Fujiya & Miyagi decided to exit the Autobahn and broaden their sound for new album Ventriloquizzing. Frontman David Best tells JIM CARROLLabout the Brighton band's Californian recording jaunt and how beer and car ads pay for their musical meanderings
A CHANGE IS as good as a rest. When the time came to record their fourth album, Fujiya & Miyagi decided it was time to flex some different creative muscles and see what would happen.
Over the past decade, the Brighton band with the Japanese name have become an act noted for intuitive, quirky electronic grooves, all spun out while tipping the hat to various Krautrock types. If you needed a set of tunes that could turn your spin on the motorway in to an adventure on the Autobahn, they were the ones for you.
For new album Ventriloquizzing, though, David Best and friends took a big leap forward. They knew it was time to move on and embrace the new.
“There was a definite feeling that we must do something else if for nothing more than exciting us as a band, to use that old cliche,” says Best. “The last two albums were quite similar in many respects, and this new one was a conscious decision to be different by having more sounds and different layers and to just progress. It’s less minimal, has more depth and more sounds going on and, I think, better songs.
“When we began, we brought in some rules. Guitar solos weren’t allowed, for example, and we tried to keep the songs as simple as possible. It’s quite good to ignore stuff like that now, as what was useful in the beginning can keep you in the same place and stop you from changing. Because of that, this is a big leap musically.”
In hindsight, Best accepts there was a lot wrong with their last album, the rather lacklustre Lightbulbs. Much of this was down to the band not taking their time with it, he says. After their 2006 album Transparent Thingsbrought them to the attention of a much bigger audience, the band decided to strike while the going was good, a decision Best now feels wasn't the wisest.
"We recorded Lightbulbsfar too quickly," he says. "It was such a hectic time, because we were touring so much that we didn't really have time to think. When you write songs and make records you always try to do the best you can, so it's only in retrospect that you realise that it didn't turn out quite how you wanted it. We took our time with this one and made sure it sounded how we wanted it to sound. And that we were happy with it."
The decision to rush the release of Lightbulbscame from the band, says Best. "All pressure is self-imposed. With Transparent Thingswe'd been playing those songs for a long, long time before we recorded them. The reason I want to be in a band is to make records, so there's self- imposed pressure to do that.
"In retrospect, we could have stood back a little bit from Lightbulbsbefore jumping in, but that's how you learn and get better. It's easy to just keep making music and never release it. I know a few people who have bought a lot of equipment and who have written loads of songs, but who have never put it out because it's never perfect. Sometimes you have to make mistakes and let go."
One of the big changes around Ventriloquizzingwas a geographical switch, as the band swapped Brighton for California in order to work with producer Thom Monahan.
“Thom lives in Los Angeles and works in a studio in Sacramento, so we went over there to do the recording. We’d demoed all the songs before we got there, so it doesn’t sound like a cliched Californian record by any means.
“It’s definitely still a pretty miserable European record. I was worried that I would end up wearing flip-flops and shorts and grow a ponytail, but that didn’t happen.
“He produced Au Revoir Simone and we’d toured with them, and we felt he would be good to capture how we’d moved from being a mainly electronic act to adding live drums and other live instruments, and we wanted someone to help us capture that. He has a real interest in electronic music, and was referencing all the groups we were in to, so we felt it would work out fine.”
Another change came in the lyrics. Out went the songs about household appliances and body parts in favour of more aggressive lyrical ideas.
“Yes, there was a conscious decision not to do more songs about body parts. I think that well has run dry for me.
“The title track was the first song to be written and the extra Z is there just to make it sound snappier. The idea of ventriloquism is to do with putting words in other people’s mouths, and that idea leaked into the whole record and informed a lot of the other songs as well.
“Lyrically, I think the words reflect the music in that they’re a bit more aggressive and accusatory. We live in a time when things aren’t perfect, and it feels a bit frivolous to write songs about dishwashers like we used to do.
“I always carry lots of notebooks around with me, and when I hear a nice phrase or a line which strikes me as something I might use, I’ll write it down and come back to it later. Fitting these together is a bit like a puzzle.
“I tried to write a bit differently with those lines and phrases on this record. Before, I’d get a title or an idea for a lyric, then follow that to its conclusion. I felt sometimes that the results were a bit one-dimensional, so on this record I tried to be deliberately vague in places because I always hate it when people make anthemic and chest-beating music. I don’t want to tell people what they should think, so it’s still Fujiya and Miyagi-ish.”
Best’s singing style also helps extend that Fujiya and Miyagi-ish feel. His gentle, deadpan, almost whispered delivery has been a part of their sound since the very first day. That can’t change, he says.
“I’m not sure if it’s a medical condition, but I can’t shout at the same level as most people. When I shout it sounds like how most people speak. When I try to be louder on record I don’t like how it sounds. I’ve settled into my own voice and I can live with that.”
That mixture of soft vocals and inventive electronics has made Fujiya and Miyagi a bit of a magnet for advertising agencies and brands looking for soundtracks to their ads. Income from car and beer ads has enabled the band to be full-time musicians for the past couple of years.
“If you asked me 15 years ago, before I was in a band, if I would want our records to advertise some product, I’d probably have said no. But the industry has changed so much since then, and it’s a reality now.
“I don’t really have any qualms about it, because we have complete control over what our music is used for.
“If you hear one of our songs on an advert, it’s because we’ve run out of money. We’re not like a lot of the acts who get used in ads who already had made their money before downloads came in.
“It would irk me if some act made their record specifically to advertise some product, though.
“Once the songs are finished and are out in the air, I don’t feel that precious about them, and I’m happy for them to be used on an ad. Within reason, of course. Obviously I wouldn’t want our songs on a McDonald’s ad or anything like that, but if people get music for free they are going to have to accept that the people who make it are going to have to make money somehow. All the same, I hope I’d draw the line at anything really cheesy or unethical.”
Ventriloquizzingis released today
