London multi-purpose/multi-genre dance punk band Fat Dog released one of the best albums of last year, titled WOOF. We talked to the band’s Chris Hughes ahead of their European tour as well as their Istanbul concert at Blind, March 15.
I want to start off this interview by quoting David Lynch. During a TV interview in the 1990s, he said, “The people who watch Twin Peaks are party people.” Would you say that people who listen to Fat Dog are party people?
Chris Hughes: I’d have to agree. I also agree with David Lynch on the first account. I was actually watching the first episode last night by coincidence. I’ve seen it before, but this time with my girlfriend. Yeah, Fat Dog fans are definitely party people. And also in the same way people who watch Twin Peaks are strange, they’re all strange. It’s a good observation.
Maybe we can say they are niché party people.
Yeah, very niché party people.
Do you have an active dream life, and do your dreams voluntarily or involuntarily influence your music?
I have an active dream life for sure. I have some very, very bizarre and very vivid dreams, but some of them are just too strange for them to influence any sort of music that I do. (laughs) One of the last really memorable dreams I had was… I don’t know if you know the band Fat White Family.
I do.
I was walking through the woods in a forest with Lias (Saoudi). He said, “This is a game my family used to play,” and then he started throwing rocks at me. And then when I was trying to run from the rocks, he was like, “Don’t run, you coward! Start throwing rocks at me.” I asked him about it because I thought maybe he’d understand. He just said, “I get it, but you need to figure this one out on your own.”
Sounds very Lynchian.
Exactly!
WOOF was one of my favorite albums last year. Can you tell me three very random memories associated with making of the album?
The first one was that we tried to make our own choir. We tried to layer our voices over the course of 3 hours to try and make a really thick choir. At the end of that three hours, it just sounded really awful. That was earlier on in the recording process and it was a very disappointing moment when we realized that the digital patches that you can use on a MIDI keyboard are way better than anything that we can do with our own voices. Yeah, that was disappointing.
Slowly watching Joe become less of a human and more of an animal as time went as deadlines got nearer and nearer was another thing. He kind of receded from society and became less man and more of an actual dog living in the studio basically. It was funny. Sometimes it was also quite stressful. I felt bad to see my friend like that.
The third memory… I don’t know, I think the day the album came out was very surreal. Having the physical copy was just great. That’s not really about the making of it. The making of it was fairly smooth. Having fiddle and string players in the studio was also really cool, though.
If you were to pick two songs from the album, one easiest and one hardest to create, which two would you pick? Was there a song difficult to create?
Most of them were alright to do. “Vigilante” was pretty easy. It’s always been our opening song of sets. We just had to get that one done. The hardest one was probably “Closer to God”. I’m not even quite sure why. It’s not even because it’s in an odd time signature (7/4). Getting it to sound good in the studio was difficult. That’s a song where, for the longest time, we didn’t have any sort of real electronic parts on it. It was mainly just a band. So trying to transfer that into a much bigger piece in a studio was a tough time.
You play the synths for the band. Synthesizers have their entire big universe. Do you have a favorite synth in your collection?
To be honest, I’ve gotten sick of the synth that I’m using most of the time because it’s just been through so much. It’s got so many broken pieces on it now. It’s a Minilogue. We also use SH-1O1 sometimes, which is really good. And in the studio we’ve got a DX7. I’m a massive fan of that. I’m personally a really big fan of some of the older stuff. A lot of people really don’t like it, but I’ve got this synth at home, which is a microKorg XL from the 80s or the 90s. I can’t quite remember when it was made, but it’s really awesome. It has a vocoder attachment to it and you can really have fun messing around on it.
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of synths. I’m trying to learn about them a bit more, because I always approach a bit more from a childish perspective. I’ll just twist it until it sounds how I want it to sound. I could get more in depth into understanding why things sound the way they sound.
There are practically a million different synths right now and so many features that you just can’t explore enough.
And sometimes they’ve got a really intuitive user interface. I have a friend in a band who uses this one called UDO, and it’s insane. It’s this blue synth and the sounds that he comes up with that are some of the best ones. It’s so powerful. But to be honest, we can’t afford one right now. (laughs)
Yeah, that’s an issue. They’re often expensive.
Yeah.
I will make reference to another interview that you did with a friend of mine. You mention there that you actually grew tired and even uncomfortable of people loving you as “a band with a dog mask”, and that you don’t want people to watch you, but listen to you. The image of a band is an issue that can get tricky. If you get stuck with an image that you don’t feel represents you in the best way, it can be a burden. I guess you don’t want to stick to that sort of thing because of that, right?
I think you’ve pretty much nailed it. It would be horrible for any band, I think, to not be able to shed their skin occasionally to reincarnate themselves. The way that we thought about things four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, it’s not the same as the way that we’re approaching things now. Obviously, we still have many of the same songs, but to constantly be the band that has the drummer with the dog mask would mean we are stuck in the past. There has to be a common point as our bodies age, as our lives recede. We are still the goofy kids, but I think being too attached to an image will eventually take away from the capacity of the music itself.
It’s definitely good to be goofy, but you can also get goofy in new ways, right? You can always reinvent yourself in your goofiness.
Yeah, well, that’s what I think the plan is. (laughs) You have to constantly look towards the future.
I was wondering if there is a big name that you like to open for the most. Because obviously you want to go bigger.
We were talking about this the other day. I think it would be really cool if we could open up for Nine Inch Nails. But also I remember thinking a while ago that it would be good to open up The Garden.
They’re great.
Yeah. We were kind of hoping that maybe if they come to the UK, we could do a support tour with them. That would be a lot of fun.
They’re also very goofy, by the way. But I don’t think you contact them too easily. I also tried contacting them for interview purposes, but maybe it could be easier in a supporting act sort of way.
Yeah, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know the channels to go through for them. But I suppose because we have a label acting as a secret police force. I don’t know how they do it, but they have a finger. Maybe someone, somewhere can do them a favor and we could get something like that going.
Fingers crossed. How do you feel about the upcoming tour days, as well as the Istanbul show that’s coming up?
Well, we’re super excited obviously, to get back on the road. It’s always quite a fun thing to do. And also last year we did so many gigs that we basically became institutionalized being on the road. So we get a bit sad if we spend too much time off of it. The Istanbul concert we were talking about yesterday, actually. We’re super excited for that. A few of us are especially excited because I’ve never been to Istanbul, or Turkey. Part of me is just really excited to see how it will go down with a Turkish audience. What do you think the Turkish audience is going to be like for Fat Dog? Just curious.
Turkish audiences who follow new, exciting bands are usually very passionate about seeing them live, because again, you have a niché audience and we don’t have an enormous amount of niché concerts. It is a precious occasion for you to come. I think it will be great.
That’s awesome. I’m super excited.
I have lived in Berlin for a few months now, but I’ll be visiting Istanbul during March and I’ll be there. I can’t wait.
Nice one. How do you find Berlin?
It’s good. I think it’s a city that really suits me well. Obviously there is this whole adaptation-to-a-brand-new-life process going on, but I’m feeling good to be here.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Berlin myself.
I couldn’t catch you here in the last Berlin show. Maybe I will be there in the next one.
You’ll be welcome.
Do you have a concert memory that you can’t stop thinking about?
A few, to be honest. One was just simply the fact that we played a gig last year in the Arctic Circle. We played on this tiny island off the coast of Norway. It was just a surreal experience playing this gig in such a remote place and being on this absolutely beautiful island that was basically without humans and the fact that our music was projecting out across the ocean. (laughs)
That’s pretty rad.
Yeah, that was one of those moments when we were like, “This is unreal, this is just crazy.” I also have so many images burnt into my head where I tried to jump into the crowd and fell over. I like that whatever happens, we all find that really funny (laughs). Also when we first played a properly big show in our hometown was the first time as a band where we all looked at each other like, “Damn, this is serious. This is crazy, you know?”
When you check your streaming platform’s search history, what are the last three things you see?
Oh my. (laughs hysterically)
Go on. Tell me.
One of them is “Hot Dog” by Limp Bizkit.
Great.
The other song is by a band called Spirit. Finally, there is Nick Nicely’s “Hilly Fields”.
By the way, you could also rock as a Limp Bizkit opening act.
Oh yeah, you know what? Now that you say it, you’re damn right. I think that would be awesome (laughs). They’ve got some certified bangers.
Yeah, they do. They also feel goofy, but they’re also very legit with some quality tracks.
Yeah. I think “My Way” is such a good song.
Hope that will happen someday.
Yeah, I’m gonna get in touch with Fred Durst.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of your lyrics would you like to see written on Fat Dog’s stone?
Ooh. It could be “We are all just dogs gnashing our teeth at the moon.” That’s a pretty good, dark memorial. Maybe the whole opening monologue from “Vigilante”. I wrote that specifically to be the kind of thing that you would describe on a memorial or something. But I also kind of like the notion of just having something like “You’re all the same!” (laughs).
You can check out Fat Dog’s Bandcamp profile here.
