9 ‘o’ Clock Nasty Talk to Us About All Things ‘Crowland’

Nobody entails absurdist rebellion as glamorously as 9 ‘o’ Clock Nasty. The band refracts the rock genre with new levels of energy, edge, and excitement. When you listen to their music, you are drawn to both their cynical anthems and their elastic charisma. It extends to all the new territories that they explore, be it the bombastic funk in ‘Unkle Natur’ or the eclectic cultures of ‘Culture War 23’. Their latest single is ‘Crowland’ a gritty, grimy, and groovy rock track that is extrapolated with electronic effects that are reminiscent of vintage space wars. It is littered with nebulous sensibilities, distilling the dark spirit of the theme with slights of macabre, malady, and mystery. Listen Now! 

Also read : http://www.apollosharp.in/blog/gary-dranow-transforms-country-blues-with-rock-n-roll-dynamism-in-im-a-man

The band sits down with us for an exclusive interview, uncovering the inspiration behind the track, their creative process, and more. 

1. Y’all have a reputation for coloring outside the lines. Your technique is deliberately raw and your themes form with absurd contexts. How do these distill your style and ideas of rock?

We colour inside the lines that we see, they just aren’t the same lines that you’d always expect. There is a precision to our oddness. It’s always intentional. Writing in a studio rather than a rehearsal room leads to that, hopefully the result is never clinical or without heart. Any song starts with an accident. With Pete it is usually waking in the night with a guitar hook or a vocal melody. With Ted it is usually a beat and bass sequence and repeating chorus line. When we write together it is that moment around the kitchen table when you found exactly the right vocal melody for the strummed guitar the very first time you try and everyone goes “record that!.” That is the heart of the song, the song that wants to escape into the world. The rest is the business of building and crafting it into something that is worth sharing.

We believe very strongly in a few simple principles of song writing. There is no need for a song to be long (there are exceptions like Seven Is A Crowd by the Qwarks, but they are rare beasts). The chorus has to hit early and hit hard. We usually have got to a hook within 30 seconds. That isn’t to pander to short attention spans and the TikTok generation, the best pop songs from the 60s caught you into the main theme early and took you with them. You have to be able to sing along to the chorus. If you strip everything away except the rhythm track it has to be groovy enough on its own to make you want to dance. So it isn’t really a style or an idea, it’s a set of rules we apply to each project, and they can be wildly different. If a song wants to be a disco anthem, that is what it has to be. If it is a twisted, blazing 2 minute scream of punk anger, so be it. We keep telling each other “we serve the song” which is helpful in the studio but a bit strange on the bus.

2. What inspired the creation of Crowland and what do you want your listeners to take away from it?

It was inspired by a visit to Stratford upon Avon and being overdosed on Shakespeare. We’ve always loved the language and imagery of his work but there is something about the reverence for him as part of the “England myth” - an idealised fictional place where monoculture of people lived in happy subservience to rules they never wrote - that makes the blood go cold. We watch slithering fools all over the western world trying to drag us back to this imaginary ideal world we call Crowland.

3. There's a sense of rebellion and resistance in the track that is shared by almost all your releases. What about insurgence appeals to you?

Absolutely nothing about insurgence appeals to us. Nothing. We want to grow old quietly. To eat good food. To talk about beautiful things with close friends and watch the world getting better around us as future generations build it in their image. But the world is not getting better. So our Art has to react to that. We would much rather write songs about how good it is to dance until your feet bleed (in fact we have and it is out in May) but you have to write about what moves you. Here, now, insurgence moves us.

4. What role does experimentation play in your creative process and how does it help you find your sound?

There are two sides to our song writing process. In the right hand there is a deeply, ritual, obsessive order and the removal of absolutely anything that is not necessary for the song to deliver. This takes hours of work and dialogue. In the left hand is absolute chaos. Random ideas. Poorly realised one-take recordings at 3am. For every song the source of the chaos differs, but beneath the structure and design there is an engine room of stupidity. Without that chaos, without the blood on the guitar strings there wouldn’t be anything interesting in the song. The role of the production process is to sharpen the point of that spear until it cuts but to preserve the mad beating heart of inspiration that it came from.

Also we like to muck about and try ideas. Pete’s computer has about 70 versions of most songs because he is a devil for taking an idea off on a tangent until it breaks and coming back with a different angle on it.

5. Who are some of the artists that inspired you all in formative years as musicians and why?

Oof. That’s a hard question. How do you choose? The Ramones for sure.The Fall. Electronica in all its forms, especially in the early 80s. Our parent’s music that played around the house of a loop with the pure pop ballads and dance tunes. Reggae and Ska.

6. As a band, ya’ll showcase a grand camaraderie. What are some of the values that ya’ll picked up from each other that make ya’ll better artists?

We were friends before we were a band, and we’ll be friends after the band has gone. All the bands we know that succeed and keep going have some deep friendship and love that underpins it. It also helps to have a shared perspective on the “outside” and to be ready to laugh when trouble comes. We’re lucky to be surrounded by people and love that help us hold together and partners and friends that put up with all our whimsies.

Enjoy : http://www.apollosharp.in/blog/backstrom-crafts-a-contemplative-neoclassical-ballad-in-animal

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The track is available for streaming on popular sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music! 

You can listen to ‘Crowland’ by 9 ‘o’ Clock Nasty here - 

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