Hi:Fi interview: The Bees

United Kingdom | by Ross Purdie | 16 May 2006

The Bees have been far from buzzing in recent times. Apart from the occasional DJing appearance the last time we heard anything from them was over a year ago on a mini-tour promoting the excellent 'Chicken Payback' single from their second album 'Free The Bees'. The band have since been locked away recording songs for the follow up, which has already been titled 'Octopus'. Still getting used to the idea of daylight, VF caught up with bassist Aaron Fletcher to find out about the art of being timeless...

Virtual Festivals: How you feeling about playing Hi:Fi South?
Aaron Fletcher: Yeah we can’t wait. It’s a wicked site out there. I was at college in Winchester and we used to go up there to have a look at what was going on when Homelands was on. We never actually went though, because we were always too skint and just flyered all the punters trying to get them to come to our DJ nights in town. It’s called Cheesefoot Head that place. Everyone knows it as the Matterly Bowl but it’s actually in Cheesefoot Head.

VF: What're your thoughts on the marriage of dance music and indie/rock, which Hi:Fi is trying to achieve?
AF: I didn’t know that, but it should be good and open it up a bit. All I know is that Ian Brown is playing. It’s brilliant that we’ve been asked to play there.

VF: Do you think it’ll work?
AF: Yeah, it should do if it’s all good music. The punters will love it won’t they, being able to see loads of different kinds of music. I reckon some of the bands and DJs will be really into it too because it’s rare you get to check out music you wouldn’t usually go and see.

VF: You've got a bit of a dance element to you, haven't you?
AF: Yeah, our new record is like a big groovy thing compared to what we’ve been doing in the past. I’m not talking the whole four-four house thing but we’ve always been heavily influenced by dance music. We’ve been listening to a lot of African and Caribbean music recently. We all love Femi Kuti and loads of African stuff. There’s a big bass and drums sound going on with the new album, a real one groove sort of vibe. We love our groove.

VF: Do you venture to those parts of the world for inspiration?
AF: No, our drummer just loves reggae and he’s got loads of world knowledge. We discovered Femi Kuti about five years ago and we’ve got as many records of his as we can track down. We’re also bang into James Brown.

VF: Did you catch him when he was over here recently?
AF: We saw him at Glastonbury in 2004 which was amazing.

VF: You've been pretty quiet since 2004. What you been doing?
AF: We've just been in our new studio in our basement. It took us a while to build the studio and we’ve been recording for about a year, we’re right at the end of it now. Learning how to use the studio took most of that! We like recording together as a full band so we’ve had to adapt the studio to allow for that. The drums are in a separate booth because we always try and record the drums and something else live together and then maybe layer it up with other instruments. We’re slowly mastering it but I think we need an engineer because there are a lot of jobs need doing. Even little things like pressing fast forward and stop! But we love it, we’re living the dream.

VF: How's the album coming along?
AF: We’ve been writing it since being on the road with Free The Bees. We’ve finally got an album together but it’s taken a while because we’re a bit picky and want to be as good as we can be. We want to be timeless, which is really important. But that then means that we spend so much time listening back to tracks because we’re doing it all ourselves. We’re happy and there are lots of songs coming about. We wanted to make a ten track album but I think we’ll end up with 12 or 13 in the end. We had about 17 or 18 but have had to put a few on the backburner. They’ll see the light of day at some point though.

VF: Does your quest for 'timelessness' mean you're in less of a hurry to finish the thing? 
AF: Oh I don’t know, because the equation on that one’s a mystery, isn’t it. The music we want to listen to is stuff that is classic, that we love. If it’s really old and it still sounds good today then it’s timeless. But saying that, there’s stuff The Chemical Brothers have put out which is only a year old or so but you already know its classic. Some tracks that have only taken half a day to record are timeless. It’s a weird one.