Ash

0:00uh... and i want to talk with the zombie christmas record coming up so what so what's the deal with that with one of them or you know i made it maybe i'll be last year with them in the emily great uh... yeah so but this is the best thing i would get in the show on final so we made like it fresh video for it don't be christmas uh... you know made it like it about a month ago in in mondon and the answer people on the market really proud of that record it really found up among the good christmas records in the but he did yeah i watched the video this afternoon i like i like i like the zombie aspect how why did why did you decide to throw zombies into christmas how did that collaboration come together but a couple of songs

0:48um... new chris was built like no day and uh... i like that and was parents place you know we're kind of like that's what they're we can't do anywhere so it just started writing songs and briefly started brainstorming and trying to think of so many trying to freshen up the whole christmas thing and you know what are the ideas on the christmas which was like stupid national of two things uh... i i i i guess you can put it on the fire and i think he had these days absolutely yeah it was time it was time it happened i like it you got a lot of stuff on the go i mean i you just toured you have the zombie thing going a new covers e-p came out this summer so why don't we uh... why don't we start with the people yes or go ahead of the film context as well and in the meantime as well

1:36oh no i didn't know about that okay let's go there then what do you film soundtracks what do you what do you do and are you are you playing as a music music or like composed yes because the book yeah it's like actually the last one i did was film spike island which is going to come out in spring it's like uh... set around like the road the show in like island in nineteen ninety six-second you're coming of age period uh... uh... yeah it's pretty sweetened a couple of times and it's not like songs for bands but well but you know it main part of it was missing all that the incident will like score music that's interesting yeah it was really funny at this time i guess what the let me go to the composing stuff too but writing stuff further bands that you written as a songwriter have you written stuff for other people before

2:21not really know it was and it was pretty cool i'd try to get into that mindset of you know i think that early nineteen much of the band you know one of the one of the band was very much uh... obviously true rich there are over this trying to be the roses and i feel like happening in the first album and and then the other band is made it more like charlotte's kind of vibe yeah i think i really quite enjoyed like the writing to brief and you know writing to divide because i enjoyed the acting of a band style and seeing what makes me think do you write differently knowing that it's someone else goodness is going to sing a song i'm not really it's a really not still like i always have my way of writing all these in the um... yeah i don't know i don't know how to change it um

3:08try to think but uh... i guess the instrumentation you know it's i was trying to think of the little tricks they were always fluent but that was a few years round of time but pretty good maybe certain notes that you know which and given the magic of the accent mmm yeah i think it's really a few extra rhythm and does that does that music i assume typically starts on a guitar i assume most of your songs are going to try to know how you write you write on guitar pia no other songs are you mostly guitar but yeah i don't have to use it but much more of the keyboard so yeah a lot of the like more recent action materials yeah it sounds more electronic for sure and then the christmas record like yeah i guess maybe half of the songs are really bored as well but yeah i can mix it up the production panel is my first instrument

3:55okay so you can't come from the linear background and knowledge in the theory yeah uh... what about so sorry go ahead oh yeah i know you know just agree okay and what about songwriting for you do you need to be alone do you need to be like you have a place that you go to write or are you someone that can write pretty much anywhere no i definitely need like a bit of space and quiet you know writing on tour is really hard for me um... yeah i i don't know you need to sort of be in your comfort zone i think so now yeah i tend to write it home or it's you know actually in what in the parents place is actually a really good place for life it's you know sometimes go back and retreat there for a few weeks and get some stuff done always even heard like we read actually like going to his parents place you imagine you writing heroin

4:43i was like like making dinner that's great just going but you know yeah i i i feel like yeah i certainly have been having this big quiet really did i i guess you've been in new york for a few years now right yeah seven years now yeah seven okay so that's a long time i i don't know if this question is really appropriate anymore then but uh... did did moving their change did you need something fresh in terms of i don't know if it was a life choice to move there was that something as a writer or as a musician you needed to be somewhere else uh it's like when i when i visit here it would always like leave full of ideas so i think i think it's um and i think i get up with i'm here you know now i'm living here

5:29if you switch in this buying place the people who've been trading people that you need it just are amazing you know it's just a check it's great people yeah i don't know i i i sort of i get a lot from the energy of the place and people here so it's like yeah it's like nothing to work in here um so good yeah i think i i feel like that's an i think i might be like the nature and like because i really come from like the middle of nowhere in old knoll and like the country side um so like you know that that can work for me too but it's um it's a big concept is that what you got into music because it wasn't much to do is that what you picked up i guess a piano for the first time yeah yeah i think it was um yeah it's well

6:17it's not a lot of fans but yeah it seemed like a root the the rest of the world i think that because it is a bit of a backwater and especially with i guess all the stuff that i'm politically going on to go enough it was even more and it cut off a lot of ways you know like a lot of bands wouldn't come there to occur so um yeah so it definitely seemed like a great escape that's interesting you mentioned the political situation i didn't know if we go there or not but did it did it affect you did you did you see things happening did you see bombings like what was that like i'm never spoken anyone that's lived through yeah well i get yeah i thought you know there was always constant bomb scares the army was around all the time there's always that like getting road checked um there's like bomb scares so i felt police was shot shot in Belfast

7:05when i was going police health and when i was a kid i kind of think i'd yeah and uh because my dad he worked for the government so we used to have to look under car bombs every day wow yeah that's kind of thing i guess but near kid you just get on it and think it's um you know you almost think it's it's something normal or normality and you know it's i don't think i was particularly traumatized by it but it just it seemed like that was like normal life no but with that but that might lead you to the the music you make the music at least the earlier ash records are more of that i don't want to say punk rock sound but they have that that angst to them that that urgency yeah i wonder if the political climate did

7:51that yeah and mature yet i was you know wonder you know it was you know it was a vibe that was rounded time you know people who were listening to like that kind of music that was i was a teenager so i don't i don't know if i i don't know if i can feel the attributes of these troubles at all you know right you know like you know a lot of teenagers are drawn to like punk rock and and like impressive noise there's yeah i don't know but it was having said it there was like a very healthy punk scene in Belfast the the straps and the correlations so are you headed there a little bit oh yeah i was just saying you know that that there had been a very healthy punk scene in Belfast you know in the late 70s so it just you know there might be a correlation but i'm

8:39not sure right yeah i've heard on that yeah um talking about the past i guess let's go to the covers record just because there are a couple of old tunes on there's hello goodbye do you want to date beatles beach movies so where do these songs come from how did you how do you curate the covers record are these songs you grew up with that you loved or are these just songs you felt like playing there's sometimes yeah i guess they're all like smart those those love and um i guess you know a lot of them are quite pop you know pop songs really that we've you know we've it's something that we quite like to be when we're really kicking off the session we like to you know like do a cover just sort of gather out sort of heads back into the studio and sometimes it's it's like the real mixtrine to your song and

9:26you want to unlock it by and that the kind of that's way it's the end of it they'll cover of it see what makes it you know dissect it a bit and try to recreate it there that's kind of what the truth is for in the covers where we sort of accumulated enough that it felt like it felt like it was a good time to sort of compile them and recording them and and you said dissecting them and doing all that i know when i play songs at least covers um yeah usually when you when you're writing i don't know a couple hours later if you're sitting around with a guitar you might gravitate to a melody that's somewhat similar or something didn't it right after doing all these covers did you tend to realize that i'm kind of writing songs like these songs that i discovered i wonder if you love on me the the other song um

10:15that that was around the time where you know having a sort of on her stuff and um yeah you know i was loving all the crazy like i've had videos and that's uh trying to figure that out and yeah i definitely did do creeping stuff like on like binary first yeah oh cool i like that and what about seeing it but that's one of it's got like it's almost got like got some back five you know your answer back in back five's going on three three hours long ago which was you know it's very cool that they added that like this good yeah they well i was gonna say they don't get enough credit but they certainly do get enough credit but they're underrated in in the sense that their musical abilities are amazing yeah i think that they were like just sort of like successful artists sometimes people then

11:01yeah so they take them serious as artists but they definitely got your clever band now i was reading your twitter and you saw dinus for jr the other night with johnnie mar who ended up showing up on the show so watching a band like that and watching these guys that have been doing it forever and seeing a guy like johnnie mar come up and just i guess just riff it everywhere how does that yeah and you just came off tour so how does it make you does it make you want to go right back on the road or does it make you want to be like this is something i got to strive towards wow i love it again i really think they joined up because of it was you know it's the time to junior you know do like one of the fans i was like really listening to you right in the beginning of you know when we started ash and in fact like with johnnie we did the song the wagon which is like

11:47attractively covered as a band like the very first rehearsal we did together it's really sweet to be that and you know i guess i i love like shredding so as you know i've always like slotted them into our stuff although like sometimes i'm open to sit like kind of cool in the indie world and you know we have people who have done it but like whatever reason i guess it's like people like jane arse has made it kind of cool you know yeah i mean it's just phenomenal yeah it's pretty amazing shows like two and a half hours never cut fells for a second do you watch those shows like that and think this is how i should do it or i should change our our live show i don't even know where questions going our live show to kind of yeah you know um not really it's also yeah well one thing i did pick up one

12:35was i think it um you know maybe i should extend some of these so is the best yeah he really you know he really will sort of arm and just like improvise for like a few minutes and at least it's really really cool that's yeah yeah i mean it didn't have good writing to the show you know like it's even the moment we're like new bar that's a couple songs on the ukulele and um something else i picked up you know just like coming out diversity like almost such a complete change in the set for like even just five minutes can i don't know it's pressure things up but you know the point in the set it's cool yeah i changed things up for the audience too i'm sure i'm sure you noticed that yeah yeah um just got off the road what's what's the plans for next year besides maybe finally releasing the slasher

13:21film that i've been hearing so much about oh yeah yeah i get uh do we have the main thing is just gonna be get back in studio and start writing i'm working on the new ash stuff really nice now yeah so yeah and i i can see us returning maybe just making sure guitar record you know no that's no cue much possibly okay i know i've built a village really speak collection nevertheless for years i think it i think it might be time just to you know just to really go back to the roots um but because you know you know it's you know it's where we'll end up really start with one idea and end up somewhere completely different you have to let the songs kind of take take you where they want to go well absolutely and and what about in terms of release strategy do you do you do you let that just come as as it as it comes or are you gonna stick to that yeah

14:09we don't want to do albums anymore we're just going to put out songs that's a really no idea i think yeah we'll see this how it starts that's merging i guess um you know see to me you know see the two-be-single vp's or you know whatever um you know it's pretty cool like last time we tried out this whole like subscription service model you're putting at 26 singles in the year and i was like really rewarding and cool for the fans it could be something to build on next time yeah i think you were a little ahead of the curve uh when you did the first time yeah yeah i think it was yeah it took people a little while to get heads on it but you know people who were long for the ride sort of a thing like it was it was pretty it was really nice bond through that whole time with like you know we were creating

14:56you know knowing that there's like i said a hungry audience like you're waiting for the next track like two weeks later yeah it was it's a good way to work it's like good creative with you yeah absolutely so you were writing it as as you were you were creating the record as things were being released it wasn't all just like yeah make the record and then put them out afterwards we did have a lot quite a lot prepared at once because it was so much but yeah we still we still did record a lot of it as it was happening and you know we were sequencing that as we we go on you know sometimes we're like okay this oh i know what needs to come out now this song from like a year ago or or sometimes we're like you know something completely fresh it's sort of dependent because we were trying to sort of fight people every couple of weeks and so that's why we we were changing

15:43smiles so much it was pretty fun and when you go back in for this this new record um will Charlotte be there because i know she played a few shows last year um yeah she she played with us yeah last autumn we did work shows but i don't that was just the one off you know you know just it was just a lot um she's really like she's immersed in this new project of her is cool now it's overturned yl vr and uh yeah she she's she's really a tat i started playing like London like she was opening for back for last year for about a month ago and yeah she's like i know you can tell she's banging into it and she's loving it so i can't really disturb that no fair enough that's cool and what the but before i let you go there's this i want to talk about the

16:30slasher film i want to know more about this thing so the so you guys directed a movie like 10 years ago yeah we yeah we made it onto we're we're onto like opening for people like co-play and either co-play mobi and a dashboard confessionally we kind of did like a year of almost non-stop opening slots in the states and uh you know cuz we you know we'd be finishing early in this set that's for short we'd sort of have a lot of time on our hands with one of our ideas goes to like make the slasher film so we're sort of riding it as we went along and we've roped in people at kismartan and state girl you know county ills and old playboys had quite big roles in the whole thing yeah we just never really got around this finishing up like everyone got killed except for me and

17:16my death was meant to be like the end of it but we never filmed unfortunately it's just i don't think it's something can actually ever finish but um we've got a little teasers for it uh like we made a little video for a track called binary and you can sort of get an idea of what what was going on and then actually this year we had a 20th anniversary show and we we like uh protect the screen and we're like showed you like the audience you know most of the film that exists you know what actually is there and like do you people really enjoyed it but i don't think it could ever get properly released because a complete film doesn't exist you know the people the people want it what the people want it obviously i mean if you see it right there yeah i think the mystique is kind of you know

18:06helps it you know it's kind of because it's almost better than what it is but yeah at this point yeah the myth has grown up so big that you can't possibly live up to it i know what you're saying yeah that's exactly what it is yeah what was uh what was opening for david boe like did you talk to him did you meet him is he what what was that yeah we met him a couple times um he was so fucking cool i think at one point unitary was being then going into a meet or in maybe a record and like bang a couple of our records and i even you check on site like aside of stage a couple times and but one of the yeah so the c-the-seam and david boe you know the guy who's like trying to give up figure-round you know the guy who is like

18:52um kind of you know trying to promote his new album but like you know trying to look like the weight of all he had done you know trying to you know trying to fight to get his current work seen amongst you know such a substantial body of work you know because you know you feel like just talking to me a little bit about that you know trying to get him later and you know it just made me feel cool like you know here's another guy you know trying to make it as a musician even though he's like one of the greatest full-time you know it's still moderate to him so it was it was very cool to be yeah it's nice to hear i'm glad that even at that level you're still you still want you still want more i guess

19:37yeah yeah absolutely i you know if you play as a skimp drive every every project you pick on if i see someone like him then so we do something before let's do we do something called five questions five quick questions one word answers okay rotors okay rotors studio lennener mccartney um mccartney when you hear a song what usually hits you first lyrics melody or rhythm song you've written you're most proud of shining light and in one word ash oh that's a good one i like that yeah awesome thank you so much tim i don't want to take

20:23it any more your time but it was great chatting with you great fun to see i enjoyed the