After a decent hiatus UK punks Black Time are back. It turns out that the cause for this interruption has been that little chestnut known as “dealing with life”.The band now has more children between them than there are members in the group. Damn kids!But the London band who feature guitarist Lemmy Caution and drummer Mr. Stix return with Aerial Gobs of Love, their fourth LP (which was recorded in 2009 but never quite finished) on Stockholm label Förbjudna Ljud.Black Time have built a strong reputation in punk circles with their Crime, Pussy Galore, the Fall and Monks inspired sound. A music their label describes as ”heavy vampire sound that deals with tangles of wires and old drum machines plugged into buzzing amplifiers, burning funeral pyre of 60s catalogue guitars”.We are premeiring “More Kicks Than Pricks”, a track from the album, which by the sounds of it could easily have been named “More Kids Than Pricks”Noisey: Aerial Gobs of Love is a great name for an album. Does it have any particular meaning?
Lemmy Caution: Lying on my back holding my smiling baby son above my head and him drooling on my face from on high. One of the themes of the record is how love changes as you get older: a transference from lust and romance to wiping up vomit. We're following in that fine punk rock tradition of celebrating bodily fluids, just like GG Allin and Sheer Smegma did, but in a more uptight parental way.You've described the album "like the Stone Roses’ second coming had they been a really obscure London garage band and their next album hotly anticipated by five people” Why such a long wait for the record?
Babies, basically. We recorded most of the record in 2009 in a warehouse space we had in London for a summer. The band was kind of naturally coming to the end of a 5 year cycle where we'd done a lot of records and played a lot of shows, and in the autumn I found out I was going to become a dad, so the record kind of got shelved. I'd occasionally post up finished mixes on our blog, and eventually Jakob from Förbjudna Ljud got in touch and enquired about releasing it.You’ve always had cool record design. The art of Arturo Herman Medrano III on the new album is just as superb. How did this come about?
I'd been a fan of Arturo's excellent collages for a while, and was aware of his design work via his label Convulsive Records, so I got in touch with him and asked him about doing the layout. Luckily, he turned out to be a fan of the band. We exchanged some ideas about what the record was about and he produced the sleeve which we're really happy with.I’m intrigued by a song titled “Tarzan vs IBM”. Is there a story behind this?
Tarzan Vs. IBM was the working title for Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, his 60s sci-fi film about a dystopia ruled by an all-knowing supercomputer. There's been lots of references to French new wave movies in the band, from my name to a whole EP we put out based on themes from the films. This has enraged some people who have reviewed our records, seeing it as symptomatic of pretentious name-dropping. I just like the films! Black Time was always a product of our enthusiasms, but based on a vague idea - like not knowing what the band Catholic Discipline sounded like, but trying to imagine what a band with that name would sound like and coming up with the song "Catholic Discipline" as a conceptualisation of that. "“Tarzan Vs. IBM" is a great title, so it was crying out for a suitable soundtrack in my head. The track we made originates from a improvised piece we recorded in the warehouse with me hitting a cymbal taped to a kick drum, Mr Stix on organ, and Andrew making guitar drones. We then reversed the tape and overdubbed drum machine and piano. Since then we've been asked to do the music for the new Working Title film based on the 90s British garage scene - Hugh Grant is playing Billy Childish, Ray Winstone is Dick Scum from Armitage Shanks and Bill Nighy is Liam Watson.
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Lemmy Caution: Lying on my back holding my smiling baby son above my head and him drooling on my face from on high. One of the themes of the record is how love changes as you get older: a transference from lust and romance to wiping up vomit. We're following in that fine punk rock tradition of celebrating bodily fluids, just like GG Allin and Sheer Smegma did, but in a more uptight parental way.You've described the album "like the Stone Roses’ second coming had they been a really obscure London garage band and their next album hotly anticipated by five people” Why such a long wait for the record?
Babies, basically. We recorded most of the record in 2009 in a warehouse space we had in London for a summer. The band was kind of naturally coming to the end of a 5 year cycle where we'd done a lot of records and played a lot of shows, and in the autumn I found out I was going to become a dad, so the record kind of got shelved. I'd occasionally post up finished mixes on our blog, and eventually Jakob from Förbjudna Ljud got in touch and enquired about releasing it.You’ve always had cool record design. The art of Arturo Herman Medrano III on the new album is just as superb. How did this come about?
I'd been a fan of Arturo's excellent collages for a while, and was aware of his design work via his label Convulsive Records, so I got in touch with him and asked him about doing the layout. Luckily, he turned out to be a fan of the band. We exchanged some ideas about what the record was about and he produced the sleeve which we're really happy with.I’m intrigued by a song titled “Tarzan vs IBM”. Is there a story behind this?
Tarzan Vs. IBM was the working title for Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, his 60s sci-fi film about a dystopia ruled by an all-knowing supercomputer. There's been lots of references to French new wave movies in the band, from my name to a whole EP we put out based on themes from the films. This has enraged some people who have reviewed our records, seeing it as symptomatic of pretentious name-dropping. I just like the films! Black Time was always a product of our enthusiasms, but based on a vague idea - like not knowing what the band Catholic Discipline sounded like, but trying to imagine what a band with that name would sound like and coming up with the song "Catholic Discipline" as a conceptualisation of that. "“Tarzan Vs. IBM" is a great title, so it was crying out for a suitable soundtrack in my head. The track we made originates from a improvised piece we recorded in the warehouse with me hitting a cymbal taped to a kick drum, Mr Stix on organ, and Andrew making guitar drones. We then reversed the tape and overdubbed drum machine and piano. Since then we've been asked to do the music for the new Working Title film based on the 90s British garage scene - Hugh Grant is playing Billy Childish, Ray Winstone is Dick Scum from Armitage Shanks and Bill Nighy is Liam Watson.