The Noisettes have just released ‘Wild Young Hearts’ their follow up to the ‘What’s The Time Mr. Wolf’ PRO MOTION is currently working with them on the release of ‘Don’t Upset The Rhythm’ in the U.S. The band are currently here on tour and will soon move on to Europe. Shingai took a moment out of her busy schedule to talk to us about the Noisettes. Check out the interview!

INTERVIEW (PART ONE)

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INTERVIEW (PART TWO)

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DAVE AUDE CLUB MIX (CLIP)

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SOUL SEEKERZ CLUB MIX (CLIP)

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Tell us about the Noisettes.  How was the band formed?

The Noisettes are made of 3 people who have a passion for all kinds of music from musicals to folk stuff to rock and roll to jazz to old soul and what we do is make pop music that sounds fun and brings together our own influences in an actual way to make something that really stands out and will wake people up.  It’s very, very fun, exciting pop music.  We met nearly 5 years ago.  Dan and I were introduced to Jamie who was then in another band.  Me and Dan had met in school a few years before and we had played in cover bands together and stuff, but we weren’t in any specific band at the time.  We were in a band, but mainly just for enjoyment and fun.

I understand this is your second album, “Wild Young Hearts”.  So why do you think that it’s this album as opposed to the first album, that’s giving you mainstream success now?

I think it’s just connecting at a time when people are kind of ready to hear different inflections in pop music again.  When our first album came out, there were a lot of manufactured boy bands and manufactured girl bands and solo artists who were kind of the staple diet of the day.  I don’t know what’s happened since then, maybe the recession has meant that people aren’t too much into bubblegum stuff anymore or maybe people aren’t just going onto eBay or going into record shops and just spending a hundred quid on like 5 potluck Cds, maybe only buying 2 or 3, maybe spending their money on something that might be a little more timeless.  It’s great that our music touches on different influences, so the 5 years olds like my nephew love it and 50, 60 year olds love it because of the crazy, old-school backing vocals and stuff.  So I think it’s all just about timing.  And then, we never had a big campaign for the first album.  The first album was sold by us just touring the world and bringing our music to people live.  This time we’ve got a label, before we were signed to Motown in America as an import from the UK, which was a difficult position to be in because every decision seemed to take a few weeks.  Now that we’re signed to Mercury directly from Universal, it just means that whenever we want to get something done, like we want to tour or we want to do a video, it can happen straightaway and we don’t have to wait until the music’s not fresh anymore.

What’s the process of making a record?  I understand that some of you play instruments.  How does it work when you get in the studio together?

There’s no particular way of doing something, I think sometimes you’ve just got to start playing until you all hear something that makes you kind of excited.  As a vocalist and lyricist, sometimes it helps to maybe take stuff home or sometimes it helps to just put your instrument down for a minute and then concentrate on whatever crazy poetry comes from your heart and your head.  Then after a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, it turns into something you can’t stop singing yourself.  It’s nice to have a producer who really shared our vision of making a sound in pop music that no one has heard for a while.  I mean, there’s a lot of pop musicians that manage to get their own sound that doesn’t really sound like one style.  I mean, there are people like Queen, who never made the same album twice and people like Radiohead, people like Grace Jones, people like Prince, people like Portishead, Massive Attack…they allow their personality to come through.  I guess a lot of female singers feel like they’ve got to sound like their favorite singers or they’ve got to sound like Mariah Carey, maybe their idea of perfection.  I think nowadays, there’s so much music out there, that you’ve got to be really a bit more sensitive and you don’t just go in there copying a starlet that’s already done before and copying all the hard work that another vocalist has put down before you- to just take their framework, I think is a bit unfair.  You shouldn’t be afraid to let the texture of your own voice come through.

When I think of The Noisettes, I think of you as being a very creative band, very visual, as well as having a great sound.  Where does your inspiration for that come from?

My inspiration personally comes from a childhood that was very, very colorful and very flamboyant.  I was born in London and in South London it’s a very, very beautiful crash of cultures.  You’ve got in Brockley or Brixton or Peckham, which is near where I grew up, one minute you’ve got Little Lagos where you just hear people speaking Youruba and then you’ve got Little Shanghai and Little Kingston.  Then you’ve got your next door neighbors is a huge 12-piece Irish family and then next door might be a single parent family.  I grew up in a very, very colorful community and also went back and forth to Africa quite a lot as a child.  My mother’s family is very creative, very flamboyant and it’s just normal for people to get up and put on very colorful head wraps and colorful clothes.  The language is very poetic and where I’m from, it’s like Zimbabwe and Malawi, so the way that my mom would speak English to us is very colorful and very poetic and also very humorous.  I kind of can’t help but be quite flamboyant and interested in the world.  I’m interested in people’s stories.  I’m very much in love with life, because I suffered quite a few losses as a child, so it’s just normal for me to want to get up and make the most out of everyday.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about the live act.  I know you are currently touring in the U.S. and I heard that you were described as “Britain’s Best Live Act”.  So for people that haven’t seen you play live, what can we expect from the show?

You can expect a bit of a journey.  The album is quite like a film- it goes from a ballad to a very up-tempo song quite naturally.  What we’ve done is we’ve added some new people to the show sometimes.  We have big shows now- we have a chamber quartet or a trio of strings playing with us on some of the songs.  We’ve also got a couple of backing singers, as well, with us sometimes.  It’s kind of like dancing and singing.  It’s basically the three of us doing our own dynamic thing, which is pretty memorable and, obviously our “out there” outfits that make us  very excited about telling the stories to the songs that we do onstage.  So add that with some other dynamics, like strings and other vocals.  There’s definitely a lot of surprises.  I like to try and be flexible on stage and take the music to whoever’s in the room.  It’s not just all about the front row, it’s about every single person, even the bouncers.

What are some of your favorite songs at the moment that you like going out and dancing to, when you have a chance?

We’re all into a completely different array of music.  The last album I went out and bought was- we’re into the new Empire of the Sun record I think is really good.  Jamie is really into Lil’ Wayne at the moment- good beats on that to dance to.  There’s a West African folk singer/songwriter from Nigeria who’s based in Paris called  Ayo, who’s really good.  There’s definitely a bit of everything.  You get on our tour bus and there’ll be Fela Kuti to Prince to even a little bit of Alesha Dixon in there.  I mean, the pop music that we like has to be a little bit more than manufactured bubblegum stuff.  Although that can be fun to go out and dance to sometimes.  You might not necessarily buy it, because like I said, times are hard.  Maybe that stuff is kind of cool for the dance floor, but when you can only fit so much stuff into your bunk on tour, you might not buy an album full of every song that sounds the same.

What can we expect from The Noisettes in the future?

I’m very much a family person.  The last 3 or 4 years I haven’t seen much of my family.  I’d like to know that the next time we make an album, we’ve experienced a few things on about the road because that keeps you having things to sing about, that you connect with people.  So I expect us to probably travel outside of touring for a change and explore those hearts desires that we’ve had, maybe keeping an eye on relationships and families and how that’s going.  And maybe falling in love would be nice!  Some normal things would be nice.  We’re definitely going to keep on making music, but I can’t say in what capacity because it could be musical kind of stuff, it could be writing music for other people.  The sky is no limit.

Thanks Shingai!

Don’t Upset The Rhythm (Dave Aude Club Mix)