Martin Sakutu
BCR: That must have been insane to have nineteen people and samples and the rest…
Laurel Collective: Well, this was the problem, it was insane but it was just, too much of a wall. It was just a big thing of white noise coming out at you.
Bob Laurel Collective: It was a wall of sound and I was drunk. Staggering around a wall of sound. It was weird.
BCR: So you find it better now that you’ve pared it down?
Laurel Collective: Yeah, it’s just having... concentrating on our parts more and making things musically is so much more important than having loads and loads of stuff.
Laurel Collective: I think, now, you can hear more of each person. Another thing that people say after a while is that they can hear everyone’s character coming through in the songs, in the writing itself.
BCR: So it’s more delicate and a bit more complex?
Laurel Collective: Certainly more intricate. Everyone seems to actually listen to each other more which makes what you play a bit more complementary to the other players.
BCR: More democratic?
Laurel Collective: Yeah, not everyone being as loud as you can, everyone listening to the other parts.
BCR: I would have thought with nineteen parts there must have been a fair amount of competition to get something into a song that you’ve come up with.
Laurel Collective: We were all trying to get our girlfriends into the band and our families…
BCR: Are you building a cult?
Laurel Collective: Bob said the other day, “we all share girlfriends but we’re not hippies”.
Bob Laurel Collective: There is a distinction.
BCR: If you’re going to be in The Laurel Collective, just remember, it is a collective…
Mark Rainbow
Bob Laurel Collective: There was a lot of politics and sound issues but it all went over my head because I was drunk.
BCR: It seems that you’re really big supporters of other bands, putting on shows and… being incestuous.
Laurel Collective: The good thing about the scene we’ve sort of been involved in is that bands that we know have had their own nights and we’ve played at each other’s nights. We’ve had one at the Good Ship that Micachu and a band called The Invisible played at, they’re amazing, and they had a night down at the Macbeth which we played at and another band called Golden Silvers who are doing really well right now…
Laurel Collective: Naked And The Boys as well… It all seems to be kicking off for us, for all of us, this year. Last year the singer for Naked And The Boys said, “Bob, this is going to be our year”
Laurel Collective: Were you drunk Bob?
Laurel Collective: But low and behold we both got deals...
BCR: Why do you think that’s happening? Because I think that people are starting to appreciate solid bands, people who play real music.
Olly Puglisi
Laurel Collective: Definitely. A couple of years ago you had post-Libertines rip off bands and then we went through this New wave patch and now there’s all these bands coming out of New York who are all a little bit different and a little bit quirky.
BCR: yeah, Yeasayer and Akron Family are the same, influenced by things from all over the world and just really, really good bands.
Laurel Collective: And that’s cool, that really feels like a good new wave of stuff coming in which is, I think, going to sweep out of the way …
Laurel Collective: All the rip off bands.
Laurel Collective: Yeah, the rip off bands but I think that’s all over anyway. It’s exciting when you have bands like Micachu and Post War Years and The Invisible and us, it’s all just really different.
Laurel Collective: And everyone’s really different to each other, it’s interesting how that’s happened. We’re not at all the same.
Laurel Collective: It’s not a scene band by genre it’s some other band value.
Laurel Collective: It’s just good. It’s Good Core.
The Laurel Collective on Myspace
