“It’s always
been more spontaneous than with the Banshees”
says Budgie about The Creatures. Speaking from his home
in the South West of France, where he has lived for
some time with Siouxsie, drummer Budgie explains the
drive behind the band. “I think we still have
the same enthusiasm when we record as there was at the
beginning with the Banshees. In the early days, we were
all exited about what we were doing, but with time,
some people loose that or the motivation is different.
Siouxsie and I still have the same need to create music”.
The Creatures were never meant to become a project
in its own right for Siouxsie And The Banshees vocalist
Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie. It all started with
a track recorded during the sessions for the Juju
album with the Banshees in the early eighties. “We
just had a couple of tracks that were quite different
from what we’d been working on with the band,
and there was no plans to include them on the album
we were recording at the time, so Siouxsie and I decided
to release them as a single. There were no plans for
it to become something regular or anything. It wasn’t
planned.” Released in 1981, the Wild Things
EP, taking its title from writer and illustrator Maurice
Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, which
contained lead track Mad Eye Screamer, introduced
the Creatures sound, built around Budgie’s tribal
drumming and Siouxsie’s unmistakable voice, with
Mike Hedges on production duties. They returned two
years later with the Right Now single and the
Feast album, recorded in Hawaii. “We
were looking for somewhere to record, and Hawaii seemed
like the right place, so we flew there and we recorded
the album in two weeks.” The album further explored
the percussive nature of the pair’s musical inspiration,
adding some indigenous sonic elements to emphasise the
tribal nature of the pair’s music. “It makes
me realise how far we’ve come from when I listen
to Feast now. How Siouxsie’s voice and singing
have evolved, and how my drumming has changed as well.”
Following the release of Feast, Siouxsie and
Budgie returned to their main project with the Banshees,
and it would take Budgie and Siouxsie over six years
to revive The Creatures. “We did four albums with
the Banshees, and I think that after the Peepshow
tour, we all needed a break. It’d been a really
intense five or six years. Siouxsie and I went away,
drove around Spain for some time trying to find somewhere
to record, and eventually put Boomerang together”.
The album, released in 1990, following the Fury
Eyes and Standing There singles, showed
The Creatures experimenting with a more subtle sound.
The drums were still integrant part of the Creatures
sound, but this time round, the songs featured a more
varied use of instruments, with marimbas being given
more importance, and brass and accordions providing
a calmer, more settled ambience, perhaps best encapsulated
by the beautiful cover shots by Anton Corbjin. Produced
once again by Mike Hedges, Boomerang was taking,
as Feast before it, full advantage of the recording
environment.
After the Banshees officially called it a day in 1996,
The Creatures became Budgie’s and Siouxsie’s
main project. “For the first time, we could devote
all our time to The Creatures. We had to continue to
make music, and it was natural to come back to The Creatures.”
This album proved determinant in the future of the project,
as Polydor had dropped the band. “We still had
the support of Geffen in the US, but we had to find
another label to release our material elsewhere. We
recorded Anima Animus and went to find a label,
but it proved a lot more difficult and time consuming
than we expected. It is like everything else, things
take time.” Then, Budgie met Doug Hart. “He
came to me and said that he wanted to start a record
label. I went to our management company, but it was
not what they wanted us to do. Anyway, we decided to
go with Doug, and we started Sioux Records, but once
again, things took quite some time to come together.
We had the album ready, and it was quite hard not to
be able to release it straight away.” Hart was
also influential in what the third Creatures album would
sound like, and even more pivotal in the Hybrids
remix project. “Doug was releasing all these really
cool stuff, like Black Dog or Icarus that I’d
never heard of, and that really influenced the way we
worked on the album. He lent this album from Juno Reactor,
and I remember driving around at night with this massive
sound blasting out of the speakers. I didn’t want
the night to end”. Anima Animus denoted
quite a change of direction for The Creatures. For the
first time, the voice/drums equation was replaced by
a far more technologically advanced sound, full of post-industrial
tinges. After the tribal inspiration behind Feast
and the Hispanic colorations of Boomerang,
Anima Animus reflected the modernity of England,
the US and France where the album was conceived. Although
Budgie’s drumming was still integrant part of
the compositions, especially on tracks such are Turn
Me On, Make It Mine or Prettiest Thing,
the multiple layers of electronic sounds gave the pair’s
music a far more contemporary twist. “It was not
the kind of things that our fans would necessarily listen
to. It was like we were bringing something new to them.
Recently, Siouxsie co-wrote a track with Basement Jaxx,
on which she does vocals as well, and now some of our
fans are buying the Basement Jaxx album”. At the
same time, Budgie got quite involved in the development
of the band’s website, and it was a chance for
The Creatures to give something back to their audience.
“We have this art fanzine called Gifthorse which
is something very different, and we also put a few website
albums out, like live stuff. It gives us a chance to
get closer to our audience as well, which is great.
We can exchange a lot more this way”.
Fast-forward to 2002 and the end of the Seven Year
Itch world Banshees tour. “It was like putting
the last nail in the coffin with the Banshees in some
ways. When we finished the 7YI tour, in 2002,
the whole band left Japan, leaving Siouxsie and I alone
over there, and the next day, we went in the studio
with a lot of people we didn’t know. It felt like
it was all new, and we recorded the bulk of the new
album in about an hour and a half. It was all very spontaneous,
very organic.” Marking a return to the original
sound of The Creatures, Hái! also marks
the beginning of a new area for the band. Although they
were already responsible for most of the production
on Anima Animus, it is the first time that
they were fully in control of their work. “We
don’t consciously split the work between the two
of us, but this time Siouxsie wrote all the lyrics and
I dealt with the production and everything that goes
with it. She stopped me from going overboard with the
production, like trying things. When you’ve got
all these machines and computers, it is easy to go too
far. She really kept me focused, which was great. Plus
this time, we didn’t have to worry about the album
coming out. All the structure was in place, so it was
a far more comfortable situation to be in”. The
album was recorded with ex-Kodo taiko drummer Leonard
Eto. The basis for the nine tracks on offer were recorded
during drum improvisations recorded in Tokyo, with Siouxsie
effectively writing lyrics and melodies when the pair
returned to their home in France. As if fascinated by
the synergy between Eto and Budgie, Siouxsie seems to
almost take a back sit at times on this album, often
resorting to incantations to give definition to the
compositions, especially on some of the more eruptive
tracks. When the mood is more reflective, on the second
half of the album, her voice becomes the main focal
point, with songs such as Imagoró or
Tourniquet showing The Creatures at their most
subdued and introvert.
Twenty years after they first appeared as The Creatures,
Siouxsie and Budgie still manage to retain the essence
of their original sound, while allowing for new elements
to come and colour their compositions. Intrinsincly
linked to the recording environment, the music of The
Creatures offers an oblique vision of the world.
Telephone interview 29 October 2003.
Thank you to Budgie and Ian. |
