07/00 -iCrunch

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welcome to the animalhouse

Outside Islington club, The Garage, a tall girl with blue hair whispers excitedly to her friend. They stand in front of a fly postered wall, covered with Animalhouse psychedelic prints.

"Can you believe it? Doesn't it look great? I bet we sell out the gig tonight." She pulls at his khaki shirtsleeve whilst he coolly checks the scene from behind a pair of shades. Sam Williams and Hari Teah have reason to be excited. The Animalhouse have taken up residence in London and the vibe is buzzing.

Backstage the mood is a more chilled out affair. Hari puffs elegantly on a perfectly rolled joint whilst sipping on Evian. Sam relaxes in the corner, occasionally roused by the ring of his mobile. Loz Colbert, Mark Gardener and Jason King are running through the last sound check and the DJ's are spinning a few tunes to the eager beaver early birds.

The Animalhouse are no strangers to this scene. Sam's credits are long and impressive, having played and produced two Supergrass LPs and establishing his band 'The Mystics' on the tail end of the Britpop explosion. Mark Gardener and Loz Colbert were part of shoe gazing supremos, Ride (their old colleague, Andy Bell has now moved on to Oasis) and Jason King came from fronting his own band, Disco 45. Hari knew the crew through the Oxford connection and in the winter of '97 they formed The Animalhouse.

When the band first began playing gigs, the music press were keen to slate their current efforts and concentrate on comparing their sound to that of their previous endeavours. But after one listen to the incredibly infectious debut album 'Ready To Receive' (released July 31st), you have to wonder where the reviews were coming from. This album has to be one of the hidden gems of the millennium.

Sam: "It's frustrating for me but I expect it. In England we have such a cynical music press, who happily criticise and cut people down for success. It doesn't happen so often in other countries like Japan. I personally think it is wrong to compare what you've done in the past to what you are doing now. The Animalhouse is such a massive departure from anything we have ever done before."

Obviously the band's different musical backgrounds have influenced their sound to an extent, but it is pure positivity that they are preaching and the bitching rants of the English music press cannot suppress The Animalhouse's boundless energy.

"We are very keen not to get painted into a corner generically. We wanted to form an open collective crew - like the Beasties or Massive Attack, where people can move around instruments. You don't have to be the drummer, or the singer on one track. I may play drums while Loz is rapping over the top. That's cool and it's incredibly liberating especially when you're coming out of a traditional line-up. The bands that I look at as being positive references from the past would be The Clash and The Beatles. They were real bands that would share ideas. I think that has been lost and the nature of generic bands is very backward looking. People look at us and wonder how we coexist having five different writers and singers. But we have a common vision; we all have equal input and can exchange ideas freely. We mix influences as if we were five DJ's that are all totally passionate about what their angle is. That's the idea, to mix and not isolate what you are doing. Great DJs will show you the connections between music. They show the connection between drum and bass and indie music. That's how we try and approach it. We all welcome that input."

Hari crosses her long legs, and pulls out a cigarette from her pony skin purse. "Sam is definitely a catalyst for a lot of the material and writing. He's a great filter, which shows how strong his writing is and how exceptional his production skills are. It's an incredible thing to have within the band. Everybody writes and brings stuff to the table, and so we get lots of interesting combinations and infinite variations of new sounds."

The beauty of The Animalhouse is its ability to constantly evolve and stay fresh. Their sound has a universal appeal and they have tapped into this, preferring to give early release and exclusive material through their interactive site www.theanimalhouse.co.uk . This has helped them win a devoted following in Europe, Japan and America. The single 'Ready to Receive' and 'Small' have been released in England and have received massive amounts of airplay on XFM, helping them chart in the indie Top 40. The gig at The Garage has completely sold out to a 500 capacity crowd. The Animalhouse have succeeded in the art of subversive communication.

Hari: "Japan and Europe are a lot further ahead than England with The Animalhouse. We're further up the bill at Fuji Rock festival (Japan), than what we'll be at Reading or Leeds. We've always thought we were an international act. It's quite a big world and I think people should stop thinking that being on the cover of the NME is the be all and end all of making it in the music business. England is a small island ... get it into perspective."

Sam: "We are trying to put a positive message of communication through the album. It's the beliefs of transmission and reception that really sum up what this whole record is about. I think there's been an incredible amount of music lately, which has been fixed in one emotional bandwidth. It's really exciting if we can open that up and show that there's an awful lot going on in life; that includes melancholy, that includes extreme madness, excitement and happiness ... a full emotional range. That's what we aim to achieve with the album."

The band have consistently tried to keep up to date with their fans, using the website as a means of arousing interest in the band and keeping a personal link between the record buyer and the musician.

"We found it to be the starting point for people from the US and Japan. It's about simple correspondence, replying to emails that people send you so they have a personal feeling about the band. It's amazing to get that amount of international input, especially from Japan. There's also a great buzz happening in New York, the college radio is really plugging us and we've started to get a few emails from a fan base over there. There are so many people trying to communicate with us on a totally day-to-day, personal level. Telling us about a new CD they've bought or a film they've seen. I find it hard to keep up, but I do try. Life seems 50% virtual now. I think a lot of what we do musically and lyrically is on that subject. What it is like to integrate with all of that technology. We try looking at the positive aspects of it. I think all technology opens up independence. We try to embrace that."

'Ready to Receive' was recorded at the band's own studio Temple Sound, in Oxford, the band managed to stay on track, although they admit to occasionally being tempted by the lure of the local pub, or nipping home for a quick cup of tea.

Sam laughs. "It was definitely strenuous. We all live within five minutes of each other and it was all right for the first six months, but then when we actually started to mix, it all got a bit much. I'm glad we did it because it actually sounds as like we're at home, which is kind of a breakthrough. The general perception of mixing is that your record company brings a load of outside producers from all around the world, everything gets a little manic and you're in the middle of chaos. But it was controlled intense activity every single day."

Hari agrees. "I think it was great in terms of bringing the band together. We were building the studio whilst putting down the album and it took a year to do. Everyone was sitting down at the end of every night to have dinner and it was a real family thing for a year, so it definitely strengthened our relationships."

This closeness is evident in their live gigs where the band feed ideas off each other and actually look like they're happy to be performing. Sam describes this symbiosis beautifully.

"There are two periods when bands are automatically awesome - at the beginning, when you don't know each other you have the confidence of complete youth in terms of the project. The other is when you have been through all the crap and the detail of tearing each other to pieces and finding out what you are, what your roots are, and then re-grouping. Then you're really strong, you can't be stopped. You can't be knocked by outside influences anymore. It's like any relationship."

The Animalhouse have big plans for the future. They have always established strong links between music and film, using wicked psychedelic images as backdrops to their live gigs. It seems that they would like to explore this area further.

Hari: "I think our music is really visual without there being a visual concept. When you have visual and musical content, it is just much more powerful emotionally. We want to take that further. Avoid the whole promo video thing, and use it as a platform to make short films. It's a dying art - the orchestral ability that people like Brian Wilson and John Barry had ... it's just not happening any more. Trying to do something that is great is not cool in England. Don't be too cool...don't be too clever. . But we don't believe in mediocrity, we believe in creative greatness."

On this note Hari extinguishes her last cigarette and straps the bass over her shoulder. Sam adjusts his collar and picks up his guitar. Both walk out to join their band mates on stage. The crowd are swinging from the rafters and climbing the walls in anticipation. Welcome to The Animalhouse, where the door's always open. Enter for inspiration.

Emily Rayner

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