Ancient Greeks believed everything in the world was a permutation of the four fundamental elements: wind, water, fire and earth. The heavens were made of perfect ether, the immutable fifth element; celestial bodies moved within it, creating harmony that was the ‘music of the spheres’. The music of Turin Brakes recalls this cosmological idea with the alchemy in their new album ETHER SONG. London-based duo Turin Brakes are Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, and their acclaimed debut THE OPTIMIST was a shadow of things to come. I talked to Gale at home in South London, and asked him about being denied a visa to visit America, the new album and home…

Are you going to be touring Australia soon?

We are, yeah. I don’t know the exact dates but it’s our English summertime, so July-August. I think we’re doing a festival too.

How about Glastonbury this year?

Yeah, I think we’re on the same stage as Radiohead, but much earlier in the day.

Do you enjoy playing at festivals?

We do actually, they’re really good fun. Festivals are nice because they’re not just about you except when you’re doing your set (then obviously it’s about you for a bit). Everyone’s happy, the band’s having fun, the audience are having fun. It’s more than just going to a show. It’s about going to loads of shows and having a really good time on top of that.

Did you go to festivals when you were growing up?

A few, but I stopped going to festivals when I got to about twenty; I got quite old and stopped doing anything like that. I mean, I’d go to shows but I found festivals quite hard to get around, quite hard to navigate. I never ended up seeing the bands I wanted.

I heard your gig at the Brixton Academy recently was absolutely brilliant…

Yeah, it was. It’s a five minute walk from my house (which is where I am right now) and it’s where we saw bands when we were growing up. We always kind of said, “We’ve made it if we play Brixton Academy.” It’s taken three years of touring and promoting to get there, but we actually got there last week - it felt great! It took a few days to sink in. When we used to go there there’d be bands that would change the way we think about everything. You know, they’d blow our heads off. And we kind of thought, there might be some people out there right now having the same kind of experience that we had when we were going to see our favourite bands. It’s a feeling of great responsibility.

So what bands did you see that blew your mind?

At the Brixton Academy we saw Transvision Vamp when we were ten years old. It was one of our first gigs. It didn’t exactly blow our heads off but we were kind of amazed by the whole thing. At Brixton I also saw Ride, The Verve, Fugazi… We saw Pavement’s last ever show there too. I also caught the Black Crowes there and that was one of my favourite gigs in the whole world.

Are these the bands that have also influenced you?

Definitely to some extent, but I don’t know how much it comes across in what we do. Those were also the bands we listened to but that was quite a while ago.

So what do you listen to these days?

Kind of everything, really. The staple diet of Turin Brakes… definitely for Olly at least, is Joni Mitchell, all the time. It’s what he grew up on, and what he’ll always listen to. I listen to a lot of blues, and a lot of John Coltrane, Pink Floyd, that kind of thing. At the moment I’ve been listening to Billy Corgan’s new band, Zwan. I mean, it’s really exciting. It’s really speaking to me at the moment, or at least the past couple of days. But it might be one of those period things where the band says exactly what you think for a time.

How are you coping with all this new-found fame? Turin Brakes are suddenly the Next Big Thing. You even have top 40 hits…!

It’s kind of nice in a way but we’re not pop stars. No, we’re definitely not at that level; I always console myself (laughs). I think it’s mainly while the album’s coming out, the way it’s being pushed. They put your picture everywhere and people start recognising you, but it’s only while the album’s coming out. After that, it’s only the people who genuinely like the album that will recognise you. That’s kind of nicer than it just being for no reason.

The 2001 Mercury Music Prize nominees were really outstanding. Was your nomination totally unexpected?

Yeah, it definitely was. When we made THE OPTIMIST we didn’t consider anything like awards or singles, radio play, anything at all. We just made our record. So when it did get nominated for a Mercury - which as far as we know is based on music, and not industry and sales - it was a really big compliment. Like a rubber stamp being put on our album. We were sort of being told almost objectively that it’s a good record. When you’re making something that’s so close to you, you’ve got no idea whether it’s good or bad; whether you like it because it’s you, or whether you like it because it’s good. But getting the nomination made us realise that other people are going to like it. It did so much for us; it was like getting a lift in a fast sporty car.

Turin Brakes support Greenpeace. How did that relationship come about?

Greenpeace called us up and said, “Come and see our offices.” So we did that; it’s a really inspiring place. We were supposed to do a gig on their boat, the Rainbow Warrior, but it got cancelled because it went to a protest, to clean up an oil slick. We keep in contact with them though. They send people down to our shows, try and inform people about what the big issues are at the moment. I don’t know to what extent the band are going to get involved, ultimately. But we realised that a lot of people bought our records and we had the opportunity to shine a bit of attention on important issues.

So do you think aligning yourselves with a good cause is a responsibility that comes with being famous?

To some extent. We don’t want to tell people what to think in any way. We almost try and stay out of being political in any way whatsoever. But it takes nothing for us to put in a website address on our album sleeve for Greenpeace, to put a link on our site and for us to just be aware of what they’re doing all the time. It’s kind of good in that it takes almost no effort on our part and it gives Greenpeace a lot of exposure to young minds.

Speaking of politics, have you really been denied a visa to visit the USA because you were born in Iran?

It’s only a temporary thing. The problem is, we were meant to be in the US this week playing gigs and they told us last Thursday afternoon that they won’t give us a visa. It all happened really quickly. So I went to the American embassy and they’re going to give me a visa but it takes them three weeks to do it. You have to come into the embassy because then they can tell if you’re a terrorist by the look in your eyes (laughs).

So do you want to comment about all that…?

I’m not going to say anything just yet until I get my visa (laughs). I don’t want to burn my bridges.

Do you identify with your cultural background?

I moved here when I was a year and a half because of the revolution in Iran which is where my folks are from; they’re Armenian. It’s definitely a part of me… someone said to me, “I think you’re great because you involve the sensibilities of Armenian music but you don’t actually use Armenian instruments. You communicate in a different way.” I thought that was really nice. I’d never thought of anything like that before and to be honest, I thought it was a grand comment myself. I only speak a very little bit of Armenian but it’s always been around. It’s the language my parents used and we weren’t supposed to understand.

**page*

So now that you are on the road touring a lot, what does home mean to you now?

Home… home means sleep; I find it quite hard to sleep anywhere else. Touring is really good but it can be quite tiring and it can get you down sometimes but largely, everything we do is all very good fun.

Tony Hoffer has produced Supergrass, Air and Beck. Why did you go with him as producer for Ether Song?

When we were getting ready to make this record, the main thing we wanted was increase the sonic side of it and make the second album consist of things we hadn’t heard the first time. Make it a bit more candy for the ear you know? A bit more of a listening experience. We were listening to the second Air album and Tony Hoffer just happened to be in town. So we gave him a call and we got on with him really well straightaway. We kind of decided almost straightaway that we were going to work with him. But he said he’d been in London for ages working with bands and wanted to go home, and that the studios are much better in LA and he had his people there. He said, “If you come there it’ll be fine.” At first we didn’t like the idea of it because it was so far away, but then we actually thought it would be good for us. It would give us freedom if we went far away and just concentrated on making the new record. And that’s exactly what it did.

So do you see your new album as a continuation of what you were doing on The Optimist or is it a totally different direction?

I think it definitely comes from the same point of view of the world. It’s richer than the first record but it’s kind of still got only the essential melodies.

Does it matter to you what other people think of your music? Are you worried about how people will react?

I know we shouldn’t be but we kind of do, we can’t help it. Even though you always make the music for yourself, you definitely want other people to be able to relate to it. It’s the whole point of it; to share it. To get your message across to other people and communicate something.

So what is an ether song exactly?

An ether song is this idea of pulling a song out of the ether, out of the collective. It’s kind of the idea of being able to make a song that relates to anyone on Earth and not just relatable to people from London, England. Distilling the whole thing about being human, exposing it… and not just mundane problems but universal ones too.

Do you believe in the ‘collective unconscious’ then?

The idea of an ‘ether song’ is pretty much just that, but maybe less defined. Maybe everything is bound together in some way. Every tiny element, every particle to every building and every human being is bound together in some unforeseeable force propelling us forward in time. And that was the idea of the ether, that there’s more than the mundane in life. There’s something else going on.

BY SHEILA PHAM