Borealis 2010

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The Chap

The Chap are
 
Keith Duncan - bottles, drums, vocals
Panos Ghikas - bass, computer, drums, guitar, iPhone, violin, vocals
Claire Hope - keyboards, vocals
Berit Immig - keyboards, vocals
Johannes von Weizsäcker - baking tray, bass, cello, computer, guitar, vocals

The Chap, a pan-European modern pop group based in London and Berlin, began life at the beginning of the last decade. In their quest to create music which “sounds wrong”, they pre-empted the current flavour for lo-fi prog-pop music by several years and released two seminal bedroom-produced classics, “The Horse” and “Ham”, the latter in particular gathering considerable acclaim. The band decided to release a third masterpiece, “Mega Breakfast” which focussed on corporate motivational – style anthems about “proper music” and wanting to clone oneself. Weirdly, commercial success and world domination continued to evade them, so The Chap finally decided to “sell out” by recording this, “Well Done Europe”, their fourth album. Needless to say, it’s a masterpiece. It contains hit after hit, quite a few of which mention love and death and stuff like that.  It sounds like the coolest new wave pop album ever recorded by a group of teachers (almost nobody in The Chap is a teacher).
 
LIVE REVIEW ROSKILDE FESTIVAL 2009: " (...) too bad they were completely overshadowed by the biggest surprise of the festival in Britain’s The Chap, who put on one of the best sets of the weekend, if not THE BEST. On record, these guys are just bizarre and it doesn’t always work; however, live, with freeze frames, synchronized dancing, lyric placards, a piercing string section breakdown and hilarious banter, these guys are the balls. Merging electro with post-punk and what-the-fuck pop, it’s a melting pop of fun and absurdity self-described as “shit disco” and, elsewhere, as “Justin Timberlake vs The Chap.” It was great. Laneway, bring these guys out! Do it!" (www.thevine.com.au)

Knut Vaage interviews The Chap

Q.  What is the story behind the Chap? When did you start and why? Who’s in the group? 

A.  (Johannes) The Chap started when I asked Panos and Claire to help me perform songs of my solo project live. Having originally met Panos and Claire at the London College of Music, we had been discussing plans to form a band for some time. So the solo project immediately turned into that band, in which we write music together. After a few rather messy London shows, Keith joined as drummer and only person capable of logistic coordination. So, soon we were up and away in an old Royal Mail van, playing lots of dreadful so-called underground venues and learning how to perform like proper rock monsters in the process.  Later, Berit, with whom I used to play in a group called Karamasov,joined, as Claire went into temporary maternity leave. Since then, we have also performed as a five-piece with both ladies. That is my favourite line-up. It’s the one we are hoping to present at the Borealis festival.

You could summarize the Chap’s music’s and raison d’etre as chiefly being defined by our love-hate relationship with pop culture and pop music in particular. Given that pop culture is very much a projection screen and market place for modern western lifestyles, you could surmise that we are expressing our love-hate relationship with modern western lifestyles and the confusion which results from this relationship. So basically, we express the fact that we are confused.  But doesn’t everyone? I guess we just feel that in order to express these sentiments, you don’t need to sound like Radiohead or other groups who despite being very accomplished musicians with a broad palette at their disposal choose to deal in this weird type of hyper-sincere whinge-rock.

I actually think everything I have said about what The Chap is about, has only become fully apparent to us in retrospect. Initially, our goal was simply to create a type of pop music which sounded WRONG and slightly frightening and sometimes made us laugh. So we tried, and to this day keep trying to explore many different approaches to making WRONG music and performing it IN A WRONG WAY. At first, this was facilitated by the fact that we had the worst studio set-up ever (a couple of computer speakers and a £19 Woolworth microphone), combined with a rather ill-matched musical ambition. Later on, our technological set-up improved marginally and we started more recognizably juxtaposing different pop styles and messages as well as increasing the lyrical content. For lyrics, we have turned to many different sources of inspiration, including asthma inhalers and computer music magazines, but we seem to keep drifting back to the worlds of media marketing and corporate identity. Punchy slogans of motivation and pure positivity. Use that with some Chap-style pop and the result is likely to sound quite wrong.

Q.  What can you say about the fact that you are mixing different styles of music?  Is it all about creating an up-to-date and modern sound-landscape, or is it first and foremost about connecting a radical mixture of different traditions? 

A.  (Panos) We find almost every style of music fascinating, mainly because every genre's aesthetic character is usually defined by factors which have nothing to do with music. So, in an anthropological kind of way, it's fun to observe how one man's bad taste is another man's high art. The field of popular music is quite good for this kind of observation because the artists are the least self-conscious, compared to other genres. As a band though, we have a much more exclusive approach towards styles.  We have found that bad taste can be used in its most extreme forms as a way of offsetting the "trusted" forms of the pop canon.

Q.  In this mixed style of yours, what is the relationship between contrasting elements,  for e.g. non-narrative as against narrative? 

A.  (Panos) On the level of structure we tend to first follow the generic pop song template and then try and rearrange it on order to get the right balance between "fun" and "interesting". Recently we have become more open to the possibility of writing proper memorable melodies, although what we define as "proper" is probably not what most people do, especially the music industry. In terms of lyrics we either follow the non-sensical cut-up approach (as long as it sounds good) or we have a basic narrative concept.  An example of the latter can be found in our latest single release "Well Done You": A person is congratulated for having successfully completed a difficult and  demanding assignment, and then is welcomed to join a workforce on a permanent basis.

Q. How does your work as a composer affect your work in The Chap? How does it differ in terms of organizing structure, time and pitch (and other elements)? 

A.  (Panos) My work as a composer doesn't directly affect the Chap's creative process, which is shared mainly between Johannes and me. Our focus is on songwriting and making pop albums which we can tour as a band. We have found that making music which infuses musical elements derived from both über and sub culture can, more often then not, produce compromised results if viewed from either genre's perspectives. On the other hand we do share a few planning strategies with modern composition: We usually devise sets of limitations on the level of harmony, melody and production and we make aesthetic choices primarily by painstakingly excluding an infinity of possible outcomes. Come to think of it, we spend more time excluding than actually writing.

Q. What are your plans for the future? What can we expect from the Chap at Borealis?

A.  (Johannes) As we are answering these questions, we are traveling across Europe touring and simultaneously trying to finish our new album. So in spring, there will be the fourth Chap album! Plus more touring, festivals, world domination, subsequent moral bankruptcy, total alienation, suicide attempts, group therapy and a painstaking process of reconnecting with our musical roots. Ok, just some touring.  I often call the new album the mature fourth album. One of its chief influences seems to be Fleetwood Mac. It also has a Chap theme tune–style disco number on it which contains some rather inauthentic tribal percussion and this football choir singing things like “fiesta!”. Not sure how this will go down with the kids (or the Borealis audience, for that matter) but I’m rather excited about it. At Borealis, we will hopefully play as much material from the new record as possible. We are, first and foremost, a pop group, so I like the fact that we are performing at a festival which seems to be mainly dedicated to improv, noise and modern composition. Looking forward to it!