Coming from Southampton, Plastik mix dark alternative sounds
and flirt with catchy pop chorus’s to serve up sexy subservient
songs that promise to go down easy
What’s the name of the band, and how did you come
up with the name? We’re called Plastik. We initially took the
idea from the word plastic (a little artistic license allowed us
to change the spelling of the word to plastik). The name was really
spurred from ideas we were having about human identity and the particular
categories we felt pressured into organising our lives into.
We all felt that human identity does not always have
to be one or the other for example, male/female, straight/gay, black/white
masculine/feminine etc. There is whole spectrum left out in-between,
and why be one or the other, why not play with the choices?
It was from this moulding and reforming of shapes
and identities that we took the word plastik from. We applied the
qualities of plastic (namely it being manmade, recyclable, reshapable,
strong and yet lucid and fluid) to human identity. What Plastik
is about is the ability to look at yourself critically and see how
society has shaped us into a particular mould.
Plastik is the celebration beyond that one mould,
the ability to experiment and cross boundaries within society. We
carry this way of thinking and expressionistically into our music.
What is one minute loud and masculine becomes quite and feminine
the next. If you want a more in depth understanding about our name
visit http://www.plastik.co.uk/
and read the Plastik Manifesto.
What are the individual members names and what
do they play?
Gareth Moss voices, guitars, keyboards, sampling
Andy Natt bass, guitars, backing vox
Paul Cox drums, percussion, backing vox
How long have you been together? Plastik formed
in May 1999.
Where is the band based? Southampton. England.
Describe your sound? I think our eclectic mix
of influences is most apparent on record. We have developed a sound
for ourselves now, that’s not to say that we wont experiment, far
from it, that’s what Plastik is about, crossing boundaries, one
minute being masculine and rigid, the next being fluid and feminine.
Our sounds are at times dark and at others light,
fluffy and poppy. We’re a very sexual group too (that’s not to say
we romp on stage or consider ourselves muscular hunks), but we’re
very in touch with our sexuality (no we’re not all screaming queens)
but its very liberating to play the music that we play, there’s
something about that groove when the bass and drums just melt together,
you can’t help but become a conduit for the music.
It all sounds very up our own arse and pretentious
and it probably is. [I don’t think I did a very good job with that
question].
Do you prefer to play in the studio or live gigs?
We’ve never worked as a group in a studio, we produced The Honey
Demos and The Blow-Up Demos (both 3 track CD’s) ourselves on our
digital 8 track. We have so many ideas that we wouldn’t be able
to get them all down if we had hired studio time. Just listen to
Blow-Up on the One Two Blow CD.
We’ve got samples of ladies orgasming to the beat,
a drum machine synched with live drumming, numerous over dubs and
sounds and the song ends with a spoken outtro looped backwards.
We wouldn’t have been able to experiment so freely in a studio.
What we play live is very different to what we put down on CD.
Live we are a lot rawer and harder, you shouldn’t
try to recreate what you’ve got on record at a gig, you should give
them something different. Our gigs are always energetic and bursting
at the seams, we don’t want to blow our own trumpets but if you
don’t think you’re one the best live acts you’ve seen why are you
doing it?
Where can people see you play? We mainly play
around southern England and London. It’s best to check the website
or join the mailing list, we update our site very frequently. Its
an integral part of building up our fanbase, and people don’t want
to visit a site that was last updated in January 1999.
What are most of your songs about? Our songs
are about life, love, sex and politics. Lyrically we tend to go
for the deep meaning, the poetic metaphors, the dark fairytales
and goings on of suburbia.
That’s not to say that we are so serious we are about
to kill ourselves it’s just that if you’re given 4mins on a record
why waste that potential with naive primary school trash.
We’re the type of sad bastards that sit in our bedrooms
pulling the lyrics apart to the latest album we just bought.
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http://www.plastik.co.uk/
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