Evil Nine

Evil Nine Interview

UK adapta covered Evil Nine, for their new album, ''They Live!'' launch party where the band all slapped on makeup as zombies! They say the album is zombie-based and it was a special treat for Halloween night. The album features collaborations with a bunch of big-time artists as well as their out of the box mixture of sounds, shows their broad interest in various kinds of music. We sneaked into the backstage and found out...

youtube : Music Video ''Crooked''

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- Can you give us a brief background of Evil Nine and also introduce each other to us?

Tom: I'm Tom and this is Pat. We do duties in the studio together but Pat is a bit more technologically minded than me.

Pat: Yes! Technology!

T: We do live shows together. I also DJ, whereas Pat doesn't.

- You also do a lot of remixes. Can you tell us a bit about them?

T: We do quite a few, such as Alex Dolby, Moby, UNKLE, Eagles of Death Metal which we've just remixed, and so on.

P: We enjoy it because you put your own stamp on it. They are really great tracks in the first place, and for someone you really like as well is a nice treat.

- How come you decided to name yourselves Evil Nine?

T: There's not really a real reason. There's no big story behind that.

- You have just put a new album out? We are here for your album launch party.

P: Yea, it’s called ''They Live'' and it's zombie-based, as we are big fans of zombie soundtracks from the 70's and 80's. It’s not really a concept album but we wanted to turn it into our own thing.

- What's your favourite zombie film?

P: ''Zombie Holocaust'' and any of George A Romero's early zombie films.

T: ''Dawn of the Dead'', both old and new versions.

youtube : Music Video ''They Live!''

- You have guest singers on your songs. How do you choose singers? Do you have any criteria?

T: Just people who we love basically.

P: We approached people whom we met through friends or people's music we've loved for years and we loved to work with them. We worked with great people for example, EL-P... He's a big influence on our music. He's a producer and a rapper. Emily Breeze, who's here tonight, has done a track with us. Also, on our new album we've got David from autoKratz and Beans whom we are also big fans of. We really love their voices, energy and what they talk about.

youtube : Music Video ''All The Cash'' feat EL-P

- Do they write lyrics at all?

P: Yea. They write mostly. There are a few tracks we've written lyrics for our album are the singles, They Live and another track, Luke Goss. We are not the greatest lyric writers in the world...

- What kind of equipment do you use in the studio?

P: Old analogue synths and computer.
T: and guitars. That’s it really.

-What equipment/setup are you using on stage? Is there any difference?

T: Yea, it's quite different because we have live drums for a start, me playing a base guitar and Pat has a base MIDI, which means he's gonna play samples and synth. He has a keyboard as well. And also a vocalist Juice Aleem, who's on the first album. He's our frontman. A whole show basically.

- Choose one word best describes your sound.

T: Awesome!
P: Awesomer!

youtube : Music Video ''Restless''

- What about your influences or inspiration?

P: It's a zombie music thing, which is like the guy called Fabio Frizzi who used to do lots of classical soundtracks. It's basically quite hard to say anyone in particular but we like all types of rock music, punk, electro, and people like John Carpenter and lots of soundtracks in the 80's. We like pretty much all music. There's nothing we really don't like, as we are big music fans.

- Any other hobbies/skills you have besides music that you'd like to tell us about?

P: Although we are busy doing stuff for music, whenever we’ve got time off I just like relaxing... eat nice food, go walking in the countryside in the sun... non musical moment type stuff.

T: I watch DVDs, go for a long walk in the countryside, download tunes and movies, I like detective films, and paint sometimes.

- You have already been to Japan. What was your experience like?

T: Amazing.
P: We met nice people, had great gigs, and amazing food.
T: We loved sushi so...

P: I think my favourite thing was going to Fuji Rock Festival, which was so clean and nice. We've never been in such beautiful surroundings and it was the greatest experience... and the drive in the countryside was amazing.

- Do you have any plan to go back there sometime soon?

T: Yea, hopefully next year, because we have KSR, our record label in Japan, we'll go back to do live sets there.

Website : http://www.evilnine.net/

myspace : http://www.myspace.com/evilnine

Written by Chika Aoki

All photos by Toshimi Takaishi