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 Clor, the south London band and the eponymous LP, were some of the most interesting and idiosyncratic people and musical offerings of 2005 as far as I am concerned.
Not gigging or doing interviews in the UK, for the time being, I decided to corner them on unfamiliar territory, Paris, where Clor’s five members are playing their first French gig or to be exact, a ‘showcase’ organised by V2 France, their label.
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Right after sound check, I found myself sitting in a Parisian bar, opposite Barry Dobbin and Luke Smith, Clor’s main men whose bright smiles and friendliness make me forget that it’s dark, cold and wet outside.
 Florence: Hi guys, and thanks for meeting me tonight.
What are you doing in Paris ? Do you think the French are ready for your idiosyncrasies ?
Barry: I think we’re ready for the French’ idiosyncrasies!
No, they’re ready and the record is coming out over here and we’re going for a twin attack: vinyl and CD as we think they’re quite different experiences.
Florence: What about London ? Have you gone as far as you could in the UK?
Barry: I think we could go further.
Luke: We tried to keep a low profile in London but we’ve played so many gigs that it didn’t really work.
Barry: We’re not particularly driven by a desire to become big, universally liked or even universally listened to. We were just happy doing something for ourselves but our lack of strategy has served us well so we tend to continue with no strategy whatsoever and hope that it keeps on going.
 Florence: So are you leaving it to luck or fate?
Barry: I don’t know whether its luck but....let’s say that so far we’ve made the right decisions, intuitively, so we need to keep it like that.
As soon as we start to over think things it might change what we are.
Florence: You’re very much trying to create a new sound, look forward. You seem to have turned your back on the whole 80s revival we’re witnessing right now.
Barry: You can’t completely separate yourself from the past because it’s our musical experience...I’m not sure whether it’s true that we’re deliberately striving to turn our backs on the past, but I think that it’s pointless to try and recreate or emulate something that’s already been done.
I believe that it’s important to make something that maybe you’ve never heard before.
Something that people couldn’t even imagine before they heard it ....if you can achieve that then I think you have created something important.
Florence: For me, maybe you’ve achieved that with ‘Good stuff’.
Something about it feels very fresh and new, and once you’ve heard it you can’t live without it !
Barry: Wow! That’s a perfect compliment!
Florence: ‘Good stuff’ is a classic of tomorrow not that I’m knocking the rest of the album.
You’ve mentioned that you would want to write a track that could stay in people’s head long after the stereo has stopped.
‘Good stuff’ was like that for me, waking me up for days on end....I’ve cursed you enough times!!
Barry: That’s an experience I have really liked when it’s happened with other bands. You’re doing something totally inappropriate, or you’re at the cinema watching a film and Deerhoof is going through your head or some old Roxy Music you’ve played two days before.
That’s a very interesting phenomenon.
Florence: You wanted to write something fresh and catchy and you’ve achieved it. You make song writing sound very easy.
It seems easy for you to reach your goal.
Luke: We test it on ourselves first...
Barry: If it sticks with us then we stick with it...
Luke: I’m never sure we’ve actually reached it, I’ve never thought:
‘that’s it’.
Florence: From another good track ‘Love and pain’, explain the line “you look a little lost and found”, is that some South London lingo I’m not aware of or did you make that up?
It paints a very vivid picture.
Barry: I made that up!
You’re like lost property. You’ve been left somewhere but are still usable. Whoever previously owned you, hasn’t got you anymore.
Florence: Such a romantic way to look at women!
You’ve said that you don’t really expect to make any money out of Clor. Did you mean that?
Luke: We seriously doubt that we’re gonna make lots of money out of this.
Barry: We’re hideously in debt, the pair of us...
Luke: We’re just trying to enjoy music and the opportunity given.
We’re trying to learn to develop our music as far as we can.
If we were chasing the buck we would come unstuck, we wouldn’t write the same stuff...
Barry: We’d be useless...
Florence: Right now you are being true to yourselves..
Luke: Which is a luxury...
Barry: This is a more successful way to pursue happiness ...
To try and become rich by doing something you don’t believe in must be pretty soul destroying.
I don’t think anybody gets into this business for the money...
You don’t know how people will respond to your music and whether it’s successful or not is someone else’s concern, it’s not mine.
I am making music not listening to it.
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Florence: It’s true that you have no control over how many Lps you’re gonna shift.
You’ve given up the day jobs, so it may not be financially rewarding yet but Clor keeps you busy.
Barry: Since we’ve started [18 months ago] we’ve had one week off, and that’s about it.
Florence: Before Christmas, you’ve finished what was a long tour of the UK.
Luke: We gigged for months...At one point we did 31 or 35 dates in a row, to include 3 dates in Europe!
Barry: It was gruelling but actually quite enjoyable!
Luke: Character building!
But we are fortunate that we all get on and have a good team.
At the back of the van, you can run out of conversation quite rapidly...
Barry: But this doesn’t happen with us. We’re all talkers!
And we have Max [bass player], he’s our oracle and he’s never wrong!
He always gives a fascinating insight, on anything.
Luke: If you need any advice, try to get in touch with Max, he’ll probably give you the right answer.
We’re thinking of setting up a ‘Ask Max’ section on our web site.
Barry: First we need to ask him if it’s the right thing to do...
Florence: What about Club Clor , is that still going on?
Barry: The last one was just before Christmas, and now it’s on hold as we’re recording the second album.
We need a few months of minimum gigging and maximum writing.
Even a single gig can upset that routine as we need to rehearse, everybody needs to get back into it.
Luke: We need a couple of days of yoga as well.. Yogic flying...
Barry: If you don’t reach that higher state of consciousness it makes life more difficult on stage...
Florence: Yes Chris Martin would be proud, but is that before or after the pub? Anyway....Club Clor...
Luke: Club Clor will be back.
Barry: We’re setting up the next bands that will be playing.
We may take a more curatorial role...
Luke: We intended to do that in the first place and it’s only by accident that we ended up playing ourselves.
I think that it could be interesting if it’s DJs and curated...
Barry: There are so many good bands...there is a massive list of bands we want to put on and play, it’s a shame that we just don’t have time right now.
Florence: You never had any problems selling out and quickly!
Barry: The Windmill [Club Clor’s venue in Brixton], is only small but you get such an intimate, intense atmosphere in there...
Luke: The way good venues used to be before being infiltrated by the mega brands. Now everywhere is ‘Carling’ something.
The manager is very ethical as well, all the money goes to the bands and DJs, and the venue itself makes money off the drinks.
That's a rarity in itself as promoters these days make an enormous amount of money.
Florence: Just exploiting young bands...
Luke: Bands are working very hard for minimum gain.
With records sale declining and deals getting smaller, bands need to make a living from their live performances.
Even in big venues, if you want to sell a t-shirt, the venue will put 40-50% on top, so you end up charging £15 instead of £10.
It’s sadly all about money.
Florence: Talk to me about your second album.
How far have you got?
Barry: We’ve recorded a couple of tracks.
We write a song and then record it. We have a big sketch book of ideas, and as soon as we get back to London we’ll be working on more tracks.
It’s an ongoing organic process of development...could you get any more ‘grey area’ than that!
Florence: Do you have your own recording studio?
Can you work from home?
Luke: Yes, it’s in my flat!
The actual equipment is in an area no bigger than the surface of this small table.
It’s a computer, a keyboard, a little toy Yamaha keyboard we use a lot, and a couple of guitars...
It’s actually very interesting to use the equipment that we do use, because the limitations you’re presented with can end up being to your advantage. Not having any guitar amps means that you have to do something different to the guitar sound to make it interesting and that’s sort of how the first album developed. Experimenting with limited equipment and limited technical expertise.
We were learning as we went along, maybe breaking some recording rules...but we kind of like that.
Barry: In that case, and as we were following our own path, we’re allowed to fail. Actually if you fail spectacularly it’s just as good as if you succeed.
Our next album will be built entirely upon failures!
Florence: Is that my Clor’ s exclusive ?
Barry declares “our next record will be built entirely upon failures” shocker!!
Luke: It’s gonna be a hit after hit after hit ALL FILLER NO KILLER!
Florence: So when is that little gem coming out?
Luke: It’s pencilled for summer, but we don’t want to rush it too much.
Florence: Do you already feel that you have exhausted the first album?
Has is been toured to death?
Barry: Not at all, it’s just hit the shops in France and hasn’t been released in the States yet. It hasn’t been heard of in a lot of places, it’s only in London that people really know us.
In the rest of the country we get to play to medium sized venues but we’re not blasting over the airwaves, constantly.
We would like to carry on with this album [Clor] and hope that there could be a seamless move over to the next one. Really it’s gonna be more of the same, more of what we do but maybe a little more Hi-Fi. Presented in a different way but somehow we feel that it’s just an extension of the first album as the song writing process stays the same.
Luke: I think we’ve learned during the many many gigs we’ve played, how the songs work live.
At first we didn’t have any idea of how it should work, no manifesto. It kind of developed itself.
Florence: You can’t beat touring an album for instant feedback!
Barry: Touring is good, you make all your mistakes very early on and then it becomes very small things going wrong, things that are completely out of your control.
Luke: That’s the most annoying, when you have no control...
We did this show in Leicester, some festival going live on BBC 6 Music,
it was going fine when as we’re getting ready to play the last track ‘Love and pain’, in front of 2000 people, some of them in the rain, the power went down. The BBC told us to stay on stage as they were gonna fix it, and you have faith in the BBC....we’re standing there in silence, unable to speak in the microphones...
Barry: People starting shouting ‘get your kit off’..
Florence: Did you?
Barry: No but it might have turned things around, but Max said no, so I wasn’t gonna do it.
Luke: We stood there for 10 minutes like lemons before the BBC told us to get off stage!
Barry: But we still got cheers! Well I think it was a cheer of sympathy!
Florence: Tell me about Sparks.
Barry: We did a remix for Sparks recently. ‘Perfume’, it’s on their new album. We’re big fans of Sparks. ‘Kimono my house’ is my definitive Sparks record. It’s a great album that sounds like no one else’s.
Florence: Whose musical career do you really admire or envy?
Barry: It has to be somebody inventive and who’s got longevity....it has to be Eno’s or Sonic Youth’s career...
Luke: Someone who’s fairly low profile.
Barry: Someone who has maintained the ability to convey their ideas throughout decades, from albums to albums.
Mark E. Smith and The Fall keep going and keep making good records, even now.
John Peel would use them as the band by which he would measure every other band.
The Fall did about 10 sessions and there was a great deal of mutual respect and admiration.
Florence: Luke, you’ve mentioned ‘low profile’, is that important to you? Are good musicians low key?
Luke: In our case, we will stay low profile. We have no burning urges to go on to chat shows, the music is the most important.
Florence: What’s playing on your iPods right now?
Barry: We’ve got a 60GB iPod, so just about everything.
4 weeks’ worth of great music.
Luke: Deerhoof, Deerhoof, Deerhoof, Metronomy, they’ve just released an EP, We’re Animals, Jackson and his computer band, Aphex Twins...and even more bizarre stuff...
Barry: Max has got the most fascinating iPod. He plays 80s power ballads. He’s only 20... he defies all boundaries.
Florence: And lastly, what would be your message to the world?
Barry: That’s the hardest question!! Let’s see...more kissing!
Luke: I’ve got to go with Barry. Such a great answer.
More kissing, more hugging, more embracing
Embrace one another.
Florence: OK guys! Let’s kiss good bye.....
Words: Florence ACHERY.Pictures: Dean CHALKLEY
CLOR website:
www.clor.co.uk |
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