Exclusive Interview

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music interviewed Olly White and Sam Langley of Eftus Spectun on September 3, 2004 Bath, England, The Star Inn.

Xtreme Music: I’m here with Olly and Sam of Eftus Spectun at The Star Inn, Bath. I’d like to start the interview by asking, how did Eftus Spectun first get together?

Sam Langley: Well, we’re cousins for a start..

Olly White: And I started playing music with Kieren when we went to school together. He said he’ll play drums and I said I’d play guitar, we progressed from there. I started doing stuff with Sam when I left school and started college.. yeah, so how long have we been doing it now? (gestures to Sam)..

Sam Langley: Since 1999.. but when I was about ten and Olly must of been about six, we used to write a comic together called “Eftus Spectun”..

Xtreme Music: That answers my next question, what does the name “Eftus Spectun” mean and what does it refer to? Could you tell us a little more about that comic?

Olly White: School humour (laughs)..

Sam Langley: Yeah, I think the name originates from a greek method of bending light..

Olly White: Nah, it just sounds good. All our lyrics are based from just pure sound.. you-know whatever sounds good.

Xtreme Music: How would you best describe the music of Eftus Spectun?

Olly White: Chaotic!! (laughs)..

Sam Langley: Fun!! (laughs).. I dunno, we always have a hard time with describing our music because I kinda think beyond playing it, and you-know you just present something to someone and say “Listen to that”, make up your own mind. I don’t really enjoy pigeon-holing music. I find it goes against the whole creative process really.

Xtreme Music: I’m sure a lot of musicians would agree with you..

Olly White: It’s hard to playing this stuff, but either of us will just play something and if the other one likes it, we’ll go with that.

Xtreme Music: Who would you say are your main musical influences and how have they shaped your musical direction?.. Any particular bands that you feel have influenced Eftus Spectun?

Sam Langley: The Beatles! They’re probably my favourite band ever!

Olly White: Right now I really like that band Hella, they’re really good!..

Sam Langley: I like classical stuff as well, there’s a guy called Iancu Dumitrescu that I listen to a lot. Xenakis, Bernard Farmagiani, U.S. Maple, Captain Beefheart..

Olly White: We saw Deerhoof, they played The Cube [Bristrol live venue] the other week, absolutely amazing! We saw them up in London, but we couldn’t believe that they’d play The Cube, this tiny cinema and they played there! Really personal place, absolutely ace!

Xtreme Music: In terms of Eftus Spectun’s live performances, how have they been going and what has the crowd reaction been like?

Sam Langley: Well it’s interesting because it’s always been really good, like you get really positive feedback from everyone, and everyone seems to love it! But then I recently thought that maybe that’s because the people that don’t like it, just don’t come up to you (laughter). So it’s probably split fifty fifty, some people hate it, some people love it, but the people that hate it are not going to come up to you and say “Look, I really hate it!”.. (laughter).

Olly White: One of the most positive reactions we had was someone vomiting as we were playing, then went to the toilet to vomit, came back out and told us they had to go vomit again! (laughs).. I thought that was fucking ace!

Sam Langley: We’ve played to some really weird crowds though, people that wouldn’t like listen to that sort of stuff. We played one night to a load of Welsh beer boys with peroxide blonde hair and they all fucking loved it! (laughs)

Olly White: Yeah, you can never really judge it..

Xtreme Music: Has Eftus Spectun ever considered performing cover songs on their live sets?

Sam Langley: We’ve considered it (laughs), we’ve considered it a lot of times..

Olly White: What was that one we really wanted to do? (asking Sam)

Sam Langley: We wanted to do “Hey Brother Pour The Wine” by Dean Martin.

Olly White: Yeah, but you can’t really do him justice though, Dean Martin.

Sam Langley: I can, what are you on about!? (chuckles)

Olly White: Well, I don’t think you can do him justice (both laughing)..We talk about doing covers but they never come to life.

Sam Langley: It’s a nice idea but actually getting round to writing out the song, I’d rather just write our own music.

Xtreme Music: Which are your favourite venues in the U.K. that you’ve performed at and how were those shows?

Sam Langley: We played at 93 Feet East in London on Brig Lane, that’s probably one of the best places we’ve played really. I wouldn’t say it was the best gig we ever did, but it was a good venue.

Olly White: The Cube is a really good one in Bristol, it’s a bit small though, that’s the only thing about it, it’s a bit arty, chin-strokey sorta thing as well.

Sam Langley: We haven’t played anywhere really good..

Olly White: Porter Butt! [Bath venue].. (laughs)

Xtreme Music: When would you say has been the best experience in Eftus Spectun’s music career?

Olly White: Writing this new material! Coming up with the new stuff..

Sam Langley: In terms of performance, the best gig that we ever did was playing with Melt Banana. That was like the best gig, there were a load of people there, it was fantastic! Olly White: Yeah, we got a lot of good responses, it got us in front of a lot of people. Did you make it to that gig?

Xtreme Music: I wish I did, I just heard about that Melt Banana support that you guys actually performed through an online web site.. Could you tell us about your latest album and what music we can look forward to?

Sam Langley: We’re releasing a CD with a compilation of music we’ve recorded over the years, including an EP we recorded recently. So it’s a load of music and we’re releasing that in America.

Olly White: It’s a collection of the last three years or something..

Sam Langley: Anything we’ve done that we still think is good we put on there. We’re gonna do a short album with this new stuff that we’re writing, and we’re gonna do nothing else until we’ve done that really. Noticably much better than anything we’ve done.

Olly White: The new music is more ambient, mathematical, it’s a lot more drawn out than our earlier stuff. It was more clustered together and this music is more dragged out, that’s a good way to describe it.

Sam Langley: It’s more ecclectic. We’ve found out what we can play and found out our limits, and how we can sound really good.. (laughter).

Xtreme Music: How did U.S. based label Public Eyesore Records discover Eftus Spectun, and what has the relationship with that indie label been like?

Sam Langley: Well I sent them some music a couple of years ago..

Olly White: Just coz we like the name.. (laughs)

Sam Langley: Yeah, I was kinda going through the back of Wire finding loads of weird record labels, and I chose them because I liked the name. I mean, we send off music all the time but they just so happened to be a label that actually responded to us.

Olly White: They got back and were interested.

Xtreme Music: Where can you see the Eftus sound going in future releases?

Sam Langley: It’s always gonna get more complex! It’s just gonna get more horrible! (laughter).. It’s just gonna get more refined and yet more complicated.

Olly White: I don’t think you really know until you start doing it. You-know, a lot of people say “Hey, you should try and do this”. I never think I’ll try and do something and then it’ll come out that way, I think you just attempt to do stuff and it comes out completely different.

Sam Langley: I feel slightly unsatisfied when we have done what people say we should do, we’ve gotten a bit more repetitive.

Xtreme Music: What can you tell us about the writing process behind Eftus Spectun’s music and lyrics?

Sam Langley: Well me and Olly just write music together.. (chuckles)

Olly White: Think of chords, weird chords and think of weird numbers and they seem to stick together. Then we’ll take it to Keiran, our drummer and work through it.

Sam Langley: “Why don’t you play this?.. Why don’t you play this?” Drummers are always much more up for playing what feels good than what is good. So we encourage him to play what’s most complicated and what’s gonna hurt his brains.

Olly White: He’s good, he’s getting through a lot of the new stuff
which is incredibly complicated.

Sam Langley: It’s a bit unfair actually, because the music we are writing at the moment it’s really easy for me and Olly to come up with a part.. it’s just like hitting chords like that, and then we come to Keiran and say..

Olly White: “Play fifteen different rhythms with one hand!”
(laughter)

Xtreme Music: And for my final question I’d like to ask, what can people looking forward to in the near future with Eftus Spectun?

Olly White: A f-ing headache! (laughs)..

Sam Langley: A new album, Top Of The Pops..

Olly White: Yeah, we are trying to write some hit singles at the moment.

Sam Langley: Along side this, me and Olly are trying to write real pop music and it ends up being not-pop music, but that’s what we’re always trying to do. That’s the driving force behind what we do, trying to write pop music and it just ends up sounding horrible!

Olly White: When we were starting out we were actually trying to write pop tunes that were slightly weird, but you always think actually it sounds better being really weird..

Xtreme Music: Well, it’s been wonderful to meet you both again, I’m certainly looking forward to the new album material from Eftus Spectun! Thank You.