On Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show, Nick Valensi of The Strokes joined Zane to talk about the new album, on Kings of Leon, on being in a ‘weird’ band and much much more!
On the album:
I worked on it for a while, that was the most important thing to me is that it would feel like me and I would have fun with it.
How do you keep this project direct and simple as possible?
thats what it was for me I know I wanted to get on tour be in front of audiences and I just wanted to do it in a really simple way so I forced myself to sing which is a first for me.
On using his voice for the first time:
For me it was just wanting to get on tour not touring that much with The Strokes and it kinda was just means to an end I don’t wanna say I was forced into the front man thing I kinda forced myself to getting out of your comport zone and it was not something I had the drive to do. I love to sing in shower, car I love music I could always sing hit the right notes but fronting a band was not something I ever. I’m not even trying to compete with the likes of Casablanca or Gallegar.
On Kings of Leon Singer Caleb Followill:
I think one of the best singers is Followill. He’s got a very pure voice and there’s so much emotion that comes through.
You must have lost your shit when you guys came out and they were just coming out—you helped those guys early on.
My initial thought was we gotta take these guys on the road and they were int the process of getting signed to the same record label we were and with the same A&R guys and I think we took them on tour for 3-4 months and I think at the time the bass player was like 15. It was a cool tour we had Regina Specktor, First of three, Kings of Leon, second and The Strokes headlining. I have a lot of cool memories.
This project started with me doing shit on my laptop experimenting seeing if i even had it in me to put an album together and I did that pretty much by myself for a year
How many songs were in the pool to choose from?
I had about eight or nine demos which were completed demos and it took me about a year to get there and I knew I liked them but I had kind of hit a wall and started second guessing myself a lot. I’m used to being in a band and having people around me, different opinions to bounce off of. Its hard, it gets really lonely and you start to go crazy a little bit.
He invested into it,
I could see as we were listening to the songs that his brain started to go and he gets this thing where he paces the room and goes intense and started telling me what was great about the demos and the vocals. He was really surprised at how strong the vocals were, the guitar playing and blah blah blah. Then he went to the drumming and he said the drumming was God awful.
You hear the riff and you're like you love it straight away and then you hear those drums and your like—Josh
The feel of the drums and the way I had done my demos the drums were a little drum machiney. It was like real drum sounds that were chopped in Pro Tools that were made to sound perfect and he hated it. The perfection of the drums For him its all about feel and I mean he's totally right and (I said) ‘since were talking about this and you have so many good ideas do you think you'd produce it?’ And he was like ‘f* yeah’ and then we just moved forward.
On how this experience makes him feel:
This experience makes me feel like a kid again. I was doing grown up things at a young age but this is the first time since the Strokes I’ve had the experience of launching a new thing and being at the helm of a new project and introducing it to the world now its exciting and I didn't expect that feeling but now doing this with CRX, this is what it was like when I was 19 doing this s* with the Strokes
On the name:
Well the name comes from a car but it also comes from this drum machine CR78 from the 70s. It was actually Josh when we were using this drum machine he started referring to the drum machine as a CRX and then when we were working on a song he’d get this visuals when we worked on songs like a music video director and we were doing this song called “Walls” using this drum machine, he said, ‘All i can picture is this Japanese punk rocker and he’s got a really tall mohawk shredding thru deserted streets of Tokyo in a CRX, you’d call him a Japanese future punk’. When we were finishing “Ways to Fake it” said he couldn’t stop picture me hovering down a hallway with my hair blowing behind me. That should have been the video to ways to fake it.
How do you do that? You guys are a weird band,
We are weird. I love being in this band (The Strokes) I love the weirdness.
Is anyone producing?
Donald Trump is producing
Zane mimics Donald Trump, “Its going to be the best album believe me”
Its the five of us and all our issues. Its going to be awesome music. Julian is psyched about it. He's very moody so if you have him psyched about music it means were on the right track.
How he felt after The Strokes LA charity show:
It’s like family you come together at xmas or gathering all together so much love and familiarity
and maybe you haven't seen each other in 6 months or 6 years or whatever but you've never skipped a beat, its like the love never goes away.
The last EP was fantastic,
We started to make a record and then thought well these songs are good so lets just put these three out. Maybe we’ll do it again.
