#24: A chat with The Umlauts
Ahead of tomorrow's Windmill show
Cantilever is a weekly rundown of London-based gigs and other musical ephemera. This is the first in a new format where we’re speaking directly to the artists playing live right now.
“The fire alarm went off in the middle of the set and we all collectively thought that it was one of us making the noise. We started playing in time with it. We really trusted it and took it as part of the music.”
Ahead of the third night of The Umlaut’s Windmill residency last week, I went over to their rehearsal space in Peckham and had a brief chat with them about playing live. You can listen to their music here, as you read:
When I walked in, just vocalist Annabelle Mödlinger and drummer Toby Kempner were setting up gear, then over the course of the conversation, more and more Umlauts trickled into the room in a steady stream, until there were at least six or seven of them. With this polyphony in mind, the interview below is a mix of all their voices.
Cantilever: The shows at the Windmill are billed as a residency, so are there differences between the nights?
Umlauts: We're trying out different set lists. The sole reason is for us to get comfortable playing new songs that we've written because the plan is ideally to have a live recorded album. We want to really get to grips with every single song.
C: So are you writing as a live band as well? What's that been like?
Ü: So good. An amazing experience. That's why we've not put anything out for so long because we’re developing into something completely different.
C: Playing electronic music in a live band, I assume you’re always walking that line between what's mechanical and what's more fluid. Is that hard?
Ü: Some songs don't work with a click [metronome], they have to be able to move like in classical music where the time is a bit more free. You can stretch it, depending on what the phrase wants or needs.
I love dance music with real drums. There's a Soulwax show on dvd from 2005 where it’s all run off the computer, it's all midi and Ableton playing the synths, but they've got a live drummer. The energy, the articulations you get out of a hi-hat and the builds you can make are way more exciting than anything you can get from a computer I think.
With the live band, you're sort of free to move in any way you want. Sometimes the click can be a helpful tool in doing so, but we don't really think about it. Some tracks just need it because they’ll speed up by accident; they need to be tethered.
C: There's an interesting electro-clash resurgence at the moment. Sounds on Brat or The Dare and so on. Listening to your track Dance and Go made me think this “resurgence” was already kinda happening two years ago. You've got the massive ciggies in the video etc: it’s obviously taking the piss out of something that shares references with those artists I just mentioned, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly what that is?
Ü: I think one of the main inspirations for that song was Britney Spears actually. We spoke about her quite a lot. We were doing a cover of 'Toxic' every now and again at practice. We found that pop element quite interesting at the time.
We started with the guitar riff, then thought: maybe we should put really cheesy pop stuff over the top. Originally it came from a place of poking fun at the dance music that we like.
A lot of bands that go from being a rock group, then add in more electronic elements. We already have all those elements so we're heading back in the other direction.
I feel like what's really interesting about the new songs is that they're spliced in a way that you would do on Ableton.
We've been able to record the gigs from the residency and listen back to them and try and work out what we think is working about them or not. It's been really valuable. And there are some really hard cuts in them between a few different sections which sound great. Just blocks of sound that change cleanly.
C: Kind of like the quirks of digital recording are influencing how you write on real instruments?
Ü: All of the early stuff really started out like that. We had to learn this ridiculous section that was copied and pasted wrong. It's actually incredibly hard to learn.
Now we're coming from the opposite direction where we're writing as if imagining what would happen if you did copy and paste it wrong.
C: It feels like there are more and more large ensembles playing on the live scene in London. I wonder whether that is partly just because it's fun to play with more people, but also partly because it's tied to a sort of viability of even being a band now? When you are trying to rent a space like this, you can split it between nine people and ease the financial burden?
Ü: I think it's because of multi-track recording and the possibilities of doing loads of tracks and then having loads of players perform it —
— it has only caused difficulty —
— financially, it’s a terrible idea. The White Stripes had the right idea. Each show, once you divide it by 10, it’s like a tenner each. Which is pretty cool —
— I don’t know if people would be doing it for financial reasons; it’s for fun —
— for me, it’s for money. I’ve just got very bad business acumen.
C: Is that hard then when you've got 10 or however many influences in a room when you're writing a track? Are there still key songwriters?
Ü: I think everybody in this band has such an ability to leave their own ideas at the door and whatever comes together comes together.
Obviously everybody puts in their two cents, but I think there's a general understanding that whatever is created within the bounds of the band is just the Umlauts, and that's just what it is.
By the time the song comes together, everyone's forgotten who contributed what.
We wrote one long jam called 'Markets of Marrakech,' and pretty much half of the songs on the new album are just different parts of that.
It's an almost unlistenable jam, but there's little bits of gold in there.
C: What about the lyrics? Are you just sort of coming up with stuff on the fly in these jams?
Û: A lot of mumbling. Sometimes I mumble and then people say: 'That sounds like that’. And I think: ‘that’s a really good lyric.’ I didn't actually say it. But somebody will point it out.
C: I really liked your state51 session.
Ü: Yeah we played the xmas party there. The fire alarm went off in the middle of the set and we all collectively thought that it was one of us making the noise. We started playing in time with it. We really trusted it and took it as part of the music. I was like: “Alex is doing something crazy shit, but I love it.”
The session was part of the inspiration behind this new form of the band actually. It was just kind of a bit of a realisation that oh, the band actually sounds really good live. None of the recordings had really reflected that, up to that point.
C: What's coming up this year then? Any festivals etc.?
Ü: Nah. Until people actually see that we're putting something out, I think our rewards are being withheld. But the residency is going really well!
C: Any parting wisdom?
Ü: Ban children from music festivals.
C: What age do you set the bar at? 18 plus, 21?
25 —
— Do you have an upper limit in mind as well? —
— We were at Green Man and Paddy had had some mushrooms. He was sitting on a hay bale and there were these kids under him pulling the straw out —
— It was like being on a life raft being torn apart by these little demons. That's not something people on drugs should have to see.
You can buy Umlauts stuff here:
The residency last Thursday was 10/10. See clip above. There is a real progressive element to these new songs being trialled, with parts that change pace and have odd structural elements; the drama of the whole thing is turned up a notch.
If you’re free tomorrow evening (Thursday the 30th of January), I’d recommend you get down to The Windmill again for Independent Venue Week, the de-facto final night of this residency.