BUSSETTI: ‘POST FUNK THREE STEP LOUNGERS’
February 18th, 2004 by susanna
Already well-loved by The Big Chill community, Bussetti are on the brink of great things in 2004, as their mash of funk-jazz-hip-hop-electronica-weird-shit reaches ever more grateful ears . Time to figure out just what takes them tick…
1) Who are you and what do you do?
Charlie: ″We’re Bussetti and we play post-funk three-step lounge music.″
2) How did you all meet up?
Charlie: ″We all met at university…″
Jana: ″…apart from Fatback who’s a genuine urban ghetto boy.″
[Fatback: I'm straight representing the ghettos of Muswell Hill - 50 Cent was always round borrowing cups of sugar.]
Charlie: ″We never all played together there, though, cos we all disliked the other bands that each of us was in.″
Henry: ″I was in a band with Jana for three years, and played regularly in a piss-take blues band with Charlie too. Nick, Dan and Oli were the core of a huge funk band, and I ended up playing guitar for them for a mad gig in a Belgian abattoir (as you do…). We all ended up in London after uni, and decided to get together for a couple of jam sessions in Dan and Oli’s living room – the band grew out of that.″
3) You ‘fuse’ an awful lot of genres, but is that a conscious thing or is that you trying to describe what you do AFTER you’ve created a song?
Charlie: ″Most of the time it’s the song that comes first. Occasionally, we may say ″that would sound better with a broken beaty feel″ or ″it needs to be a bit more hip hoppy″ or whatever.″
Jana: ″But generally we just write things we like – we don’t really contrive to sound any particular way overall. We just have a huge range of musical tastes between us and it gets reflected in what we write.″
Henry: ″All of the songs grow organically from jams we have in rehearsals. We record everything on a laptop, Jana and Charlie will go away and write words to the bits that they like best, then we get together a week or so later and see how its all sounding.″
4) You seem to be on an upward curve at the moment – how does it feel to have your music used on the documentary ‘Death In Gaza’ and so on? Did any of you go to witness the film at the Berlin Film Festival?
Charlie: ″Dan’s the only one who can answer this one. Of course, we’re all very proud of him.″
Dan: ″Difficult to say…the film, ‘Death in Gaza’, is a very unusual one – it’s about kids growing up in a refugee camp run by Palestinian paramilitaries and overlooked by Israeli sniper towers. James Miller, the director, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier when he was barely halfway through filming. James was a good friend of mine, so scoring the film has been an enormous emotional as well as artistic challenge. Some of the motifs were bouncing around in my head in the weeks after James was murdered and they’ve found their way into some straight Bussetti tunes as well as the film score. The world premiere was last Wednesday (11th February); and it was fantastic to see James’ last film on the big screen. The music sounded pretty awesome on those big speakers too… (if anyone wants to find out more about James, see www.justice4jamesmiller.com).″
5) What other things are you up to at the moment? What’s on the horizon? And describe your new single to us!
Henry: ″We’ve just done our first remix, for Canadian artist Verbrilli Sound, which was a lot of fun putting together. We’re very pleased with the result. Also, we’re all working on other stuff outside of the band – Charlie’s just written a play, Dan and Oli are doing soundtrack work, I’m hopefully writing some music for a production of an Anthony Minghella play and Fatback’s running his monthly night, Toast, at 93 Feet East (www.toastlondon.com). As far as Bussetti goes, we’re going to try to get an EP recorded for a summer release, and do a hell of a lot more gigging… And hopefully get signed – that would be nice.″
Charlie: ″As for the single, it showcases two different sides of Bussetti. ‘The Itch’ is a laid-back piece of layered jazzy songwriting…″
Jana: ″…with some brilliant sax on there, lots of squeaks and honks in a Pharoah Sanders-style.″
Charlie: ″’Debussetti’ on the other hand is a complete mash of different things all thrown together, none of which sounded like they could all fit in the same song. Kung-fu, cut-up classical music, a hip hop beat. It’s all in there. On both tunes, there was a real difficulty in avoiding adding too many layers. Even now, it’d be good to do two completely different mixes with all the bits we ended up taking out.″
6) There are so many of you – do you all get on all the time or can it be difficult to keep everything ‘solid’?
Henry: ″It’s difficult co-ordinating such a big outfit, but we all get on pretty well.″
Fatback: ″Well actually, I don’t like Charlie, but it kind of balances out because he doesn’t like Dan, our keyboardist, who shows his contempt for Oli, our drummer, by trying to throw him off the rhythm with his samples. Then again, Henry, the bassist, doesn’t like me and always tries to bump my decks when I’m doing a cut. So I get even by unplugging Jana’s mic when she not looking. As for the other Nick…well there can be only one.″
Charlie: ″Obviously, there are figures of fun within the band who relentlessly have the piss taken out them so that everyone else can feel more bonded and ‘solid’. Not that they mind too much – they’re given the odd solo here and there to appease them. It’s noticeable that no-one ever really says that they don’t like anything. It’s always couched in the term ‘I’m not entirely convinced by…’ which has become a code for ‘I f***ing hate…’″
7) You’ve been likened to Red Snapper. Who would you say are your main influences? Have you ever been compared to somebody you don’t like?
Charlie: ″I reckon we’re a sort of fusion of Red Snapper, Cinematic Orchestra, Herbaliser and Lamb. At least, that’s what we’d like to think. We do often get compared to Galliano, which is great for some members of the band and terrible for others.″
Jana: ″Yes, that happens too often for my liking.″
Charlie: ″We were once even compared to The Beautiful South, which left us a bit perplexed and obviously was the worst thing anyone could ever say.″
What is your link with The Big Chill? And are Bussetti going to play at the Festival soon?
Oli: ″Nick and I used to DJ on Big Chill FM (Thanks for having us Clive!)″
Henry: ″Also, a load of us went together to Lulworth Castle in 2001, just after we’d started playing together…″
Charlie: ″…and then, like an irritating small child, Henry pestered Pete Lawrence again and again to let us play at Eastnor 2003. Eventually, Pete’s resistance was eroded and he succumbed. Of course, we’re hoping to play again in 2004. But only one man can tell…″
9) How would you sum up the ‘essence’ of The Big Chill?
Charlie: ″Chilled.″
Henry: ″A music festival run by people who like going to music festivals.″
10) And what’s your hopes for the future? World domination or…
Charlie: ″Clearly, world domination would be nice. But first we need to get an album out of the way. And I’ve heard that Britney’s looking for a bit of a post-funk makeover…
11) Finally, cheese or cider?
Nick: Oh, is there really not going to be a question on the ″unsteady interactions in transonic turbine stages″? In that case: Beer.
Interviewed by: Susanna Glaser
Picture by: Helen Burrows
From left to right:
Henry Scowcroft – Bass, bass synth, programming, production
Charlie Miller – Vocals, MC, guitar
Dan Edge – Keyboards, programming, samples, production
Jana Hermon – Vocals, vocal effects
Oli Bird – Drums, percussion
Nick Atkins – Soprano and tenor saxophone
Nick von Fatback – Scratching, samples
Bussetti’s second single The Itch/Debussetti, is due 6th March (available from from www.kudosrecords.co.uk and all good record stores).
They play a launch gig in London on 28th February 2004.
Details: The Spitz, 109 Commercial St., Old Spitalfields Market, London , E1 6BG, 8pm – 1am, £6 before 9am; £8 after.
