What with Brian Placebo wearing their ‘Stunt Girl’ T shirt at every opportunity and the fact that they might actually release a second album one of these days, life is looking up for the original Scottish rock band. Ben, Nathan and Drew spoke to the band and Ben wrote it up.
A.C Acoustics have been around for ages. We interviewed them first about two years ago but since then they have managed to release just one single, ‘Stunt Girl’, and that was just after last summer. It’s a shame because they could have been the first Scottish band to make it big paving the way for such indie sensations as Urusei Yatsura, bis and Geneva but instead they’ve been suffering record company and contract hassle.
They are made up of Paul Campion (guitar and vocals), Caz Riley (bass), Dave Gormley (drums) and Mark Raine (lead guitar) and they produce a sound which combines fierce guitar noise with acute melodies. It’s a sound which obviously owes debts to the American underground scene but has an original twist.
However, the first thing that needs to be sorted out is their minimal output for two years, “They actually put us in cryogenic storage to wait for the Britpop shite to die down and then to come back with another killer single.” Caz comments. However Mark is slightly more helpful, “ Our record company went off Alternative Tentacles and was bought by One Little Indian so it was like a year and a half of record contracts being sorted out. So that’s what took so long and of course during that time we couldn’t release anything because we were in cryogenic storage.”
However, in that time they have managed to record an album but then they decided it wasn’t good enough and so re-recorded it and generally pissed off their record company, “[We re-recorded it because it was] Something to do and because it really fucks off your record company if you do that sort of thing and it’s nice to keep them in some sort of emotional comedown.” Paul points out.
“You see, they actually gave us too much money and we didn’t want to record it for that amount of money so we decided to waste it the first time round then record it for a couple of grand the second time.” Dave adds.
“Because we recorded the album when all this contract shit was going on”, Says Paul, “ it was a bit of a grim, bleak, dark kind of album. It was quite sparse and shit so what we decided, well actually we were only meant to re-record a couple of tracks and they went really well so we thought fuck it we’ll do them all. Which we did in about seven days actually. So, then ‘Stunt Girl’ came out which did pretty well and stuff. At least in T shirts terms if not anything else. No, it got shit loads of radioplay and stuff which was good as we’d been worried as when we first started we had loads of support from Radio 1 with Peel and evening session and shit and we thought we might have lost that vibration in our two years of silence but it seems to have come back and then some. So, that’s nice.”
‘Stunt Girl’ was a bit of a winner for A.C Acoustics as as well as being a blinding single the T shirt has then been worn by Brian Molko of Placebo on Top Of The Pops and in Melody Maker, giving the band just a little bit of publicity. This is then the second tour the band have done with Placebo, so they must be good friends? “They’re a bunch of fucking cunts and we hate them.”, Paul says, “No, nothing could be further from the truth. We toured with Placebo before. It was Placebo and a band called Linoleum and we had a fucking brilliant tour with them and became good friends and so when this tour came up they asked us and it’s been a pleasure. They’re a really fucking great band. They have supported us in a way that nobody’s ever ... (pause for dramatic effect) supported us before. The ‘Stunt Girl’ T shirt and stuff is quite a funny phenomenon. Brian had it on on Top Of the Pops and in Melody Maker and shit and I think as a result of that we’re selling more T shirts than ever. I don’t think that’s what he intended but yeah, they’re great friends and a great band and I could happily tour with them for a million years.”
Touring at the moment with Placebo and dEUS, they are showing themselves the equals of both the Belgium art rock gods and the newest best new band in Britain. All three groups have an exciting twist on the notion of what rock music should be about and it’s a really stunning line up. “I think all three bands do really exciting things with guitars.”, remarks Paul on the similarities between the bands, “It’s not just like a ‘guitar’ bill. It’s an ‘interesting guitar’ bill. Apart from maybe if you added the Flaming Lips and Girls Against Boys to this tour then it would be the fucking greatest show on earth. So, three out of five ain’t bad.” This comment is then followed by an argument about how all three bands also do interesting things with percussion and which is sadder; having a conversation about things percussive or comparing the flexibilty of plectrums.
However, the most exciting thing for the band is the fact that there new single, ‘I Messiah, Am Jailer’, is about to be released and that once their album has been mixed they might finally be able to get some of that success that their early reviews promised. The single is outstanding and from their live set it sounds as if the album will be pretty special as well. Definitely one to watch.
A.C. Acoustics were talking to Ben, in March 1997.