In The Company Of... The Whip

Stabbing electro basslines met trashy guitars in the mid 2000s, they dated for a while and then cemented their beautiful reunion, and consequently their lovechild, The Whip, was born. Hailing from Manchester and bringing together fans from opposing dance, pop and indie worlds, the quartet went on to wow everyone with their debut album release ‘X Marks Destination’ in 2008 . Two years on and now wrapping up their second album, the band are headlining Chibuku’s Birthday takeover of Room One on Friday March 11th. We caught up with front man Bruce to find out about their forthcoming show which, in his own words, will be guaranteed “energy, bass and sweat flying around the place.” You've been described as both Dance Rockers and a Computer Pop group, but how would you describe your sound? It's always funny to see how people describe our music cos it sits in the middle of a lot of places as we basically love a lot of different types of music. When we DJ we play electronic house and some disco stuff but love a classic pop song and live instruments are what make us what we are too. We make dance music that has a heartbeat to it in my book. I used to be in a band that got described in an interview as "council estate skag sheek." Pretty far from the mark as I always paid the rent and snubbed the brown vibes but I guess that suggested time for a change. Having said that some Italian dude called The Whip "afro synth." That's just confusing, we use heavy product and hats to flatten our hair?! After a manic tour schedule in 2008 and 2009 where you practically travelled the world, you took a break last year to work on the follow up to debut album ‘X Marks Destination,’ how did that go? Yeah, a lot of it was written between dates touring the first album, on days off we would record demo's or use hotel rooms sometimes, but last year it was great to find the right producer to work with and work together as a band to make everything as good as possible and step the demos up a level. We recorded it with Jagz Kooner in his Echoplex studio in London and spent pretty much all of last year getting it right. We worked together on getting all the songs as strong as possible and just going over everything with a fine tooth comb to get it better. With a few songs Jagz took parts that were already there and remixed them, giving things a new rhythm from his delays and really stepped things up with his production, which was class. Everyone really pushed themselves to squeeze everything in to it so we can't wait to get it out. Can you tell us more about what we can expect from the forthcoming LP? It's got a nice throb and a pulse to it from start to finish, the songs are a lot stronger, a lot more times been spent on production and lyrics which has helped. There’s still guitars and bass but the drums and synths sound better than before, we're really happy with the drum sound. It sounds more like when we play live now than the 1st record did. There are a couple songs that we have been playing live for a while that are on there that have been going down really well. With a sound obviously influenced by a variety of different genres and scenes such as alternative Brit pop of the 80s and Hacienda-like acid bleeps, what were you listening to whilst making the album? We referenced quite a lot of stuff, sometimes it's good to play stuff loud through the monitors to everyone to get in the right mood and see what you have to aim for. Jagz played us a fair few old school beauties, ‘Hardfloor – Acperience’ being one of them. With Jagz being part of the extended Scream family it was a super exciting time for him while we were in the studio as Primal Scream played Screamadelica anniversary shows at Olympia - I’m a massive fan of the album too so a bit of that rubbed off. I listened to 70's Bowie stuff too and a couple of really good books about making albums from the 33 1/3 series, one of them Bowie’s – ‘Low’ and the other ‘Loveless’ by My Bloody Valentine which is one of my favourite albums. We listened to The Twelves remix of Two Door Cinema Club a lot as a drum reference. The 12's mixes sound great, Kris Menace too and some Alex Metric things. Anything we downloaded for DJ sets got a listen too, whenever it came out... Siriusmo, Para One, Azari & iii, loads of good stuff. To be honest we worked really hard but always found time to have a little party and play back and a mini rave with a couple mates along the way, that madness kept us sane. It was nice to listen to Caribou on the way home in the middle of the night too. We recorded the live instruments and did mixing through Kraftwerks old desk with Mark Ralph which defo brushed proceedings with a little German robot magic. You released ‘RemiX Marks Destination’ featuring remixes of your tracks on the first album by artists such as Van She, Crookers and Hadouken, is there already talk about doing a similar project with your second album? I love remixes of our tunes, it's so exciting to hear people take things to a different place or expose something that's in the original mix but is buried by everything else. I'd defo like to put the best of them together again with this album. Your headlining Chibuku in Room 1 on Friday March 11th with a live show, what can we expect from your gig? Fresh meat a plenty. It's literally the 1st time that we are playing most of the set; no one has heard the songs before so it's an exciting night for us and hopefully those who are there. There will be lots of energy and bass and sweat flying around the place. Room One is one of the best places to play, the vibrating dancefloor has made nights for me in the past. The main Chibuku Shake Shake room in Liverpool is special too and we're really happy that they have asked us to play. The Mixhell guys are great too and it'll be great to see them. What are your plans for 2011, we're guessing as with previous years, your Summer already looks packed with festivals? We're ready to release the album and do it all over again, we're waiting on a release date and then we'll be out there. The nearest summer stop to London is Hyde Park with the Chem’s which should be a nice day out. I can't describe just how much we want to get this album out now!