“Thundercats is actually quite dark in places.”

How did you start out making music?

I started out on the guitar. My dad took me to some Blaxploitation night when I was, like, about ten or something. And I saw Superfly, and there’s this bit with Curtis Mayfield and he’s got this yellow pimp suit on, playing ‘Pusherman’ or something, I can’t remember. That shit proper changed my life, I thought that was the coolest shit in the world. I actually wanted to be Curtis Mayfield, despite the odds, for a while (laughs). So I got this really shit electric guitar from Argos and bugged out. I had a second hand wah-wah pedal that didn’t work very well, all crackly and shit. I used to play wah-wah guitar for hours, trying to be Curtis Mayfield. That’s the only instrument that I’ve ever taken time to actually play- everything else is, y’know, pressing buttons to make music.

I don’t think I’ve noticed any guitar on your Kid Kanevil albums?

I’ve used it for atmospherics and things sometimes….I think it’s such a used instrument in some respects. I don’t know if it excites me now that much, as a sonic sound, I really like the sound of things. Again, with the new album, the thing was just getting into sonics and enjoying how things sound, regardless of music parts sometimes. So for me, the guitar has been fairly widely explored. At the moment I can’t seem to get enough of kids’ musical toys…I’d actually like to do an album entirely made with kids’ toys. I think I might even do that next, I’m not sure.

For the fourth Kid Kanevil album?

Yeah, might be just for the kids (laughs). I’d quite like to do a real simple, happy album now, having done a fairly full-on, dark album, so maybe that would be appropriate. Kids are pretty dark though…Thundercats is actually quite dark in places.

Really?

Yeah, watch it again. Mumm-Ra’s Temple and shit. There was this one episode where he summons all these ninjas…yeah it’s pretty fucked up. What was that one that was like Thunderbirds but really fucked up?

Terrahawks?

Terrahawks! Terrahawks was fucked up. What else fucked me up as a kid......Return to Oz- what the hell was going on there?

So the seeds for the third album were planted when you watched Terrahawks?

There definitely is some Terrahawks in the spirit of the third album, I’d say so yeah (laughs).