Got - Djent.com - Interview with chimp spanner

So, I'm here with Paul from Chimp Spanner and he just finished up his first show with Cynic here in the Village in Dublin. How did it go? It was awesome, a few first show nerves, but it was nice to see the crowd warm to us. We had a little hard-core of people come to see us, and then by the end we won over most of the people, it was packed, good crowd, really good. This is your first gig since Euroblast festival, and then there was a long gap in between touring. Yeah, basically we're not doing a lot of one-off shows, not doing that many tours. We are trying to keep it to relevant bands, relevant line-ups, so the Cynic tour was perfect for us. How did you find Euroblast as an experience? It was brilliant. The way the timing worked out, we ended up headlining the first day, kind of by accident. It was supposed to be Mnemic headlining. The way it worked out everyone was really tanked, the room was just full. It was crazy, I've never seen people crowdsurf to instrumental music. Actually the set tonight was 2/3rds instrumental. The opening band and you guys were instrumental. What was the name of the band? Shardborne, from Limerick. They were cool man, really cool. So, you've got a new EP coming out, February? Officially it's February 6th, we were supposed to have limited edition vinyls to sell from now, but we don't get them until London. So we will be selling them from the London show onwards. And sort of the general release on the 6th. When you say limited edition, that comes with a seperate remix CD right? Yeah the vinyl, it'll be a signed vinyl, its transparent as well, which will be cool. It'll be signed and have the remixes on the other side. The iTunes and CD release will just be the EP. Whose idea was it to the remix, it's all one song, Supererogation is the one song? Yeah, the first track off of the last album. That was Nathan's idea, from Basick. He was just like, dude, how do you feel about opening it up to remixes and - hi Boris! And yeah, it was a great idea and we had a lot of really great submissions. I know Remi from the Algorithm did one. Yeah he's on it, The Algorithm remix is on there, it's really good. I read that you said that the EP is a bit darker than At the Dream's Edge, but still has the same kind of feel. Yeah, basically, there is one sort of centerpiece song, that's 14 and a half minutes long, it's called Möbius. That was kind of... without getting too into it, but the last couple of years have been a bit weird, and rather than doing the whole futuristic thing like on At the Dream's Edge, I tried to to do something that was a bit more personal. You said it was more personal, more based on experience. Yeah, it progresses nicely, with the way things have unfolded for me the last of couple of years. So, the fact that it's personal, does that mean that the writing process for it was any different? Yeah, normally I don't sit down and write or record anything until I've got everything worked out. This time anything that came to mind, I sort of just put it down. I mean I had like 10 minutes worth of stuff that I didn't really use, it was just at the end of the song. Yeah, it was more fun to write that way because you don't feel so boxed in, and it feels a bit more natural and free... yeah, it worked good. But then, on either end of this long song, there's two other tracks that are a bit more like the At The Dream's Edge stuff, they're a bit more happy and cheesy. When you say its darker, are the ambiences darker or just the tones or the riffs? Just, the riffs really, there's one in there that's kind of uncomfortable to listen to, the chord and the way it's all laid out, it's a bit more dissonant, sort of seedy. It kind of evolves nicely into something happier and Chimp Spanner-ish. But I was also approaching them with playing it live in mind. Whereas with At the Dream's Edge, it was never meant to be played in front of people. You didn't expect that to happen. No, not at all, it's just lucky that its translated as well as it has. But this stuff, you know, I was very conscious, thinking 'putting this kind of riff, it's going to go down well live' and yeah, it worked out good, I think. How does it feel to be touring with a band like Cynic, I know this is the first night and you really haven't met them. The thing is, that I know that they are very... they are held in very high regard obviously. They've been going for quite a long time, but really my first introduction to Cynic was maybe 3 or 4 months ago. We were checking out the EP, like as recently as a week ago, few days ago. But it's amazing stuff, we were just in awe of their set it was just brilliant, great music. It doesn't really fit into what everyone else is doing, they are just doing their own thing. Just sounded amazing, really good, we are just really stoked to be touring with those guys. Yeah, it's a really, really good fit with you guys' music. So after this tour and the EP, is there anything else in the pipes? Yeah, we're doing an EP release show in London on the 6th of February. Thats going to be at the Barfly in London. I don't really know if to say the other stuff. We are working on some stuff anyway. Hopefully we'll be touring at least one more time for certain next year, maybe it'll be a European tour again. But I also want to get back to writing as well, start working on the full length. We'll see how it pans out. You mentioned earlier that you hadn't written the At the Dream's Edge stuff for live, so how does it feel to go from this little instrumental project to a touring band? It's weird man. It's still kind of strange to me that people come out to see something that I just made. I don't know, I can't get my head around it still, but the reactions to it were better than I could have hoped for. It's nice to re-live the music again, in a different context, because it's one thing to sit and drive yourself crazy with it for months and months, and not really any goal in mind, and then to have it actually come and turn into something that people can enjoy... yes, it's cool, really cool. Bit different question, if you were stuck on a desert island and you could only play 3 video games for the rest of your life... 3 video games? Ok, SimCity 4 Deluxe, because it comes with the traffic management expansion, that's great. Total Annihilation, the old RTS game. And Sims 3. Yeah, I was a big Sims player when I was young as well. That would be my three games. A lot of playtime there... And on the same model, you can only drink 2 beverages, one alcoholic and one non-alcoholic. Water isn't included. Ah, ok, I would take Jamesons and original Lucozade. Alright, interesting. I didn't even have to think about it. Wow, yeah you have this planned out in your head. Oh wait, actually no, I would take sparkling, can I have sparkling water? Yeah yeah, thats fine, sparkling water, I hate sparkling water. Any last words, shoutouts to do? Massive massive thanks to Nathan at Basick. Oh yes, I completely forgot, because I couldn't get my laptop set up, there was a bit of trouble getting over here in the first place. Yeah, I mean, I won't go into the ins and outs of it, it was a little bit hairy, Nathan kind of came and saved our *** at the last second, so yeah, massive thanks to the guys at Basick. Also to Jim's dad for sorting out a missing passport. And to everyone that's bought tickets for these shows, everyone that came tonight, it was cool. And basically everyone that's helping us out, supporting us, buying merch, buying the album. Thanks a million Paul.