Q: The first question is about new music.  Who’s doing it for you at the moment?

Mike – Theophilus London is a friend of mine and I love his music.  It’s melodic hip-hop from a real personality.  I’m a fan of pop personalities and he certainly has one.  He came out of Brooklyn, has a great stage presence and I think he’s going to go a long way.  It’s exciting to see him at this stage in his career.

Jeff – Fanfarlo is a personal favourite– I’d always heard their name around, but the first time I saw them was at Vibe Bar, London.  I was blown away by them – they had a total Brian Eno/David Byrne, kinda Talking Heads theme going on.  I thought they were brilliant

Q: It sounds like you guys get a lot of great opportunities to see live shows on tour. Are there places on the map mean a lot to you from a musical perspective?

Jeff – Red Bank New Jersey, because in ‘97 when I was in high school, Ari Katz who’s the singer of a punk group called Lifetime opened up a record shop called Black Katz.  So I used to go down there when I was a little fat kid, about 12 and I would talk to him about records and he’d pitch new stuff to me and because I used to be a fan of his I’d be kind of star struck

Q – Can you still have that kind of experience in America?  Because unfortunately Independent record stores in the UK have largely disappeared

Jeff – Well that place is a beauty salon now. But that wasn’t so much to do with how the record industry was going it was because where is was taxes were going through the roof and forcing people to move out

Michael – In Harvard Square there’s a number of record shops that order from distributors who are overlooked by everyone else so you can get everything. Also Boston has a lot of good record collectors who digitise stuff and bring it to these stores

Q – Do you guys collect music to use in your production?

Michael – We did very little sampling on the new record.  For instance we’d drag an MP3 into a sampler and create a synthesiser out of it, but only because I didn’t have any synthesiser programmes, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that sampling.  Also, we were advised against sampling, but there is Mary ‘O Hara on Sleepy Head, that was the first time I ever used a sample. It was a little Kanye of me.

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