Fixers, Interview

We caught up with Jack Goldstein vocalist from hotly tipped psych-poppers Fixers for a chat about their new EP 'Imperial Goddess of Mercy' and what their plans are in 2012.

What's happening in the world of Fixers at the moment?
We just got back from Amsterdam! It was one of my personal favourites, the venue (The Paradiso) is incredible and everyone was so friendly. We got off stage just after midnight and went to this small whiskey bar, it must have had well over five hundred malt whiskeys stocked. The bartender showed us a bottle of malt which cost a thousand pounds. We sat on the street and hung out, I recall accidentally kicking Azealia Banks backstage in an attempt to talk to her - as soon as I had kicked her I figured it was probably best to stay clear and shrugged it off and walked away.


You're being tipped by many as 'ones to watch in 2011' for those yet to discover your music, what's the best way to describe your style?
Like Transcendental Meditation, stiff joints trying to dance and Kate Bush's relationship with Donald Sutherland.


And further more... how would you actually like people to describe your band?
Like Transcendental Meditation, stiff joints trying to dance and Kate Bush's relationship with Donald Sutherland.


When you first put Fixers together, which bands did you want to model yourself on, and now you've grown and developed as a band, do you feel that those similarities are still contained within your music?
When we first began we were attempting to emulate Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound, we had loads of samplers filled with different instruments so we could make a big sound with just the five of us, we didn't use many cymbals and just had large washy reverberated snare drums. I think those elements are still within us but we have embraced the instrumentation and developed upon the sounds we can put on our samplers - we all love dance music and listen to lots of weird psych stuff so it's great to be able to introduced some weirder sounds into our set as a result of that.


I hear you're a big reader, lyrically do you draw inspiration from your latest favourite book?
Not in a direct sense, most of our songs are either open to subjective interpretation or about real life.

I sometimes come across certain words within books which linger and can often make it into songs.


What's the best book you've read in 2011?
Mmm, i'm not sure. I have read more non-fiction this year than ever and quite a lot of poetry too.

I just got What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, I found it in a charity shop and I am just about to start it.


You're set to embark on a UK tour, other than your home city where do you really enjoy visiting/playing?
Well, we just did our home show and it felt hard. We choose to do it in a museum, the venue was beautiful but it was hard to engage with the audience because of a rather large pillar obstructing the way. We have got so much more equipment on this tour that sometimes the stage is so crammed it is hard to be able to let yourself relax, get into the music and really dance the way you want too. Having that restriction gives a show a sense of unnerving, after every song you think to yourself that the next one will be the one when you finally relax and feel like going crazy in a fun way.

All of our European shows so far have been incredible. Hamburg, Paris and Amsterdam all have amazing crowds, were cool venues and had this sense of musical intensity that bubbled around the room - we played in bournemouth and it went off like that too, we were nose to nose with the audience and it felt like one big house party!


Other than Fixers, name a band you think are good and will do well in 2011?
Youth Lagoon and Niki & The Dove.


When you need cheering up what record will do it for you every time?
At the moment when I require a bit of assertion and encouragement I usually listen to what I would consider quite emotive and beautifully innocent records like Pet Sounds, SMiLE, the recent Youth Lagoon record and Pavement.

I feel like I'm in musical limbo, I don't know quite what I am creating music for at the moment so I listen to these records and remind myself that I don't need to create music FOR anything and that it is important to remember that forever.


After the tour, what's next?
I tried to start writing some songs and then stopped. Then started again and then stopped. Nothing is driving me crazy in terms of popular music right now and most of my listening is spent on either Hip Hop or Classical music - I have been thinking about our album, as it stands though. It's got a naive, innocent quality that I have realised is, in part, rectory to my history of being in a punk band previous to Fixers.

It got me thinking about how some of the most emotive music/records of all time are reactions by the artist to their previous body of work and how this is a level of musical perception I hadn't really considered.

It's not that I think it's, in whole a bad thing but I would love to make music which feels ambivalent in a completely forbidding and unsettling way, still emotively powerful but without such a linear perception.

I guess it's nothing new but it's taken me a little while to click with it and now I feel very creative, it's just antagonising to know people won't hear the music we make now for a while!


As well as some dates in November and December, Fixers will be on tour throughout February 2011 with Kaiser Chiefs.

November:
23 | Sheffield Forum
25 | Brighton Green Door Store
26 | Tunbridge Wells Forum

December:
01 | St Albans The Horn
03 | Sunderland Independent
05 | Coventry Kasbah