PunkTV.ca exclusive interview by Dixon Christie with Simon Lord of The Black Ghosts in support of Any Way You Choose to Give It.

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Dixon: We are about to talk to Simon Lord who is, of course, the singer of The Black Ghosts and also the voice behind "We Are Your Friends" by Justice Vs. Simian. Hey Simon, how are you?

Simon: Good, thanks.

Good. I guess I have reached you over in the UK, where about are you?

I am in East London.

How has your day been going?

Good, good. I have been doing some writing.

I was going to say later in the interview I wanted to talk to you about a day in the life. You guys are very prolific and it seems like you guys must be writing and producing and mixing and remixing everyday.

Yeah, pretty much. I have got my own studio so I am always in there tinkering away.

Let's bring the kids up to date in Canada. They might not know who The Black Ghosts are, but they certainly know the song "We Are Your Friends", and you sung it?

I sang the vocals on that because I used to be in a band called Simian and that track was a remix of one of our songs.

This song "We Are Your Friends" has become an international phenomenon of sorts and I see it almost every day on a TV commercial. They basically took your vocal off the old song, remixed it, and then Justice released it. Did you know at that point that they were doing that and did you have any inkling of how good it was going to be when it was done?

We first released the single ourselves, our version of it, and when we released it we did a remix competition in France because we were on a French label and that is how Justice first did their version. This was probably 5 years ago at least, and they did a very early version of it then and it got released on a small label. Then it got re-released about 4 times and it gradually built up. When it first came out we liked it but we didn't think it would lift off, but then it just kept on going and we kept on hearing it around clubs more and more. Then when it was released just over a year ago was when it hit big. So, it was just really cool to see it grow from the ground up. I think that is how you can tell a really good record: it is not one that gets rammed down your throat and marketed to hell but one that the people sort of make big and is just great on its own.

The kids grow to love it instead of having it played 100 times.

Yeah, the kids were the ones that made that record, it wasn't the record companies, and that is what's cool about it, I think. I think that's why it's still popular; it's a people's record. It's not like a company goes "you have to listen to this".

So how many singles has that song sold? Do you have any idea on just how successful it is?

I don't know, actually. I haven't got a clue.

Hopefully you have seen a check or two in regards to that single though eh?

Not really. I think it's a bit confusing… even though it has been a massive record in clubs, I don't know if it has actually sold that many copies. I think that it's one that everyone hears when they are out, and everyone hears off the internet and stuff, but when it was released it didn't get very high in the charts and wasn't like a massive seller. But it's like a big party record.

Yeah, and there is kind of an irony in there. I am going to take a guess here that you aren't pissed off at all about the way that it has become successful?

No, not at all. I'm kind of really happy that so many people love it. I am not bothered about the money side because it makes up for it when I go to clubs and see people chanting the words.

I guess that Simon Lord is in the position now of being noted? Everybody knows your voice, so now is the time for you to release some new tracks eh?

Yes, it has kind of given me a step up so it's cool.

There are a couple singles that we want to talk about today, and the first one is "Some Way Through This", and I just checked out the video for that. I hadn't heard the song but the video is pretty clever. Can you tell us about how the idea for the video came about and a little bit about the song?

The video was done completely with Legos. We met these two guys that directed it and they really liked the song and told us about this idea they had for the video. We were into it, but we weren't sure how it was going to work. We just let them go with it and when we turned up at the studio it was just mad to see: they had about six people locked in this room building Legos for about two weeks and it was cool to see people so dedicated to it. By the time they finished they were just swimming in Lego. It's cool, and the song itself has got kind of a bit of half time feel to it and it is quite dark, so we like taking something like Lego and putting this big melodrama behind it.

And the timing works with stop motion photography effect doesn't it?

Yes, exactly.

Michelle Gondry, the director, has done a couple of these projects with Legos, but I think he wouldn't have imagined doing like this.

They were really into creating scenes from films and then scenes from paintings and stuff.

I noticed your microphone is also made of Lego.

Yeah we had Lego microphones, Lego keyboard, Lego everything. It's brilliant.

So, obviously, this video is taking off and tons of kids have seen it. It seems to have captured the essence of the music and the song really well and giving it a good way of representing it for you.

Yeah, especially on things like YouTube. I don't know if you have looked on YouTube but there are tons of Lego videos where people are re-creating all sorts of films and all sorts of stuff like that. I guess we just wanted to do our own take on it and these directors were into that as well. They into it enough to really go for it and create this whole Lego city so it's cool and, like you say, for YouTube and things like that it really works.

I didn't know about this Lego movie making business.

If you type Lego into YouTube there are absolutely tons of them.

The other single is called "Anyway You Choose to Give It" and you chose a completely different path for this video.

That was kind of more a sci-fi movie; a bit like Ridley Scott.

That's what I was going to say. It's like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

We are really into that sort of film, and when we started making music a lot of things we talked about were films and things like that we had in common; I guess videos are a good excuse to live out your fantasies a bit. We both love the fact that we really miss space ship films. Making a robot band [for the video] was down to us meeting these two directors that were so dedicated: all the robots [were made from the directors] going around shopping and buying old bits of electronic junk and building the robots out of them. Then we met in this basement in London and, again, in two weeks we turned it into the inside of a spaceship. It was down to the directors again getting totally immersed in it for a while.

The other thing that I noted in this video is kind of a little bit of Herbie Hancock.

Definitely. We are influenced by that era of stuff so it crept in there.

Did you keep all the gear?

Yeah we have some of the robots still left over in the studio just hanging around.

On the single "Any Way you Choose to Give It" you guys have got the "Fake Blood" remix, the "Playgroup" remix, and the "Boy 8 Bit" remix, and then you have got another 7 inch that has exclusive B sides on it. Tell us about the importance of having your music interpreted and re-produced in remixes, and then let's talk about vinyl and going back to, again, the 70's and 80's dance kind of release where the song is really the hero of the album.

Again, with the re-mixes it's just a really great way of making the most of the song, and we have got lots of friends as well that make music so we can sort of call on them to interpret [the songs], especially for playing in night clubs and things. It is great to have different versions and it means that the album doesn't necessarily have to cover all those places and do all those jobs. With the remixes it will get played at different club nights and heard by different people and then they can come back to the album if they like the remix, so it's a cool way of getting lots of different flavors of the same song.

Doing it the way that you are doing it do you find it difficult to decide which of the tracks is going to be the track to be left on the album?

We always start off with the album version and then we get these re-mixes afterwards. That's not usually a problem, especially nowadays when you release things in different formats and stuff; it means you can get a lot of different versions out there so it's cool.

Let's talk about the influences of the band.

A lot of the beats and the back bone of the music comes from Theo, who's main thing is DJing and he has DJed professionally for years and years. He has this massive knowledge of dance music and how it works and where it fits together. My background is in singing and songwriting, and I have not got as much experience with electronic music and stuff like that. I think that's what sort of works, the combination of those two things. I really like putting songs onto electronic music, and so it was the combination of those twp worlds really. We both love analog, synth, and that sound, but at the same time I wanted to go in depth with the songwriting into it and the choruses. Also, we didn't want to make it sort of too hard and un-listenable, we wanted it to be sort of light and sing along at the same time.

Melody and song structure is still a big part of it.

Yeah keeping melody and keeping song structure, but keeping that dance music energy and simplicity in the arrangements while adding the vocals and things, which is I think is probably why it has an 80's influences as well because a lot of that was going on in that period but hasn't been done that much until, as you say, the last couple years where it has come out again and people are doing dance music with songs. It has become a lot more popular and it cool.

It seems that dance music has become a lot more street. Instead of being something that was flighty and lofty in the 80's and 90's with all of the Euro kind of sound and everything, it seems like it has really been stripped down. Daft Punk and Air kind of taught us to break it down didn't they?

Exactly. Daft Punk… I think they mastered writing these songs and, as you say, they changed it so it sort of works on the same levels as other classic albums. It was one of the first electronic albums that had songs in them that worked in a really sort of raw, street way, and I guess it's keeping that sort of thing going.

What is your sequencer of choice in the studio and, briefly, what is your live rig like?

Well Theo uses Logic. He makes pretty much all his music using Logic and uses a lot of samples and vinyl as well as a lot of synthesizers and things like that. I use Ableton for most of my stuff; I record all my vocals myself and I really like using harmonies and layers and things like that. Also, I mix in a bit of live bass and live guitar and live percussion to give it a bit more live feel. So that's the main recording side of it. Live? We use Ableton mainly for live. Theo uses CDJs for live and I use Ableton, mainly.

So do you have all the samples all ready to trigger for Ableton live and have a rough idea how the show is going to come out? Or do mix it up and change orders if the crowd is really grooving on a part of the song you might play longer?

At the moment, for live shows, we kind of do like a DJ show but we use Ableton so we can play that instrumental stuff and do edits. I deal with the vocals live. The album we made it doesn't really work doing it as a live band sort of thing, so we wanted to try out doing sort of a DJ show, combining live elements like live vocals and live looping and edits. So it's kind of a bit of both: we can turn up and do it as a DJ but with elements of a live show.

Have you tried some of the other sequencer software packages like Rebirth and Fruity Loops and Sony Acid?

We started different ideas and stuff in the studio, but I kind of liked Ableton live the best because you can control it really well and also it never crashes.

Do you have a backup laptop with everything ready to go in case you do have a crash?

Not yet.

Tell us about the future for the band, upcoming tours and when is the album going to be ready?

Well, we are kind of doing shows most weekends in London and just here and there whenever we get offered. We have lots of shows coming up [based] around the singles being released and stuff like that. Our album is ready to go, but we wanted to build up to it with the single releases and it will be released at the start of next year.

Ok and we got two questions that we ask everybody: the first one is what would surprise kids most to learn about The Black Ghosts?

We are not black, and we are not ghosts.

The last question is which of the following experiences have you had: have you seen the face of God, have you had an alien encounter or have you seen a ghost?

I have had a ghost whisper in my ear if that counts.

Interview by: Dixon Christie, PunkTV.ca
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