INTERVIEWING SHITDISCO (By Ben Shafran)

Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Joel Stone took the time to tell us about the difficulties the band has been facing trying to release their next single and while on the road.

Hi Joel, what is the band up to the moment?

We’ve just been doing the odd gig over the summer. We just got back from a few gigs in London which were pretty eventful – I got headbutted onstage by one of the sound men.

What happened?

I was trying to get him to turn up the drummer’s monitor up for him and the sound guy had an exception to the way I was phrasing it. So this fucker comes out of nowhere and before I knew it he was fucking laying into me, like headbutting me. I got a bit of a laddering but then the rest of the band jumped in…

We played another gig the same night at 2 in the morning and one of the stage invaders got naked. So it’s been a surreal weekend.

Does that have anything to do with why you didn’t turn up to T In The Park?

No, the T In The Park thing was purely because our van is a piece of shit. We allowed 8 hours for a 6 hour trip [from London to T In The Park] but it took 9 and a half hours to get up the length of the country, it was unbelievable. We all felt really bad about not playing T In The Park.

It’s sort of your home festival…

It would have been great to play the festival gig with the Scottish crowd. That’s not really our audience – in a way, because of our home town it is. But the people who come to our gigs are all wasters and sort of degenerate. So it would have been nice to get some of the mainstream people into it.

Do you think, with the rise in popularity of dance-indie, that you have mainstream potential?

The music does. Obviously we have a name that’s not very radio-friendly. I like to think our culture could go main stream, but I think maybe we’re a bit off the map for that.

So far you’ve only released ‘Disco Blood’/’I Know Kung Fu’. What are the plans for your next release and why has it taken so long?

It’s been a nightmare getting the next release done. Basically, we recorded the next single twice and we still haven’t got a mix that we’re happy with. It’s been really frustrating, just been loads of technical reasons why it’s taken so long. But hopefully we’re gonna get the mix done and start recording the album. Hopefully the single will be mixed this week [week starting July 16th]. It was meant to be out in January and it’s more like fucking August or September.

How are you progressing with writing and recording an album?

Well, there’s fuck all recorded yet but we’re going to be demoing this weekend, we’re going up to a farm outside of Glasgow. But I mean, it’s written. A large bit of it is going to be the live set but there’s also some stuff there that hopefully will take things in a different direction. The album is a bit more expansive and has got a bit more range to it than our average live set, in terms of depth and complexity.

Have you been approached by any high-profile producers who wanted to work on the album?

No, unfortunately not. So if you know any of these producers who want to work with us tell them to get in touch. The record industry in general treats us with a kind of suspicion bordering on fear.

Why do you think that is?

Fuck knows why that is. I think we’re probably seen as something we’re not.

If you could work with any producer, who would you pick?

In a sort of fantasy land? Probably work with [French band] Justice. I don’t think they’ve ever produced a band as such, but at the minute they’re the band we’re all collectively looking at and going “They’re fucking amazing”. They’re doing these amazing songs, just unbelievable production.

Or, of course, if we’re in fantasy land there’s Bobby Orlando as well, the old Pet Shop Boys producer and now born-again Christian I believe. But he’s still the man, it would be amazing working with him.

Time for a fan question: Do you guys really know Kung Fu, or any other martial art for that matter?

[Laughs] Well, I think there will be a video probably on YouTube pretty soon of this fight onstage at the weekend [check it out here: Soundman Attack]. But to answer your question – in the sense of unarmed combat we’re probably not very good. I mean, this guy who came and fought me onstage was a huge fucker; he was way bigger than me. But he did make the mistake of attacking a man with a 4-foot plank of wood in his hand.

So yeah… unarmed combat we wouldn’t be particularly tough. But one thing you learn from living in Glasgow is never to go into combat unarmed. The guitar makes a good weapon.

I bet! Has touring made you into a better band?

It’s ruined my fucking health! Yeah, you get really tight playing those songs but it’s ruined us health wise. You come back off tour and you have to basically have bed-rest for about a week or so. It’s intense as fuck, but it’s also kind of like the more you do it, the more up for it you are.

Do you ever get bored of playing the same songs over and over again?

No, not yet. We haven’t got to get any of the new stuff on the go. But that’s one of the difficulties of touring – finding the time to craft the new stuff into shape. You need time to practice, which we haven’t had recently because we’ve been so busy. But we’ve got quite a lot of new stuff that just turned out in the last couple of months in Glasgow. We’ve been road-testing a few of them and they’ve had good responses.

How does the new material compare to the older songs?

It’s a wee bit more diverse. Different songs pull much more in different directions. I think we’ve been trying to give a bit more feeling to the individual songs and let them go in their directions in order to make the set, and therefore the album as well, a bit more diverse. I think [there’s] a little bit more atmosphere in the newer songs.

Any particular favourites?

I’m really keen on a song called ‘OK’. I don’t know if that will be a single, it might be. ‘Reactor Party’ is always a favourite because it’s really fun when you play it live. It’s got a really big break in the middle, which if the opportunity is right you can go crowd surfing and try to make it back on the stage by the time it kicks back in.

What size crowds do you usually play to?

It totally varies. We’ve played to fucking thousands and thousands of people, and we’ve played to like 20 people in a crap Barfly gig somewhere. They’ve been totally diverse. I mean, they’ve been getting a lot busier these days obviously because we’ve had a lot of press, but in the past we’ve played weird gigs in weird places.

When the band was getting started, did it help that Franz Ferdinand were drawing a lot of attention to the Glasgow scene?

It was weird for us because the band was just starting out when all the A&R people suddenly got a hard-on for Glasgow. We weren’t in a position where we could say to a record company “Here’s our demo, sign us” because we hadn’t recorded anything. We weren’t really trying to be a band in the sense of being signed. It wasn’t something any of us had planned. Honestly, I know a lot of people say that, but in our case it was genuinely true.

We started out in art-music circles. We were all at the art school. It wasn’t a real particularly, it was a floating membership with all sorts of different people in it before we settled on the final four people. We weren’t A&R sort of material. It wasn’t the kind of thing they were looking for because we were just playing railway tunnel parties and warehouse raves, which has always been more important to us than playing some crappy North London gig with loads of industry wankers who just nod their heads over their pints. We’ve always been much more about trying to seek out our people, still going at 9 the next morning.

How excited are you about playing Reading and Leeds?

They should be great. I’m really looking forward to them. I’ve been to Leeds a couple of times when I was younger. Found great amusement in watching the toilets get blown up [laughs]. That was a standout memory for me, it was my first festival actually.

Do you think the Dance Tent is the right place for Shitdisco or did you expect to be on one of the rock stages?

Definitely, I’m really pleased to be in the Dance Tent. It’s kind of the right atmosphere and right sort of vibe about it for what we do. It’s perfect for our music, although we’re not electronic music. The atmosphere there – it’s the nearest thing to one of own parties.

Thanks to Joel for taking the time to be interviewed.
Shitdisco will be playing the Dance Tent at Reading on the Sunday.
All pictures were taken from Shitdisco's official site.