Editors strike a different chord with third album   

By The Holland Times Monday 19 October 2009, 09:10

Editors sprang from humble beginnings in the English Midlands seven years ago. They have since risen steadily through the ranks of modern music to now stand as one of the biggest bands in the world.

With their first two albums combined selling over two million copies worldwide, many are predicting Editors - Tom Smith (vocals, rhythm guitar), Chris Urbanowicz (lead guitar, keyboards), Russell Leetch (bass guitar), and Ed Lay (drums) - to follow in the footsteps of bands such as Coldplay and U2 into the stratosphere of musical stardom. This October sees the release of their highly-anticipated third album In This Light And On This Evening. For the inside story on their international success, The Holland Times caught up with drummer Ed Lay on a recent visit to the Netherlands.

The new album represents quite a dramatic change in musical direction for the band. Are you expecting some people to find it somewhat alienating?
It is going to split opinion there's no doubt about it. I think it could lose us some fans that possibly got into us at a later stage, but it opens up an awful lot of doors as well. People who haven't been into us before have maybe thought of us as a little too overblown, this could actually change some of those conceptions.

You've enjoyed an amazing amount of success here in the Netherlands where you seem to have a huge following.
It always amazes me how well we are received abroad. I'm so proud of how well we've done in countries like the Netherlands. Our gigs here are actually our biggest outside of the UK. When we headlined the last day at Lowlands last year it was a bit ridiculous really. It came as a surprise, and I think we were a little bit awestruck and I don't think it was our greatest performance, but we're obviously doing something right here.

Is it important for the band to be recognised outside of your own country?
Absolutely. To be a success in a completely different culture, somewhere foreign, that carries a lot of weight for me. We get updates of ticket sales for our gigs in the UK and around Europe, and it's far more interesting to know how tickets are selling in foreign countries. Its crazy how quickly the gigs here in the Netherlands sold out, it's really a great feeling to know people want to see you that much.

And how do Dutch crowds compare to others?
Dutch crowds are really good; they're quite similar to English fans, quite raucous, boisterous. The shows in the Netherlands always have a great atmosphere. The venues here are really good as well. The Paradiso is probably my favourite venue in Europe.

Did your first experience of live music make you want to be a musician?
Yeah it really did. When I was 13-14 the first time I experienced that environment it was so alluring; so loud and so much tension during the build up and excitement to the band coming out on stage. I loved everything about it and it made me want to go to a gig every night so I guess the best way to do that is to be a musician yourself. That night sowed a seed in my life for sure.

Reading the band's bio it says you all met while studying Music Technology at University. That sounds quite a lot nerdier than the usual band bios. Do you all consider yourselves to be music geeks?
No we don't consider ourselves music nerds or tech-heads at all, and to be honest that course was one that we all took just to meet like-minded people, we didn't even do very well at the course. As soon as first year was over I knew that it wasn't the thing for me. I'm not technically minded at all, I don't have any mathematical ability let alone enough patience. But what it did was give us all a lot of time to hangout and form a band.

Can you explain how the name Editors came about?
Well we have changed our name a few times. Some of them have been truly awful. When I joined we were called Snowfield and that would have to be the wettest, most awful name in the history of music I think. It didn't conjure up any of the right kind of imagery that we wanted.

So it's a visual metaphor?
Yeah. We wanted an aesthetic that was very simple, black and white, and when we wrote it on the page it sort of had a glow to it that we all liked. Even though people like to make up things about the meaning of the word it's not about that at all. It was just that it sounded good and we liked the visual concept of it. The thing is as soon as you get a record deal it's absolutely crucial to have a good name because that's going to go down in history. That's who you are.

People are constantly comparing Editors to bands such as Interpol and White Lies. Do you think that's justified?
I can understand why people do compare us to bands such as those, but you can compare anyone who has an interest in writing dark music. Obviously those bands have a baritone lead singer as well so that doesn't help get rid of those misconceptions. But we don't really worry too much about comparisons; we like to think we're making our own way just fine. But we're hearing those sorts of comparisons less and les these days, and I think it's a compliment now that it's not happening so much because people are realising we're original and we're making our own way just fine.

Do you find darker-sounding music inherently more interesting than 'happier' music?
Basically there are two kinds of music: ultra happy and miserable as sin, and everything else in-between really doesn't interest us because it's just grey and dull. We can write some pretty dark material but there's a lot of humour in it as well. We like to think of it as a 'black comedy of music.'

You're new album sounds something akin to a soundtrack for a science-fiction film set in a futuristic, dystopian London. Did filmic references influence the writing of the album at all?
I'm not so sure about filmic influences, but when we were putting the songs together I had a particular storyline - a themed direction if you will - that I thought the album was heading in. Not only that but our music is intended to evoke images, colours and shapes so I think in that sense it can be quite cinematic. When I watch a film it hugely effects how I feel and we try to do the same thing when we create music so it definitely plays a part.

Do you have songs worked out before you go into the studio or is the recording process part of the creative process?
The recording process is very creative; nothing is ever completely worked out before we go into the studio. There's quite a mixture of stages that any one song will go through. Some songs are almost completely done just through our demos, while others need a thorough examination and re-working.

Does one process tend to produce better material over another?
It varies greatly. The main thing is as long as the song fulfils its potential. Sometimes it's incredibly simple, like with one of our most well-known songs 'Munich,' that took us about half an hour to write. When we'd finished playing it we just all looked at each other and went 'yeah that's there,' it was just so free-flowing and easy. But there are other songs we will labour over for weeks-on-end that won't even get onto that particular album. Those songs absolutely kill you to produce but they're very gratifying once you get them simply because you've put so much time and effort into them.

The fundamental difference between your first two albums and the new one is the shift from guitar-laden songs to keyboard driven tunes. Was Chris, as the lead guitarist and keyboardist, the catalyst for this systemic change in musical direction?
Chris decided that if he tried to write material on guitar for the next album he would get bored very quickly and he knew that in some ways he might get lazy, he might start ripping himself off or repeating himself. So he thought he needed to take drastic action. So he bought a couple of keyboards and started writing. He's not particularly well versed with playing keyboards but because he was approaching writing melodies in quite a substantially different manner the results were therefore different.

Was it daunting at all?
No not really because it meant that all restraints were off. We could be very experimental and it was quite liberating. We could go in and create sounds that were completely unique and like nothing we'd ever done before. We could do sampling, we could manipulate sounds.

There are a lot of what appear to be robot-like noises on there as well
There are, but still we wanted to put them all back into a song that we were proud of. That's what Editors are: we care a lot about melody, we care about dynamics, and we want to move people with a tune; it's still an Editors song, just more experimental.
 
In This Light And On This Evening will be released on 12 October through Kitchenware Records.

Editors Netherlands tour dates:
8 November, Melkweg, Amsterdam
9 November, Oopsterport, Groningen
11 November, 013, Tilburg
   
Read our review of In This Light And On This Evening

http://thehollandtimes.nl/Arts%20en%20Culture.html?artikel=187