Crazy P are heading to our shores for Harvest Festival in November, and 100% caught up over with singer Danielle Moore to talk about their upcoming album, touring a live band and, er, knobs.
“We’ve just, as of yesterday, gone into the studio to write the new album,” explains Moore. “We’re sort of just kicking off at the minute. We had a massive summer, we’ve been really busy, so we’ve sorta locked October out to start the new album. Right now, it’s myself and [founding members] Jim and Chris who are going into the studio together. So it’s a bit more the production side rather than the full live band. And we’re experimenting, shall we say, with various sounds.”
Experimenting, eh? Sounds intriguing. What exactly does “experimenting” entail for The Band Formerly Known As Crazy Penis?
“We’ve not got our genitals out, if that’s what you mean. So it’s not sexual!” Moore responds, laughing. “Well, it could be. I mean, everybody knows our minds are very open. But it’s a bit more… we’re trying to leave all our troubles behind, shake all the toxins out before we go through the doors, and not have any inhibitions – put it that way. We’re open to suggestions from the ether as to what we should do. But our genitals are generally zipped up in our trousers.”
Experimenting has always been a part of how Crazy P operate, continues Moore. “I suppose because the guys in the band are musicians, essentially, their instruments are very important to them, but also the production is an experiment. Matt for example works on a live drum kit, but also works on a drum sample kit as well to achieve more house sounds. Tim’s also got various bass pedals that allow him to experiment with his sounds a little bit. It sounds funny, but… but we’re all experimenting with different… should I say – knobs?” We both giggle a bit at this point. “I’m not technologically minded, so my musical vocabulary is very limited. So I’m bringing it back to base level. Knobs is the only word I could think of!” Yep. Sure. I’m unconvinced.
Elegantly avoiding a – shall we say – lengthy tangent about knobs, Moore stays on the topic at hand. “The production is completely different [from the live band]. For the last album that we made, that was a production album. We don’t always take the live band into the studio and record using all of us. That’s not a necessity. What we have to do sometimes is reinterpret the productions we’ve created in the studio for a live show. We’re still booked as a festival band and a live band.
“We’ve also got a soundsystem that we take on tour, which involves a scaled-down version of the live band. We’d definitely take our keyboards, a synthesiser, maybe a guitar, myself with a loop pedal. For example, we’ve just down a tour of America – both North and South – and that was a scaled-down version; we didn’t take the whole band. That is now a lot more popular, and we’re looking at developing that as more of a live thing. But there is still the call for the full live band. Because we do cross over a lot of live, more soulful tracks with new, more electronic sounding music. So we’re very much aware that that’s important. It’s exciting. It means that you’re not stuck in that funk/soul bracket. You are moving forward. And we’re really excited about it because it keeps us fresh as well.”
Although Crazy P visited our shores not much more than a year ago, it was more than a stopover than a proper tour. “It was so brief,” remembers Moore. “We were only there for four days. From that perspective, it was the most difficult thing we’ve ever done, because our jet lag was horrendous. The shorter the time you spend down there, having taking you 26 hours to get there, the worse the jet lag’s going to be. We played New Year’s Eve in New Zealand and New Year’s Day in Sydney, then we did a DJ gig in Sydney that night. It was amazing but it wasn’t a tour, it was just a couple of shows. But this time we’ve got something to get our teeth into!”
How are the band feeling about their upcoming tour and Harvest dates? “Well, it’s just gone into our autumn now and it’s got really cold. So for one, we get the sunshine. And two, we all love to come back to Australia! It’s become a really sort of welcoming crowd and we have a really good time every time we come over because we’ve met some amazing people. They’ve almost become a side-itinerary for us, it’s like, “Let’s do this today; we’re gonna take you to that place tonight!” Also with Harvest, we’re looking forward to seeing Beck and various other people…Cake, Santigold. We’re really excited, yeah!”
