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Caned & Able, aside from being an interesting play on words and Biblical reference, is something of a musical collective headed by Patrick Bird and Martyn Savigar.
The musicians they collaborate with are notable in their own right. To take a few examples, guitarist Jon Klein used to play for Specimen and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and drummer Chris Bell also played for Specimen as well as many other quality '80s bands. Their combined sound takes the concept of the mash-up to extremes, intermixing Billie Holliday and John Peel with Anna Jacyszyn's vocals.
The group combined efforts yet again to answer our same six questions. |
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Patrick Bird: I was studio trained back in 1993 by Andy Montgomery from On-U Sound. I was in post-production for the rest of the nineties working on records with Tricky, Aswad, Primal Scream and Suede - since then I've done pretty much every job there is to do in the audio business. I've got my own production company now and most of our work is mixing and mastering, but we also produce music for films, television and for brands. Martyn and I started Caned & Able five years ago to give ourselves the freedom to do what we wanted in music - that's when we started the Beats For Bars project.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
PB: We got together with Mike Coles from Malicious Damage Records last year and made an ambitious decision to do a double album - one uptempo and one chilled. 'Smoke' is the chilled one, where we got to do a lot of experimenting and trawling through ideas we've had around for a while. We also got together with Paolo Ogliari from Milan as co-producer - chilled music is his bag, so that was a real pleasure and we found a good working formula together. There are quite a few guests featured on the album too, notably Tommy Deff and Anna Jacyzsyn on vocals. Jon Klein from The Banshees also played guitar on a lot of the tracks, Chris Bell on some drums and we obviously did a lot of audio sampling too, which I think made for a nice hybrid of sounds. Last year ended up being a very chilled year, so we only got round to making 'Smoke'. The 'Mirrors' album got left behind but we're working on it now.
Martin Savigar: 'Smoke' is one of those albums that's been around the block a few times. Different names, different tracks, you know - we'll probably do a very interesting remixes, b-sides and covers album at some point.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
MS: Lots of robust debate is a diplomatic way of putting it.
PB: It's a difficult question for us to answer because we never make two tracks in the same way. I like to start with a title to inspire me, then see what happens - basically, one of us will get an idea down and often pass it on to the others in the team. An important part of our process is not being precious about our own ideas and to let the others improve the tracks whenever possible. When we all end up in the same studio at the same time, we focus on the mixing and get the tracks finished - that's it!
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
MS: Portishead made the best album I've ever heard in 'Dummy'... faultless production. And I'm a big Bonobo fan - Simon Green's got a fantastic knack for rhythm.
PB: The Cure, Groove Armada, Gorillaz, DJ Shadow, Beethoven.
Q5 What would you say to someone listening to your music for the first time?
MS: Listen to this.
PB: Pour yourself a drink and listen to this!
Q6 What are your ambitions for your album, and for the future?
MS: We'd really like to have Roots Manuva do a rap for us - and we'll just keep making fucking good music for the cows to come home to.
PB: We're going to up the tempo a bit now - we've got plans coming out of our ears. We're just starting a Beats For Bars-style project with Kris Needs, we're remixing a bunch of Ike & Tina Turner tracks, which will eventually become its own album, and of course there's 'Mirrors' which will hopefully be ready this summer. Plans for the 'Smoke' album? To sit beautifully in people's record collections right next to 'Mirrors'.
published june 2008
