THE MUMBLE : Hello Stazy, so where ya from & where ya at, geographically speaking?

STAZY : Awrite, Mumble. We’re from a lovely wee village on the east coast of Scotland called Leith.

THE MUMBLE : When did you first realise you were a musician

STAZY : I think I’m still waiting to realise that I’m a musician. I’m more of an ideas man with hear vision. No bad at rhythm guitar. We all played different instruments on the new album but dunno if you’d call it musicianship. I just watched that Take That special and Jason Orange was tapping a tambourine.

 

THE MUMBLE : How were your influences in the early days, & have they changed over the years

STAZY : The band as a whole has got too many influences to mention, and not just musically speaking. Every day is an influence. I’ve got an old Top Of The Pops on the telly just now and I was thinking that this was probably a big influence on me as a wee skid mark. Thursday at half 7, couldnae beat it. Rod the Mod is number 1 this week.

 

THE MUMBLE : So can you tell me about Frantic Chant?

STAZY : There’s a song on the Ride It Like A Shark album called Surf Daft and the chorus goes “We do what we want and we don’t give a fuck”. That probably sums up Frantic Chant. If you like us, sound. If not, sound. All our album sales pay for the next one, so as long as that keeps happening we’re happy.

Our drummer, Col, runs the label as well. He’s still sending out copies of our last two albums, Oscillator and Ride It Like A Shark, to happy customers every week, so hopefully that continues with this album.

 

THE MUMBLE : You’ve just released your seventh album album, The Glass Factory, there’s a hell lot of songs on it, what’s that all about on a song-writing level and can you tell us how it was recorded?

STAZY : The plan was to do 9 tunes but over time and space that escalated to 21. As far as songwriting goes, nobody ever comes in with a full tune, it’s usually a couple of chords or a riff or a line or something and we kick it about a bit and see what happens.

Most of the lyrics were done well into the recording, so we took time and could fuck about with harmonies and that. We went a bit radge with the orchestration and overdubs on a couple of numbers, with 8 minutes of us “ohmming” being one. There’s a good mix of 4 minute catchy tunes and 11 minute journeys of aural discovery.

A couple of the songs came about while waiting on everyone turning up to the studio. If there’s an idea, get it down. We first went to, our producer, Elle’s studio and spent a few weeks recording tracks that were 3 acoustic guitars and a couple of bongos. We then packed up the gear and moved into our space in Leith where we recorded the stuff that would benefit from us being in full flight.
We went back to Elle’s to work on about 15 songs. We spent ages on overdubs and because there’s always something to play in a studio, someone would come up with another tune. We’d all get distracted by this, join in and then that would get finished and put on tape there and then.

One of the tunes was done with a drum machine at, Darren, our bass player`s studio with Nick playing Darren’s right handed guitar (Nick’s left footed) and we just kept that more or less the same as Nick couldn’t play the same way with his good hand.
The Memory Song came from a nice motif that Darren had follow him which we then took it through Morocco via The White Album. We called it The Memory Song because we kept forgetting the titles we had for it.

We know Colin from the band Bombskare and knew he was sound so we asked him if he was up for playing trumpet on a track. The four songs his trumpet eventually ended up on are a perfect mesh of Psych and Soul. It’s quite a good time really.

THE MUMBLE : Do you have any live gigs coming up this year?

STAZY : We’re playing at Leith Depot on the 20^th of May, which is the first gig since the CD came out, so we’ll have a few to punt on the night.

We’re also playing the Carnival 56 Festival in Dundee in August alongside Mark Ronson, Basement Jaxx, Clean Bandit, Hot Chip, The Fratellis and many other esteemed popular acts from the hit parade. No doubt we’ll be adding more dates as the year goes on and we’re looking at heading down south for a few to help spread the word.

 

THE MUMBLE : What does Stazy Chant like to do when he’s not making kick-ass music?

STAZY : Caving.