Sometimes it’s better to not be too serious. That’s why we’ve introduced a new game during our OFF Festival interviews. We’ve interviewed some bands as always – doing a ton of research, preparing and being serious. And some we presented to our lottery – where they drew their questions from a box. Some of those were funny, some stupid, provocative, etc. and some were very serious and deep. We did four of those funny interviews and at some point in each one, someone from the band spoke the magical words – „This is Fun!” giving the name to our new series. The first people that we had pleasure to play with were Superorganism’s B [backing vocals] and Harry [guitar]. Check it out!
[MOŻESZ TO TEŻ PRZECZYTAĆ PO POLSKU]
Do you have any strict rules whilst on the road that help you go along without any fights?
Harry: I think for me, it’s: “Spend as much time away from the big group of people as possible”. We’ve got seven people in the band and four of crew, so it’s eleven of us on the road living together in the bus all the time for months. That can drive me a little bit insane, so a strict rule for me is just to anytime I can get any amount of time for myself to sit in, like, noise cancelling headphones for example or something like that.
B: I think – sleep. We have to have the right amount of sleep so that no-one gets grumpy and also I think… it’s going off from what you said – it’s good when we choose where to eat dinner, because not all restaurants can fit eleven people at once. You have to just go off on your own if you need to, otherwise there will be fights, because people get hungry and angry.
Harry: Oh yeah, this morning for example… We played at a festival last night. We got back to our hotel at 1:40 and then we got picked up again at 3 AM to fly here. So by the time we arrived here in our hotel, everyone had, like, one hour of sleep and in the lobby we were all like: “DON’T TALK TO ME. I WILL SNAP YOUR HEAD OFF”. But then everyone had a bunch of sleep.
Did you have any other ideas for the name of your band?
B: Man, it feels like a long time ago (laughs)
Harry: To be honest – no, because when we put the project together, we weren’t sure that it’s going to be a band. It’s not like: “Ok, we’re already a band. let’s think of a name”. It was more like… we decided to make a song and that was “Something For Your M.I.N.D.” – that was the first song we did. And at that point we kinda drawn in eight different people – I remember me and Emily [Mark Turner, synths] and one of the other guys in the band were chatting. We used to be working day jobs online about it. We’ve been talking about the interconnectivity of the Internet, of human society as a whole, of nature and stuff and it kinda guided the idea of: “Hey, why don’t we have 8 different people in this new project that we were coming up with. We might as well make it a bunch of good artists and bring us all together, rather than be just like me and you and calling ourselves a band. Let’s get other people and all these other perspectives in. It will all be interconnected and we will be like… what’s the other word for that?” And we were like: “Superorganism”! We were just shocked that no-one else had already taken that name.
B: And everyone was really into it. It’s weirdly simple. No fighting about it
Harry: It all made sense. It totally suited the whole ethos of the project.
Name few bands that fans of your music should know.
B: Ok, so maybe some obscure ones… The band that i really, really like is called The Go-Betweens from Australia and they are a band that a lot of people around the world might not know. We’ve got some friends in the band called The Salad Boys, which have amazing songs. I recommend people checking them out.
Harry: What else… I’m struggling with thinking.
B: It doesn’t need to be obscure.
Harry: Well, I guess that you should probably be well-acquainted with The Beatles (laughs). If you’re not… If you’re into Superorganism, just check that out! I swear you’ll like it. “Magical Mystery Tour” – that’s basically the whole idea behind our band, you know?
B: Oh, and Tove Styrke. She’s from Sweden. She’s got an amazing album that came out a couple of years ago that a lot of us really love. She could do with some more fans, I recon.
The biggest fuckup in your career.
Harry: For me, it’s not really anything I would put my finger on as being a major fuckup. We’ve actually had really good luck with this project. It’s got from strength to strength and it’s got more popular without us really doing too much to control it, but I think for me the one thing… the biggest thing I’ve learned on this first album is that anytime you don’t have control over a situation, it gets decided for you. It’s not a fuckup as such but it’s one of the things where you don’t have idea how to do one certain thing, like, i don’t know – tour poster… If we didn’t have our tour posters sorted, then our manager would sort it for us. And it’s not necessarily going to be exactly what I would have wanted. So it’s not a fuckup, but it’s something I’ve learned that you have to be…
B: … as involved as you can.
Harry: In every area. We had one point where we were presented with like… I don’t mean this is a diss on anyone – I’ve got to do that as a disclaimer (laughs)… At one point we had merch being pitched to us by a merch company and it was fine, but it got way out of hand. We were like: “Some of this is so far off base”. So we had to go like: “No! I’m sorry but these designs are crap” and then do some designs ourselves. It’s not a fuckup.
B: Yeah, preventing fuckups by being involved.
You’re organising a festival. Choose your lineup. (As this is so close to one of the previous questions, you can draw another one)
Harry: Well, I think I’m going to pick a handful of things that I’ve seen in a last couple of years that blew my mind. That’s Kendrick Lamar – saw him at O2 last year or something and it was amazing. I saw Gorillaz in Margate, down in the south of England. Just an incredible show.
B: Kanye West!
Harry: Oh yeah, I love Kanye West. Definitely there has to be a Kanye West show. There we go! That’s three big headliners.
B: And The Strokes! Because I’ve never seen The Strokes and they’re one of my favorite bands.
What is the thing that you fight about the most while you’re on the road?
Harry: So, before the end of the last year about the half of the band was vegetarian and about half of the band wasn’t…
B: It comes with what we were talking before – the restaurants.
Harry: Yeah, we kept on having clashes where people were like…
B: Really hungry and they wanted different food…
Harry: We go somewhere, like, I’ve been in Japan and I do eat meat, so I was like: “Hell yeah let’s go get some ramen” and the vegetarians were like: “Ooooh, I just want to find some vegetarian cafe…” And I was like: “Fuck!”. But in the end the bunch of people who were vegetarian have now been turned to the dark side. We went to Mexico and they just couldn’t resist the tacos and Soul [backing vocals] was vegetarian until we went back to Korea. He’s from Korea and we were there in february and his aunt brought this korean fried chicken and it’s like his weakspot… like a cryptonite or something. He gave up his vegetarianism to eat that korean fried chicken.
B: Not a serious fight at all.
What is your favorite music video and why?
B: I really like… I don’t know if you know the Pavement song – “Carrot Rope”… It has a hilarious video where they are wearing those yellow raincoats and dancing around. It’s so simple and makes me very happy to watch it.
Harry: It’s just cute, isn’t it? I think for me it’s kinda similar thing but maybe “Buddy Holly” by Weezer… When it came on TV when I was a kid, I was like: “Oh my god, this is so cool. These guys are such nerds and this is so cool”.
What band in your opinion is overrated?
Harry: OH! OVERRATED!
B: Spicy question! (laughs) It should be someone really big.
Harry: I’m not sure if I really believe in that so much. I think the things tend to get rated about what they deserve. It’s a weird thing – it might not be to my taste, but…
B: … but you can’t say it’s overrated.
Harry: But for example, I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Twenty One Pilots, it’s not to my taste but…
B: … but you have to be happy for their success.
Harry: Yeah, I don’t have a problem with this.
B: Yeah, we won’t give you an example here (laughs). We’re too kind.
Harry: Yeah, sorry (laughs).
Check out our other interviews – HERE!