Eat This

POP WILL EAT ITSELF HUNGRY FOR CHART SUCCESS? WE TALK TO THEM ABOUT THE MAKING OF THEIR 'NEW ALBUM "THIS IS THIS"

THE Bullshit Factor. You can't escape it. It's even in their shiny new RCA press release, coyly dressed as "...a refreshing f*** you attitude." Yes, they definitely have an attitude...

"You want to talk gear? Okay. I use a point 73 plectrum, nylon, grey in colour, I think, a Jim Dunlop model.."

Four years of clippings history ready you for the rough ride, but say nothing about a honey of a Brummie accent that sugars every smart-arse pill with a sly comic delivery. Pop Will Eat Itself, grebos turned sussed hippie-hoppers, will misbehave of precisely as much as you ask for. But when it comes to their work, it's the lack of bullshit that astounds.

"Our last single, Can You Dig It?', I didn't do f~ all on it," says Adam, the guitarist with the picky taste in plectra. "I don't really play guitar in the studio. Rich does, cos he's better than me. We got a mate in for all the wailing heavy metal stuff cos he's better than both of us. We'd rather make a good record than a crap one we played everything on."

The day we met, PWEI were pulling the threads of the album together in a West London studio. Or rather their producer was, while Adam, the first band-member to arrive that morning, watched.

"Fair enough. Flood got here first," he said, unimpressed by studio demarcation lines as the producer worked on a Pror24 triggered drum pattern.

".. I'm not saying it's going to be in, but we'll give it ago. It sounds like a big word but there's a certain respect involved."

Flood demurs, "It's just being ordinary human beings. If I try something and they don't like it, I've got to be able to say, 'Oh, fair enough', and vice versa. It's good to make a record and have a laugh about it...

Obviously not the experience of The Fine Young Cannibals who produced "a couple of tracks" before deciding that PWEI wasn't them.

Perhaps it was the fact that with six-tracks plus "fillers" all but completed, the last two or three in outline form, and deadlines pressing, no one has yet seen fit to write any lyrics.

'THIS Is This..." ('This Is The Hour, This Is The Day, This Is This", a meaningless sample from the film 'The Deerhunter") has had a patchwork evolution. Some material ("Wake Up, Time To Die") "was demoed pretty much as it will be, on Portastudio." Some, having had a similar birth, on fellow PWEI member Graham Crabb's "not-so-hot- S700 sampler, sequencer, and beat box, went next to a 16-track studio in Coventry.

"Sixteen-track doesn't force you to make the same compromises that four-track does," said Flood.

"A band can just go in, and bang the thing down really quickly, 'bosh bosh bosh, this is our rough idea', so when they come into the studio, you listen to it, and go `Works well there, that bit's out of time, can we play it? Can we sample it? Do we sequence it?' It lets you make positive decisions right away."

Other tracks, like "Radio PWEI" were already more than demos: "It was going to be the nextsingle after 'Def Con 1'," says Adam. In the end, it needed radical restructuring to soothe RCA's nerves over sample copyright."There was a Led Zeppelin sample which we had to take out, because it was so obvious, and Jimmy Page is known to be so anti-sampling. There was a Tears For Fears bit that had to come out. In fact, we've had to sign something which says if we release a record with samples on without clearing it with RCA first, we're he ones who get sued. By the time we finished, the original rhythm track of 'Radio PWEI' sounded weak, so Gray had another drum loop he wanted to try."

It was this that Flood was setting up the morning of our chat, using his Pro 24 and 'Tower Of Babel a flightcased rack comprising SI 000 and 900 samplers, a Bokse SMPTE synchroniser and sundry multifix.

I got the Bokse because I wasted up of studio syncnronisers which didn't work. The Pro 24 crashes all the time, which is a real pain in the neck and it can be stifling at times, sitting there shunting one hi-hat beat one nanosecond, like that's going to affect record sales usually I just use it like a MIDI tape recorder. I've got a rhythm with a few alternative sounds, so Gray'll try his loop, and we'll all sit back and go 'that's a rocker, that's a winner, that's a loser', giving it the old Nero with the digits up

FLOOD, a much-sampled man himself, fakes a relaxed view of this integration of sample loops with programmed beats.

"On the face of it, taking a drum loop off record is just lazy. But by the time you've got the thing in time, split it up, added more sounds to it, phased it or whatever.. .There's a track on the album, 'Not Now James We're Busy' where we took a James Brown loop, with him going, Woo-yeah!', and he plays along, and then it goes into a thrash metal bit.. .it's how you use it that counts."

The previously mentioned "Wake Up..." is a good example of just how much goes into 'easy' sampling.

"One of the problems of a 'kit' of samples is that they sound very separated. Reverb helps, but one old trick is to shove it out through an amp, to make it sound a bit more gritty. On this particular track, one of the loops was mainly a hi-hat, and when we shoved it out, we really distorted it and got these different pitches and harmonics off it; it started playing a tune!"

The same logic was applied to the bass synth and other sequencer lines, but as distortion increased, Adam realised: "it sounded more and more like guitars, so we thought, "f**k it, we might as well play 'em, so we did."

Sampling particularly 'found-sound' cut-ups is crucial to the current PWEI sound.

'We used to do a punky version of Sigue Sigue Sputnik's 'F1-11'. Then one night in Holland, James Brown from the NME played us The Age 0f Chance's version of 'Kiss,'" recalls Adam, Gray decided to put this hip-hop beat in the verse of 'F1-1 1' to cut it up a bit..."

Thus was history made. These days, its the soft-spoken Gray who conceives the bulk of the "one chorus, one verse" songs. Entering the studio in time to be warned not to drop the names of the people he'd been sampling for the album, he explains how the skeleton of a song is assembled.

"Everyone in the band has got huge piles of tapes, clips of TV programs. Some things just seem to jump out at you, like the 'Can you dig it?' speech from The Warriors.' It's amusing, and it's strong, and you can build a lyric round it."

"It was a hard lyric to get," adds Adam, "because there are only so many things you can say if you say. If you like beer, you sound like a lager lout. If you say you like girls, you sound like a sexist."

This from the band that did "Beaver Patrol"? The effect of moving to a major must be more serious than I thought. Adam counters with an anecdote: "The Gang Of Four had a single with the line 'the rubbers you hide in your pockets', and Top Of The Pops' wanted them to change it to "the rubbish you hide". They wouldn't, so they didn't go on. And now they reckon it was the biggest mistake they ever made. The point of being an indie is not to stay as obscure as you possibly can."

"Dosh! Chapter 22 were paying for us to go into studios, but we wanted to move up production wise, and it was making everything a squeeze. Who knows? "Def Con I ' might have been a hit with a major behind it. Besides, it's nice to have a few quid in your pocket. We got a £60,000 budget for the album, which we're well over by now, and enough after management commission for us each to have 150 a week for a year. It's not megabucks, but it's nice to have that security."

Just then, a studio minion pokes his head round the door to announce that the video of the single has been slotted for the "Breakers" slot on "TOTP". The synchronicity is almost too perfect. Fame beckons, Adam. No bullshit.

Live, Adam plays an Antoria semi-acoustic "beefed up with JB rhythm pick-ups. It feeds back, but it's a big guitar that looks good, and it's cheap, so it doesn't matter if I chuck it about." This runs through a Roland GPB fx board "which I haven't sorted yet" to a Peavey Renown combo and Marshal 4x12 cab, "...but they use different ohms or something so basically my amp is twice as loud as my cab."

Richard March plays a Columbus bass "covered in comics, so it looks good," also with a GPB - "I use two sounds, a really distorted one, and a really distorted one with a bit of echo", running to "a Peavey bass amp - I can't remember what it is."

The X7000, and an FRZ1 sampler hold extra samples for Richard or Graham to play, with drums and backing tracks on an Otari four-track: "Bass and hi-hat on one, snare on two, toms and percussion on three, bass and voice samples on four. We're getting an eight-track, because with bass and voice on the same track you can't bring one up without swamping the other."

Spontaneity isn't a concern, as Gray points out, "A comedian doesn't change his act around every night, so why should we?" But Adam admits, working to tape has its own problems.

There's this big stage set, smoke, flashing lights, 2000 kids screaming, you burst from your intro tape into the big drumbeat from the single, everyone goes `Waaah!` you play your guitar - and the radio pack doesn't f***ing work! So we had to stop and because the intro went straight into the song, we had to rewind the tape and do it all over again, like Spinal Tap or something…"