Kasabian

In The Studio: Kasabian

TITLE: TBC
STUDIO: British Grove Studios, London and Dan The Automator’s Home Studio, San Francisco, California
PRODUCER: Serge Pizzorno, Dan The Automator
TRACK LISTING: ‘Switchblade Smile’, ‘Neon Noon’, ‘Goodbye Kiss’, ‘I Hear Voices’, ‘Shelter From The Storm’, ‘Velociraptor’, ‘Man Of Simple Pleasures’, ‘Green Fairy’
DUE: October
LABEL: Sony

Hi Serge. How is the new record coming along?
“We’re just finishing up, it’s being mastered now. We’ve mainly been recording in my house in Leicester. I’ve moved house before every album but I’ve always managed to turn one of the rooms into a studio. That’s how I’ve always worked, in a little room at the end of a house. I’m still using a fucking old PC and an old fucking computer programme, I’ve tried to change shit but it just never works. I don’t know what it is about that system; it just seems to work.”

Was the recording process similar to your previous albums?
“Yes definitely. It’s been pretty easy really, it happened really quickly. It felt like a vehicle for this other thing that was happening; I don’t really remember doing any of it. I just remember waking up in the morning, getting in the studio and going ‘fuck that sounds great!’ It’s almost like it wasn’t me doing it, a spirit would take over at six o’clock at night, do all the work and I’d wake up the next day, listen to it and think, ‘I don’t remember any of that.’”

Sounds weird! How long did the album take?
“It didn’t take long at all, it was gone and finished in six months – which is pretty good. It can take longer, that’s why when we went back in the studio with these great sounding tunes, we just thought, ‘let’s just put it out.’ We wrote and recorded it in six months.”

How would you sum up the sound of the album?
“I’d call it a jukebox record. It’s like going to a good jukebox that just spits out these instantly great tunes. I don’t know if that means anything to anyone! It’s definitely recognisable as a Kasabian record. We’ve got our sound now, a Kasabian sound and we’ve taken that really far this time. Of all the different styles on the record, it still somehow sounds like Kasabian, and that’s great.”

What genres are on there?
“All sorts really. The album starts with a tune that sounds a bit like Pulp, it’s got a really epic sound at the beginning. Then we’ve got elements of 90s house, it’s proper old school, like from when I was a kid. There’s a really amazing old rave riff, from the east midlands rave scene. It goes all over the place really.”

So can we expect the usual Kasabian festival barnstormers then?
“Definitely. We’re unique, we don’t fit in with anyone else. We are that band. We play big gigs, so we need big songs. The great thing about the record is that there are loads of ideas on it, it doesn’t sound like the other three but it’s still obviously us. It takes you to all sorts of weird places mentally but it’s still got huge choruses so you can stand in a field with 60,000 people and feel the vibe. It’s the whole package.”

Bonus Factoids:

Serge has just had a baby.

Parts of the album are “a bit Syd Barrett”

The band steered clear of narcotics during recording, “We’ve got enough crazy ideas already, we don’t need extra help!”

Serge likes cooking bacon and eggs; he says they’re “yummy”.