Ian Svenonius Interview
Cowpat Fanzine - October1996
http://www.southern.com/southern/band/MAKUP/Int_Cowpat_oct96.html

A few months back The mAKE-UP came into the country to deliver their Gospel Yeh Yeh to the people of the UK, there were casualties along the way; namely Mr I F Svenonius' yellow flares and his knees. What was the meaning of all this pant splitting activity? Reading yet another article on The mAKE-UP that compares them to Jon Spencer or Rocket from the Crypt gets tiresome, The mAKE-UP are no retro revivalists and they ain't "Grunge Rock with horns", they're a NU sound, that Gospel Yeh-Yeh, "new breed for the new flood".

Their awesome, inspired show came to London's Powerhaus and it truly was the best thing witnessed by COWPAT for a very long time. Although Ian Svenonius has the best question avoiding technique ever and feigned indifference whilst the tape recorder was present, he later revealed his true thoughts on several of the subjects discussed over a green salad and espresso. Look out Soul is back for the second time around.

CP; We've gotta get you down on the Gospel Yeh Yeh sound.

Ian; I guess, mAKE-UP.....It's typical I don't do interviews until after I play because I don't like people to go in with preconceptions of ideas of historical forms, but Gospel music is inspirational in that it provides a non comodified example, an underground. There's a whole underground scene, network etc., that exists outside the whims of the market place. It's not on a timetable for success and planned obsolesence like capitalism, pop music or whatever. Gospel music, cathartic passion music, exists outside of time constraints or anything. The presentation is something when applied to pop music of Yeh Yeh music.

CP; You're not consigning yourself to organised religion then?

Ian; No, no. Unless we create it, unless we dictate exactly what that religion means,. I mean, religion serves a social purpose right? It serves a community function, it's really about the congregation that gathers in sanctified walls, a sanctuary, so that's what mAKE-UP try and provide, but if that's organized religion then so be it and if religion calls on us a greater spirit then so be it. mAKE-UP is organized religion because we still believe in the idea that things can happen is a space, in a place, in a time. We're not really subjecting...we don't restrict ourselves to the sort of cynisism that perpetuates Rock n Roll music of whatever. Yeh Yeh music is a music from the early sixties in France. Francois Hardy and Jonny Haliday and all those people were creating a super confectionary jukebox music, so this is a sort of synthesis of forms, thats why, y'know, Gospel music.

CP; What do you make of the Young Lions Conspiricy?

Ian; Is that Tim Kerr? Oh yeh, he's a friend of mine.

CP; Does that tally with your notions or is that something different all together?

Ian; I think it's different and it's more recent y'know. Tim's cool. I don't actually... I haven't been subjecting myself to alot of the idiom recently. I think it's often more helpful to step outside the idiom if you're trying to contruct something new, y'know. But he's great, all of his things in the past have always been great. Is that something to do with the Lord High Fixers or something? I haven't heard or seen any of their records. How come, what do you guys think of the Young Lions Conspiracy?

CP; I just thought it seemed to be saying the same sort of thing; emotion, soul, liberation through that.

Ian; Oh really. Well that's interesting because mAKE-UP's trying not to fall into a manifesto form or anything because we feel Nation of Ulysses sort of pioneered this form which was manifestos and the noise on the stage intimated a thing and there was a larger script and it was...that's all become really cliched and comodified by a host of artists and therefore it's sort of passe. Therefore our content, we try and present it in person, on stage.

(Later when the tape recorder was turned off, Ian disclosed that he was infact well aware of the Young Lions Conspiracy and thought that Tim Kerr assigning himself to such a thing was pretty lame, even though he thought Bad Mutha Goose were a great band.)

CP; So you rather let people see what it is for themselves?

Ian; Exactly. But also, through speaking, through sermonizing, through the Gospel form, ideally we let it all hang out on stage and it's not like something which needs to be scripted y'know what I mean? Because we're trying to bring down the noise, let spontonaity occur, y'know, speak about the issues at hand at the moment.

CP; The album, it's a live album, you've set yourself up as a live experience already.

Ian; Exactly. Although the live experience on the record is much less sort of...it's a good record, but it's less realised in the sense of it being the Gospel experience that we were trying to present.

CP; You haven't brought your MC along with you?

Ian; Oh, our MC always just comes from the crowd. I think Dale's gonna be here tonight, but he happens to MC on the record just coz he happened to be there and he did a great job. Every night we just seem to take whoever seems to be the most up for it.

CP; Does Dale live in England now?

Ian; No, he lives in the USA, but he's on a trip that coincides with our trip. He plays music in DC right now, he travels between Olympia, DC and San Francisco, he's a hobo. He's a lonesome hobo, in the words of Bob Dylan (Conversation turns to that of Savage Malignant playing in the USA)
Ian; This is a pretty big place man. Frighteningly large.

CP; What kinda places are you playing in the USA?

Ian; Oh, we play basements and shit.(that's a lie..ED) and we have a really good response typically. I think people are really responding to our thing. It's really built on the ashes of the nothingness that preceeded us y'know and we're against the new punk rock, it's really regressive, reactionary and boring, so that's why everthing we do we're trying to like strip it down, funky Gospel.

CP; I keep waiting for you to say "take me to the bridge", are you ever gonna say that? (I swear I heard him say this in the middle of 'We can't be contained')

Ian; People make alot about our James Brown influence and of course we're influenced by James Brown because he was number one in energy and formerly presenting a whole show, but I think our music isn't really James Brownish really. I'm not a good dancer, but also more of an ortorical figure where as James Brown is really... every thing in the orchestra is rhythm, including him, y'know what I mean?

CP; Do you do knee drops?

Ian; I do a lot of knee drops. Right now my knees are really hurting so I don't know if I'll do any tonight, I've been doing them every night.
(Having said this, within the first few seconds The mAKE-UP took the stage and went into 'Hold It' he had done several knee drops, disconnected the mic from it's lead, pivoting on his stolen shoes, yelping and generally getting on down. As Bootsy Collins might say, 'he's got da funk')

CP; Most alarming falsetto style, differs a lot from N.O.U.

Ian; We're just formally breaking all new ground. NOU was inspirational to a lot of people and really imitated in a lot of ways, not all of them bad, some bad, but it's basically a cliche; you have major label rock acts basically reciting Ulysses records and I don't mean to sound bitter, that's the nature of art I suppose and the sad thing is that the revolution was comodified before it was realized, but we just feel like there has to be something that isn't so easily assimilated by the organs of regression and the organs of the staus quo.

CP; Could you give me any advice on doing the high vocals?

Ian; Oh, I'm trying to turn it down because I found that for power it's really good to like...screams and high things, it's good to use them very prescriptively for the moment. Y'know a lot of bands including my old band; huge volume freak out, it can seem very powerful live and often it is, but it's more interesting for us now to try and figure out how to ration these things. The tension is the most powerful thing then the release of tension is like bricks, that's obvious, that's what we're exploring. But yeah, a falsetto...I dunno, my falsetto is getting bigger.

CP; Do you find that you can actually break through to the crowd every night?

Ian; In England it's tough, but in America...I mean contextually we're an American band, everything that we do has to do with a situation that we live in America which is that everything is comodified and co opted and destroyed and sold out, everthing that we were involved in a few years ago. So we've kinda constructed this new thing, but y'know, of course in England there's been no underground for a really long time... people are much.. I dunno. It's just different with Radio One and 'the papers', all these things are so..

CP; Have you heard of that band Bis?

Ian; Bis, yes.

CP; What do you make of them?

Ian; I dunno, I haven't heard or seen them really.

CP; Someone said bands like Bis are the product of Ulysses, the fruit of Ulysses, but I don't agree. It seems like those papers, they're hyping Bis, Kenickie, Comet Gain, saying this is the new Ulysses or whatever, this is Everett True saying this, and that their US cousins are bands like mAKE-UP, Pee Chees, Bikini Kill etc. I dunno how you see the two, UK vs. US?

Ian; I don't know much about these bands, but it is interesting to me the idea that people think that something that is sort of lifted directly is supposed to be the same...I dunno if the issue is art?

CP; Well that's what I'm saying it's not.

Ian; What I'm saying is; people defend this outright copyism and artistic plagiarism as some sort of modern day appropriation. I can dig inspiraton and all that stuff. I dunno, Bis are just not very interesting to me that's all. I draw inspiration from Blonde Redhead who we are playing with tonight because of the attitude they have on stage and that innovation and their character and charisma and formerly I draw a lot from historical forms like Gospel, James Brown, all these things, but to draw directly from something which is basically within our immediate context, it's just redundant. It's not very interesting, y'know what I mean?

Michelle; We're leaving now, you wanna go eat?

Ian; Sure, sorry...but I'm not condemning it, I haven't heard any of these bands (Which is of course totally untrue - ED). I'm speaking about the American phenomenon and I'm not actually talking about our band, I'm just talking about derivative art. I dunno if the issue is art. Art is a market; what I mean is, the only way to hear ideas...is for language to be fresh.

CP; Have you given up on Rock n Roll?

Ian; I gave up on Rock n Roll a long time ago, but I love music; kids makin' it , responding to it and historically. In a way we're reaffirming our love for all this stuff, we proclaim belief in faith and it's very abstract. What are we ascribing our belief to? a trancendent moment, what about that?

CP; Who is this band, do you know them? (Gold Blade had just started to sound check and were shouting out "Soul power" into the mic repeatedly.)

Ian; I know 'em a little bit coz we played another show with them.

CP; Do you think they know what Soul Power is?

Ian; Soul Power y'know, that's interesting. It's an interesting concept. I'm really interested in the idea of soul and blackism and all that. Because in the USA there's the idea that blackism is something that's an essential character and starting in the late eighties there was a turn to this black power idea which at first titillating to the politically minded...(stops as the noise of the other band is getting too great, some talk about the Frumpies)...Um, oh yeh; so the idea of Soul. It is an extension of someone's essential blackness or the black experience, the black colonies? We're inspired by Gospel music, is that co-option of another cultures form? I think it's interesting that soul music was sort of um, you're talking about this contrived scene that you say Everett True is constructing, well soul music in a way; I suppose it's like this contrived term, it's like Rock n Roll, it's a way to delineate a certain new marketing. It's interesting because of the hype behind soul music was that it was gospel music that was cyclizised, it still had the passion, the feeling and the ad libbing and all that stuff, but really when you listen to it, formerly and everything it owes much more to pop music of the time, or blues. I mean blues being a pop form in the sixties right, so what we're trying to do is go deeper to a Gospel thing, but it's not like some form of commodification. In America there's that black and white are essential conditions and perhaps they are and I'm not belying the idea that a culture exists, but I believe more in a class y'know, in power and powerlessness. Like it says on the back of the Clash single where it talks about the idea of youth and ages being this like, y'know....it's just a lie. Capitalism, and capitalist goverment, democracies based around people who sell things, around what's economically feasible, so since slavery was abolished in the 1860's which was due to war of economics where industrial capitalism triumphed over plantation slave style feudal state, a medeival style English culture, they envisoned themselves as feudal lords or serfs. Anyway, since that sorta thing, since the North triumph there's never been....to me the people in power have never given a shit who the working poor was, whether they were white or black.

(Interview finally ends here due to extremity of noise and hunger, thanks to Ian Svenonius for doing this interview.)