Japanese Voyeurs - Interview

It's not often you come across a band that's hard to pigeonhole, and leaves you walking away from the their gig stunned. We had seen Japanese Voyeurs quite sometime ago performing at Nottingham's Bodega venue, and we witnessed a kick a** attitude with the music and show to match. At the very core of the band you have a solid set of musicians who compliment each other perfectly, and when you have such a group, you had better make sure you have a singer to match. In Romily, they have that, and so much more, a vocal hurricane with focused intent.

Many thanks for taking time out to answer our questions! You've got a very busy schedule coming up, do you take a bit of time out prior to tours to gather yourselves, or, are you just wanting to get on with it?

Tom: Right now, I just want to get on with it. Seems like we haven't played in a while, that being said it is nice to have a couple of days before hand to pack a bag and just hang out at home doing nothing.

I caught you at Nottingham's Bodega last year, great intense show. You don't seem to lose that intensity at larger venues either! So do you make conscious decisions to do things slightly differently to keep that in larger shows, or get so caught up in what you're doing that it carries the audience along with you?

Romily: The only thing we do is try to make sure that we're close together when we play bigger shows. It can be pretty weird to suddenly be on a big stage when you're used to standing very close to each other and being able to hear what everyone is playing through their amps so when that happens we try and just squash everything into the middle of the stage as much as possible. I don't think you can really get the same energy and excitement if you're only hearing each other through the monitors.

Your debut album, you've said you won't listen to it for a while because you were too close to it, but I'm wondering, has doing that album perhaps altered the way you work, or introduced a new perspective? Has it actually sunk in yet that you've completed it?

Romily: It definitely feels like a huge milestone for us, we've been working toward making our first album for a few years so I think we're still dealing with the fallout of that goal being realised. Most of the aftermath has been good, looking at things we'd like to differently moving forward and also recognising what we managed to get done on the record, but there is always going to be an element of anxiety when you're forced to finish a project you've been working on for a long time. I try to look at it like a snapshot in time of where we were at musically at that particular moment, when I look at it like that and not as some definitive statement, then I'm very proud of it. I think the bottom line is we want to make a lot more records and making this one has just clarified that.

While we're talking about the album, are there any personal favourites on there for the members of the band?

Romily: For me, Get Hole, Smother me and Blush. I like the doomier, wilder songs although I think songs like Feed and That Love Sound are also really important to have on the record. You've got to have different dynamics or else you lose the impact of the heavier songs.

Tom: Mine have got to be Get Hole and Milk Teeth at the moment. Both heavier ones. And I'm pretty pleased with how then end of Get Hole turned out.

You're often tagged as grunge for the sake of an easy pigeonhole, but that's a copout - your music sounds more complex than that. What would you say are the defining qualities of your sound?

Romily: That’s quite difficult to answer... I'd agree that the grunge label is overly simplistic, we are striving to do something new and different even if that’s rooted with some influence from the 90s. I think that in the current climate of sterile indie pop and emo rock, we're trying to bring something to the table with more of a visceral edge, we're not interested in making shiny pretty in the box music and I hope that comes through in the live shows and on the recordings.

Your artwork and videos suggest a willingness to experiment, a lack of which is what arguably killed grunge in the end. How much of a role does this approach play in your songwriting? Do you find that maintaining artistic freedom can make the band members pull in different directions?

Romily: We've never struggled in terms of pulling in different directions; I think the musical parts of our brains were somehow fused at birth. We've honestly never argued about a part or a sound, we all just know when we've got the right thing, it just feels right.

Tom: We'll always try and idea if one of us thinks it might sound good. I think we all bring something different to the table. Were just lucky we all usually agree on it.

The new video for 'Milk Teeth' suggests a raw DIY ethic that backs the music perfectly. Do you consciously avoid the glossy production values often associated with music videos?

Romily: We were really happy with the way that the Milk Teeth video turned out. We wanted to make a schizophrenic head f*** of a video and Stephen Agnew the director really understood where we wanted to go with it. I think it would be pretty hilarious if we suddenly came out with a fallout boy style sleek hollywood music video, it would just be ridiculous. To be honest it’s never been an option considering that we've always been tight for cash so maybe the DIY ethic is born out of necessity and one day we'll be whipping out all the special effects and naked chicks.

Regarding your Screaming Meat guitar pedals; Do you use the same equipment for yourself on stage? Many musicians become associated with a particular pedal that anyone can buy (Cobain with the DS2, Hendrix with the Crybaby, etc) so what lengths do you go to in order to define your own tone?

Romily: We all use a bunch of different pedals, I use the screaming meat because it does exactly what I want it to in terms of keeping the low end really really heavy, but I also use a DAM meathead which is very strong and Tom uses a bug muff and a ds1. I like the idea of using a combination of pedals to get the exact sound you want but sometimes its not possible to find the perfect sound and that’s why I started heavy child pedals.

We were reading a feature by Juju of the band Little Fish, where she and fans of the band interview influential women in rock, largely to highlight that there are so few. Have your experiences in the band thrown any light on why that might be?

Romily: I don't know, I don't really spend much time thinking about that, I just like making music and I don't think that’s dependent on the fact I'm a girl, I don't really feel entitled to speak for the whole of woman kind. My favourite musicians are mostly men but that doesn't make me feel alienated or annoyed, I feel like I can get a lot out of a song irrespective of the sex of the musicians.