GRAB OUR FEED
by
Stef Smith
31-Jul-09
Jumping on stage at Glastonbury to sing with Patrick Wolf (quite drunk if you ask me), burping salutes to Luke Pritchard of The Kooks (again, quite drunk if you ask me), and doing shows with all kinds of friends, Edward Eke, formerly known as Edward Larrikin, is kind of the darling of the London indie scene. The quirky man with the androgynous looks who folded his band Larrikin Love and started The Pan I Am is set for a European tour, the release of some singles, and “hopefully early next year” a debut album. And yes, the band is named after the Greek god often portrayed with an huge erect phallus, (as if the previous goals weren't pressure enough). Not only does he make music, but he's written a short play and is about to start a film club and film project with Jonas Mekas - still very much hush-hush so you didn't read it here. Edward's a well-read man, but somehow we still ended up talking about a man selling dog shit as “squidgy black”, Pan’s sexual prowess, and the circular absurdist customer care of Abbey National Bank.
Portraits of Edward photographed for EVB by Fabien Kruszelnicki
Stef Smith: If we could be in any place doing this interview, where would it be, and why would we be there?
Edward Eke: We would be on the Southbank in London in summer, or the Leftbank in Paris in autumn. Though in reality we should be just at the bank on my high street as I have to pay rent. Right now.
SS: What color are your fingernails painted today?
EE: I recently spent an afternoon biting them, so flesh colored I guess.
SS: Any formative memories from your teen years?
EE: I knew a guy called Nazir who used to collect dog shit from the street and freeze it. Just as it began to melt he would come outside and sell it to us as “squidgy black”. Hash forever smells of thawing dog mess to me.
SS: Aside from that, what's keeping your thoughts occupied these days?
EE: I'm very up and down these days. Some days I'll sit in my flat staring into the middle distance and suddenly it will be night again and I feel so down as I am losing days. Then I will have three or four days where I am extremely active and creative. The creative times outweigh the low periods because the actual process of creating is a statement of optimism. I'm an optimist - even here and now where you could argue that there is nothing to celebrate.
SS: I feel the beginning of a rant - why is there nothing to celebrate?
EE: I mean that sometimes you wake up and you just want to go back to sleep.
SS: You were quiet for a while, after Larrikin Love, and then exploded with 'Fire Dance'. Was it a catharsis of some sort?
EE: I built up two different bodies of songs which I subsequently destroyed or left to rot on the side. Then I wrote a new group that I felt were present and connected and ‘Fire Dance’ was one of them. I think that a high majority of all output is a purging and clearing out of the particular artists life, body, emotions etc.
SS: What exactly were you purging and clearing?
EE: Some people build shields up around them and go at their life and work almost systematically - I can’t do that. I get affected by things that I see happen. I store it, then sit in it, then kill it.
SS: You’ve said that you take on a more formulaic approach to constructing your songs now, musically and lyrically. Could you elaborate on that?
EE: I start with a drum beat and and slowly build up each part up. It’s a system that could seem quite restrictive but it works far better for me - I can be concise and sharp and direct to the center of the song.
SS: Tell us about the ‘Fire Dance’ video?
EE: The concept of the video is born from the Japanese performance/dance movement Butoh. The video is physical and animalistic and the performers were lightly dressed to project a feral and earthy feel.
SS: In the video the boy has less clothes on than the girl. Music and videos like yours, Wolf, Bowie, Barnes seem more sexually ambiguous and androgynous. What’s behind that you think?
EE: I don’t know. Well, with the video, as I said, it a Japanese dance so it’s not really connected to any sexual ambiguity within the music - it’s born from war. I can’t speak for the others but I am not trying to play on androgyny or trying to camp it up. I couldn’t tell you what is behind it apart from perhaps the fact that the aforementioned don’t see society’s strict guidelines and views on gender as much to talk about. I don’t know.
SS: Actually, some of your recent pictures look a bit Bowie-like! If you ever were to do a concept album like Ziggy Stardust, what would it be about?
EE: It would be a full on, sci-fi, Hollywood blockbuster. An ultra-violent, explicit assault on the producers of all reality and cheap celebrity medias. The hero would be called Cutty Wag Hag.
SS: Speaking of heros, exactly how deeply do you identify with Pan, the namesake of your new band?
EE: I find Pan the most interesting of all the Greek gods. I’m not in any way a mythology nerd, but it just happens that when I was given a Greek myths book I was immediately drawn to this guy. Pan means “all” - now that sums it up for me. He's complex but open. He's challenging - he provoked the other gods into competing in tasks that they were masters of, not he. His music arouses every type of feeling, from the sexual to the fearful
SS: What do you think is the most sexual piece of music ever made?
EE: Of course it’s ‘Pause 4 Porno’ by Dr. Dre or Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed.
SS: Pan was famous for his sexual prowess. Care to comment?
EE: Pan was a whore.
SS: Pan is usually known for his music, but also inspires disorder and fear (i.e. panic). Very TPIA I think, no?
EE: Yes. Perhaps the main link with Pan, and hence the title of the project, are the emotions and atmosphere that he inspired - I want the audience to go through the emotions at a TPIA live show. Extremes.
SS: What sort of extremes?
EE: Well, I'd like to create different atmospheres with different songs - and where they are placed in the performance is important too. We should feel elation, then loss, then excitement, then winded.
SS: Some of your previous gigs included monologues, poetry, etc, it seems more like an artistic movement than a band, no?
EE: Yes. I like the idea that given the time and facilities the TPIA shows will be a step forward from your average concert and will blur theatre, performance and music. I hope that on the next tour that can be fully realized.
SS: What's your favorite everyday object to use on stage?
EE: I favor the motorcycle chassis or the great microphone-against-the-forehead technique.
SS: Can you play a Pan Flute?
EE: Unfortunately not. I did used to know a Jewish guy who was a master of the Chinese mouth harp though, if that makes up for it?
'Ophelia, Aged 6' - The Pan I Am
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'Young God / Bad Thing' - The Pan I Am
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SS: You seem to be a very literate guy, and you allude to literature in your songs. What's the latest thing you’ve fancied?
EE: At the moment I am reading a book on Tarkovsky’s films called Elements of Cinema. I also just finished reading a collection of one of the East Village's very own children, Jim Carroll. I like his writing because it’s so lo-fi and teenage and almost like rap in some kind of tripped out junkie way.
SS: On your website I saw a link to Francis Bacon - what's the attraction?
EE: I like looking at his work because there is something very visceral and sharp about the way a lot of them are constructed. Up close they are full of hidden textures and, of course, there's his story - and it was a wonderful life. I have read a couple of biographies and also met an old friend of his who gave me the tales first-hand. People talk about Bacon as a tortured soul - well, yes, perhaps there was a dark side to him, but the way I see it is that he made life a continuous celebration. I think he said that he was “optimistic about nothing”. I like that.
SS: You wrote a play called Camusflage Krokodial, what was that one about?
EE: Camusflage Krokodial is just a short play, a one-man monologue. I guess you could call it absurdist theater - it's a clapped-out actor falling apart on stage and he serves as a metaphor for this planet and we humans.
SS: I love absurdist theater, but also absurdist life! What is the most absurdist thing you've ever witnessed?
EE: I once heard of this bus driver in a small village in Sussex. He drove the route four times a day backwards and forwards for thirty years and never picked up a passenger.
SS: In absurdist plays, and in Bacon, one theme is existentialism, a part of which is meaninglessness. What do you find the most meaningless thing you have to do in this world?
EE: I find myself having conversations with people sometimes that go in circles and are probably still going on somewhere. They seem like they are straight off the pages of Albee or Beckett. Abbey National Bank are particularly good at circular absurdist customer care.
SS: 2008 was your first trip to the US. Where were you able to go? What did you think of the States?
EE: We only made it to Texas as we were playing in Austin for SXSW. I loved it. I understand that every different state is like a different country so I can’t wait for the day that I can drive from coast to coast.
SS: You mentioned in a SXSW interview that you liked Dolly Parton. Really?
EE: I must have been drunk - I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure.
SS: On that coast-to-coast tour, what’s the most nerdy, touristy thing you are actually really looking forward to doing?
EE: There are too many. Acid in the desert, go down to New Mexico, up to the Pacific Northwest for some twin peaks - all the stuff that everyone has already done. I guess it's impossible to go “off the map” in the States.
SS: What is the most embarrassing thing you take with you on the road?
EE: Probably some kind of Carlos Castaneda book for the desert. Or a miniature cactus.
SS: When are you coming to New York ?
EE: I want to come as soon as possible. I have friends that live there that I have never visited.
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