new people sign up here
username (or email address)

password


forgot your password?

Headland

releases

events

Headland live @ ULU
2004-04-23 20:30:00

profiles

On the press release for their first extended player, last year's EP1, west London's Headland listed amongst their myriad influences a mutual love of stone skimming. Mystified? Don't be. Stone skimming, after all, suggests insouciance, and Headland's music radiates the sort of qualities that are synonymous with the young and fancy-free. To wit, buoyancy, irreverence and sparkle. Think pop were it not shorthand for mechanical boy bands.

"There's nothing like good pop music," reckons Tom Wegg-Prosser, who's rediscovered synth-pop acts like OMD of late, having grown up on Bob Dylan and Eddy Grant. "It has immediate impact and can last a long, long time. Pop in the 80s was, if not subversive, certainly challenging. And there's nothing wrong with that."

"Trouble is", adds Tom Ball, "mainstream corporations have got a hold on us, and what is offered up as pop is really pap. But we both grew up listening to pop music, and it'd be great to make something that's as vital as the best pop."

They've not made a bad fist of it so far. Like EP1, - which sampled the sound of foxes fucking and which was likened, fittingly, to The Avalanches ("The English Avalanches? We'd rather they were known as the Australian Headland" jokes Ball) - their new release, EP2, is feisty and seductive, albeit more cohesive than its cut'n'paste forebear. "EP1 was us going we do this and this and this and this," explains Ball, alluding to its breathless mix and match of styles, "and now, maybe, our sound is slowly homogenising. It is more recognisable as us, I think." It's also more overtly dancey than its predecessor, particularly in the shape of the opener Freak Flag Fly, which clocks in at three minutes long, as all pop music should. A rush of psychedelic riffs and frazzled, fey vocals, it was inspired by Ball's sojourn in Dubrovnik, Croatia. "It's about how beautiful it is yet ten years previously it was witness to some horrible things", says Ball, "so it's basically us saying you may not have much time so you may as well do your thing."

Elsewhere, Overtime, is a simmering bump'n'grind affair, all dreamy backward beats and huge swathes of feedback; Oddball, is as anthemic as a one and a half minute lo-fi instrumental gets; and Hymn 9, a hazy slice of psychedelia utilises splendidly a vintage piano that Tom Wegg-Prosser "inherited" from his mum. "Well, not inherited" he adds hurriedly, "'cause that implies my mum is dead and, er, she's not."

For their part, Headland would have been in pop's vast graveyard by now had they not updated their original blueprint. Two bright boys, they met at Durham University where they studied history and politics and played covers of Iggy Pop and Britpop songs in a college band. On leaving Durham they travelled to Sydney, where they encountered Bobby Gillespie on the beach and found, unwittingly, work in a gay bar.

"There are far worse places to enjoy yourself", insists Wegg-Prosser, who played football for Brentford youths until he was 16. during which time he played against Sol Campbell amongst others. "The guys working there would go out at night, take whatever they fancied and start work the next day without having slept".

There, enlivened by DJ Shadow's Endtroducing,, the city's glut of chemicals and drum'n'bass, they decided to amalgamate beats and songwriting. "We wanted to experiment" says Wegg-Prosser. "Radiohead's OK Computer, had just come out, and I admired them for not doing the obvious and taking risks. I think today, a few years down the line, we're formulating those influences into the sound we have today."

Which will become increasingly apparent when Headland's debut album is released. "It will", says Ball, though it's still in its early stages, "be ambitious without being up our own arse. We want it to be to the point. Bang bang bang bang". Nothing much, in other words, like The Avalanches. Or any other group with whom Headland have been compared. "We don't feel part of any scene at all", says Ball, "so we don't have to subscribe to any rules. If something interests us and we think we can do something with it then we will".

Yes, you've heard it all before but this time it rings true. Stone skimmers of the world unite.