Making a dope return to their roots with their forthcoming “There Were Seven” long player
Jake, Ollie welcome back to DMCWORLD towers. I saw your post from Friday on your way to Hasselt for the The Play festival, how did it go?
JAKE: “It was great. We’ve had a good relationship with Belgium. When we first blew up there we found ourselves sharing a stage with Simple Minds, Wet Wet Wet and Neneh Cherry at an amazing festival called Axiom Beach Rock! It was good to see lots of the new generation of Herbaliser fans at the show on Friday too. Plus DJ Format was there with DJ Cheeba, both did rocking sets.”
Well, how time flies when you are having a ball. It’s incredible to think that ‘There Were Seven’ will be your seventh album. If we’d have told you back in 1993 that 20 years on, you’d have seven long players under your belts, what do you think your reaction would have been?
JAKE: “We’ve always been surprised at how much longevity we’ve had. It was very much a case of being at the right place at the right time when we signed to Ninjatune back then – within a few months the label and artists were getting alot of attention and within 3 or 4 shows our band was really in demand worldwide.”
The London leg of the album tour hits the mighty Soundcrash night at The HMV Forum on Saturday October 27th when you will be joined by Belleruche, DJ Cam and DJ Food. You must love rolling into your home city after a long slog on the road – what are you looking forward to the most at another huge Soundcrash event?
JAKE: “Rob always puts on a good show, with really strong line ups. It’ll be interesting to see how many people come as we’ve been away for a long while due to Jake’s illness, it’s been over 4 years since our last record came out, so we’re hoping not too many people have forgotten about what a good band we are live.”
So let’s talk about the album 15 slabs of super heavy audio. How long were you working on it?
JAKE: “About 18 months in all. It was finished in February, but as we are releasing it on our own label, Department H, we wanted to make sure we had distribution and promotion in place. It came out today and was at number 18 in the iTunes Electronic chart when we last looked, so we’re pretty pleased!”
The album features some great collabs, let’s kick off with ‘A Sad State of Affairs’ with north London wordsmith George The Poet, a dude that basically is known for his politically conscious and humorous social commentary. When did you first hear about this dude and why did you want him on the album…
JAKE: “We’d almost finished writing the album when we realised that we didn’t have a UK vocalist (we did have UK based Hannah Clive singing on ‘The Lost Boy’, but we also like to have a UK emcee too). One of our mates, Jonny Cuba from Dynamic Syncopation and Soundsci mentioned his friend Rob Ryan, a video director who was working with George. We checked out his stuff on You Tube and asked if he’d like to collaborate with us. When he came to my studio we were expecting him to do his spoken word, but he rapped the first two verses and did his spoken word on the 3rd verse, which is quite different. He’s incredibly talented and is definitely going places.”
As you mentioned, ‘The Lost Boy’ features the stunning vocals of miss Hannah Clive, a lovely singer along the lines of Carole King or Adele even. I love the fact she used to live on a boat, that always show a free spirit. What was it like working with her…?
JAKE : “Hannah has been a close friend of my younger brother for over 20 years. I heard some of her recent recordings and heard what a good songwriter and singer she was so figured it’d be good to get her involved with a Herbaliser track. We’re hoping to do an E.P. with her after the album campaign has died down.”
You’ve enlisted the help of two cool Stateside MCs in Twin Peakes and Teenburger. We are loving the chorus on ‘Zero Hill’ and the old-skool vibe of ‘March of The Dead Things’. Talk us through these two tracks and collaborators…
JAKE : “Ollie met Ghettosox in Halifax, Nova Scotia a few years ago on a DJ trip. He was clearly a great emcee, so Ollie exchanged details and we made plans to work with him. Sox is involved in a few projects in Canada – Teenburger with Toronto based emcee Timbuktu and also Twin Peakes with producer/emcee Muneshine. ‘March of The Dead Things’ was a piece of music we did when we got access to a vault of 70’s library music and given free reign to remix/sample it. It seemed too good to just leave as an instrumental so we passed it to Ghettosox and he and Timbuktu rhymed on it. We shot a vi
deo for it too, which will be released on Halloween, it’s a zombie themed video and it’s excellent!”
Aside from the vocalists on board, the instrumentals are in full force, loving the flute funk of ‘Take ‘Em On’ – what are some of your favourite tracks on the album?
JAKE : “Definitely ‘Take ‘Em On’ is a favourite- it’s sounding great played live. Also ‘Welcome to Extravagance’ as it’s a first for us to do something with a reggae influence and I think we pulled it off. ‘Mother Dove’ came out well too – a mix of electronic sounds and analog that seems to work as well.”
How long have you been sitting on the name for this album?!
OLLIE : “Since the previous lp really, I think. Or it may have been when we were doing session 2. I know we were working on some kind of artwork, so I know we would have been gearing up to release something. I was thinking how much we like albums that are number based and realised that our next one would be number seven. Then I thought ‘oh and there’s seven of us, that’s good’. Then started thinking about a whole load of stuff like, 7 samurai, magnificent 7, 7 golden vampires etc and thought it would be good to portray ourselves in such a fashion.”
What crowd from around the world always give you the best reception, Canada was always a big one for you…
OLLIE : “Canada is probably our favourite place to play or maybe The Reunion Islands, although we’ve only ever been there once (it’s paradise). We really love France because that’s where we have the most dedicated following so the gigs are always crazy.”
What are each other’s most annoying habits on tour?
JAKE: “We’re all really horrible to each other. As it’s the same bunch of musicians since we started, we all know each other’s soft spots and no mercy is shown.”
http://theherbaliser.tumblr.com/
Soundcrash presents an evening featuring two of London’s finest acts: Launching their seventh studio album will be our all-time favourite funky, forward thinking, experimental hip hop collective The Herbaliser making a return to their roots with their forthcoming self-released LP “There Were Seven”. Joining them in the midst of their “Rollerchain” world-wide tour will be our favourite turntable Soul trio Belleruche! On Dj duties we are very excited to have over from Paris for an ultra-rare London appearance the seminal Hip Hop producer DJ CAM plus Ninja Tune stalwart DJ Food playing a live audiovisual show. This will be a glorious celebration of some of the most creative and influential acts that have helped shape the sounds of today.
Line-up:
• The Herbaliser (live)
• Belleruche (live)
• DJ Cam
• DJ Food (Live AV Set)
• Soundcrash DJs
8pm-2am at The Forum
Tickets: £17.50 General Admission, £19.50 Late Buyers, more on the door
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