Conquering Animal Sound
1) Who are you, who is in the band, who does what in the studio and on stage?
We are Conquering Animal Sound, a duo of Anneke Kampman and James Scott. While you will see Anneke doing all the singing, and James doing most of the music on stage, we collaborate on all the music together before Anneke writes her singing parts. It’s a completely collaborative process.
2) How long have you been writing and performing in this way?
We have been writing together since 2008, and played our first show in May 2009. I think we’ve constantly been changing how we perform live, and adapting our performances to how we write our music. When we started, we had harps, percussion, toy pianos on stage. Now we use samples and synths. It’s important for us to keep moving forward and keep changing things.
3) Your (current) style is predominantly electronic, isn’t it? How exactly do you work / write / record? Have you ever done it any other way? If so, how did you do it before and why did you chose this method for your current music…?
We work with lots of different sound sources, manipulate samples and then write rhythms and words around those. We didn’t make any conscious decision on how we would go about making the music, it’s just a process that has emerged entirely naturally from being together in the studio.
4) How do you feel your studio/recording style informs the way you perform your music live? Does it make it easier or harder, better etc…?
We’ve moved away from using acoustic instruments over the duration of our career, so the sounds we use are often impossible to replicate onstage, and thus we’ve moved towards samplers and synths, away from the loop pedals/devices we used in the past.
5) What’s been happening lately and what’s new with you?
We’ve just returned from our second EU tour of the year, where we played with Múm and K-X-P amongst others, and finished at the fantastic Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz. We’ve been touring this year to promote our second album, “On Floating Bodies”, which came out on Chemikal Underground Records in March.
6) When was the last time you played Edinburgh (and where)? What do you remember about that experience?
We last played in Edinburgh at Limbo in March, which was great fun! The audience is always really good at the Voodoo Rooms for us, so it was great to come back.
7) If you’ve played Limbo before, what did you like/rate about the experience? If you’ve not played Limbo before, what have you heard about it?
The Limbo shows are always well attended, well promoted affairs, and we enjoy working with Andy and Dave. We’ve had several great shows, the most memorable being with Jonnie Common and Meursault in 2011, which was a brilliant night.
8) What’s next, coming up after this gig, for you and what are you generally looking forward to right now…?
We’re touring with Múm again in the UK in November, and making our first trip to Dublin then, which is pretty exciting! We’re then returning to the studio to finish recording our new EP, some songs from which we’ll be debuting at our Pleasance show, which will hopefully see a release in Spring 2014. It’s even got a song about football on it, called “Puskas”.
9) How do you feel about Scottish independence and the whole ‘Yes’ campaign? Have you decided which way you’re voting yet (and, if so, what’s your decision)?
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10) Is there anything else you feel strongly about that you’d like to tell us about right now?
I personally feel that DJ Rashad just released the album of the year so far, that the UK media needs to stop giving column inches to political nobodies from right-wing extremist parties, and that everyone needs to stop spoiling Breaking Bad for me, cus I’m still only on season three. And as ever, Girls Make Techno.
(answers by James)
