Interview with Noko of Apollo 440

Apollo 440

Interview with Noko of Apollo 440

Apollo 440 are an English musical band formed in 1990 in Liverpool by brothers Trevor and Howard Gray with fellow Liverpudlians Noko and James Gardner, although Gardner left after the recording of the first album. All members sing and add a proufusion of samples, electronics and computer-based sounds.

Reporter: When was the first time when you got paid for playing music ? You have a really long career, how do you look upon your begginings?

Noko: Yeah, we’ve seen a few cultural waves come and go since we started in 1990.

Personally, the first time I got paid for playing music was when I was 15 and was selling my first acoustic guitar through an advert in the local paper, The Liverpool Echo, to get the money to buy my first electric.

A woman came round to buy it and said she wouldn’t buy it unless I played her a song on it for her! – I played “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath really badly because the guitar was a piece of shit with a really high action. She still bought the guitar.

Reporter: What’s your best song? And the one you feel the least happy about?

Noko: Good question – though they’re totally different aesthetically, both “Stop The Rock” (for its euphoric dumbness and sheer breadth of post-modern reference) and “Pain In Any Language”(for it’s languid beauty) are both immaculately realised and I couldn’t imagine them any other way.

Reporter: Why you don’t want to talk about dub?

Noko: We do want to talk about dub! – all of the time – The principles of deconstruction/reconstruction and generally messing about with the bits of things, changing the internal focus and re-contextualising are at the very root of all we hold dear – in music AND otherwise.

Reporter: Your music has lots of cultural, artistic references , for example Duchamp, Bukowski or Baudrillard. Who are your mentors and what inspires you most?

Noko: You have to ask yourself – who would you rather party with out of those guys – I reckon Duchamp would be the most fun! But I have a love/hate relationship with Duchamp – in some ways all the problems we have as artists stem from the position he first mapped out.

At best, the idea of art being a matter of contextual definition is liberating and exhilarating; at worst, everything is one big joke. The stranglehold that glib conceptual art has had over the visual art scene for the last 50 years is entirely his fault!

Reporter: Do you see music as entertainment or as a cultural act?

Noko: Obviously both – it’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice!

Reporter: What do you like most – remixing or making music?

Noko: A lot of the appeal of remixing other people’s music has gone for me as technology has made it much easier for everyone to do it themselves.

Having said that, there’s something very satisfying and exciting about re-contextualising some hidden greatness in someone’s work and showing them a hitherto undiscovered path to beauty.

We tend to keep all our best remixing tricks for our own music these days

Reporter: How do you define Apollo 440 aestethtics or philosophy ? What do you believe in?

Noko: Absolutely everything AND absolutely nothing – in roughly equal measures.

Reporter: You released only four albums in almost 18 years. How come? What’s the concept of the next album, if you can tell us?

Noko: Sorry, we get up far too late. We’ll try and speed it up a bit in future.

The next album is called “The Future’s What It Used To Be”- the concept kind of speaks for itself.