FIXERS

‘I really like Rebecca Black, I won’t have a word said against her!’ - FIXERS

by Chris Eustace | 21 April 2011

“I’ve got this theory that Zac Efron will be the next Leo DiCaprio, I just get the feeling he’ll break out of the mould and kill it!” Fittingly for someone whose band surround themselves with mystical imagery, we join Fixers singer Jack Goldstein as he’s busy making bold predictions for the future.

It must make a refreshing change not to be on the receiving end of them. Big things are expected of Fixers, following a hectic year which has seen them championed by BBC Introducing all the way up to their stage at T In The Park, landing on the Radio 1 playlist and bagging a major label deal.

All this from a band who seemingly came together via a process of elimination, as Jack explains: “All of a sudden you realise some of the people are just doing it because they’re at that point where they just want to have a band. We’re the dregs, the people who really want to do music and at the same time can’t really do anything else very well!”

It’s no wonder that there seems to be all kinds of sounds battling to make it out of their swirling, Beach Boys/Animal Collective-tinged pop stomps – that’s exactly what gets put in: “We don’t really bond on influences at all, but there’s a general aesthetic that we all dug, so we were kind of like ‘Yeah, we should do this!’ We all like Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, a lot of 60’s psychedelia, and things like the Sublime Frequencies compilations are great. It’s not like we don’t discuss our influences with each other, but we have different tastes. I tend to listen to pop music or hip-hop.”

With the band hailing from Oxford, it’s inevitable that Blessing Force, a loose musical collective that recruits the city’s best to its ranks, is going to be brought up. While they’ve been supportive, it’s no surprise that a band with so many disparate influences is slightly reluctant to align themselves with any kind of movement: “We removed ourselves from it a bit. It does benefit good Oxford bands, it’s a great thing that it’s getting so much exposure, but it wasn’t our pet project. For people to put this thing upon us, the connotations don’t really exist. I don’t know Foals, I’ve never met Yannis.”

Yannis knows them though, having praised Fixers’ “lack of pretence”. In the end, perhaps Jack doesn’t like his band’s music getting analysed too deeply, though that’s something he’ll have to get used to, and he’s at pains to stress that wanting to stand apart doesn’t equal a snub: ”You strive not to sound ungrateful, if someone likes your music then that’s a very nice of them to champion it, but to have someone tell me about my music and what it is? That’s a bit different, especially if you haven’t met them. If someone picked at the little idiosyncrasies in our music, even if they knew our band quite well, it’s still quite presumptuous I think. I’m friends with Hugo from Chad Valley, I’m friends with Andrew [Mears, Blessing Force figurehead] from Pet Moon. They really embraced us, but there’s nothing that correlates us musically I think, though of course there’s no bad blood between us either.”

The colourful, abstract imagery used on the band’s artwork and websites has also been noted, giving them an air of mystery, with people looking for hidden meanings, though for Jack they’re merely to compliment the music: “The songs are fundamentally pop songs, but the way that we present them or record them we’ll use unconventional means of recording and producing. We just think it’s a nicer way of presenting a band, with collages and pieces of art and ways of expressing yourself that isn’t being stood in a wood!”

With the infectious bounce of ‘Crystals’ set to be the band’s debut major label release, following a 7” of ‘Iron Deer Dream’ on Young & Lost Club, and a self-released cassette of ‘Amsterdam’, are the band not worried that, having signed to a big label, they won’t be “allowed” to continue being unconventional? “I’d like to do another tape, but not on a big label, what would be the point? I was looking at the tapes in Rough Trade earlier, and I saw one of them had a Bella Union sticker on it – it’s like ‘who are you kidding?!’ I would always want to do that myself, the tape we did just had one sticker on the front. It doesn’t cost much, that’s the whole point. We see them as a production tool, because there’s that added sound you get. I had the Chariots Of Fire soundtrack by Vangelis on tape. It was about 35 years old, it had been knocking in my parents’ shed for ages and it sounded destroyed! In five years’ time, our tape will sound like something completely different!”

The band were initially picked up by the local BBC Introducing show in Oxford, getting airplay even before their first gig: “I never really listened to the radio, I’ve never understood why you’d listen to music you didn’t want to hear, on the off-chance of hearing something you did. But now I see BBC Radio, at least, in a new light - if they hear something that they really love, they’ll strive to champion it. We’re indebted to them.”

Jack’s conversion to the wireless was complete at the start of this year, when BBC Introducing bands were put on the Radio 1 daytime playlist as part of its New Music initiative. As ‘Iron Deer Dream’ nestled in amongst Jessie J et al, the band decamped to Maida Vale to do the Live Lounge, complete with standard cover version: “The coolest thing is that you have to turn your phone off, so we all got loads of texts later saying ‘I just heard you on the radio!’ We did a Rihanna song (‘What’s My Name’), we were going to do ‘Whip My Hair’ by Willow Smith but another band [Pulled Apart By Horses] had already done it. I think it was a better song to do in the end!” 

BBC Introducing also provided the band with their first festival experience, as they played their stage at last year’s T In The Park. It turned out to be as much a reality check as a pinnacle for them: “It was really early so there weren’t many people watching us, but it’s not about that. It’s of those stepping stones, you can’t get disheartened. We were really happy when we got confirmed for it, but the reality is you’re just kind of there. We were a small fish in such a big pond. Not to discredit the people who did come to see us, we met some great people there, but if a thousand people had come and watched us there in the rain at ten in the morning, this band no-one’s ever heard of, you’d almost think ‘these people are idiots!’

“It’s nicer to go to smaller festivals, we’re still finding our feet in this world, so we’d rather that than play a big festival at our level, where people will be asking ‘Should I go and see Fixers or should I go and see Foo Fighters?’”

It looks like Fixers will be seen on festival stages big and small this summer, whether their singer likes it or not. If, however, like him, you’re more up for the smaller, intriguing ones, it doesn’t get more “niche” than their plans for Manchester’s Sounds From The Other City festival on 1 May: “We’re doing this old church, we’re going to play along to the Mariah Carey film ‘Glitter’, it’s one of my favourite films!” Maybe, if there’s no stairs to climb, the diva herself might turn up for the encore?

As for Jack’s own favourite new artists of the moment, Manchester gets another shout out, along with another, er, diva and some of hip-hop’s latest stars: “I’m into Wu Lyf, the Wiz Khalifa album, and I really like Rebecca Black, I won’t have a word said against her! Tyler, The Creator and the whole Odd Future thing is great. Tyler is one of the few people who has got something to say. B.O.B. made a reply track to what Tyler said in ‘Yonkers’, and I love that he heard it and said ‘I didn’t even think I’d dissed him!’, which is the perfect way to destroy someone’s diss!”

Perhaps bands should start following suit with some diss tracks then? Fixers haters beware, as it seems that Jack is quite up for this, though strictly under the guise of helping you out: “It can improve someone’s music, especially where hip-hop’s concerned. If you lay into someone and that incites them to become a bit more brutal, and lay themselves bare, it can only be a good thing.”

So in a few years time, as the Indie East Coast/West Coast beef spirals out of control and Zac Efron picks up his seventh Oscar, what’s the betting the soundtrack will provided by warped Fixers tapes, whilst thousands claim to have been at “that” T In The Park show? One thing’s for sure - there’s far more chance of it happening than Mariah taking the stairs anytime soon.

Fixers are set to play Live At Leeds 2011 alongside James Blake, Frightened Rabbit and many more.

Tickets are on sale now priced at £17.50.

Click here to buy Live At Leeds tickets.

See where else you can see Fixers play this summer here.

First On//Fixers

Posted 21st April 2011, 11:28am | By Matthew Britton

The tempting thing to do when you start talking about any band is to try delving into the area they come from as a means of understanding them. When a band comes from Oxford and makes pop music that is even vaguely challenging, the urge is multiplied tenfold with the swell of recent local history almost possible to ignore.

Fixers don’t really deserve to be judged against those who they happened to be brought up in a similar proximity to. They’ve been around for about 18 months or so now, and have been making waves pretty much since day one. They “all met from older bands, growing up together,” admits Jack, the band’s keyboardist, “We all used to be in heavier bands when we were kids.”

Of the many adjectives to describe their current project, heavy is one of the few you’d leave out. It’s almost psychedelic but without all the wankery that implies, pop music that remains far from saccharine, doused in drama without being melodramatic. ‘Crystals’ does more to sum it up than any prose is likely to, starting out with boundless energy before turning into the kind of twinkling pop that many try but few ever actually master like Fixers.

Indeed, most people have been struggling to pigeonhole them with any amount of luck. Jack: “The NME compared us to Silver Apples which was very complimentary” – whilst other publications have been a bit further from the mark. How about being put alongside the jaunty, tip-toe pop of Everything Everything? “I don’t like Everything Everything at all - these kind of bands don’t excite me in any way whatsoever.”

You can understand the frustration, the two acts only marginally inhabiting the same sonic space. Brian Wilson is a marked influence, as is Van Dyke Parks – “[his] relationship with words is so beautiful, they take on this unworldly aesthetic of their own within any track” – but there’s some altogether more eclectic material appreciated by the band. “She may be an overnight blast, it’s hard to foresee or predict at this early stage, but she’s certainly made a good impression on me” confesses Jack, about the internet phenomenon that is Rebecca Black.

Whether or not they’ll ever earn the 100 million or so hits that ‘Friday’ has managed is still up in the air, but the grounding is there. The band have already had a 7” put out by Young and Lost Records and have featured across the board on Radio 1, and despite having a new EP - ‘Here Comes 2001, So Let’s Head For The Sun’ - coming out on 9th May, it’s comforting to know that the highlight of their career remains getting “Free Nike”. Foals probably say the same…

Crystals by Fixers

Sounds From The Other City Festival 2011//TICKETS HERE

FIXERS // THE 405 INTERVIEW

April 18, 2011, 0 comments Written by The 405

In a couple of weeks time Fixers will be releasing a new EP in the form of Here Comes 2001, So Lets All Head For The Sun. It sees the band continue where they left off with single ‘Iron Deer Dream’, which garnered them a lot of praise a few months back.

They make the sort of pop music that people should be making: catchy, bold, interesting and ambitious. We wouldn’t want to say something silly like ‘this is the sort of pop music Brian Wilson would love’ but there’s no reason why he wouldn’t when it’s this strong.

We caught up with band to find out more about ‘Cosmic Crunk-Haus’, their music and what they listen to on tour.

Where are you now…and what are up to at this moment?

At home, it’s sunny outside which is nice.

You’ve described your music as Cosmic Crunk-Haus. Is this a serious attempt to try and describe your music? Or do you think label and categories just get in the way of enjoying the music?

Labelling and categorising doesn’t necessarily get in the way of enjoying the music but it can limit creativity from a musicians point of view. Being defined by description just acts as a means of relaxing the listener into a comfort zone. Once relaxed, people tend to enjoy music from certain genres regardless of content. Musicians and Bands evolve but genres and labels very rarely evolve with them.

Do you think the psychedelic music is about the state of mind or just music that is better under the influence of chemical stimulants?

I see the term psychedelic as a description of a musical period in time. Although the music is the paramount and defining element of that term, it also carries with it all the cultural connotations of the time. I’d never want our music to be perceived as “drug music” simply because our music isn’t created on drugs.

That’s not to say that our audience won’t get an alternative and exciting experience from listening to our music whilst on drugs.

Brian Wilson is a very apparent influence on your music. What track or album has had the biggest influence on you as a band and why? (do you dream of having your own sandbox to compose in one day?)

1977’s Love You is my favourite Beach Boys album of all time. Its stark and minimal synth instrumentation correlates with Brian’s complicated yet innocent arrangements and make for an album that sounds like no other, it’s mind-blowing.

Its hard to pinpoint a stand-out track as it works so well as a complete package, I’d have to go with ‘Cabin Essence’ as a favourite all time Beach Boys track.

I had this idea for an early show where we filled the venue with sand - it was one of my more poorly thought out ideas!

Would you like people to first encounter your music live or on record?

On record, I find it hard to relax live. In the studio you get to experiment and explore musical ideas - overall it makes for a much more exciting process. You’re just about to embark on an extensive UK tour.

Give us one thing you love and one thing you hate about life on a tour bus?

We have a van that we all pile into the back of, its pretty cool. After a while you can begin to feel the cabin fever setting in, we drove up to Scotland last year and by the time we had all got out of the van we looked pretty green and shell-shocked.

Our tour manager makes a pretty colossal mixture too, lots of Nicki Minaj and Gucci Mane to dance along to in the back of the van.

What thing you’ve had to spend most time practising most to get right as a band?

The harmonies - they are so complicated, our entire set is a work in progress.

What influences (books, films, TV or other) connect most as a band?

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of Tyler The Creator, Rebecca Black and WU LYF. Our inspirations are constantly evolving but the fundamental influences are pretty rooted - stuff like Brian Wilson, Arthur Russell, Kate Bush and a lot of sugary J-Pop like Perfume, MEG and Capsule.

I think our relatively “busy” vision and visual interpretation of our band is testament to us all being inspired by different things. We attempt to infuse our music with as many influences as possible, its the way we have naturally worked since we formed.

Over time you see yourself evolving musically – it’s weird.

What unreleased track are you most excited about people hearing and why?

We have a track called ‘Animals’ which is pretty intense. It involves lots of animal sounds recreated on a small keyboard. There is also a track called ‘Future Native Skyline” which I’m pretty certain no-one will ever hear.

And what are you looking forward to the most in the next 6 months?

Getting to work on an album after our headline tour in May. We are all pretty nervous about touring.


You can check the band out at the following dates

April 2011
Sat 30th | Live At Leeds

May 2011
Sun 1st | Sounds From The Other City, Manchester
Mon 2nd | Hull Fruit
Tue 3rd | Newcastle Cluny
Wed 4th | Aberdeen Drummonds
Fri 6th | Glasgow King Tuts
Sat 7th | York Fibbers
Sun 8th | Sheffield The Harley
Mon 9th | Stoke Sugarmill
Wed 11th | Leicester Lock
Thu 12th | The Great Escape, Brighton
Wed 18th | London Cargo
Sat 21st | Liverpool Masque Loft
Wed 25th | Birmingham Hare & Hounds
Thu 26th | Cardiff Undertone

SWEEPING THE NATION

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Tracklist: Fixers - Crystals

Somehow Fixers have landed themselves a major label deal. Perhaps Vertigo thought they’re an electropop band because they have keyboards front and centre on stage. This certainly doesn’t come across as radio friendly unit shifting if by any band without MGMT’s early self-created populist mystique. At the start it briefly imagines it’s going to be Clinic, then headlong dives right into a psychedelia stew of whirling colours, bouncy rhythms, fizzing freak-pop microclimate melodies and the same kind of west coast harmonies that’s made their work to date stand a little even further out. The EP this is on, the unpromisingly titled Here Comes 2001 So Lets Head For The Sun, is out 9th May.

Crystals by Fixers.

FIXERS//SFTOC INTERVIEW

As a city, it’s even rarer that Oxford isn’t filled with some of the most exciting noises in the country. You can probably guess where Fixers are from, but the you probably wouldn’t be able to judge which film they’ll be soundtracking for the festival this year – until te 3rd question or so, at least. We sent Jack from the band some questions, he mailed back some answers, and here they are:

Hiya Fixers. Tell us a bit about yourself. What have you been up to today?

We are in the middle of writing for our album, its going ok – cabin fever is beginning to kick in though.

We’ve converted our rehearsal room into a hub – oil projectors and smoke machines.

Today I went to The University Church Of St.Mary The Virgin in oxford city centre.

It has this large church tower which you can walk to the top of.

You can see the entire city from the rooftop, its intense.

You’ve got an EP out, too. For anyone who’s not listened to it yet, why should they care?

It is out on May 9th.

Its titled “Here Comes 2001 So Lets All Head For The Sun” and is a basic cross pollination of our fleeting obsession with UFO Religions and our countless visits to Scientology Churches over the past four months.

I was audited on an e-meter and it was intense.

That’s all dead in the water now though – the beautiful thing about recording is that you can capture momentary pieces of excitement or fleeting obsession and infuse them into your recordings.

I hope people dig it.

Crystals by Fixers.

You’re soundtracking Mariah Carey’s Glitter for your performance. Do you see her as an inspiration? What can we expect from your set?

She is a massive inspiration, The Emancipation Of Mimi is incredible – its my girlfriends favourite record of all time.

We were working with Craig Silvey and he told me that after she split with Tommy Mottola she did a rock record but its almost impossible to hunt down, kinda like a cheesy butch vig-esque “break up” record.

I’ve tried looking for it everywhere but it seems pretty much non-existent.

If we find it, we will learn it and play it as our set.

You’re from Oxford. Ever been to Salford before?

No, I had to google it to find out where it was.

Anything else we should know?

I’m looking for a book on American politician Harvey Milk and a copy of She by H.Rider Haggard.

Can you help me?

Sorry Jack.

Fixers:

Here Comes 2001 So Let’s All Head For The Sun: Signed + Free Poster
2769214
Release Date : May 09 2011
Label:Mercury

10 inch single
£4.99

The first 100 customers to order ‘Here Comes 2001 So Let’s All Head For The Sun’ will have their copy signed by Fixers and will receive a free poster*.

Fixers are the new Oxford five-piece set to emerge in 2011 as one of the most creatively minded bands. Sonorous melodies and incredible musicianship blend together to make music that is thoughtful and uplifting. An experimental surf dance quintet. They have been playing and recording together for just under a year, blending the sixties psychedelic childlike innocence of Brian Wilson and Bruce Haack with the spaced out eighties avant-garde dance of Arthur Russell, Dead Can Dance and Tom Tom Club.

“It’s weird, it’s experimental, but it’s also instantly addictive” - NME

“a wondrous thing” - The Guardian

Tracklisting

Side A

1. Another Lost Apache
2. Crystals

Side B

1. Uriel
2. Passages // Love In Action

*Signed copies are strictly limited and will be sent out on a first come, first served basis. One signed copy per household. Once all signed copies have been sold the offer will be taken down and replaced with an unsigned version of the single.

Fixers:

Iron Deer Dream / Egyptian Aberration Cult: Signed
YALC0058
Release Date : Feb 21 2011
Label:Young & Lost Club

7 inch single
Immediate Despatch £3.99

The first 50 customers to order this single at recordstore.co.uk will have their copy signed by Fixers*

Fixers are the new Oxford five-piece set to emerge in 2011 as one of the most creatively minded bands. Sonorous melodies and incredible musicianship blend together to make music that is thoughtful and uplifting. An experimental surf dance quintet. They have been playing and recording together for just under a year, blending the sixties psychedelic childlike innocence of Brian Wilson and Bruce Haack with the spaced out eighties avant-garde dance of Arthur Russell, Dead Can Dance and Tom Tom Club.

Tracklisting

Side A

1. Iron Deer Dream

Side B

1. Egyptian Aberration Cult

*Signed copies are strictly limited and will be sent out on a first come, first served basis. One signed copy per household.

THE POINT OF EVERYTHING//FXRS

With everybody’s attention turning from the best of 2010 lists to the new class of 2011, those lists can be summed up in three words: look to Oxford. With Chad Valley and Trophy Wife all making a name for themselves, Fixers look ready to join them shortly.

The come from the same town as Radiohead and Foals and sound nothing like them. Slow repetitive beats circle for three minutes and even though you are left waiting for something to happen, you realise you have already listened to ‘Who Says Boys’ another five times. Watch the video below.