say ‘You know what? Fuck it! I’m going to put my albums up on the web for free.’ But, like many other musicians, we rely on record sales just so we can keep on touring and recording. We couldn’t exist otherwise. So, it cuts both ways.”