Anglo-Irish, London-based electro-folk duo Ranger3 have already been our band of the week in CMU Weekly, and quite rightly so. Intricately mixing folk instruments and electronics, Jim Perkins and Ronan Burke (ex-Cane 141), play folk songs, which they then chop up into little pieces and put back together in a far more pleasing order.
In case you wondered, the duo are named after the ill-fated US Ranger 3 space probe, sent to explore the moon in 1962, but which missed by 36,000km and was lost in space.
The duo released their debut album, 'Old Simplicity', via Bigo & Twigetti, earlier this month. Both Jim and Ronan have given us their answers to the immense Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Ronan Burke: A combination of being forced to take piano lessons by my piano teacher mother and being subjected to repeated plays of 'Wuthering Heights' by Kate Bush as a child.
Jim Perkins: When I started primary school they gave a few of the kids a hearing test. Some of us were given recorders and a few of us violins. I made a terrible noise on the violin for about two years and then stuffed it in a bush outside my school gates. I then had five years off music, starting again with a £20 acoustic guitar purchased from Argos.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Both: We really wanted to do an album that was accessible and melodic but both of us are interested in intricate, dynamic rhythms and arrangements.
RB: I think I wanted to remain true to the spirit of Irish folk in covering some dark issues such as death and bereavement but not letting it get in the way of a good tune.
JP: The album was written over three years, during which time most of the music that I wrote was a fairly unconscious reaction to what was happening to me then. It was also an opportunity to test out different types of arrangements, harmonies, ways of expressing emotions and rhythms.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
JP: The process consists of both of us writing sketches for songs independently and then coming together to develop the final arrangement. The amount of time taken varies greatly from track to track, inevitably some tracks come out more strongly influenced by one of us than the other but this balances itself out over the album. I spend most of my time on the music and arrangement and Ronan writes the lyrics and most of the lead vocal melodies. We both play the majority of the instruments, occasionally calling in a bit of external support and I record, produce and mix the tracks.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
RB: My influences have accumulated from listening to everything from Flying Nun Records pop to Kraftwerk, John Fahey, The Books and Schneider TM over the years. We draw on sounds from a variety of sources from early classical choral music to TV On The Radio.
JP: Yeah that and the theme tune to 'Cheggers Plays Pop'. I like a mixture of really well crafted harmony and technique from classical artists like Debussy, Ravel and Wagner and then on the other side I'm really into experimental textures and cut n paste, patchwork elements from artists like Ligeti to Portishead, The Books and Matmos.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Both: Listen to it on headphones, it sounds better... but don't listen too closely to this bit, or that bit and if I did that bit again I'd change...
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
RB: Like anyone who makes an album, we want it to be heard by as many people as possible.
JP: In terms of the future, I'd like to get access to a wider range of instruments and performers so that we could expand what we could do, leading to an Andy Warhol-style factory of people churning out Ranger3 brand music to a very strict set of criteria, whilst we take all the credit... well, perhaps not the last bit... well, perhaps so...
MORE>> www.bigoandtwigetti.co.uk and www.myspace.com/ranger3uk