PHILIP SUMNER of
BRITISH SEA POWER In the midst of their tour and summer festival dates, Philip Sumner of indie band British Sea Power took time out to talk with Korg. For a band that spend a lot of time on the road the newest addition to their growing Korg collection, the Microstation, is proving to be a big hit. Read on to find out more. What are the band up to at the moment? Well we've been touring 'Valhalla Dancehall' and just came back from Russia and Germany where we played a few club shows and performed at Hurricane and Southside Festivals respectively. Moscow was fantastic, we were well looked after there. The promoter made sure we got on the overnight train to St Petersburg stocked with a small bar. The stowaways in our carriage were pleased. Aside from touring we've been writing the next album, so with second demos complete we look set to record it in September/October this year. You get compared to a lot of bands from The Cure to Joy Division. Which acts do you find inspiring? Queen seem to be high on the agenda at the minute on tour. Freddie Mercury is the most anti-depressing front man. Julian Cope, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy and St Vitus all score high in the Zeus bus. Trans Am are one of my all time favourites, watching them live made electronic music and guitars seem cool to me. When did your musical journey begin? BSP just celebrated 10 years in the business. We reissued 'Fear of Drowning', our first single, to commemorate it on our own label Golden Chariot, its original label. It was after this first single that Rough Trade Records signed us, and we're still with them. We are in fact Rough Trade's longest serving act. Geoff Travis at Rough Trade is a legend. You're playing many summer festivals. Do you enjoy touring? How does your fan base differ from country to country? Yeah it's good playing festivals; it gives you a nice break from standard tours. We're playing a lot in Europe this year. Our Fan base often surprises us though. We're off to Poland next week where we're appreciated quite a bit and we're going back to China in August. Last time we went there for the first time and 700 people turned up to the shows, which was incredible for a country where our albums weren't available. You have a pretty large Korg collection. What is it that draws you to Korg gear in general? I've been using Korg's since I was at school. When I was 15 I worked in a big music store in Shrewsbury and used to sneak into the demo booth and just play them instead of working. I own two Korg Delta's from 1979, the year I was born. Those machines are amazing, the sub on them is outrageous, plus they have a dedicated string synth which I've used to fatten vocoders. The best thing about Korg gear is that they develop over short periods of time. The sound sets change and they tend to have standout features unique to that keyboard, something which other companies forget about or go completely the other direction and put daft stuff on them. How does you live setup vary from your studio setup? Well I leave the old stuff at home basically. I've bought double of some stuff to stop me carting flight cases back home from tour. I've been trying to write this time around using purely the hardware I currently tour with for obvious reasons. Having said that though anything I can't take I generally sample. Do the Microkorgs and the Microkorg XL still get used heavily in the studio and live? Yeah the Microkorgs get used loads live. I used one Microkorg live as a dedicated bass synth. I've programmed a series of subs, synth basses and bass organ sounds whilst the other one runs sequenced sounds, twinkles and arps. The Microkorg XL gets used when we tour over here a lot. On our last record I used the Microkorgs all over it; songs like ‘Stunde Null’ and ‘We Are Sound’ feature them a lot. The XL organ was used on ‘Living is So Easy’ as well as the twinkle sounds which are delayed arps, some forwards, some backwards. Your newest addition is the Microstation. What are your favourite features? I've had a Microstation for a month now. I principally bought it because we were getting charged a fortune in excess baggage when we fly to shows. 61 small keys in a flight case you can pick up with one finger is a big favourite with our technicians Paul and Mal. I use it for its pianos and organs (to have splits and combinations of both) on stage. It also doubles perfectly as a midi controller live as I run Kontakt 4 for all the sampled stuff. I keep midi channel one clear whilst having a dummy sound patch. Then when I want to dial up my samples from the computer, use the global media button to change the midi channel whilst selecting the dummy patch. The Microstation is brilliant. I'm amazed by some of its features for such a little machine. Have used it so far in Russia, Germany and Loaded In The Park. Definitely worth the purchase. What does the rest of the year hold for you? We have a whole host of festivals (T in the Park, Oxygen, and latitude) in the UK. When we return from Poland next week we're playing a show at Jodrell Bank. We thought it would make a great setting for a show with the telescope as a backdrop, and then we're off to Japan and Australia. I think come September, assuming we've found a suitable studio; we'll record the new album, which even has title.
Photo Credit: Dan Dennison and Josh Trupin
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