Indiecision: Music Blog: Independent Music in India and Elsewhere

INTERVIEW: FIRE BIRD INTERNATIONAL

FBI is a four member indie rock act from Hong Kong. They recently released their debut EP (review soon). In an exclusive interview with Indiecision, Cain McInerney (vocalist) from the band talks about the band, the indie music scene in Hong Kong and Cantopop.

1. Tell us about how the band got together.

One gwailo (foreigner) and three Hong Kong guys make up Fire Bird International.

FBI has been together for just over a year now. I (Cain) met Jerald at a bar in the New Territories and started talking about music. An Oasis song came on and Cain started singing it and Jerald said, “Man, you have got a good voice.” I went on to say how I was a singer and Jerald told him that he was in a band, so we decided to have a jam one day. On the first day I met the other members of the band (Archvictor and Nice) they convinced me to have a performance at a community centre for a bit of fun, even though we only had been practicing for around half an hour prior to that. You can still see some of the recorded songs on YouTube, especially ‘First Date’, that people have commented highly upon, despite this being the first day or our first date together as a band. The name FBI was came up with after this show. Since I am a foreigner we could be international, since they were already calling themselves something like firebirds in Chinese. FBI just made sense.

Head downstairs for the rest of the interview.

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INTERVIEW: DIRTBLONDE

Dirtblonde are a indie rock duo from Liverpool, England. Gibson listed them as one of the top five bands to watch from Liverpool, and they’ve been invited to perform at SXSW ‘09. They released White Noise, Rubber Heart last year on Filthy Little Angels and you can sample it with a free download of ‘The Hangmen’ (at the end of this post). The band is Ivan and Lula. Here’s an interview about Alan McGee, the Liverpool scene and Sonic Youth.

1. Tell us a little about the band - how did it come about, some of the major milestones, the name Dirtblonde?
We just came up with the name on a drunken night. Like with bands such as The Beatles or Nirvana, It’s just a shit name…

We formed in 2004, bored with the music scene in Liverpool. The scene has got better since, not that the rest of the country would know about it - all the best Liverpool bands are obscure and unsigned, but all people hear about are The Wombats and The Rascals and things like that. So it still feels like Dirtblonde has got a sense of purpose here – offering an alternative to what the boring mainstream says is good. It can feel like a hopeless fight sometimes.

Milestones? In 2005 we released ‘The Hangmen’ as an online single and people liked it: We got BBC airplay thanks to Steve Lamacq; XFM played it and Alan Mcgee liked it and booked us a few gigs in London. He came to one of our gigs and said we were really good. I had “Who The fuck is Alan Mcgee” written on my chest. Never heard from him again… but he danced to Dirtblonde!

In 2006 we played Leeds festival and a few dates in New York, including Death Disco…it was cool to hang out with total legend BP Fallon. But we felt down, had a big fight and decided to split up the band.  I remember throwing my Les Paul guitar in the gutter on the Lower East Side and thinking I’d never play a note again…

Soon enough we felt the need to do music again, so we reformed the following year and released White Noise Rubber Heart and played more gigs.

Read the entire interview after the break.

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INTERVIEW: JIHAE

Jihae (South Korea/NYC) is a singer/songwriter who is as intense as she is charming. Her new album Elvis Is Still Alive was released earlier this month; check out ‘Best Thing’. Indiecision brings you an interview with the songstress who talks about visual landscapes, shrooms and dancing till dawn.

1. Tell us about your new album Elvis Is Still Alive. How different is it from your previous releases?
The new album is different in many ways. First off the album was recorded in an actual studio, Future Sounds in Dumbo (as apposed to a bedroom in Bushwick as I did for the first album). With this recording all the songs were more in the pocket prior to going into the studio. We did two days of basics with the band late July and spent the next two months with overdubs and layers, beats, sound scapes etc. It was quite a magical experience. Everyone involved was so amazingly on the same wave length. Recording everyone together in one room added its special element to the tracks. I had two producers on this record; Jean-Luc Sinclair and Ivan Evangelista. Jean-Luc was in charge of some more atmospheric elements of the tracks and programmed beats and Ivan was dealing with the rest. They have two adjoining studio spaces next to each other so at times I’d literally spend the day going back and forth making decisions on the mixes but most of the time the three of us worked together. Both Ivan and Jean-Luc are the coolest music geeks with impeccable aesthetics. It was a blast and a rewarding experience working with them and the band.

Head downstairs for the full interview.

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INTERVIEW: THE RAGHU DIXIT PROJECT

The Raghu Dixit Project recently completed a mini world tour, travelling to four countries and playing sold out shows to new audiences. I spoke to Gaurav Vaz (bass) about the band’s experiences abroad.

Over the last couple of years The Raghu Dixit Project has become one of India’s premier independent music acts. From the release of their eponymous debut album, to a string of big venue, outdoor shows, the band has fast become one of the freshest properties in the Indian music scene. This success and some hard work by the band’s record label (a Vishal-Shekhar project supported by Counter Culture Records) culminated in a four nation (Hong Kong, Russia, Japan, South Korea) tour organized by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).

I phoned the very amiable Gaurav Vaz.

What were your first feelings when you returned to India?
Well, I didn’t really want to. It was really good fun; this is what a travelling musician really dreams of doing. This is the second time we’ve been on a tour like this, but only the first time abroad. The first time was in the North-East of India when we sat in a tour bus and went, so that was even more hardcore than this.

Take the jump for the full interview.

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