circlepit

u/a - i don't care about people anonymously posting opinions, but do think its cowardly for people to anonymously post bullshit or personal attacks towards someone who isn't anonymous.

tugboat - sorry if i offended you, as i said i know very little about the guy, and that includes his music. to be honest i haven't heard a great deal of it, but what i have heard i thought was terrible. which doesn't mean it is, seeing as i'm an idiot. each to their own.

lynch/badalamenti/cruise is a huge compliment, thanks. i'm really loving over-the-top love/sex songs at the moment, anita lane's 'sex o'clock' is worth checking out for those who haven't. cheesy as hell, but amazing nonetheless.

just to clarify - when i say we took photos of each other, i mean i took the photo of angie, and she took the photo of me. we didn't plan it til she got here and it was a lot less thought out than everyone seems to think. the label was waiting ages for the cover art and we left it so long that we had to do something. thats not to say that we would want it to look any different, we love how it turned out.

dope

i love the idea of being 'styled' to look like pete doherty. i know very little about the guy other than that he makes terrible music, takes drugs and used to go out with kate moss, but i can honestly say that neither of us were thinking 'what should we try and look like for these photos' - angie came over to my house, we were dressed in what we happened to be wearing that day, and we just took photos of each other in various states of undress with the song titles written on our arms. i didn't realise that i looked 'pallid' or 'fucked up' - its just how i looked that day. the photos were taken on film and we didn't see the results until days later. not everything we do is all calculated and referrential - in fact very little is. i hate how there's this assumption with modern music that everything is some kind of throwback, or dishonest, or motivated by public opinion - is it really so hard to believe that some people make music to express whats inside them, what they're going through in their lives? and while we don't claim to have invented a sound, we don't sit down and dissect other's music and try to re-configure it into something that passes as 'original enough' - yes, we might be subconsciously influenced by other music, but we write what comes into our heads. just because some people approach songwriting in that way, doesn't mean its the only way to write. you can certainly find similarities to other musicians in aspects of our work if you look for them,as you can with most music - past and present, but that doesn't mean that they were written with that in mind. the way i see it, if you're making music from an honest place, and not consciously trying to sound like someone else - that's original. whether or not others have used the same instrumentation, chord progression, drum-beat, whatever - is irrelevant. we're really happy with this release, and while its something we want to explore further in terms of the set-up we used, it doesn't mean that we've abandoned the guitar-based music we've made previously. our next release is a 5 song 12'' EP on Sacred Bones Records, which we recorded largely with the band while on tour in the states. I'd say that this next release is probably our most raw, 'damaged', loose and scummy sounding record to date. we don't place limitations on what we can sound like, we just go with whatever comes out of us and see where it ends up. i like to read about what others think of our music, its fascinating to me, but in no way does it have any bearing on the music we make. as for the usual drug-related gossip - thats all it is, speculation - by people who clearly don't know us, or much about us. jack.

go

stream online here:

http://soundcloud.com/hardlyartrecords/sets/circle-pit-slave-honey/

available worldwide through Hardly Art/Sub Pop.

so just because i play in a band means i deserve to have my family criticised and scrutinised by other fuckwits who probably also play music?

greg arraki can be pretty hit and miss - doom generation's tacky but fairly enjoyable. will have to listen to 'the classical'.

we'll be back in melbourne sometime in june hopefully. ps. come.

FUCK YEAH. loved draft dodger, so stoked to see teargas in sydney finally! 'i know, i know what i know and i know how to aim and i know how to throw'.