Interview: Mystery Jets (Fact Magazine, 2007)

2007 has seen the Jets release Zootime (a Stateside primer made up of songs from 2006’s Making Dens and some new material), overcome Visa rejections to tour the US with and without the Klaxons, record an album with Erol Alkan and play DJ sets up and down the country. They probably don’t even have time to write haikus, but guitarist Will Rees was still gracious enough to spend some half an hour with FACT, reflecting on the year that’s been and looking forward to the next.

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So Erol Alkan produced your single, ‘Umbrellahead’, and he’s also producing the next album. How did that collaboration come about?

I think Erol was very keen to work with a band and try his hand at other things – something other than his remixes and running his club night. We’ve always been big fans of what he’s done; so when the opportunity came to work with him about a year ago, we jumped at it.

We started off doing ‘Umbrellahead’ and a couple of B-sides, and it went really, really well. I think initially everybody felt that we should do the record with a big name producer, but eventually we thought, you know, if we do this with Erol it’ll be his first ever album, and he’s going to go into it all guns blazing. And I’m really happy with that decision; I think he’s a brilliant producer.

What stage is the album at?

We’re just getting it mixed by a guy called Nick Launey in America; he engineered Flowers of Romance by Public Image Limited, and he also mixed Neon Bible [by the Arcade Fire] and Grinderman.

And how much can you tell us about it?

I think the record’s quite a big departure from Making Dens; I think the songwriting is stronger, and I think it’s us really finding our feet in terms of what we are as a band.

Where as Making Dens had hundreds of different influences, and different colours and sounds, the new record is more focused; it knows what it wants to be more. I’d say there’s less going on in it, so yeah, I think it’s stronger.

You fit a lot into three, four, five minute songs. Is there a specific writing process behind that?

I think that’s a true thing to say; we do tend to fit a lot into a few minutes. I think that just comes about due to the fact that we all have a big input into the writing of the tunes, and we’re quite eager to put our bit in there. That whole approach was very common on Making Dens, but it’s an approach you’ll hear less of on the new record.

There’s less eagerness to put ten different ideas into one song; these songs might only have one or two ideas but they’re stronger.

How much input did Erol have into the songs?

Well the songs were written before we got into the studio so there was no input in terms of the writing, but Erol’s got a great ability to understand what a song is, where a song needs to go, and what a song needs to mean to people. He’s really intuitive at knowing lyrically what our songs are about, and he was really important in terms of giving each tune the correct magic touches to help demonstrate the songs properly: bring out the right feelings and stuff.

Erol became the fifth member of the band in a lot of ways; the work we did in the studio was really collaborative, even with the songs already written. We’re really open to other people’s suggestions, and Erol had a lot of those.

Tell us about your recent US tour; there was some sort of Visa problem…

There was, yeah. I don’t really know what happened as it was all a bit unclear; we were planning to go at the end of the summer but then US officials were saying they couldn’t give us a Visa for some reason. It wasn’t really clear why, but I think we were a bit relaxed in terms of sending off our application, so we were a bit late as well and it didn’t work out. It happens to a lot of bands, from what I hear. We did manage to go out slightly later though; at the end of September. And that was amazing…

How do you think you were received over there?

I think well. We’ve got quite a long way to go in America if we want to do this properly, which we really do. We do have little clusters of fans in some of the cities over there, and they’re really into it; there were bunches of kids over there bringing us presents and baking us cakes with Mystery Jets logos on them… It reminded me a bit of Japan, the way they really look after you and show their appreciation for you.

There’s definitely something going on for us over there. I really want to live over there; as a band we’re thinking of maybe living in New York for six months to a year, touring properly and maybe doing the third record over there as well.

It struck me when you brought up kids bringing you cakes; most venues in the US seem to have age restrictions. Were there problems with that?

Yeah, there were problems. Before we went there, loads of kids were saying they were only seventeen and wouldn’t be able to see us, because a lot of the clubs are 21+. We did manage to contact a lot of the shows’ promoters and make them 16+, so we sorted it out a bit. Half the tour we did was supporting the Klaxons, and there were definitely a few younger fans who managed to get into those shows…

Did you get the chance to catch any other shows whilst you were there?

I saw Simian Mobile Disco in Chicago, which was really brilliant. It was the first and last time I’ve seen them live, and I really want to do it again. They played their tunes like ‘Hustler’ and ‘It’s the Beat’, but it wasn’t just them bringing CDs and playing a DJ set; they were cutting up tunes and I guess making it up as they went along, which was really cool.

There were some really interesting drops, like they’d play ‘I Believe’ on top of some random sound, then strip away everything but that sound until the audience didn’t know what was going on, and then it would come back in with the chorus and everybody’s going crazy for it…

I see Mystery Jets DJ sets billed; who from the band actually DJs?

That’s all of us. In the last eight months, and I don’t know quite how it happened but Erol was a big influence on it, we’ve all got really into dance music. I suppose it started when we fell in love with Justice and Death From Above about a year ago, and it just got deeper; we’ve been getting into Switch and Sinden, and old dance classics like Donna Summer.

It’s just music that we really love and it’s something we enjoy doing. I think it’s influenced our new record in a certain way too; I wouldn’t go as far as to say we’ve made an electro album or anything, but there’s definitely a feeling that the songs have come from a slightly dancey background.

Is there a specific way you approach DJ sets?

Not really; there’s not any sort of formula. We make it up as we go along, and we try to read the audience. Something we’re really keen to do is play tunes that people know, but they’ll have forgotten about.

We like to play songs from people’s childhoods, so for example – and this is a really cheesy example, so please don’t write about this [sorry Will!] – you know that song ‘Teenage Dirtbag’? That came out what, eight years ago, and it’s a completely cheesy American pop song, but we were about an hour and a half into this one DJ set playing Switch and Dusty Kid, and it was going down really well so we thought, “What happens if we play that song?’ So we thought “fuck it”, played it, and the whole place went absolutely apeshit.

You see, I always thought that was quite a good song…

It’s a really good song! The melodies are amazing!

Wasn’t it done for American Pie or something? I mean, when you take it out of that teen comedy context it’s quality…

The chords are great, the melodies are wicked, the chorus really kicks off. It’s one of those things; it treads that fine line between cheese and quality…

That final bridge is ace too; the ‘listen to Iron Maiden’ bit…

I think there are plenty of things like that. Phil Collins is a great example of somebody who’s cheesy but also really, really good, especially songs like ‘Easy Lover’ and ‘I Can Feel It’. Cyndi Lauper as well, and I suppose Michael Jackson in places. I think that type of music has definitely been an influence on us; pure pop music with a certain something, a certain depth to it. There’s really something about it.

Something I’ve always read about, and something you presumably always get asked about are the White Cross Revival parties you used to throw. What was the best one you put on?

The best one was the last one. We did about six or seven, and each time we did one the audience would double, basically. The first one was to twenty people; just friends and family. And then the second one was to forty people, again it was friends and family but they brought more people. And suddenly it started getting really insane; people were coming onto the island from all over London and getting really into it. And for the last one there were seven or eight hundred people there, and it was really, really fun.

Who played at the last one?

I can’t remember, but we had Larrikin Love, Jamie T, Jeremy Warmsley, Electric Ladyland, Ladyfuzz; loads of people. We’ve got the sets written out; we’ve preserved all the posters and that so I’ll have to have a look at those at some point, but we had some really good people. And people who’ve gone on to do quite well for themselves.

Especially now you’ve got the connection with Erol, are you thinking of trying to reprise that series of parties at some point?

Maybe. Those parties were quite unique, the way they were on the island; they were lawless in a lot of ways. There was no security, there was no alcohol to be bought; it was all free. You couldn’t do that in Central London; the only place you could do that in is a squat. But the thing with squats is that there’s an undercurrent of drugs involved.

I’ve been to a few squat parties that have been amazing events, but a lot of them tend to be a bit dark, where as on the island there was a kind of innocence about it. We were all a little bit younger; we were eighteen and nineteen at the time, so we wouldn’t try to recreate them but we’d be up for putting on a club night. It’s a hard thing to do well; there’s not many club nights I could say I’m a big fan of.

Durrr and Trash were two nights that I was definitely into; it’s a real art though, it’s hard to know how to do it well. Some nights are amazing for three, four or six months and then that’s it, and some clubs go on for years and years, Trash being a good example of that. I don’t really know anything about doing it properly, but maybe one day…

Tell us a bit about ‘Flakes’, your new Christmas song.

It definitely shows a lot about what people should expect from the record, in its simplicity. It’s one of the first songs we did for the album, and it’s really Blaine’s tune, but we all had input into it and it’s a song we’re all very proud of. It’s very sweet, and I think lyrically it comes from a place in Blaine… From a point in his life where he was having a few doubts, and it just popped out.

It’s a very simple song, and I think it says a lot about growing up: turning 21 or 22 and thinking “I’ve been drunk, I’ve gone out, I’ve kissed a few girls and okay, that’s fun but there’s more to life, and it’s time for me to decide what sort of person I want to be”. It’s a song about growing pains.

And as it is the season: what’s your favourite Christmas song?

Well, there’s Aztec Camera’s ‘Somewhere In My Heart’; that’s not actually a Christmas tune but it feels Christmassy. We covered it the other day; we filmed a New Year’s Eve show for the Queens of Noize on BBC6 and they asked us to do a cover, so we did that. I’d say that’s my favourite non-Christmas Christmas song. Then there’s the John Lennon song, ‘So This is Christmas’; I think that’s really beautiful. I don’t really know any other Christmas tunes…