“I didn’t get too uptight about it.”

At what point did it start to become clear that they weren’t what they seemed?

Basically how it works is: if something gets a bit of hype, the major labels don’t understand it but they want it. So they do whatever shit they need to do to sign it and once they’ve signed it they’ve got it and then they figure it out. So once they signed us they were really uncomfortable with the beats side of stuff. I think they regarded me and Rod, who did that side of things, as just a slight irritation.

Our A&R man signed another band, which was Sony’s attempt at bringing some credible acts. So they signed us and signed this other band. The other band’s album came out first and flopped and our A&R man freaked out and took it out on us. He was like ‘Right, I want songs for the radio, I don’t get this weird shit’, just changed his tune completely. And to my ears it was way too Radio 1, I was proper uncomfortable man (laughs). I was on the other end of the spectrum, but like I say I realised early on that this wasn’t about me at all. I didn’t get too uptight about it.

So this other band flopped (laughs), A&R dude freaked out, we were struggling to get by and they were basically holding us to ransom, they were like ‘you can’t have the next installment of the advance until you start delivering what we want’. The thing that bemuses me is that in some ways they probably could have got want they wanted if they’d gone about it in a different way. If they’d put us on a cool tour and got us really excited, got us writing material then they’d probably have got what they wanted. But they didn’t do that, they just took a bully approach and we didn’t take kindly to that, we just fought back. And the second you start fighting with your label like that it’s all over really. BMG and Sony merged and that’s when we were dropped.

Basically I could go on for hours about the crazy characters I met and the nutty shit that happened, do you know what I mean? Some of it is unbelievable, you’d probably think I was exaggerating- especially some of these A&R dudes we met. There was one dude that was like a fucking pig from hell (laughing), like just this satanic horrible, horrible person….there’s just too many stories man. To sum up the Sony experience I’ll put it like this: Chris [James, Stateless singer] called our A&R guy to chat about something, who for the most part had pretended to be our best friend. The A&R guy goes ‘talk to your manager’ and hangs up. Didn’t say hello, didn’t say anything. We call our manager, who was like ‘oh yeah they dropped you’. This A&R dude who’d spent the previous years pretending to be our best friend and biggest fan, couldn’t even be bothered to tell us either in person, either on the phone, or even call us, couldn’t be bothered to tell us we’ve been dropped. That’s my experience of the major label world- I’m sure if you ask someone who had a really successful album they’ll tell you something completely different. It depends- basically if your first album or single gets picked up by Radio 1 or whatever and you have a career then these people are probably your best friends. But our experience was that the second anything got slightly difficult or the second you wanted to do something differently, it was just a nightmare. I’m not saying it’s like that, it’s just my experience. Although….it probably is like that (laughs). It was definitely funny as hell, I need to write it all up one day, that shit would make such a cool film. That shit would be nuts.

Did that experience make you value First Word more?

After all that major label craziness there’s two ways you can react to that. You can either be disheartened to the point you give up, or, which is how I reacted- the major label myth had been destroyed. Beyond having 3 or 4 massive pop acts that provide all the money, they’re a fucking disaster man. Sony is a mess! There were just so many people there who couldn’t do their job. So many bullshitters, so much nonsense. I can’t imagine a business in any other industry surviving in that way, but they sort of survive in a weird way. I just came out of it really positive, thinking ‘shit you can do this yourself’, there’s no need to be part of that world, there really isn’t. At the same time Aly was getting First Word together and I was so happy to just like….I needed to do something with those beats I had knocking around on my MPC. It was just a joy, really fun and easy with friends and good people and just felt really nice. My whole thing since then has just been to build something yourself- ‘cos then it’s just up to you. With Aly doing the label and growing at the same pace as me as an artist, we’re learning and growing together and it’s just really nice. To me it’s definitely about labels like that- First Word, One Handed, Eglo…labels of that nature is where amazing new music comes from. Especially now how the whole playing field has changed- even from the early days of the Stateless stuff there was more of a traditional music industry then, when people still bought CDs and shit (laughs).

Was there anyone who particularly influenced your new album?

Yeah. Last year was a breakthrough for me in that classical music started to make sense to me for the first time. Felt like when jazz started to make sense to me, that kind of feeling. I’ve always wanted to be able to really feel classical music, and I kind of did to a degree, but….

…so what was the breakthrough?

I dunno man, just listening and it started to make sense. In particular Arvo Part- they say minimal but they just mean ‘not a huge orchestra’ (laughs)- but yeah [he makes] kind of minimalist stuff and he’s got his own style that I won’t even try to pronounce and it’s just incredible. It is the most beautiful music that the human race has ever made- that’s the closest that humans, to me, have ever got to a perfect art.

And what did you take from Arvo Part for this album?

Well there was him but also watching loads of ‘60s Japanese cinema, in particular there was a dude called Toru Takemitsu who did the music for a series of films- ‘Woman of the Dunes’ was the main one for me. That was the main reference point for me. And Takemitsu- I actually sampled some of it [his music] so probably shouldn’t talk about it too much, but….just incredible. And Arvo Part I just listened to all the time for that vibe, for that depth. And the honesty…. where pure music isn’t about being current or cool or anything, it’s just pure music. I’ve always got into my own bubble and that just encouraged me to do that even more. I just spent that Christmas and time after in that headspace, being in my own imaginary world, listening to all this weird classical music and watching bugged out Japanese movies. I don’t want to speak on it too much ‘cos I’m a newbie- I don’t know much about it but I know what’s struck me and I want to get into it more.

- Kid Kanevil’s new single ‘Megajoy/Minjo’ is out now on First Word Records
- For news and updates check out his Myspace : http://www.myspace.com/kidkanevil
- He also has a Soundcloud page : http://soundcloud.com/kidkanevil

MP3 file: 

Listen to ‘Megajoy’ here.