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	Interview with Torsohorse (page 2)
	Pete: This is your second full album, is it not, that you're about to release? Elain: Yes. Pete: When it's come to recording, how have you found the facilities? Elain: Well, the record company put us in touch with the producer and the studios, when we were waiting to record the album, and they knew a guy, Pat Grogan, who's really good with good drummers. The guys will be able to talk to you better about this one - basically it was the record company that put us in touch with him, and it worked. And so we went back the second time to work with the same guy in the same studio. Pete: Native Records, could you tell us a little bit about how that happened, how you got signed to Native? Elain: Funnily enough, we were on a course with Cultural Foundation! Pete: Through our course. Elain: That's right, yeah. And one of the speakers, Tony K, who used to be Red Rhino, he was just doing the speaking, and he was really interesting, really knowledgeable, and when he finished, we asked him to have lunch with us, got talking with him, he asked us to send a demo, which we did when we recorded one, and then we got this frantic call from him saying that he was trying to contact us, he really liked it, he wanted us to send it to a record company that he was involved with, and from there it lead to a meeting, a showcase gig, and then about eight months later, we signed the deal. Pete: And that's with Native, who have a national reputation now, do they not? Elain: Yes. Native used to be very big in the eighties, then for a while went internet-based because they thought that was where the music industry and record sales were heading. When that didn't come off, they went back to being a solid record company. And we're currently the biggest seller on their roster. Pete: Sales being handled by which distributor? Elain: Pinnacle. Pete: Through Pinnacle, so that means national capacity, doesn't it. Do you find that they're real efficient, Pinnacle? Do they take you seriously, with respect, do they take you seriously because you're just one band, or do you find that they really put their full weight behind you? Adam: We've never really dealt with them in that much detail. They have always been helpful as far as if we've ever had an inquiry, we've always been able to ring up and get answers out of them. I haven't got any complaints because the records have been in the shops, and that's what's always been important to us. That's been the part they've played as distributor. ------------------------------- Pete: When it comes down to the marketing of your material, how much do you handle, how much control do you maintain and wish to maintain, and how much do they do it? Elain: We more or less do all of it now. Because Native are a really small-budget label nowadays, and we've found that things weren't getting done. And we decided that meant we had to learn how to handle these things ourselves. And having done that, we're very comfortable with that, and we recently talked to a different record company, who weren't going to let us do any of that side of things ourselves, and we just didn't feel comfortable about that, because the only way to know that it's being done is if you're doing it yourselves. Pete: And also it means that you maintain your artistic integrity that way, doesn't it, and also the whole thing, your own vision, is maintained that way. Which of course must be essential for an outfit like yours, Adam. Adam: Yeah, it really is, and it's nice to have your own independence. It's not nice to feel that you're controlled by somebody else. Or your own future is in somebody else's hands, which is very much how it feels if you find out things aren't getting done when they should be. You know that you need to achieve that, and it's down to you to achieve it. You will achieve it, and we've found that with a lot of things that we've done. There's been a lot of things where we've said ... it's a bit like the television airplay. If somebody had said to me a month before it happened, "Next month you're going to be on the TV," I'd have said, "What are you talking about?" But then we did it, and we said, "We're going to put our all into this," and the next thing you know, it's up there. You can make your own dreams come true a lot easier than somebody else can, because you believe in that. If you get knocked back, you're just going to try all the harder to get past all the obstacles. Pete: One of the problems I think with even independent record companies is that the personnel change with such rapidity that the guy that you've really developed a relationship with suddenly is gone, and you've got to start again, or you're not flavour of the month, or whatever it might be. On that level, can you tell us a little bit, Elain, about ... in the space of a couple of years, you've achieved, to my mind anyway, a remarkable amount in terms of a couple of albums out, a serious profile as far as your recorded material goes, but also a couple of DVDs. Can you tell us a little bit about how all of that transpired? Elain: It was really funny. It was a chance meeting over the internet with a horror movie director, who came and looked at the website, saw the image, decided that ... he'd started working in pop promos, but he'd never had the opportunity to put his pop promo expertise together with his horror movie expertise. And we were the opportunity for him to do that. He's a guy who's had internationally released feature films, he's really experienced, he's really clever, and we just met him over the internet, everything was done over the internet, we never met the guy in person until the day that we filmed the first video. And he brought his team up from London to the farm, and we converted our barn into a Hell room. And it went from there, really. We had something he wanted, and he had something we wanted. Adam: And the main thing about it was, he was extremely pleased when he came up and found that we'd made such a transformation of this barn, because you wouldn't believe the amount of work that goes into something like making a video. Because on camera, if you catch something on the camera that you're not happy with or you don't want to see, at the point where that's filmed, if that ends up on the video, you're immortalising that mistake. You need everything to be immaculate. As Steve will know from the last one we did, we had all hell on. Steve actually went up a ladder and had to actively cover an entire ceiling in plastic bin bags. Steve: Which is just a bag, just the cheapest way we could find to cover the ceiling. I really enjoyed that part, making the room up, it was interesting. Adam: It certainly brings that sense of achievement. Steve: I just felt the more we could do on that side, the better the end result would be. And I think it turned out like that. Pete: And it's great if you work, I guess, within a moderate or low budget, and yet you achieve what is a professional result. Steve: We found things Richard got us, there were some old pieces of metal and things that we put over a frame to make a cage. They were growing into the grass in the morning, we pulled them out and rolled them out ... Adam: It was actually from a prison, that stuff. We had an old friend who was actually helping to strip down an old prison. It was like chain-link fencing, that we used to make the cage out of for the latest video. We actually had to actually get a tractor and dig it out of the undergrowth. (laughs). It was all very interesting. Pete: That's some resonance that way, real prison, there's some real history embedded in it I guess. Elain: We needed something to move the band on to the next level. And because the band has an image, we felt that we needed pictures, and that was why we decided to make the video. We weren't happy with the way things had been going, and we needed some way of moving things on. And what this has created, with us getting the videos out there, and getting them shown on the major Sky networks, is that instead of the album sales dropping off, the opposite's happened. And suddenly the album sales have gone much bigger. Even though the album's actually been out for over a year. But then having done that, you suddenly realise that you've got the momentum going, and you've got to keep it going, so then we decided that we had to make another video. And we had to get that one up there as well. Pete: And that's what you've just recently done. Elain: That's what we've just recently done, yeah. ----------------------- Pete: Tell us a little bit about the history of the actual transmission, the broadcast of the stuff, how that's organised itself or been organised or whatever? Where's it been seen so far? Elaine: Where's it been seen? We've had airplay on Scuzz TV, and MTV2. On Scuzz we started out on the "New Skidz on the Block" show, but we ended up topping the request chart for more than several weeks. So then they moved us on to about two or three versions of "Death by Decibels", and that was really good, because that's presented by a guy called Crusher, who MCs at the festivals and things. And the first time he introduced it, it was "the ridiculously-named Torsohorse", and he made a big meal out of the name. But it meant that rather than the video just coming on, they did actually do a big introduction to it. Adam: We got a second really big mention like that, the second one was, "It looks like somebody's been playing with granny's make-up box". (laughs) But we always got a really good announcement which was really helpful, because it's like, on a show like that where we're getting played alongside people like Korn and Slipknot, people who've been on the scene for a few years now, and are big names, and it's nice to have all them have all their videos played, then have your video made a meal of. It did a lot for us. Elain: It even ended up in the introduction at the beginning of the show, didn't it. "We've got all sorts for you tonight, including Torsohorse". It was like we were a name all of a sudden. Adam: It was quite amazing to see your name mentioned alongside the likes of Slayer and people like that at the start of the show, as their introduction to make people carry on watching and listening. Elain: We ended up with about six months' airplay, didn't we, in one way and another. You could see the difference in the website hits and everything from that. It was a really good investment. Pete: Are you referring here just to the first video? Elain: Yes. Adam: So far the new one's only had one play, hasn't it? It'll be on again tonight on the "Headbanger's Ball" show, MTV2. But it was interesting for us, and I'm sure Steve will agree, when we go around, when you're playing places, it's nice to be nationally recognised, to be able to go and play somewhere. And it's funny, because sometimes we'll go to a venue, and before we've got ready to actually go on stage, we'll go and suss it out and have a wander about and have a look at everything to see how it's going, and then you'll suddenly emerge with the make-up on. And people walk up to you and go, "Torsohorse - I've seen you on the TV". It's really nice, and no matter how many people do it to you, it doesn't change that feeling that you get from being recognised for what you're doing. Because it is a hard thing to achieve. Even the UK that's a relatively small country, it is a hell of a big place to break as a band. Without a ten thousand pound marketing campaign, it's still a lot of ground to cover. Pete: Going back to the videos. You were talking earlier about controlling your own artistic integrity for the whole package. How much input have you had into the devising of the shooting script, and so on and so forth, of the videos? Elain: We do really like to leave that up to the director, because he knows better than we know what he's capable of and what's going to look good. It's horses for courses. Adam: We'll give a general idea of what concept we're looking for, he'll generally come back to us and say, "What do you want the video to be about?" Pete: Do you do that from the outset? Adam: Yeah. Pete: That's including the first one. Adam: Yeah. And he'll come back with an idea, and we'll ping-pong ideas, and that's really how it comes about. But yeah, we like to leave it to him to come up with the final concept, because it's exactly the same as being a musician really, as being someone who's making a video. Because you're an artist, and you have your vision and your metaphor for what you can see. And you're always going to work a lot harder on your own vision than on somebody else's. If somebody came to us tomorrow and said, "I've brought you this song I want you to play," it wouldn't be in your heart like it would if it was something that you'd written yourself. And I think it's exactly the same with people like Adam when he's producing videos. So it's nice that.... you agree on the concept, because obviously you don't want it where the band's not happy with the concept, but at that point, you say, "Now it's down to you." Then it's basically again back to location, and you say, "Right, we've got this location we'd like to use, how would you like it to look?" Pete: Important in that process is the chemistry and trust as well, though. Steve: That was the thing with Adam though. I didn't have anything to do with the e-mailing and conversation that went on when they initially met, but we seem to have a very similar vision. I think that was the important thing, wasn't it? Pete: So that chemistry was there already. Steve: Ideas were bouncing off. And then when it actually came to the shoot, it was like, if you do something good, it's going to be in the video. So it was a lot of people working together. Adam: The extras were excellent in the video. Pete: Well, you've just took it right out of my head there, because that was the next thing. You've brought a hell of a team together haven't you, on that side of the camera? Adam: That very much shocked Adam who was producing the video as well, because he turns up and we've got a cast of extras there and everybody's ... Pete: How many do you have? Adam: It depends. I don't know, how many? Elain: About forty local people. We had some people who travelled up from London and Boston, one guy travelled up with a car-load from Boston. We used a lot of feathers in the video, and one of his team was allergic to feathers. He drove all that way and then had to just sit in the house while we did it. It was February and it was snowing outside, it was freezing. So when you can see people's breath in the video, it was real, it was all real. Adam: That's the biggest point of importance, and also it was really good because, as Steve said, if you do something good you'll be seen. That was announced to extras, and everybody put their all into it, to make sure that they were going to be ... Elain: It was very hard work for them, because they were being rained on constantly. They were fine while they were being rained on because it was warm water that we were using. Until the last shoot when we ran out of water in the cistern. Steve: I think at one point, Adam Mason actually said "Look, anybody that wants to go, we're getting near to the end, can go now," and I don't think there was one voice saying, "I'm not prepared to go on." There was an enthusiasm. Adam: There was snow coming in through the tiles as we were filming it as well, it was unbelievable. Elain: We'd paid for a heater for the barn, but it was just like trying to heat the street. It just didn't work. Everybody just worked so hard because they were so cold, and we did take after take, but I think the director - no, it was the producer, Nadia - she was really clever with people, because it was always just one last take, so everybody put their all into it, thinking that it was the last time, but it never was, there were always three or four after that. But just by saying "One last take" made everybody stay enthusiastic for that one. Afterwards they all piled back into the house, and everybody was covered in fake blood, which was corn syrup and really sticky, they were covered in feathers and were all wet through. And we'd recently had new carpets put down, and we put plastic sheeting down that stuck to everybody's feet. And wherever they went, they just walked off with the plastic sheeting stuck to them. Adam: You can imagine how it looked, with bloody hand prints all over the walls everywhere ... Elain: Getting everybody through the bathroom, showered off and everything, and people were saying that corn syrup went down the back of their jeans and stuck their arse cheeks together. Adam: It was a hell of an experience, especially for our first real proper video shoot, to do it under those circumstances. It really brought that sense of achievement, didn't it? Steve: I think making the video really put the icing on the song in itself, it finished it off. If it needed any explaining, then it got it out there. There's a culture.... it's almost like being spoon-fed. If you see something visually, then it explains the music ... Pete: Without having the words. Steve: ... it's like, "Oh, this is what it's all about". Pete: How long did it take you from the commencement of the shoot, to the end of what I guess is a five-minute piece? Adam: I suppose that from the start of the crew getting there and setting up to when you finish, it's about ten or twelve hours, isn't it? But for the shooting time, you're looking at about six hours. Pete: But it's work for twelve, isn't it. Adam: Yeah. Also, six hours, it's like doing a six-hour set. The last video, the "Dragging Me Down" video, was really proof of that, because we had a room full of people, and we were basically playing to these people. But we were actually in the room so there were people banging into us ........... --------------------- Pete: Your website is really impressive too. Without being over the top, all the information is there, isn't it, and you seem to have a fair dialogue between your mates and fans within it. It's a sense of community as well, isn't it? Adam: I think that's very important. I think it's what a lot of bands miss - the point of being a band. Your fans are the people who are supporting what you're doing, they're the ones going out and buying your records, they're the ones that raise your profile, so they deserve respect for that. We always try and reply to all e-mails, and if ever there's a question asked, we always do our best to make sure it's answered. You don't always have the time to do it on the day, but I like to if at all possible be able to give them the quickest possible response. Elain: One of the biggest responses we get is that people are shocked that we replied. Every time we get that, don't we. Adam: But I love it, I love speaking to them all. We have a lot of fans that become friends over time, because we have parties up at the farm where we'll invite the street teamers and things, and we'll just say to everybody, "Why don't you come along." Pete: Tell us a bit about that, there's part of your website that invites people to join the street team. Can you explain what that means? How has that evolved, and how does that work? Adam: The thing with the street team, is that it's basically people who are willing to go out of their way for you and to help promote the band. The street team, it's excellent, it's also a very difficult thing for us to co-ordinate because it means sending out flyers and things, which as your street team grows it gets harder to do. But these people are very good people who actually come and say to us, "We want to promote the band". And you'll send them flyers, and you can send them lists of jobs and they will do it, and you know they'll get done. Elain: The other useful thing is... we have street teamers for instance in London. It's a big deal for us to get on a train and go to London and find where we need to go. We have street teamers in London who will meet us off the train, they'll be there with our travel pass that they've paid £2.50 for.... that means we can get on a train, a tube or a bus, and we have our list and we'll say, "Look, these are the places that we need to go to," and they will get us from place to place, which is great. It would be very frightening for us to go and do without them there to help us. Pete: Plus you'd waste a lot of time and all the rest of it - you've got to do it fast. Elain: Exactly. So the street teamers who actually do that for us, they also come and stay with us on the farm, and maybe stay for two or three days at a time, and just party with us, basically. Adam: I think it's a very special relationship we've got with the fans. Or at least the people who have been in touch. It's very nice to be appreciated, but also to show the people appreciation. If it's like a community, it always helps you to feel like you're not just doing it for yourself, but you're also doing it for them. It's an achievement not only with you but with your group of fans. It makes it more enjoyable, because everybody has their bad days, but if you feel like you've got a reason to carry it on ... I think we get a lot of strength from the support that we receive from the fan base. I think they do help a hell of a lot. Elain: It's like this weekend when we play Whitby. We've got - how many people have we got coming and staying? Adam: God knows, I don't even want to think about it. (laughs) Pete: This is Whitby Goth Weekend? Elaine: Whitby Goth Weekend, yes. We've got some people coming up from Doncaster and ... Leicester? Adam: Leicester, and Hinckley that's just outside of Leicester. Elaine: And they've all said, "Well, you're on the way to Whitby, so can we stay with you?" And the house is going to be absolutely full. Pete: Your music, it's a very particular sort of music. You're playing Whitby Goth Weekend, but to describe you as a Goth band isn't quite right, is it? Not at all. Describe your music for the innocent bystander. Adam: I don't really think you can put a very straight brand on the type of music we play, because I think one thing that's special about our sound is that we don't really play to sound like what's cool but play to do what we enjoy doing. Elain: We describe it as power-driven melodic heavy metal with a mix of tribal stylings and catchy riffs. Pete: In a nutshell. (laughs) Steve: I think as a three we're just striving to do the best that we can. But what comes out of it is a mixture of influences. And it is melodically ... if you were to take the distortion away, it wouldn't sound like metal, and the other spins on it, but ... yeah, it is hard to label. That's exactly what I like about it. Adam: Yeah, it's not your run-of-the-mill kind of thing. Whether people connect with that or whether they don't, I do think it's important to have something unique. Pete: It is a personal vision, isn't it. Even if it's a three-way, tripartite, if you like personal vision, whoever might be leading a song or whatever else, and that comes through. Adam: You'll have certain people say, "You really remind me of this band," but then you'll mention that to somebody else, and they'll go, "You don't remind of that band at all". Steve: There's definitely no drive as to, "We want to sound like so-and-so." It comes from within, and then we try and get it out as best as possible. I would say that is definitely true of your writing. So we try to do the best we can. Pete: And that sort of thing is reflected or mirrored in ... just briefly before coming out tonight, looking at the site, I noticed your merchandising is pretty impressive. Again, in a short space of time, you've got quite a range haven't you of gear, which is all consistent and common to the whole bit, isn't it? How have you managed that? Adam: It's a case of being very inventive, isn't it, and thinking of things that people are going to want to wear that symbolises that they're into the band. It's certainly a very interesting range. We've even got down to the thongs, our underwear range. We do boxer shorts as well. But again, because it's got that almost comical edge to it, it's something that people enjoy having. Because people enjoy novelty when it's to do with something you're passionate about. Everybody does t-shirts ... Pete: You've got a good range too. Adam: T-shirts go very well for us, but it's nice to have that little bit of something extra, that little bit of something personal. (laughs) Steve: The ideal Christmas gift, in fact. (laughs) Pete: On a practical level, how do you organise that? Are you selling a lot at gigs and stuff? Adam: Yes. You often find with the merchandising that you get some real gems in there, where you sell loads. You get others where you sell a certain amount, but we also sell through the website, which goes very well. That's picked up a lot, hasn't it? That's picked up a lot lately - people can just send the cheque down and buy the merchandise. It's very good because it's very much on a trust level - they'll send us a cheque and we'll put the stuff in the post. People are often impressed by the efficiency of that, because when they order the goods we generally try and send them out the same day so they get them on time. Elain: We've just got a new batch of t-shirts done, and I put a signing on the guest book saying that the new t-shirts were here, and by the end of that day, we'd sold them. Pete: Wow. Elain: I'd never done it like that before and put a signing on the guest book, and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to do that in the future".
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