Tagged as “new rave” by NME and quickly denounced, New Young Pony Club rose out of “a global movement of guitar-based dance,” says producer and bassist Andy Spence. “There was a wave in the 90s and it was just time for that again. But I didn’t feel there was a lot of that in London. There was influences for it but it was more New York, guys like DFA that were doing it.”
You guys are signed to Australian-based label Modular (home to Klaxons, Wolfmother, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and you’ve toured Oz plenty already. Tell us a few of your favourite Oz moments? We’ve had a lot. We always like hanging out at the beaches, that’s where we want to get to but we always end up in the cities. Sydney is a great city, and Melbourne, but it’s all about the rest of it, that’s where the real culture is. New Year’s Eve was cool, we played Summerdayze and Falls Festival.
I saw you at Falls Festival actually. That was a great night. It was our first gig of the whole tour and we drove for like three hours to get there. Then backstage was this spaceship and flies everywhere. We were like, “what the hell is going on?”. But then we got on stage and it just kicked off. It was one of the best shows that tour, for sure.
And what is “Consequences” about? Basically it’s a charity record made by a bunch of people that this company got together for Crisis, a charity for homeless people in London. They got a load of bands that wanted to get involved and make a record. But no one had listened to what anyone else had done. It’s based on that game, Consequences – dunno if you’ve played it – where by you draw a head, fold over the paper and give it to somebody else to draw the body. That was the basis, so the Supergrass drummer recorded the drumbeat, then Andy Rourke (of The Smiths) and I recorded the bass on it, then Drew from Babyshambles and Graham Coxon did some guitar, Paul Weller did the vocal over the top. But nobody heard everything, just some basic chords and a beat. It was interesting.
Whenever I hear about these things I always imagine the “We Are The World” filmclip, musos with headphones on… Ha. Well we definitely wanted to not be like that. And Crisis didn’t either. They could have asked bigger names like Amy Winehouse, but they wanted to keep it as something people would actually want to buy and be of quality.
You also scored the Tibetan film called Dreaming Lhasa… I was working on that when I met Ti. Basically the directors were my landlords and they liked my music and they said, “do you want to have a go at doing the soundtrack?”. And I said, “yes, for sure”. I really enjoyed it. It was a really positive experience.
So how’s your knowledge of Eastern music? It wasn’t great at all to be honest. I didn’t have any knowledge of Tibetan music, but they did. One is Tibetan, one is Indian and they had a friend in San Francisco who was a Tibetan musician so he sent me little recordings of Tibetan instruments in his home studio and I built music around them. It was authentic but they wanted it to have a modern electronic feel. I put it together and it sounded lovely.
You’re recording your second album. Do you feel anxious about reaching the same success as the first? Only in quality. I’m not bothered by sales or awards. I just want it to sound as natural and honest as the first. Sometimes you can over-think the second album and we probably are over-thinking it a little bit at the moment. But we’ll keep going until we get to a point where we feel right with it. That will come and then it’ll be a strong album.
Fantastic Playroom is out now on Modular. New Young Pony Club play sold out Splendour In The Grass Sunday 3, Melbourne’s Prince Of Wales Tuesday 5 Aug, Sydney’s Home on Wednesday 6.
