An eccentric English duo, whose sound ranges from lounge to electro-pop, to glam-rock tones. YOOX.COM meets up with Goldfrapp on the occasion of the launch of a special edition CD/DVD set of their fourth album, “Seventh Tree”.
The album’s title comes from a vivid dream that Alison, one of the group’s two members, still recalls: “It was a tree with the number seven on it. It was a very beautiful tree, with big branches, swaying, a bit like seaweed underwater. And I woke up in the morning and decided that’s it, that’s the name of the album.”
1. What exactly is it that makes your style unmistakable even though you change your sound with every album?
Have you ever noticed that if you play a recording of somebody’s voice backwards you can still recognize it as them even though you can’t understand what they are saying.
2. In the music industry, do you rely much on your image and style?
Image and style are the fulcrum of your Tao. If you get them wrong you can become unbalanced.
3. A special CD/DVD edition of “Seventh Tree” has already come out. How did the album come about?
We have a live show that developed after the release of the original CD, and we wanted people who didn’t come to a gig to be able to see it.
4. How would you describe the musical evolution of your last album?
We are creationists so we don’t believe in evolution.
5. What present would you like for Christmas? And what would you love to buy for a special friend?
Usually people give the present they would like to receive themselves. I would therefore like to give and receive a book by a prolific author hitherto unknown to me, but who turned out to be so good that I subsequently read all their other books. And I love a Christmas stocking full of silly surprises!
Biography
Alison and Will met in 1999, united by a love of the avant-garde, Add N To (X) and Scott Walker. They swapped tapes and books and letters, pushing boundaries and testing each other a little, to see if their tastes were strong enough to hold their combined weight. When they set about making music together their sound was born effortlessly, and grew quickly from wide-screen electronica to disco-stomp.
Having released three albums, “Felt Mountain” (2000), “Black Cherry” (2002), “Supernature” (2005), they now return with Seventh Tree, an album that confounds all that went before; warm and sensual and shimmering, it is the sound of a very British delirium, echoing the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear and the eccentricities of early Pink Floyd. Recorded in a 1960s bungalow in Bath, it was a conscious move to step away from the Weimar-esque strutting of earlier work and explore a more psychedelic terrain.
Renowned for the privacy of their working methods, on Seventh Tree, Will and Alison not only brought in Flood for co-production, but also added other musicians to the mix, such as harp-player Ruth Wall, who brought in a steel-strung harp designed in the 1600s, and which they sampled on the track “Road To Somewhere”.
With the album ready, Goldfrapp are now trying to devise a way to translate their hazy English psychedelia to the stage. “The musical and the visual, they’re inseparable to me,” says Alison. “When you talk about sound, it has an atmosphere and it has a feeling and colors and character.”
Listen and download on iTunes “Seventh Tree”
Watch the videos
Caravan Girl (Live at Bexhill)
Happiness (Live at Bexhill)
Little Bird (Live at Bexhill)
