Rock Sound's favourite punk rock meets garage band meets surf and synth combo are releasing a new record. The AKAs are back with a new album 'Everybody Make Some Noise' and to celebrate we caught up with Mike Ski, lead singer and all round good guy...
First off, where have the band been?
''We have been consistently busy,'' admits Ski laughing. ''For a band to stay on tour for over three years on one record is retarded but we managed it despite not having a lot of things that other bands rely on. We do a lot ourselves so everything takes longer than it should if we had a ton of flunkys working for us.''
How was splitting with Fueled By Ramen, it seemed quite a sudden move?
''Outwardly it came off that way, but for us we saw that turn coming in advance. There was a distinctive point where things took off in a certain direction and we never had any illusions that we were part of it. The way they handled it publicly was weird, they brushed stuff under the rug when there was no need and it bummed a lot of people out. It looks weird but for us it was fine as we never had expectations of being on MTV or whatever so we just moved on.''
And made a new record...
''Yeah, we worked with Alex Newport for the new album and going into it we wanted to make a record that sounded closer to us live. For a band like ours it is the selling point, we wanted to ensure that those things were aligned. We also wanted to balance the influences without being a lame nu rave band, we felt Alex could help us avoid that.''
Did you achieve?
''Yeah and i think we will escape a lot of our old comparisons with it. We always got compared to The International Noise Conspiracy but I think the times have changed and the new record has a wider musical vocabulary. It is less obvious to the listener and more complex, I would much rather be a challenge to listen to than just sound like one of a hundred other crappy pop bands.''
Is the new record a comment on that?
''Probably not. When we started this band we were mad about a whole other set of problems, I thought bands like The Strokes were totally lame. I thought that was the extreme of fakery but now I would much rather listen to that than this new wave of little boy bands. With that in mind I personally understand that no matter what timeframe of music you are in there will always be a set of problems, mostly due to a hierarchy of stupidity. Bands are dumb, managers are dumber and record labels are dumbest. Listeners are the last hope.
Our hope is that people get bombarded with so much that they want change. That is one of the reasons we are putting out the record now rather than two years ago. People who have their heads in that Fueled By Ramen pop need a dose of something new.''
To get an ear full of something new hit up www.myspace.com/theakas
Rock Sound
Official Myspace
Official Site
Submit to:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Comments
No comments yet