Chew Lips

Chew Lips, the electronic duo of James Watkins and Tigs, are a london-based group who have been steadily on the rise since 2008, including soundtrack duties for US show Vampire Diaries and UK’s Skins and a long list of international and UK appearances. Having committed the summer to touring and promoting forthcoming single Hurricane EP and an album due 2013, Music-News caught up with them at Nokia-sponsored Tramlines Festival 2012, Sheffield, for an interview:

> How’s the summer of touring been?

Tigs: "Good. Done a lot of live events this year mixture of mainland Europe and UK. UK wise we’ve recently done Leopallooza, Magic Loungeabout, Lovebox and lots of stuff in the rain really."

> Do you find that your sound gets a different reception in different places?

Tigs: "It's really mixed - especially when you go to a country for the first time. Like Poland! We went to Poland for the first time a couple of years ago now and we hadn’t really promoted ourselves there. We got picked up from the airport and the guy gave us the day’s copy of the newspaper for that city and the centre page spread was all one feature on us. It was weird! Management had said it was listed as an outdoor event so we thought it was a festival but it was actually our own show. 1500 people turned up and at least half of them knew all the words to our album. It was totally surreal. "

James: "Then they held this massive private party afterwards in our honour. Crazy"


> You had your first album, Unicorn, come out in 2010, and you’ve supported names a wide as the Delphic, The Killers, We Are Scientists. You’re in that quite wide Electro-pop-rock, Electronica space...

James: “It’s definitely not electro.”

Tigs: “Well...It might have been more so once”

James. “But it does sit in the Electronica space. That’s the basis of it, but it’s not like clubby-electro, it’s not like-”

Tigs: “-It’s not dancey is it”

James: - “It’s dancey - but it’s, well its songs. its more songy than sort of club-DJ-esque. Because we use drum machines and because we’ve been viewed like that we’ve done a lot of gigs that possibly haven’t been right for us because, you go to a club and people just want to hear pounding 909 kick drums and have their hands in the air whereas we’re not really that. I mean, in our first album-”

Tigs: “- Right- we’ve defined what we’re not. What are we then?”

> I sort of feel bad for bringing up the question -


James: (laughs) “We always try and write actual songs that’s the main thing. We’re trying to do a few stripped down things now. We’re really into analogue synths, really into messing around with old Moogs and stuff like that so it’s kind of like, I like to think of it as classy, intelligent pop music.”

> You’re based in London. Is there a london sound?

Tigs: “No. Well, I think, there are certain bands that are based in London that, if they werent in london they’d get laughed out of down. Like there are bands you see in Dalston and you just think “only in London” and that might be what they mean. If you rock on stage with some ridiculous hipster thing in Stoke, or some small town, people are just going to laugh at you.”

James: You can be more extreme in London because in London you won't get beaten up if you walk around in silly clothes whereas if you do that in Stoke for example.”

Tigs: “We don't actually have a problem with Stoke-”

James: “Well -”

Tigs: “- Really it’s any small town, or at lot of places outside of London, even places that do have a massive university presence, London is the only place where anything goes. I guess -”

Tour Manager: “- I’m not in the band - so you can quote me on this. Stoke is absolutely the worst place in the UK -”

James: “I went to the Wetherspoons in Stoke once, and I was asked to leave before I got food because, it was kind of all kicking off. “

Tigs: “Which was the Wetherspoons we went to when it was someone’s birthday, and we had to get food before the show?”

James: “Doesn’t sound like our band Tigs. Thanks for bringing that up.”

Tigs: “We could do a Wetherspoons tour, that could be really interesting”


> So... going back to music. You are in that really wide space, the whole electronic-

Tigs: “I think a lot of bands get more defined when their second album comes out. It sort of takes time I think our first album had a sound that put us in some kind of pigeon hole, but there was a lot of stuff that came out at the same time as that that you get sort of plugged in with, and hopefully our next record will sort of broaden things out. It takes a while to get to know a person and similarly it takes a while to get to know a band.”

James: “Around the time the first album came out there was all those sort of like electronic girls about and -”

Tigs: “- Look at me! Look at my clothes! How I sparkle!”

James: “-Yeah, and then I think if you listen to our first album that we made its not really that, its a lot more delicate and a lot more, high end”

> So you’ve had some airplay of forthcoming EP Hurricane and you have an album due, what can we expect from that?

James: “It’s just a step up really. We’ve worked harder on this album, i mean the first album sounded a bit unfinished”

Tigs - “I don't think its fair to say we worked harder -”

James: “I worked harder.” (pops a beer can). “You didnt.”

Tigs: “No, I think we worked equally hard on the first album”

James: “I don’t think so- “

Tigs: “Ok I just think we looked in more detail. “

James: “We did have a bit more time.”

Tigs: “It’s just like anything - when you make your first album, your learning how to make that album, but in your second album, you know that much more, and you can go into more detail. You’re not learning so much about the process of it, you can put new work in context, and you can-”

James: - “This time we just drank a lot more”

Tigs: “We did drink quite a bit. But there was a lot of drinking on the first album too”

James: “There wasn’t that much drink-”

> So! You guys have done a lot of remix work as well.

Tigs: “Yeah It’s kind of part and parcel of how it works nowadays. I dont do it, James does that stuff. “

> Does that affect your own production and writing?

James: “It’s more the other way around”

Tigs: “Yeah we just sort of try and make everything sound like Chew Lips when we remix it”

James: “It depends if I’m remixing something that I think is good or bad. I’m doing a remix for Passion Pit at the moment which I think is awesome, and I did a remix for Hot Chip and there was some production going for a Converse ad and I did a remix for that. That was all easy because I was working with really good stuff, really good sounds. It’s just difficult when you’re working on something a bit rubbish. “

Tigs: “Which happens often, so we just take the vocal off and stick it onto a Chew Lips track basically”

> So how does it work with you two as a duo then?

James: “She writes the topline stuff.”

Tigs: (Putting on an accent and looking into the distance) “I write the Melody, and the words, what comes from in here” (points to heart)”.... and James is like the multi instrumentalist, and it works really well. It works a few different ways. I spent a year in Paris and I was doing a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and so we were doing stuff over email and it’s possible to do that with this arrangement. Though obviously it works better if we’re in the same room-”

James: “- I disagree”

Tigs: “Nice.“

James: “We either sit down together and I’ll write some kind of beat and-”

Tigs: “And I’ll start humming over it and it’ll be like “‘Oh, oh that’s good!-’”

James: “‘Hey Guys!-’”

Tigs: “‘We’re Jamming!’”

James: “Sometimes I’ll write stuff and send to her and she’ll write vocals over it. In fact. That’s all the time.”

Tigs: “So it’s got a number of different ways it can work. And, we write a lot of songs. The first album we wrote 65 songs for and this album we wrote, around 90.”

James: “Yeah. We write a lot of bad songs.”

Tigs: “It is loads. It’s a year and a half of work really. But loads of bands these days just write 10 or 12 songs and put them straight on an album - how can you have any quality control?”

James: “Yeah we’re lucky we’ve got a choice for our albums”

Tigs: “You just gotta write shit loads and make sure you’ve got the ten best when your deadlines due. We actually wish we’d written a bit less for this album though to be fair. We sort of burned ourselves out. “

> What’s been the highlight for you so far?

Tigs: “SXSW was amazing. To be that far away from home. We went at the right time - we were band of the day on Pitchfork and we had all this hype and it was mental, and again, unexpected. There’s been loads of good things and really rubbish things. Last two weekends we’ve done Shanghai and we did Slovakia too so that was cool. “

> How’d did they go?

Tigs. “Well, Shanghai was one of those corporate gigs where you sort of just go because it pays your wages for the rest of the summer. They’re not fun. It’s just 1000 people who’re not that bothered, drinking champagne. But you get to go to Shanghai and they put you up in the Ritz Carlton”

James: “Which beats Travelodge”

Tigs. “Then we went straight to Slovakia - to a proper festival and it was amazing. Beautiful weather”

James: “Beautiful people”

Tigs: “Yeah, everyone all brown, running around in Bikinis”

James: “Beautiful girls”

Tigs: “Yeah you find Eastern Europe it tough don’t you? You walk around in a daze the whole time”

> Going forward what can we expect from Chew Lips?

Tigs: “Well we finished our album but it’s not out until January. That’s what happens when you sign to a major label like we did, with Sony. “

James: “Just touring, bus touring, building up hype for the album, releasing a few singles”

Tigs: “We wanna do some charity gigs too.”

> Any advice you’d give to aspiring artists?

Tigs: “Don’t bother. Its the hardest thing to do. But if you really gotta do it then you will anyway.”

James: “Just take your time with it. “

Tigs: “The number one thing - “

James: “- Is buy a guitar tuner”

Tigs: “-No - the number one thing, looking at the some of the bands we know that will never make it - is choose the people around you, by which I mean management, super carefully. It’s the longest relationship you have. They should be able to guide you through some decent decisions. It’s super hard, to establish that push and pull. I know bands that have always just had their mates as their managers and they’ve just made bad decision after bad decision and they get a bit of momentum and a bit of hype then it falls away because they can’t capitalize on it, and it sucks. “

James: “Yeah, just plan it out. “

Tigs: “In the UK, there’s more interest in what’s brand new than what’s good. So a band that’s never released a single, that’s never done a gig, just by virtue of a bit of hype ‘Oh my god these girls are so cool and they don’t even have a name yet” suddenly are on the cover of NME and of course they’re in a massive rush to make their album so they make a really average job if it and then you never hear from them again. In America you have to tour for three years before you’re even allowed to make an album, so they know how to play their instruments.”

James: “Just spend a lot of time doing gigs so that when you do get the big flood lights on you, you know what you’re doing.”

Tigs: “We went off and took our time to get an album and it worked out alright thank goodness for that but when we got our management and loads of hype we were 5 shows in, and we were sh*t for ages! “

James: “We were so sh*t. We’ve only just started not being sh*t.”

Tigs: “Well yeah, live, we just begun kind of nailing it. And if you can rehearse for a few months without anyone seeing it then yeah - that’s what I’d recommend.”

Chew Lips EP Hurricane is due for release shortly. Their new album is due for release in January 2013.