from React

Interview with Chris Corner(from a Honolulu newspaper)

Pimping and Preening

July '96-?

Sneaker Pimps Rise And Fall In L.A. Debut

Pimping for Electro (from the Toronto Sun)

Sneaker Pimps too busy to breathe
 
 

From React

Postmodern Sleaze' - it would be lovely if that category existed for us," says Liam Howe, keyboardist/sonic architect for Sneaker Pimps, the latest in the recent onslaught of UK bands putting a distinctive spin on electronic club rhythms. "Post Modern Sleaze" is actually the title of a song from the Pimps' hypnotic debut  album, Becoming X, yet Howe feels that it's a more accurate tag for what his band does than the plethora of classifications that segregate Britain's dance-music scene. "We're beat-led, filth driven pop people who have our finger in every musical pie." he continues. "it's just '90s post-sampler, confused-culture music."
      Going on in his prim English accent about 'Mass-information culture in late-20th-century America" Howe comes off more like a professor than a pop star. Still, there's no denying that the Pimps' mishmash of sounds is hard pigeonhole, drifting from the stuttering drum-and-bass rhythms in "Spin Spin Sugar" to their ambient-folk cover of "How Do," a traditional English ballad. The Pimps' prickly appeal, however, centers around singer Kelli Dayton. A sloe-eyed pixie with a punk do as spiky as her personality, Dayton brings the same carnal voltage to her cohorts' machine-age grooves as Shirley Manson does to Garbage's. On cuts like "Tesko Suicide" (about mass-suicide machine sold in supermarkets) and "Waterbaby" (an ode to obsession detailing "40 days of one-night stands"), Dayton creates a rogues' gallery of twisted personae. "There is a  sleazy element to us," Dayton admits. "It's not just a mask. I'm sure I have all that darkness and sensuality - I hope so. Have a drink with me and make your mind up."
      Dayton's haunting vocals provide a jolting counterpoint to the icy electronic textures of Howe and
  guitarist Chris Corner. For Howe, it's that erotic fiction where humans and technology interact that drives the Pimps. "Everybody wants to fuck or save the world," Howe states. "We like to contrast these primal motivations against the dangers of the technological  age."
      Sneaker Pimps grew out of England's early '90s dance-music revolution. which found Howe and Corner DJ'ing and releasing 12-inchers under monikers like F.R.I.S.K. and Line of Flight. Bringing together their  diverse musical interests - one of their DJ nights was called Breakbeat to Bacharach - they sought to create a group that incorporated club beats in a more varied pop format. The duo approached Dayton after Howe's girlfriend saw her singing with a "sonically bad" punk band in a Birmingham, England, pub. Despite conflicting agendas (Dayton was initially "physically opposed to dance music"), Sneaker Pimps were born, cribbing their name from a Beastie Boys lackey who was assigned to search out vintage Adidas.  The nascent trio cranked out much of Becoming X in a bedroom in Howe's dad's house; the resulting DIY grooves impressed megaproducers like Flood (U2, Smashing Pumpkins) and Nelli Hooper (Madonna, Bjork), both of whom contributed to Becoming X. While their buzz has since moved stateside, the Pimps' don't want to be prostituted to America's potentially fickle romance with electronica. "I hope [Americans] don't like us just because it's taking off as a fad," Dayton says, bristling. "There's more to us than samplers - we're more permanent than passing fancy."
 

 Interview with Chris Corner-(from a Honolulu newspaper)

There's very little about Sneaker Pimps that fits neatly into conventional pigeonholes:
The group is from England, but sneakers are "trainers" there. Trainer Pimps? (The original "sneaker pimp" was employed by the Beastie Boys to obtain hard-to-find shoes for the white rap-lite comedians).
The Sneaker Pimps are officially a trio -- vocalist Kelli Dayton and producers Chris Corner (guitar) and Liam Howe (keyboards). However, Dave Westlake (drums) and Joe Wilson (bass) have musical ties to Corner and Howe that predate the discovery of Dayton; both are part of the Sneaker Pimp team and both tour with the "trio."
The schematic diagrams included in the artwork of their internationally successful debut album, "Becoming X," are for real devices like a machine that is said to remove the voice of the DJ from radio recordings -- but the group doesn't know if the devices work.
The Sneaker Pimps deliberately avoid duplicating the sound of the album in concert.
"It's actually harder work, but it would be boring to just replicate the album exactly," Corner explained on the phone in his Melbourne hotel room.
"The live thing is a bit more aggressive and spikier and messier (and) that was an intentional thing to do just to keep us interested. You do get die-hard fans who say, "That was different from the album (and) I'm not very happy about that," but it's nice to have a different experience live, and I think in general the people who listen to our music are quite open-minded."
Honolulu meets the Sneaker Pimps tomorrow night at Nimitz Hall. A squad of dance-club disc jockeys -- 4-est, G-Spot, Gary-O, KSM, Mario, Mase, Mike F., Space Cowboy, Spex and Tricky Trevor -- will provide "2 rooms of DJ sounds" as part of the festivities.
Open minds come naturally to Corner and Howe. They grew up outside Manchester and shared an interest in artists as dissimilar as Shirley Bassey and Kraftwerke. They started producing dance music in 1992 and made some "really obscure songs and records." Then they found Dayton singing in a bar.
Dayton has an arresting vocal presence that can be almost simultaneously sensual and childlike, seductive and eerie, steeped in sexual attitude and yet not blatant. An ambiguous and vaguely ominous ballad titled "6 Underground," topped the English pop charts and earned Sneaker Pimps an American record deal. They've been touring off and on since March and continuing to evolve musically.
"The first album was basically written by Liam and I and a guy called Ian Pickering. Kelli wasn't really involved with it because it was all before she came. Now we have Kelli and a bassist and a drummer -- it's more like a band really and there's a lot more of a collaborative effort.
"I think there's been a quite natural progression into that. Even the way that Liam and I think about production is going to change through doing the live thing and performing on stage."
The eclectic Pimps are moving on. The mix-and-match approach to songwriting, blends of live and electronic instruments, the "new" sound of drum n' bass, squalling guitar and trip-hop rhythm -- all these things interest them. Corner says writing is the highest priority.
"If you can't write a decent song you really shouldn't be doing music. That's a bit extreme but I think that's where the importance lies. There and production."
"The way we interpret things like youth culture and death and sex is all relevant to our own experiences. In the first album there are a lot of references to personal relationships and people that we know -- not pointing the finger at anyone specific but at that type of person (like) a girl who designs problems and thinks it's cool to be so f---- up. The point is that inspiration comes from all over and the sources of it are always changing."
 
 

Pimping and preening
The Sneaker Pimps' new album, Becoming X, has earned them a triple "e' status: Eccentric, eclectic and very much electric. SACHA MOLITORISZ believes this could be Postmodern.

You want confusion? Kelli Dayton will deliver. She is half-Indian, half-Irish. She fronts a band called, perplexingly, the Sneaker Pimps, sometimes a three-piece, sometimes a five-piece. And the songs she sings defy categorisation, utilising everything from traditional blues guitar hooks to industrial-strength samples.
Fortunately, cutting through all this confusion are two constants. The first is quality. The Sneaker Pimps released their first album, Becoming X, only this year, but what a debut it is. Featuring the seductive, slow-burning hit, 6 Underground, it remains far and away one of the best releases of 1997, at once innovative and beautiful.
The second constant is technology. The discernible thread which ties the album together, which makes Becoming X a coherent whole, is its pervasive electronic influence: all those blips and beeps, samples and synthesised sounds which have led critics to posit this band at the forefront of a genre they call Electronica.
Sure, the term is appropriate; but like most labels, far too narrow. Eclectica is closer. Or, better yet, Electronic Eclectica.
Electronic Eclectica: the perfect soundtrack for pre-millennium tension, music by and for the generation vexingly dubbed Xers (the album's title plays with the notion of identity crisis: not even "X", the even more slippery "Becoming X").
In the song Postmodern Sleaze, Dayton describes a character as "wet and wild, a typical '90s child". Are the Sneaker Pimps, typical '90s children?
"It's a wonderful time to be living in," Dayton says from Denver, far from her UK home. "We don't have the boundaries of our peers to blame. We can wear and listen to what we want.
"There is confusion. And there's huge confusion about what particular music we're all going to be listening to. There's no more fads, like punk; we're on the precipice of something interesting.
"I mean, it's easy for people to do what's already been done, and we are too to some extent. In music, everything is borrowed, like it is in language: new sentences are only ever made out of words that are already there. It's hard to say something new."
Indeed newness arrives courtesy of new and interesting combinations. For the soundtrack to the film Spawn, the Pimps have teamed up with US goth shock-rockers Marilyn Manson.
Even more surprising, however, is that Becoming X sounds thoroughly organic. This is strange, because high-tech music is often utterly without soul, and because the band's history is utterly artificial.
First co-founders Chris Corner and Liam Howe started experimenting in their bedrooms. Then they needed words, so Birmingham journalist Ian Pickering stepped in, penning all the lyrics for Becoming X. Finally they set about finding a talented singer to inject sensuality. Enter Dayton.
She isn't surprised the Pimps sound organic: "With what we do, the song is always the most important thing. All our songs have to work on acoustic guitar - we never add anything just for the sake of it.
"Actually, that fractured authorship makes the whole exercise quite postmodern, doesn't it?"
The days are gone of artistes claiming sole responsibility for works of great art. Though sometimes that still happens.
"With us, each of us is very good at what we do. But what makes us work is that total ideal of being part of something together rather than following one lead, which a lot of bands still do. That can make you sound dated."
So, beyond today, are these sneaky Pimps the sound of tomorrow?
"Electronic music is here to stay. The sampler is like the new electric guitar. And it's great if used well, although I got a bit scared when we had the rave thing in England and that was all we heard; all those beeps and digital sounds. But I think with anything the pendulum swings, and hopefully after this we'll reach a balance where people can do exactly what they want."
In other words, a world where labels just won't be appropriate? "Exactly," Dayton says. And with that I tell her I better go, that our 20 minutes are up. "How much do I owe you?" she deadpans.
 

July 1996- ?

Weird beats, sultry vocals, and collision influences - Sneaker Pimps are all this and more.
Less than a year old but already tipped as a band to look out for in '96 the 'Pimps' formed from
the ashes of various campfires; firstly Line Of Flight (formerly known as F.R.I.S.K.) an experimental dance outfit steered by 'monkey hangers' Chris Corner and Liam Howe, and thriving on a shared love for Shirley Bassey, Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaata, then there's The Lumieres a Brummy punk band weaned on a diet of The Pixies, The Cramps, Sonic Youth and P.J. Harvey and featuring the extraordinary vocals and songwriting talents of Kelli Dayton.
Dave and Joe complete the line-up and the diverse influences to provide live drums and bass. Their debut single 'Tesko Suicide' successfully fused indie and jungle and brought acclaim from all sides, their follow-up 'Roll On' - the musical equivalent of a slow sweaty shag - is even better, providing a suitable taster for the release of the debut album 'Becoming X', out in August. Their recent date at the Middlesbrough Arena provided the ideal opportunity to corner Kelli for a quickie . . . I wish.

The Press usually pick up on certain aspects of a band, so what's
been said about you?
The press have been really nice to us, which is a bit dubious, but we've been called 'tortured', and 'too clever' (which I can't understand) :-), and 'very intelligent musically'.

So how did the recording deal come about?
Chris and Liam were already signed to Clean Up, which is an offshoot of One Little Indian, doing experimental dance music, and decided they wanted to start making more formula song, but they needed a singer. They'd been looking round for ages and by chance they were in Birmingham when I was playing with my band, and asked me if I was interested. My band weren't really doing anything so I was basically poached, and they were on the label anyway, but they started taking a lot more interest when we started doing Sneaker Pimps.

Where does the name come from?
It's from a Beastie Boys interview. They very cleverly have all their friends on the payroll, and this one friend in particular couldn't do anything, so they'd make him go out and get all their
second hand trainers for them - so they called him the sneaker pimp. We liked that idea.

What makes you different from other bands around at the moment?
I think because we come from so many different musical backgrounds; from dance music, to hardcore and punk. So we all clashed and combined and thought we'd try something different.

What can we expect from the album 'Becoming x'?
It's a really mood inspiring debut, and so potent musically, and so full of different influences - it's just something special.

The music is quite slow, which must make you the centre of attention - what's it like?
It's nice, but weird, especially in Europe. When we played there they just didn't know what the f**k was happening - I think they thought the singer from the real band had gone missing, and they just dragged me out the audience.

What sticks in your mind from playing Europe?
We were in Toulouse at this massive festival, and we were in this tent playing to 2,000 people when in the middle of the set they all started shouting out 'punk rock, punk rock' - and we were like wow, brilliant!

What will you be doing up to the release of the album?
Lots of things really. Playing live is the most important thing - I think once people see us live then they'll get the gist, but we don't concern ourselves with the selling.

What about promotional videos?
We've only done one video so far for 'Tesko Suicide', which was quite funny and basically involved freezing in Hartlepool - I'd seen nothing like it; snow, gales and us freezing on the beach. So I think we might be re-making that one because we all looked really terrible.
 

Sneaker Pimps Rise And Fall In L.A. Debut
Acclaimed U.K. Trip-Pop Band Shows Strengths And Weaknesses
 AllStar Magazine,February 03, 1997

It's often a little awkward for both band and audience when one of the U.K.'s most celebrated Next Big Things hits U.S. shores for a let's- see- what- they've- got type of gig. Such was the case with the Sneaker Pimps at L.A.'s Luna Park Saturday night (Feb. 1): like a first date, both parties wanted to like each other more than they expressed effectively-- for the band's part, their surface level of confidence belied an underlying uneasiness.
The Sneaker Pimps, whose debut album Becoming X will be released domestically on Virgin Records Feb. 25, have already received generous airplay on forward- thinking stations in the states with such potential hits as "6 Underground" and "Tesko Suicide": many believe the band's combination of trip- hop Massive Attack- style beats, moog samples and seductive hooks delivered by charismatic singer Kelli Dayton will hit this country as hard as it has England.
Although the band plowed through most of Becoming X's songs with a measured degree of aplomb and authority, the live setting exposed both Dayton's strengths and weaknesses: yes, she's cute and sultry; no, her voice is not strong enough to cut through the louder, aggressive choruses. The latter proved painfully obvious on what should have been a glorious performance of "Tesko Suicide"-- her thin, reedy voice carried little of the recorded version's dark assertiveness. Plus, after a while her favorite stage move became tiresome: on instrumental sections, she turned her back, swung her hips seductively, held up her arms, then hugged herself like an imaginary lover-- a little too much.
Such emphasis on showmanship over soul does not portend well for long- term success. Yes, the seasoning will come, but for the band to fulfill the promise of both their debut album and their hype they'll need to reveal more honest qualities-- as with any relationship that lasts past a first date.
 

Pimping for Electro
Tuesday, April 29, 1997
By KIERAN GRANT, Toronto Sun

The Sneaker Pimps are just part of the procession of British bands carrying electronic beats to North America. The trip-hop-pop trio are experienced at winning over nonbelievers. The group's founders, keyboardist Liam Howe and guitarist Chris Corner, even had to convert  singer Kelli Dayton to "electronica" before embarking on their mission.

"I wasn't very thrilled about working with samplers when I joined up with them," a cheerful Dayton admits recently from a tour-stop in Hoboken, N.J. Sneaker Pimps play a free show at the Horseshoe tonight along with Junior Relaxer -- a.k.a. King Cobb Steelie -- and The Album Review Shannon Lyon Pop Explosion.

"I came from a kind of punk and indie rock background and I didn't know very much about electronic music," Dayton adds. "But Chris is a very good guitarist and Liam can play piano. That broke down a lot of barriers that I'd put up myself, really. Now we've all sort of overlapped in our tastes."

It's come in handy for the Sneaker Pimps' current North American tour.

"America's idea of electro and dance is so very different from the English hold on it," says Dayton.
"It's quite refreshing to be in America as electro stuff starts to catch on, but at the same time, we see
ourselves as a permanent thing made up of many elements and we know that when the fuss dies down a bit we won't just be making retro music."

According to Dayton, her first collaboration with Howe and Corner two years ago was meant to be a one-off experiment. "We weren't even a band as such," the 22-year-old singer says. "We just met each other through other bands and decided to work together. It was very, very easy. I would just go up on weekends to their bedroom studio. We were under very little pressure." The band were "amazed" when Virgin Records took interest in their demos. They even had to scramble for a
name, settling on Sneaker Pimps when they learned that that was what the Beastie Boys used to call a team of lackeys they paid to locate rare shoes for them. Virgin liked what they heard and recently picked up the band's debut album, Becoming X, after it first saw the light of day last year on the British indie label One Little Indian -- once home to Bjork.

The album is highlighted by the ethereal soul of 6 Underground and the infectious Tesko Suicide -- which sounds a bit like the B-52's being shoved through the techno-rock grinder. Dayton adds a bright pop dimension to the songs and provides Sneaker Pimps with a voice. She regrets the fact that she didn't write the lyrics, though they seem custom fit for her.

"I couldn't have sung them if I'd known I'd be doing it for the next two-and-a-half years," she says, laughing. "I wouldn't have agreed to do that. I'd never actually sung anyone else's lyrics but my own before. But, because it was an experiment, I invested a lot of emotion. I was quite happy to put myself through that in the hope that I'd become a better singer.

"I've been writing stuff, and we all collaborate together now. But sometimes it's nice to be able to just concentrate on singing without worrying about personal expression."
 
 

Sneaker Pimps too busy to breathe
Thursday, April 24, 1997
By RICHARD JOHN

Jam! Showbiz! Watch out for an explosion of Sneaker Pimp activity in the near future.

Currently making the rounds promoting their debut album, "Becoming X", guitarist Chris Corner admits that the future's so bright, they've got to turn down requests.

"Kelli (Dayton, the band's vocalist) is doing a couple of tracks with Bryan Ferry," he says. "We were asked to do some drum programming or something like that - which we turned down - we don't have time to do our stuff."

The band - named from a term coined by the Beastie Boys to describe an individual they hire to seek out vintage running shows - are so busy, they've barely got time to breathe. "I need a vacation", offers Corner early into the telephone interview.

Corner and fellow Pimp Liam Howe, also known as the production crew Line of Flight, are equally inundated with activity. Work in the pipe line includes a collaboration with Neneh Cherry, "something for the new Star Wars film....", and maybe even a Bjork remix.

Star Wars!?

"It's a little hush hush ... it may not even happen," Corner explains. "I think they're going to give us some parts and we'll just mess around with them and try to produce something interesting."

The Pimps are currently touring North America in support of "Becoming X", and will be coming to Canada late April. It will be Corner's first visit to our home and native land.

"I hear it's very big," he says. "I'm looking forward to it, more so, I think than a lot of places in America. We've been to a few places here that we really haven't enjoyed. Kelli's boyfriend is Canadian, so she's really excited, she can't wait."

They're also riding high in the charts both home and abroad. And looking for their own Sneaker Pimp - "there's still a vacancy for that, so if anyone wants a job, start applying." The band also appeared on THE soundtrack of the year, "The Saint".

"It's brilliant ... we're really excited about (the soundtrack)," Corner says. "We couldn't quite see why they wanted to use that particular track (6 Underground) and how it fit into the script or whatever, but the exposure was brilliant, slap bang in the middle of the film, it's love scene... we got the longest play in it. We played at the premiere in LA. The album's a lot better than the actual film."

With so much on their plate, Corner admits that the second Pimp record is on the backburner until the end of the year. "Doing our own stuff is not in the near future. Touring takes up so much time. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll get to work on the second album." The album "Becoming X" and singles Spin Spin Sugar, 6 Underground and Tesko Suicide are all available on Clean Up/Virgin Records.