– Inteview with Kai Fish

July 02, 2007

The Mystery Jets were touring like mad last year and this year they’rerecording their next album like mad scientist. They’re a five-piece band from Eel Pie Island, with lead singer Blaine Harrison whose father Henry is the guitarist. They have such a magnanimous sound to them and it shows in their personalities and attitudes. I caught up with bassist/cello player and vocalist Kai Fish for this interview. Well, I caught up with him on the phone. It was a unique experience, because the reception was terrible on the phone. I felt like it was my fault, but he was real cool about the whole thing. I called back on another line and that’s where we started. Kai talks about industrial noise bands, David Bowie, the horrors and joys of touring and what it was like to join a band at the age of 13, with an adult like Henry.

Smashed Chair: So, how goes the current recording process?
Kai Fish: It’s going great. I’m in the studio right now, just finishing off another track for the second album. We’re like two thirds of the way through. It’s going generally well and it’s really exciting

SC: We’re does the title of your album Zootime come from? (Also the name of a track on the album, which features, bells, distortion, shouting and operatic synthesizers.)
KF: It’s one of the first songs we wrote as a band. We had been getting our inspiration from Berlin, Bowie and Einstürzende Neubauten (experimental, industrial, noise band). They’re a great band! They did a gig in London that’s legendary and they took a pneumatic drill and dug a hole in the middle of the venue. They’re a legendary band. And we’re just like, “these guys are incredible!” They’re making sounds with all sorts of scraps and anything they could get their hands on, and they make music interesting.

The title Zootime also comes from the soundtrack that David Bowie did for the film “Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” (“We Children from Bahnhof Zoo”).

SC: How do you guys keep sane while on tour?
KF: This year has been pretty nice and calm. Last year, we were on tour for about 14 months. It’s just crazy. Looking back, it feels like it went by so fast. [When on tour] you kind of get into “tour mode.” There’s no stability while on the road. There’s no routine there: your girlfriend isn’t there and you don’t get to wake up in your bed every night. Instead you’re waking up in Berlin one night and the U.S. the next and Japan the next night. You’re completely disoriented, so you’re just kind of pulled by the tour manager in different directions… you just kind of have to sit back and enjoy it for what it is. You always have to be aware that “this is incredible!” You can’t get too lost in it or say, “I’m too tired” or “I just want to have a break,” sometimes you just have to force yourself. It’s just amazing, because millions of kids dream about this. When we were kids we dreamed about this and now we’re doing it. I know a lot of people that [touring] doesn’t work out for. Andey (Nicholson), the original Arctic Monkeys bassist, was on tour with us for a while and that didn’t work out, but in the end we’re all still good friends. You just have to keep aware of it all and try to keep it in order.

SC: So, try to keep humble?
KF: I think you have to. If you don’t feel like that when you go on stage, then I don’t think you can expect the audience to feel it either. Every time should feel like the first time, even when it feels like it’s the last thing you want to do.

SC: How old were you when you joined the band?
KF: I was like 13. I’d always known Blaine (Harrison) when I was a kid. My parents and his parents lived together in the 70s. He was always doing little recordings with his dad and his friends. They said they needed a bassist and I played the cello, so I thought, “one four string instrument to another can’t be that hard.” I just kind of forced myself to play the bass and it just kind of happened.

SC: That isn’t the normal job to be doing while hitting puberty.
KF: I wouldn’t say that it was a job at the beginning. It was just a joy playing music, not saying that it isn’t a joy now. But back then there wasn’t really anything on the agenda. I mean the idea of playing a gig was exciting enough, you know what I mean? We played our first gig and we toured in a little festival, in a green in London…and it was absolutely terrible, but it was really fun. It was about four years after that, when we started to get really serious and we tried to play as many gigs as we could. We had this amazing drummer who got us motivated. He was like the missing piece; he was so good and at the time for his age. He’s still great. Everyone had to raise their game, which was good, because it was a real kick-start

SC: Maybe practice a bit more?
KF: Yeah. We’ve always been really serious about rehearsing; you know regular rehearsals and not fooling around. I suppose having Henry there was a good influence, because when you’re 14 you don’t really want to be too focused.

SC: Was Henry always looking over you guys?
KF: Yeah, not really. From the beginning he never wanted to feel like anything else other than a member of the band. He didn’t want to be an adult figure. He didn’t want to seem like Blaine’s dad. He just wanted to feel like the guitarist in the band. I think if he didn’t take that approach we wouldn’t have enjoyed that. You know, when you’re hitting puberty the obvious thing is to not be around your parents. If we felt in anyway that he was there like a responsible adult role, you know it wouldn’t have worked out. But he was there as a musician. He could have been 50 or 15.

SC: Do you feel that MySpace is a necessary with keeping in touch with your fans?
KF: Now yes! It’s huge. We’ve been really bad recently with our blog. (The band has a blog at behindthebunhouse.blogspot.com) You saying that, reminds me that we should update our blog. Everyone from the age of 10 and 60 are on the Internet. Finding new music everyday. We’re always finding new tracks, because we DJ in the U.K. You know finding new remixes. It’s just a great tool. In the U.S. you’ve got some amazing blogs. I guess it all started in the U.S. right?

SC: Yeah, I guess it has to do with wanting people to pay attention to you.
KF: And keeping this kind of diary. It’s a great little idea, it’s become really important. I think what we do is try to keep the MySpace really exciting with new photos and changing the music. We’ve been a bit slackened lately.

SC: Nobody can blame you, cause you’ve been working. On to personal questions! What are your reading habits like?
KF: I love reading, but unless I’ve got a book, and I find it difficult to go out and get one. It’s funny that you say that, because about five months ago a friend of mine, she’s a really big reader, and I told her, “Lets start a book club, where we give each other books.” So every couple of weeks, I’ve been getting new books and it’s absolutely great. I’ve been tearing through them.

SC: It’s food for the brain!
KF: It is! We’ll write lyrics and that’s where you get the inspiration. You’ll read an amazing metaphor and interpret it a certain way. And you’re picking up themes in books that you’ve never thought of, so I think it’s really important.

SC: How was the Doctor Filth’s final show?
KF: You know about Doctor Filth! They’re really old school friends of ours. They’re three guys. One of them I’ve done films and plays with him and he’s a really great actor. A couple of years ago, they started a band together. The guitarist is the cousin of a guy named Anno (Birkin) in another band called KJD (Kicks Joy Darkness) and they were killed in a tragic car crash. And this band KJD was really interesting. I don’t know how to describe them. A little post-rocky, a little bit post punk.

I’m getting a bit heavy as well. Well, [Dr. Filth] started their thing by dressing up in lab coats. They did it great. One of the guys was a fantastic performer, you just can’t keep your eyes off of him. They started it off as a joke, but it started to get really interesting. But what they were playing was so different to everything else out there. So they just called it a day. Maybe they’ll have a reunion show.

SC: Getting older and becoming more adult, would you want to become a cowboy, a gypsy or an astronaut?
KF: It would definitely be between the cowboy and the gypsy. I’ve got this really romantic idea from “The Wind and the Willows,” where they get on the barge and get towed away by the horses. I’ve got that idea in my head.

And so Kai Fish soared away on a “Horse–Drawn Cart” letting me know that the band will be stateside at the end of the year. The Mystery Jets are going to headlining some shows in Victoria Park sometime in August, which is a big difference from their first shows in a green somewhere in London.

By Nathan Solis

Listen to the album at Amazon.com