Fri
09
May
2008
Cutting Pink With Knives
Alex, as we’re at Dot To Dot,
why don’t you introduce us to Cutting Pink With Knives… what have you done over the last couple of years?
We’ve been playing I’d say more seriously as a band for about a year and a half now. But the band came into existence
about three years ago as a bedroom project of out guitarist Eddy. And he basically just tried to write hardcore riffs as fast as possible along to the fastest drum beats he could possibly program.
But then over the last year and a half, it actually became a full band with Chris on vocals, myself on bass, and Eddy on guitar and programming. And we’ve done a couple of albums. We did one on
Adidat, and we did one on Holy Roar. So we’ve done quite a lot in terms of live stuff, so it seems to be sort of picking up quite a lot of pace recently.
There may be people here today seeing you for the first time. What is your live show
like?
Whilst it is sort of regimented somewhat by having an electronic backing track, I would say our live show is very
unpredictable and very chaotic. Unless it is a really super-packed room we tend to not play on the stage. And so many things have happened! We’ve been chased out of venues by Nazis, threatened by
bikers with pool cues, generally because they find us a bit confrontational and provocative… we’re never trying to be like ‘punker-than-thou’ or anything, or trying to offend anyone. It’s just more a
case of having fun and going for it with a complete disregard for ourselves and what people think of us. We’re not out to try and appear cool and pull the right moves, it’s just what comes out, so
that leads to unpredictable, and what some people might see as scary, situations. I would hope that it comes across as very energetic and fun and exciting too!
Are there any bands that have inspired that?
There’s obvious ones like Dillenger Escapre Plan. But it’s interesting you ask that. We’ve never looked at anyone and said
“that’s what I want to be like”. It’s certainly something we’ve developed over time. I mean, the band used to be a lot more cathartic more sort of emotional, in inverted commas. But now it is more
about having fun and just expressing ourselves.
I hate going to see bands when they just stand there, unless they’ve got some amazing visuals or something, it just doesn’t interest me. So any band that look like
they’re having fun and putting their whole heart into it, then that is an inspiration to me.
Are there any bands here today that do that for you?
Yeah, there’s Rolo Tomassi, who we’ve already talked about. Dan Deacon, he’s awesome. His live shows… if you haven’t seen him, go and see him. Mirror Mirror, they’re
like the Rapture but done by hardcore kids. I’m sure there others, but we haven’t got a program of the day!
No, it seems as though none of the bands even have a running order of the
day.
We have it for our own stage, but I don’t think they want us to watch other bands!
Maybe you will get to see them tomorrow when all this happens again in
Bristol.
Well we’re playing on a giant ship, but apparently it is a reputable venue! So that should be quite
interesting.
A reputable old ship?
Yes… yes. James from Rolo Tomassi showed me a video on his phone the other day of…. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to
say this, but of Todd from I Was A Cub Scout climbing the mast of the venue, and he gets so ridiculously high, it’s unbelievably scary!
Will you pull that stunt tomorrow?
No! Because he got thrown out for climbing the mast!
Where did the idea come from to mix the music you do with programmed
drums?
It originally stems from a love of very fast hardcore stuff like Bad Brains, and a love of grindcore, Napalm Death, and
then electronic drum grind bands like Agrophobic Nosebleed. And so it came from a very hardcore DIY background, but over time it’s sort of really started to incorporate a lot more 80s hip-hop,
electro and stuff like that.
Could you just not find a live drummer that was fast enough?
Basically. To start with. There’s probably a lot of stuff now that could be played by a live drummer, but there’s bits
that definitely couldn’t. It’s also the fact that we tour so easily because we fit in a car, like literally, and our drum kit is an iPod. And we don’t have to put up with a drummer going out of time.
So it’s really easy to do in that sense. But having said that, we are at the mercy of the sound engineer. If a sound engineer doesn’t like us then we’re basically stuffed. If the PA is bad, or if the
sound engineer is bad, or if we can’t hear the drums, it’s not like we can walk over to the drum kit… so it is definitely a double edged sword.
In three words, what can we expect from a Cutting Pink With Knives
performance?
Unpredictable, fast, loud.
Loading Twitter messages...
print version