JOE: So you're in Germany now then?
ANTON: Yeah, in Berlin.
JOE: Are you enjoying that?
ANTON: Of course, this is one the best cities on the planet, especially for artists. It's the most forward thinking place on the planet. It's a really interesting dynamic because it has to be forward thinking, the history is pretty intense.
JOE: What sort of projects are you involved with these days?
ANTON: We've just purchased our new studio in central Berlin, but aside from that I'm working on five albums at once, but it's more complex than that. There's a French version of the record but it's not how the Beatles did it, I'm using the music to experiment. I want to express myself underground in a way that no-one's has ever done before which is making content in different languages so it's cross-cultural; the emphasis is totally on art. The emphasis is not really the commerce aspect of it, it's truly the art.
JOE: Is it fair to say that you've been going more international recently? With My Bloody Underground and working with more German artists, is that a deliberate move to try and go more international?
AN; I don't think there's any role involved, I just think it's an interesting place for me to be as a creative person. It's no secret that if I put out fifteen albums with limited acceptance from other people, what's to make sixteen any different? People have a lot of criticisms with my production values and how I handle myself artistically, but now we're writing music for the biggest show on the planet, so what does that say about Martin Scorsese's validation of the ‘do it yourself' approach? It puts it all in a different context I think. There are a lot of different things intersecting in my life right now.
JOE: You've had a huge catalogue of albums and you're still producing them at a high frequency. Have you had any feelings of slowing down or do you still feel like you're at full speed right now?
ANTON: With my management we've worked really hard and I feel like I can finally express myself as an artist and give people an insight into the process because I'm very interested in that. I think it's important for people of my age and experience to share that knowledge and when you watch somebody that's fully formed with an orchestra like Bach and the way he puts on a production it's hard for you to associate that it's possible for you as a young person to feel like you could put on a production like that. It's important for people to see the process and I'm very much interested in sharing that.
JOE: So you're quite happy about being open about the production process, to prevent the idea of how these things are actually made from being a secret?
ANTON: That's very common. We've seen the industry present its best ideas and destroy itself. I'm not having that problem financially because we're very successful in our business endeavours and I think there's room now for a lot of my models to be looked at. For instance, I've been exploring some of the themes that I'm orchestrating, these new compositions and handing them over to a dance troupe, to give rise to mixed media events in the future. It'd be like having a Pink Floyd element of a rock band moving onto a symbolic situation but the difference is I have enough bread to bankroll the creation of it and then we'll appeal on a cultural level to these national artistic organisations in different countries. I'm working on the record using various languages, such as French as well as English, so it's really exciting.
JOE: Would that be presented in a live setting or would it be a pre-recorded, mixed media sort of thing?
ANTON: I think it would be a production but it would be like live mixed media. If you think about somebody like (name?) and what he does with the glass doing the sounds and there's the theatre involved, as a point of reference it'd very much be something like that.
JOE: I could see that actually. And would that be a touring thing or an installation?
ANTON: It would be an installation, it would still be showcasing my group or me with other people but it doesn't have to be that. I'm just going to score the thing, and explore the themes that are hinted at in the rock element so it would be a really dynamic thing. That's what I'm doing over here, working with people from France and Germany to make all these things happen. I'm trying to think about how to keep my mouth shut because I get so excited about it.
JOE: That's the great thing though, that after so many albums you can still find new sources of inspiration and new things to sink your teeth into.
ANTON: …..to watch all my peers become entangled where all their dreams are seemingly coming true. You find yourself in a situation where you have a reputation and if there's nothing that is financially viable then you become a business.
JOE: At the same time, although many groups that are associated with you such as BRMC have become very mainstream and famous, you are still well known. In the NME magazine, they had the top ten ‘animals of rock and roll' and you were number six. So you are still known, you are still in the music culture here.
ANTON: Well that's great. Something really happened the last time we were in London. We were playing Shepherd's Bush and sold it out in two hours, and when we sell out an institution or venue like that, it's not the same as when Coldplay sell it out in two hours because they buy out the realtors or guests, see? And BRMC pays for the commentary on their existence in the media. There is no wriggle-room for a journalist to insert whatever they feel like writing about, I have no illusions about that. The whole media became this whole thing of selling the American way of life to the rest of the world.
JOE: I couldn't agree with you more there. That's one thing that's been inspiring us personally, that a lot of music journalism is generally based on being an advert and a commercial for bands, and it has become quite detached from the idea of thinking about critically where they've come from.
ANTON: We can't pin it on the media because guess what, look at the Iraq War and how the government fooled everybody on it. This is just, as a culture, the way that things are being sold. It's wrong, it's just flat-out wrong and it's gotten out of hand.
JOE: There's the problem of whether it has always been that way, or has it been getting worse do you think?
ANTON: It has obviously been getting worse. It's obvious that it needs to be reeled in, everybody's saying that. But going back to this dance piece that I want to create, think about how revolutionary it's going to be to have this on a grand scale, life size. This simple act of me concentrating on this for a couple of months or something, I'm going to work with other people. It's not going to be me and my sister in my living room choreographing some imaginary shows! But think about it, it is art because it will restore faith in the humanities. As a journalist, you're a fucking joke if you can't go, in this day and age, ‘Jackson Pollock, you've got to check out the stuff he's done, it's intense', that's your background. When you start talking, you should be well into humanities in a couple of minutes or even words or else you have an agenda, you're there to knock this down. When people miss what's really going on you think ‘well, what else did they miss?'
JOE: Yeah, I completely agree with you there. I think that a lot of people, especially in the media and the music media have an agenda and they sort of start knowing who they want to promote, who they don't want to promote and I can see that being constricting because when you don't fit into a model, like if you were doing a dance mixed-media thing, there's no real way for the mainstream media to instantly absorb that and write about it because it is something which is new.
ANTON: The music media doesn't give two hoots about the arts, so we have to take it for granted. But to willy-nilly ban me from television because I'm a troublemaker is just ridiculousness and I'm going to prove that wrong. Thinking about all the stuff, all this volatility and the dangerous aspect of it, well, I can't be used to sell tampons occasionally, that doesn't make sense.
JOE: That'll be the pull-out quote that we use for you there.
ANTON: It's sort of hilarious if people can't see the humour in it, somebody has to stand up and not just critique everything they don't like or that falls short of the mark, and that's why I'm helping out new bands and spending my own money putting it back into producing other people and all that other good stuff.
JOE: I think that's a great thing because I think there's not enough out there for emerging talent. When there is talk of emerging talent it's often in the form of award for upcoming talent and it's very rare that you can have a way of shedding publicity on these new people that may not have the tools themselves.
ANTON: But it's so weird when they do that, like this ground breaking shit that resonates where they've sold like 100 with no advertising, just faking …..100,000 discs per song. But they can't award it to them because it's this grand statement, he won't make a video or appear. So even the awards are just a mockery and they keep trying to remarket dance music with some sort of content and they're like, here's…. in the machine, like that's some sort of revelation. And I've got nothing against the simple stuff in pop music but come on.
JOE: Then also you get things like American Idol and all that…
ANTON: They can't tell you that all this underground stuff is outselling The Arcade Fire and their number one album in America. Some of these kids from Hackney literally sell more records than Lady Gaga or some shit on a daily basis and they just can't tell anybody because it's abrasive.
JOE: I know and that's a real shame. That's probably one reason why new bands are using the internet so much because it can be quite a liberating way to not be so restricted by mainstream acceptance.
ANTON: Well have you seen this thing about file trading and all the New Paradigm shit? It's one thing for the US government and Germany to go ‘OK we want to be your friends Russia, we're so glad that we don't have this hostility'. All that's just talk, when our governments don't listen to Russia about Iran or something, when you're proposing friendships between cultures and a new way of looking at things and you're thinking about what's really doing it. Well it's the fucking arts that are doing it, not the oligarchy that's making some business deal with gas to make the new North Sea pipeline into Germany and fuck the rest of Europe. The real things are cultural restraints and then you find me recording with Russian guys and doing songs in Russia so there's something else to this. I'm just talking about the file –trading sites in Russia (laughs)
JOE: So is that something that's inspired you, that idea of cultural exchange. Is that part of your collaborative pet projects?
ANTON: In a nutshell it's the reason I have a German edition, an EU edition to my passport being a Yankee right? I'm obviously welcome here to do precisely this and I didn't make it into super-CV trick but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
JOE: You mentioned earlier that you've been seen as someone who is not safe of TV and someone as not the kind of person generally that people have on their shows. Do you think you still have that reputation?
ANTON: The BBC have been really cool to me, they're super cool. I've done Tim Robbins' show and what a guy, he's trying hard to fill in the slot with the death of John Peel. At the same time, they've never shown ‘Dig' on Channel 4, they'd rather not present the idea to young people that they can do whatever the fuck they want. Even though the whole storyline is titled in another direction it's obviously not true, that's why it says ‘written by Ondi Timoner'. How do you write a documentary, you edit a documentary? So that just shows you what it is.
JOE: But then how do you fight against that do you think? How would you recommend to someone that disagrees with how mainstream music is being manufactured, how does the average person respond to that?
ANTON: Shit man, I need to listen to the wording of your question. What would I suggest to someone who is having difficulty finding what they need from the arts, through the mainstream media?
JOE: More sort of how do you think we can stop this mass production and corporatisation?
ANTON: Check this out, I've been researching dance and these people have been bothering this woman from eighteen-ninety fucking eight and she's like the American modern dance lady. It's just nuts, so obviously this has been going on forever! Like you can discover the birth of film and sound inside these people who were just out on a fucking limb. They just discover this stuff on YouTube on a daily basis. In any kind of situation where someone is interacting with me, could be a record company, I'm going to fuck them up so badly because they don't understand the dynamics, how it works. It's like what's really going to affect me, whose evil eye is really going to affect me?
JOE: I think that can be a very liberating idea, that you can never let yourself be affected by these people; you can always just brush them off. I think it would be great, even if I could do that, now and then, that you could stop completely caring and know that you don't have to be affected by these people.
ANTON: But you are affected in that, you're absolutely affected because you have to understand how far barnyard politics really works So many people just snap to show others that they're not afraid of you. A lot of it isn't really even a hostile threat, it always seems like a gang situation of you against the world, a lot of it is just the mechanics of a dog barking at you as you walk by, and it's what they fucking do. Think about postmen, you deal with it every fucking day. I pay all my tax in the UK and I'm under the impression that a gentleman has the right to an opinion. At a base level, I am the fucking establishment and I have serious grievances with the way things are run but you know, there was dissent in the Roman Senate, there's nothing different about this. People had to sweat it out under numerous fucking emperors until they changed the way it went and we're just in another one of those times. I'm not advocating the destruction of the sewer system but I'm saying the media has gotten way out of control and the media is the fucking mouth of the whole thing! I'm sick and tired of hearing about The Beatles and how they're greatest band ever because guess what? They're not the greatest anything; they're just the greatest Beatles ever. They're not the greatest hip-hop act. Chuck D pisses all over them at rapping. That's the power of marketing right there and that's the thing I want to avoid with my thing. There's a difference between entering the popular lexicon and being a Coca-Cola type branding situation. Jimi Hendrix epitomises a certain type of freedom artistically whereas John Lennon doesn't at all, he's the opposite of Jimi Hendrix.
JOE: So you're saying you wouldn't mind being known for something you really were but you're very conscious of ever appearing like a brand, like living up to it?
ANTON: I don't have a problem with corporate, I own a corporation LTD, so obviously I'm not anti-corporate because I am a corporation. At the same time, I think the way that things are being sold on every level is a little bit disturbing. Everybody bought into this snake oil, saying like ‘hey, I want to sell you the Eiffel Tower'. It's embarrassing but when people are looking for exposition you want to sell it for junk metal. The Eiffel Tower's been sold like three times by conmen, by the same parties who were afraid to admit that they'd been burned for so much money. It allows it to keep happening.
JOE: The problem is though, is that corporation extruding their influence over people or is that human nature that people are very susceptible to easy answers if they just want to know what the best band of all time is, it's very easy for them to buy into it being the Beatles. Is it down to human nature do you think?
ANTON: I think it's completely in our nature to tear things down and start again. It seems like that's just the whole thing in a nutshell. You've got to be open. Whatever doesn't work, like when the governments around the world swing back and forth between making all these provisions for the population and stripping them away. With the environment and every fucking thing that you can name, we have to start doing things that last forever. I'll tell you what, John Lennon is dead because he fucking listened to Yoko and led a protest rally down the street, that's when the whole band said ‘where's this fucking headed?' That was when his days were marked. John Lennon was no Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro can't play music as well as I can so I'm more badass than either one of those guys. I'm not a Communist see, I don't care what people care about it. John Lennon is no Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro can't play music as well as either one of us but I have those guys fucking covered for sure. And I'm going to prove it, that's what I want to do.
JOE: I like the energy there; I like the idea of being able to do that.
ANTON: I'm sorry for going off on a manic rant!
JOE: That's fine. So where do you stand politically? I remember I saw your MySpace page at one point and you were obviously very anti-Bush, but do you even agree with the Democrats or is that another thing which you don't buy into whatsoever?
ANTON: No, we live in a technocratic, fascist state. I think we ought to be done with listening to these people and their plans because they don't know how to execute them; I am fully in the know about what is going on. Their big fucking plan was to infuriate the Islamic world and see who has the balls to react, it's been going on forever since we've been interacting with these people and I think it is a piss-poor plan. I think it's outrageous; Obama's election didn't change anything, where did this man come from? I have no illusions that Germany is fully part of that, Germany leads Europe on many levels. Check this out, there's no way could act like they do in the UK and the US here because people here will not stand for a return to national socialism of any degree so they can't dress up like Nazis, they can't put it in your fucking face because the world will say ‘It's back'. The same thing is not true of the way that the powers that be are interacting with people in these other countries, you know that isn't true If Germany acted in the same way that people act in the Gaza Strip there'd be hell to pay. Even with the new laws in the UK, the anti-terrorism clause. I understand that they have to do their job and we don't want to interfere with that but it's bullshit.
JOE: That's an interesting point though because obviously Germany will be more sensitive to try and avoid doing that because obviously they don't want to seem…
ANTON: Well Germany perfected surveillance societies. Just twenty years ago, 1 in 10, 1 in 4 people were getting paid to spy on each other, you know what I mean? This is the headquarters of that stuff but what I'm saying is that this is a blatant violation of human rights, a complete lack of understanding of how to get things done. Obviously Germany has a better style and so it's genius for me to move here because I don't interfere with their politics and I like our technocratic tradition here.
JOE: Are you living there full time now, have you fully moved over to Germany or are you just there for a while now?
ANTON: I live here, I've been here for three years. You need to meet requirements to have a corporation in the UK so here my issues are nil.
JOE: You're obviously involved in a lot of projects over there now, is there any room for touring in the future or is that just not on your radar right now?
ANTON: Well I've put it on the backburner because I don't see us getting very much larger as a band in a certain respect. We've already played at the same place as Bob Dylan; I don't see us making the transition to 18,000, 20,000 places every day and so there's no point in me touring because we just sold out the whole world in 65 shows. I don't want to feel like Def Leppard or something and playing 300 shows a year. I'm just going to do these five records and all the projects I'm putting out on my label, a band on my label from America called ‘Magic Tassles'. What else? I'm trying not to make the mistake that Creation Records made because there are no way you could ever pay proper attention to 80 records being put out in one year. That number is ridiculous, but that's what they did.
JOE: Well you're always welcome to be in our pages if you want Anton.
ANTON: Awesome.
JOE: I suppose that takes up a lot of your time, it'll be a while then before you'll be doing shows again do you think?
ANTON: I just don't know, I'll probably end up playing in London or the UK at some point. I'm going to do a show here at the end of the month with the guys that I'm recording with called ‘The Serious Matters'. See this is something I can do that nobody can ever do really well, and you know what that is? I can bring song craft out of these repetitious soundscapes. They have all these textual pieces and this incredible influence to everybody but a lot of people make noise for the sake of making noise. DJ culture is all just beeps and bops and beats, people don't realise that's all it is.
JOE: Is that sort of the sound of what you're doing then, a more noise-based music?
ANTON: No, this is like some really insane shit. I get like 2,000 listens a day and I get people saying ‘you need to pace it differently'.
JOE: Just to ask then, when do you expect to be releasing those new songs?
ANTON: I covered a Bobby Jameson song so that'll come out at the beginning of the year and also I'll have some releases from the beginning of my label.
