ireallylovemusic vs james banbury (infantjoy)
infantjoy is james banbury and paul morley playing with their love for erik
satie and modern studio production. the album
was a lovely downtempo affair released last year. this year the band are to
appear at the big chill, while james (one of the most credited cellists
according to his listing at allmusic !) goes about moving into production as he
puts the finishing touches to the forthcoming solo album by sarah nixey. amongst
all this activity, ireallylovemusic got to set a few questions to james
about the path to pop music, record labels and beyond.
so, from classically trained cellist to electro pop producer. are you still involved in the world of classics, do they miss you in the budapest film orchestra – or have they come to terms with the loss of your skills?
Well, after living in Eastern Europe for a few years, I fancied a bit of old blighty… I’m sure they do miss me though, and I occasionally fiddle in the area of classical music that the Daily Mail might think is classical music….
when did the whole ‘programming’ aspect of your skills become your real passion?
When I was a kid I was early adopter of home computing – I had an Acorn Atom, and used to save my pocket money to buy 1/2 k memory chips from Lasky’s.
When I got a BBC (model b) I managed to program it to play The Model by kraftwerk (only the verse though…)
so apart from helping out indie fave goya dress and black box recorder, was your involvement with natalie imbruglia your first real crossover record?
I hadn’t really thought about it in that way, but I suppose it was.
did this light the fireworks as to a new way forward ?
I’d been doing my own pop thing with a band called Trifecta (unreleased) so the Natalie Imbruglia tracks fitted right into what I was doing in private anyway…
having been the provider of cello parts on many albums, how did it feel getting involved more with the world of computers?
My first move into ‘pop’ was while I was still at college in a band called framed… we didn’t have a drummer so I used to program the drum parts with an alesis mmt8 and roland d10… then I’d play electric cello along to it – with a French singer called Fred Andre, and a keyboard player called Mark Lodge (who now plays piano for Infantjoy live.) We’re talking 1989 here…
what was the appeal – surely the attraction of all that screen interaction as opposed to using real human touchy feely skills was alien to your training, or, was it good to get more control over the sonic results?
I always dreamt of having a multitrack recording studio from the time I saw mike oldfield on blue peter… so sequencing was perfect for me, and relatively cheap.
were you aware that these rapidly evolving studio gadgets were a new way to pay bills and progress your career within the industry, or, were you secretly a tangerine dream fan all along?
Rapidly evolving studio gadgets are a way spend money… no secret that I liked TD, but I was more of a Kraftwerk fan (man machine and computer world) and of course the human league (1st 3 albums mostly.)
after all, having come from sheffied – were you involved, or aware of the whole sheffield electro scene at all ?
see above…(!) only involved as a consumer/influence soaker – heaven 17 (penthouse and pavement) etc and then later the warp releases – but by that time I was already in London.
have you ever visited the ireallylovemusic holy grail – richard h. kirks western works studios in your travels – and if so – tell us what its like?
Fraid not…
a little net digging reveals that as well as the well documented association with luke haines and his black box recorder set up, you also
helped out tricky. how was that – an easy day in the office ? or, were a lot of these pre-infantjoy jobs, merely that, a job, for which you turn up and do your button pressing with little in the way of any input?
I was part of The Auteurs for about 7 years – we used to rehearse all the time in the run up to recording an album – Luke would turn up with a roughly hewn song and the four of us (with Barny C Rockford on drums and Alice Readman on bass) used to jam through them throwing up ideas until it all worked. We’d only need to record for a couple of weeks (as with After Murder Park) because everyone knew exactly what to do. As a person to work with Luke veered between a truculent child and a witty charmer…
Tricky was a very interesting week recording his live band at Sarm West – I was having extreme problems with the hired ProTools rig (it would take 30 seconds to drop into record) so I’d continually second guess the producer… It was intense.
which of the albums that you helped out prior to bbr and infantjoy would you say you were most pleased with ?
[I wasn’t in BBR an had little to do with their records – just played keys for them live a few times]
The Auteurs - After Murder Park; ArtOfNoise - Reduction
what lessons did you learn on this evolving journey ?
How to stick up for myself. How to work with great people.
did you learn to turn your skills to any software available, or, are you mainly involved with one particular variety of studio software ?
geek list: protools, ableton live, reaktor, plogue bidule.
or, are you a hand on old school analogue equipment kind of guy ?
no, just have a juno106 in that department I’m afraid… saving up for an EMS synthi. (I have a nord lead of course, like everyone else I know…)
so, how did longer term the involvement with luke become a mainstay in your world, your relationship with luke appears to go all the way back. i guess you hit it off from the start ?
[see above for LH response]
and from this relationship came the association with sarah nixey whose new solo material you have produced, but before this, there was the connection with paul morley established and the concept of
infantjoy. tell us more on just how this all came together. after all, when i first read/heard about the partnership, i couldn’t see how your 2 worlds collided, i mean, did paul contact you due to your work with holly valance i wonder?
Meeting Paul was luck/chance – he needed a protools guy to help flesh out some ideas for an ArtofNoise track from the Seduction of Claude Debussy album, and they’d run out of in-house programmers at Sarm. My manager got a call and I pitched up with my 8 track (project) protools rig and started digging into the multi multi multi tracks of the AON album…
then from this you decided to join and form a art-electronica outfit that referenced erik satie and make the uncool music that is downtempo electronica when the rest of the world are grabbing for the hard-n-fast grime styled groove. where did the idea spring from to establish such a different style of music in 2005?
Well, we began experimenting with the idea of being in a group, going through various guises and styles, until, just on a whim we had a go at Satie… and ping it seemed to click – not only with us, but others too. And fast is much harder
(ie more difficult) than slow…
and, just how did you come to the attention of sony records and persuade them to release the album?
We initially licensed the idea to a guy (Chris Craker) who was head of classics at Sanctuary – he’d set up his own independent label called Quartz. After a while he ended up at sony bmg as head of classics, and licensed our album through to them… rather through the side entrance…
for all the talk of pauls involvement, it must be said that i reckon his time in the studio was a mere percentage of yours. why are his minimal vocal additions processed and distorted, making his use of words (surely his primary skill), basically redundant. a strange way considering that he is half of the partnership? or am i missing an implied irony here?
There was a slightly sub-conscious un-written rule with infantjoy that we would only work on the record when we were both in the room. So studio time I’d say was equal (apart from obvious housekeeping tasks – backups, bounces…) I love Paul’s voice on ‘Someone was saying’ – you get the timbre and tone of Paul, like a ghostly presence, without being too naratively specific… The classic AON tracks didn’t have Paul talking all over them, but he’s undoubtably there.
obviously, from the album, many reviews focused on the appearance of sarah on the cover of ghosts as a highlight. who chose the track to cover, and why?
Paul suggested a cover of Night Porter by Japan, but I felt it was already too Satie-like – and Ghosts was a big influence on me musically when it came out.
did this collaboration spark the idea of a full album, or were there already plans in motion and this was a teaser to check on the reaction?
Ghost was recorded exactly in the middle of the album making session. We started with
departure and ended with arrival – recording and mixing in the album running order.
the infantjoy album i guess also promoted your own involvement from arranger/cellist/programmer to full on creator, producer etc. were you nervous of such responsibilities, or, did you feel enough is enough, time to take control of the final results?
Ha – I’d done this before, but just not as successfully! Ahem…
do you like the position of being boss ?
I like being co-boss.
what were your expectations for the album?
i have seen photos of the live setup, you obviously tried to put a new slant on the whole “bloke with laptop” type of performance?
In our fully expanded luxury line-up we have (plus me and paul) Mark Lodge on piano, Ali Friend on bass and Tim Weller on drums. We run a fluid almost improvisatory set with me running ableton ‘live’. And of course we have a great front-man… (unlike most laptop noodlers….)
obviously, though, something didn’t work out quite as expected as you have now created your own record label, service av, to release your records via. did sony not work/appreciate/promote the album in the way you expected?
We were in the wrong part of SonyBMG…
so, what are the plans for the infantjoy project, there is the lovely remix of the The Collector (sarah’s first single), on sarah nixey’s new single. will there be a second infantjoy album?
First: by the end of September there’ll be a mini-album containing remixes by tunng, isan, populous and more… plus some new tracks. Then we’ll re-launch ‘Where the Night Goes’ on our label, then a new album early 2007. (We’ve started forming ides for this already…)
will paul still be involved, or will the name infantjoy become synonymous with a james banbury production basically ?
infantjoy is paul morley and james Banbury.
what can we expect from the sarah nixey album then, lots of electro-pop, or is the album going to dip into all manner of genres to showcase her range of vocal skills, and draw from your vast studio and band based experience, a little indie here, some dance pop there, and a showtune to finish it all off with?
More the latter really – it’s pretty much all electronic but with a range of tempos/moods. We’re going to be getting it ready in September/October for a January 2007 release.
will it be coming out on service av?
That is the plan!
the service av set up seems to be rather obtuse in a classic ztt manner, where little is answered and described in a straightforward manner, but with its eye definitely on the world of the internet, with exclusives being released purely for the ipod generation.
do you never think that all that effort you put into the production and sound of a track, is ever represented properly in a skinny lo-grade mp3? or, are you a big fan of the digital media?
Mp3s are the medium wave radio of today - if it sounds good on mp3 you’ve done a good job… I’m more annoyed by DRM than mp3 – which can sound great at high bit-rate.
what of the future for the record label – what are the plans/hopes and aspirations. new artists, proper chart success ? or is it more esoteric than being based purely on sales ?
I’d like to build on success (hopefully…) It’s presently an artist funded DIY label, but it’s setup to deal with inward investment and collaborative deals with others…
and a typically nerd based question to finish off, what are your current listening sessions being filled with in 2006 ?
I’ve recently discovered a vehemently instrumental electronic label called Expanding Records. And I like Tunng a lot, and ISAN’s new album.
link : service av records