Simon Wright: bass Rob Jones: drums Paul Wolinski: programming, guitar Joe Shrewsbury: guitar
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What can you tell us about your latest album We Were Exploding Anyway?
Interview with Paul Wolinski
How did you get the name? In November 1899, the Russian battleship Apraksin ran aground on Hogland island (in the Gulf of Finland). The waters started to freeze and the crew were trapped there. A Russian called Alexander Stepanovich Popov - who Russians generally credit with being the true inventor of radio and even celebrate his 'Radio Day' every year on 7th May - had been making waves with his new invention 'the radio receiver'. The stranded crew of the Apraksin used his ideas to build a transmission station to broadcast signals to the Russian Naval base on Kotlin island (where Popov, coincidentally, was teaching). Once the station was operational, in the bitter cold of a Scandanavian winter, they broadcast their may day signals. For 65 days, all they received in response was static. On the 66th day, Popvov's severe Russian tongue pierced the airwaves, telling them that the icebreaker ship 'Yermak' was on its way to save them. We thought that was a cool story, so named our band after it.
It's something that took us a long time to make, but something we are very proud of. It didn't come easily, and until it was finished and mixed we were in no way sure that we'd pulled it off. But now we love it. It's noisy and urgent and happy and sad in all the right places for us. It doesn't feel like it came from a band who had been dulled with fourth-album-blues. It feels like a new beginning. And you can dance to it too, which has proved to be incredibly satisfying now that we are touring it.
Did you start out with an instrumental band idea, or did you once have vocals involved? When we first started it genuinely wasn't even a question we thought about. We all listened to so much music that didn't have vocals - guitar-based bands and electronica alike, that we simply started making music using the tools we had to hand, that we thought sounded good. Our voices didn't sound good, so we didn't use them. We have never had any hard and fast rules about not using vocals, it's just something that doesn't often come up. Most of the time, there doesn't seem to be space for them. If there is, we try and find someone who has a cool voice to do something.
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