Thee UFO are a band that brings a piece of the fuzzy ultraviolence to your living room. Fifty something years after Stanley Kubrick launched his celluloid masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, this Irish band channels exactly the kind of snotty, botched up psycho punk energy that would have been its perfect soundtrack….
Lending their ears to American examples like Thee Oh Sees (duh!), and 60s garage rock, Thee UFO clearly is not afraid to wander weirder pathways still. Channeling Neu!‘s krautrock sound on album interlude Structure Collapse for instance, or stretching their usual short attention spanned song writing to the impressive seven minutes of underwater noise rocker Transparent Seed.
Album closer Ponderous Fug is another slow burner, with a hair raising impression of The Velvet Underground at their druggiest and most broken. It is a thoughtful and deep ending of an album that started off with loud and raucous banter and violence. A bit like the way Kubrick created different layers into his movie, making A Clockwork Orange such a wild and interesting watch.
I asked the band ten questions, and rebels as they are, they only answered six. The things they did say definitely give us a good idea of who we are dealing with here though…
What is the best thing about Ponderous Fug?
The best thing is the fact that vinyl is out now. We’re officially done with it, we’re moving on.
Where do you live and what is the environment like for musicians like you?
We live in Dublin, Ireland. The musical environment is good if you plan on making somewhat commercial music or if you’re big on marketing. There is a small psych scene, however we’re not completely married to that genre we’re very much interested in making anything and everything we can. Overall we’re not involved in the Irish music scene, we fall into every other subset.
What is your main aim with your music, is it complete artistic expression, or an escape from the everyday world? (or something else ;))
We want to create, that’s the most important thing about doing this, just being able to create. Artistic expression will never be eased, we have material ready for at least the next 10 years. It’s really easy to find yourself lost in a song, an instrument or a piece of equipment, that is a really fulfilling, comfortable, calming thing, to be so interested in something as simple as two notes and getting completely lost in that for hours.
Can you tell me about how you go about composing and recording songs?
It can be quite similar to getting lost in something for a while and building a song out of two notes, however songs do often come about generically. We do tend to jam on some songs that maybe aren’t of interest initially; eventually by trial and error we make songs worth recording. Other times we record, then cut up and combine songs.
What is “the dream” when it comes to being an artist?
To create as much as possible.
What should the Weirdo Shrine reader do after reading this interview?
Listen to some music, read a book, watch a movie, go for a walk, tell someone you love them. Live.
Weirdo Shrine 