On the day of the release of their new single, ‘The Dictionary’, I had the pleasure of talking to the lovely guys from Olympians. This four-piece have captured hearts with their folky vocals, drone textures and mathy guitars, creating a lovely post-pop sound. They have also been cited as being one of Norwich’s finest exports.
Over 2012 they are planning to release a series of singles they are calling ‘The Book Club’, which come in a hollowed out book.
Olympians are Dan, Ben, Ed and Chris.
I am James.
These are the questions:
(((o))): What prompted the idea of the Book Club?
Chris: I love getting something considered from bands. I have a few really nice 7″ collections and nice gate-fold records with expansive art and think it just makes the whole thing more appealing. Its great to have what feels like an artefact from a band rather than just a few bits of memory hanging about on your phone. That is in essence the idea.
Dan: The plastic jewel case most CDs come in is one of the most ugly brittle pieces of shit I’ve ever seen, why the hell would anybody want to own, let alone buy that?
(((o))): Have any members of Olympians ever been members of book clubs themselves?
Dan: I was part of the Gnasher and Gnipper fan club. There were badges. It was fine.
Chris: I used to be part of some kind of early eighties Ladybird book club and I had a Penguin book club when I got a little older. Really liked that they had a design thematic running through them. They look even better now. I have a bit of a 70’s/80’s design fetish.
Ed: Erm…well I was a member of the Norwich Millennium Library, which I guess you could say is part of the worlds biggest Book Club. That was until I forgot to take the books back and my Mum went in to cancel my membership and pay the fines. I was 24.
(((o))): When I first heard about your idea for the Book Club my first reaction was; “Books are for reading, and you’re destroying them?! NOOOOOOO!!!!” – Did anyone else have a similar reaction, or just me?
Dan: Sure, quite a few people have said that. But then quite a few people who are really into books are really behind it. There’s a girl who we know that runs an actual real Book Club who is super stoked about the idea as it’s encouraging the concept of books in general. We have put plenty of consideration into whether or not what we’re doing is slightly sacrilegious and stuff, and settled on deciding it’s fine if we only choose really fucking awful books. Which we have.
(((o))): Is there anything special, interesting or different we can expect from the next single in the Book Club?
Dan: Yes. My new synthesiser, that sounds and looks remarkably similar to the last one. It’s hard to say. We’ve just recorded the basic tracks of 4 songs, so we’re going to wait until they’re all finished before we decide which one becomes the next single. A couple of very talented film chaps have offered to make videos with us though, so whatever the song is it will probably be accompanied by some SLICK AS FUCK visuals.
(((o))): Your sound seems to have changed since the EP, away from a more mathy side, and now sounds almost folktronic (I think you self described as drone-folk). What were the reasons behind the change?
Dan: I think we’ve always been concerned about filling space in our music in one way or another, I think we’re just trying new ways to do that.
Ed: Following on from Dan, this has meant that we don’t seem to be as concerned about stripping things back a little more, maybe even culling parts completely. This seems to have been a good thing and nobody has complained so far.
Chris: It kind of seems like the songs have taken over. I like it.
(((o))): How are Olympians songs composed; are they a team effort, or do some members bring songs nearly completed to practice?
Chris: Dan and Ben build something and then we pootie up to see them and bash it with everything we have.
Ed: That’s it really. Now we’re split between two cities Dan and Ben can use the magic world of the internet to send us ideas, then Chris and I have a play around, see what we think and hopefully get some rhythm ideas down. This is generally followed by us getting together and hoping once we play together something will stick.
(((o))): What are the major difficulties of the band being split between two cities, and are there any advantages?
Dan: When we all hang out it’s a treat, that’s quite good. It’s also pretty rare, and that’s quite bad. Sometimes it’s tricky justifying spending 2 hours of a practice arsing around jamming nonsense when it’s the only practice you’ve got in a particular month, and that’s a pity because it’s usually the stupid jams where the more interesting ideas develop. We’ve kinda split into two units, the songwriting unit in Norwich and the rhythm section unit in London, and so our music is usually more complete with regards to song structure before we all play it. I suppose we’re still kinda getting our balance with it. We shall see.
(((o))): Where does inspiration from the lyrics come from?
Dan: Other people’s songs. Cereal packets. Chris Neil. Drinking gun. Don’t know. Most of them come from a Chinese-whispers style misinterpretation of mumbled demo recordings.
(((o))): Is there are political/social or moral those which guides your philosophy behind releasing music?
Dan: We try not to rip people off! That’s about it really. We hope that the things we make are good, and then we don’t feel bad about spending money on them. We’re pretty keen on the DIY ethos, labels like Dischord and stuff, and both we and our label depend on spending our time rather than big budgets when putting stuff out there, but perhaps if we had more budgets to blow on stuff we wouldn’t be so DIY. It’s hard to sincerely say it’s the choice we’ve made when really there is no choice at all. I suppose if we were offered big bucks to make horrible music we disliked, we’d probably be too proud to take it. Does that answer the question?
