The Big Pink

BRM has done it again. We've hunted down, captured and documented the most innovative and exciting artists to recently emerge on a number of different scenes. All month long we’ll be running interviews with our discoveries to help get you ready for what’s to come in 2010. But to get a complete look at our full list of emerging artists, check out our current winter issue.

Born from the post-industrial grit and the transient stability of London, the Big Pink are loud and noisy ravers soaked in their own musical distortions and fuzz. But the duo, featuring Milo Cordell and Robbie Furze, are also poetic softees when it comes to matters of the heart.

Their debut album on 4AD, A Brief History of Love, shows how these two ends of a spectrum — aggression and romanticism — are able to find a perfect compromise. Cordell talked with BRM about other successful binaries in their lives, the power of synchronicity, and the problems that arise from thinking too seriously (about things like binaries and synchronicity).

BRM: The album has a mixture of different genres... what are your musical backgrounds?

Milo Cordell: Robbie and I started it as two friends who knew each other for nearly 10 years, since we were 16 or 17. We'd always loved music and would go to shows together. We'd go to big shows, small shows, underground noise shows, big raves, anything really — music was our thing. He eventually went off and was in a couple of other bands. And then one day we ended up in a studio together, and we just started making noise. We didn't know what would come out... it became sort of a 20-minute soundscape, where we were building and building and making walls of noise. Then we kind of condensed them and they became songs. Then we sort of became a band after that because we had these songs. As it kind of progressed, we thought of what we wanted to do with the band; we wanted to compile everything in our lives, whatever songs and bands experiences, girls we dated, etc. into the project.

You named the album A Brief History of Love. I wouldn't necessary call it an ambitious title, but wouldn't you say it sort of is — I mean how can you compress something like love?

It's one of those statements, that goes against itself. You know, that love is ever expansive, huge, and so infinite of a feeling that it can't ever have a brief history. It is a big statement, but at the same time it's kind of...To be honest, we never thought of it as a big statement when we said it.

It's a big statement, but the fact that you both know it...

You know when you say one thing, but do the other? We are always doing that. We say one thing, and do another... because we think so much about everything. I really like thinking about things, thinking about every possibility that could ever happen in a situation. What could happen? I'm not really making too much sense, I think I ate too much at dinner. [laughs]

Thinking too hard is an advantage and disadvantage sometimes. I'm wondering if you think you thought too much when putting the album together.

When we are in the studio working together, we kind of just go and never stop to think about it. We just roll off each other. We aren't too precious, and we like to keep things of that minute. It keeps it kind of fresh.

The album has that fresh, loud, and invigorating aspect. Meanwhile, the lyrics that are intertwined are actually romantic and sensitive — that binary, that duality of the album is interesting. What do you have to say about that?

I think at the time of writing a great bulk of it, we had both come out of these huge Armageddon-like relationships. There was a relief of positivism in the music, while putting the emotion in the lyrics, a sort of retrospective in the lyrics of broken relationships in the past. We had fun, but you can tell in the lyrics that we are still kind of down in the dumps.

What's your favorite song?

I love "Velvet." My favorite! It's just so many great things happening at the same time. I hope that song evokes emotion, a different kind of emotion... like a love lost.

What do you think the biggest difference is between American and UK music?

The size is the biggest thing. England is so small. You can play every show in England in a matter of weeks, but you can tour in America for a year! There's also a huge amount of choices in America. Here in England it's much more contained, much more concentrated. I think me and Robbie, we were brought up in London, where there's a lot of concrete, glass — which is why our album sounds like a city record. It feels industrial; it feels like bricks and mortar. It's got that kind of aggression, but it also has that fleetingness of a city.

I could see how the record could sound like a New York one too.

We actually recorded it in New York. We felt like we had done London and incorporated all that we could. We want to "up it,” and the only way to "up it,” is to go to New York! I've been there like 10 times and so has Robbie. We were there recording for maybe 2-3 months. We even wrote that song "Tonight" while we were out there.

What have you thought about the rave reviews the album's been getting?

It feels like a dream to me. Robbie has been waiting for this moment his whole life. He's been in a band. But for me it’s different… I've never been in a band, never thought of this happening. Until that day we were in a room together, it never even crossed my mind. I wasn't even that good of a musician to begin with. I learned that you don't even have to know the technicalities of music, just feel it. The more I think about it, my favorite guitarists aren't the best guitarists, but they just feeeel it. They don't use their guitars as just strings, but a weapon to create noise. And that's kind of how we worked and how we recorded this album — we never let anyone in, we just did it.

I hope to catch you guys when you play NYC...

That date is like the last day of our tour, and we are talking today on the first day of our tour! It's like synchronicity... like when one door opens, another door closes. Synchronicity has literally been the last year and a half of our lives.

Words by M. Geslani

Photo by Tim Saccenti

myspace.com/musicfromthebigpink