Mike Lindsay of genre-benders Tunng tells TONY CLAYTON-LEAabout using seashells as instrumentation and scoring music for porn ahead of this weekend's Body & Soul festival
Does it bother you that Tunng are more often associated with nu-folk and psych-folk than other kinds of music?
It depends on who is saying it, really, and what they think. I reckon we have a lot of different influences in our music, and when we started out five year ago perhaps there were more direct references to slightly traditional melodies. These days I’m not so sure what Tunng is about, although in fairness there are elements of folk in there, for sure, so you can’t really argue.
Is it too easy to lump the band under a catch-all title?It just doesn't seem so relevant any more. You know, you had the folktronica thing, the acid folk, the freak-folk thing several years ago, and there was something of a scene taking place that Tunng got put in with. These days things have moved on, and so have we. We're more a wonky pop band now, I reckon.
We hear guitar solos on your latest album. Whatever next?Yes, well, it might not have happened several years back, but it's a joyous moment to bring out the axe every now and again.
You once used seashells as part of the instrumentation . .. They sounded good at a gig. On the first couple of records, also, there were a lot of ambient, natural sounds.
Self-consciously quirky?No, it felt very natural to me. I love those sounds. When you fuse them together it almost sounds like electronic music. But we've adapted and enhanced, too. We have a drummer now, which we never used to have, so it's all fitting in. It isn't just being a bass-guitar-drums band – that isn't very interesting all the time. It's just about wanting to give the music a different flavour, as well as wanting to make it interesting for the listener.
You started off your music career composing music for softcore porn movies. Please explain.Best job in the world, mate. Look, music is so difficult to make a living from that you have to take the work wherever you can get it. I'd do all sorts of things to earn a crust. It was more music for movie idents, to be truthful – it was quite exciting, actually, making thrash metal music with eurohouse beats. You don't get to do that very often.
Do you regard it as part of your learning curve?It wasn't so bad. You're making music every day for different projects here and there. And you have to pay the rent, and you definitely learn things by being told to make music you ordinarily wouldn't have anything to do with. These days I'm asked more to produce music that is more in the vein of what Tunng do. No more eurohouse tunes for a while, then.
The band recently toured with the African desert blues group, Tinariwen. What was that like?It was an eye-opener, and fantastic for us. It was more a collaboration than a headline/support show. We had four days to rehearse, and then we took it on the road for 10 days. They were great people and players, and from our side it was interesting to incorporate quite a different culture into our music. When it worked, it worked very well. And when it didn't we just had to get used to the idea that at the very least it was a worthwhile experiment. On the whole it was a great series of shows. It was a great 10 days, mixing banjos and desert guitar.
Any language difficulties?Yes, there were a lot of smiles and high fives. We figured a lot out through music. It's a universal language, you know.
What's your least favourite music?I guess it would be lounge jazz. I'm pretty open-minded, though. I don't even mind a ridiculous pop tune by Sonia, for example.
Sonia and Tunng? Never reckoned they’d be mentioned in the same sentence . . .
Well, I was joking, really.
- Tunng play Body & Soul Summer Solstice (bodyandsoul.ie) at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath, on Sunday, €99 (weekend camping)/€55 (Sunday only). Other acts include Four Tet, Broken Records, !!!, Voice of the Seven Thunders and R.S.A.G.
