February 4th saw Warwick University play host to AC ACOUSTICS, one of those 'NME loves them, but who are they and what do they sound like?' bands. Tim and Malcolm went along to find out who they are and what they sound like.

Why is it that every two or three weeks we see in the music press a review of some gig you've done somewhere, but we've never read an interview with you?
Mark (Guitar): That's our record company, is it not? They're keeping the features back for the next album, 'cos they're pretty hard to come by, apparently. It's like you get one, or something.
Dave (Drums): No, you don't. They're waiting for the right time, I mean, you don't just get one, but you don't get loads all at once. It's paced out, so we've got to kind of play it....there's no point doing loads of interviews unless you've got a record out.

It's just that it's a name that is very familiar if you trawl through the live pages of NME or the Maker, but we know absolutely nothing about you.
Paul (Guitar and Vocals): There's not really a lot to know, I mean we're not very interesting people beyond our music. We live in Glasgow and we kind of...live in Glasgow. Go to the pub and that's about it. Go shopping with our lovers, go shopping for our lovers. I've got a bonsai tree, which is nice.
M: I've got a mountain bike, which is like an urban assault vehicle and I cycle about Glasgow at night scaring people. And it's great. Anyway, to answer sensibly, we're doing this headline tour at the moment, which is going to end in about a week, and then we've got a few days off, then we're going out for two weeks on a co-headline tour with Senseless Things, which'll be coming to Coventry University.
Caz (Bass): We're also playing with Chumbawamba at Coventry as well.

They're playing here soon.
C: Maybe it's here we're playing.
D: In other words, we're playing here every day next week! Then the plan is we do another single and then we do the album, because 'Able Treasury' was a mini-album, so next one should be out in the summer.

The Senseless Things slot seems quite a strange coupling. How did that come about?
P: Well, we were down in London, we were doing a thing at Tower Records in London that was broadcast on a live Evening Session and we happened to end up in the pub and they were there. And we were kind of offered the tour, and we didn't entirely....particularly want to do it, so we were offered a joint headline tour. I don't know, they seemed very keen to have us. It's 'cos they must think that we're really cool, or something.

Grasping at credibility, perhaps?
P: Possibly...
M: I wouldn't want to say that, 'cos they've still got their big fan base, you know, still got a lot of people coming to see them, and we've not.
C: They can use us for credibility and we'll steal their fan base. We'll sell their fans our T-shirts.
P: And then everybody'll be happy. And Minxus are opening on that tour, who are a lovely band on Too Pure.

There's a dancier side to some of your music. What sparked that off?
D: We kind of discovered the sampler during the recording of our last single and we thought “we'll have a go at that, that'd be good for a laugh”, not really thinking that it was going to be a work of....genius, like it is! We just realised how easy it was. It's piss easy.
M: But that's not to say it's not good. I mean, we structured the thing and there's art and structure to it...
P: It's just like any other piece of music, really. We're not kind of snobbish indie guitar-type people. It's just something that took our fancy briefly, so we did it. It sounded quite nice, so we used it.
C: We're not afraid of technology.

The Radio One sessions received a lot of critical acclaim.
C: We've done two Peel sessions so far and an Evening Session as well, as well as the live Evening Session for World AIDS Day.
P: I mean basically what happened is that we were at Glasgow Sound City last year, and Christine Bore, who programmed the Evening Session, hated 'Sweatlodge', the first single, so much that it was absolutely banned from being played on the Evening Session. And she came up with Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley to the gig at Sound City. And they liked it. Quite a lot. So they played our record. Quite a lot. It's actually one of their, kind of, singles of the decade, really. Which is nice.

What about the Jesus Lizard support?
C: Our first ever gig in London was a Jesus Lizard gig.
P: He's a very quiet little chap, Mr Yau. He was shit-scared of us. I went into the dressing room and I thought he was going to drink one of our beers and I was like, “OI!”. And he apologised and skulked out. It was like, “I'm really sorry, Paul. 'Cos you guys are from Glasgow and I wouldn't want to mess with you”.

The only interview we've found with you was in a snowboarding magazine.
P: I haven't actually seen that, but he asked me lots of very leading questions. Like he'd written a live review in Melody Maker and it was kind of like journo fantasy of what it's like to be in a band, you know, on stage and everything? It's kind of like “They're standing there in the middle of an electric maelstrom” and all this kind of stuff. So when he interviewed me for that magazine he was like, “So, Paul, what's it like being on stage?” and I was like, “When it's good I can't really remember and when it's bad it's embarrassing”. And he's like “Yeah, but is it kind of, electric? Like an electric maelstrom?” And it's not like that at all. Like I say, when it's shit it's very embarrassing and when it's good you don't really think about it.
D: You always remember the bad points, but the good ones just go as soon as they happen. I have a lot of bad ones.
P: I get people throwing things at me. It's usually the rest of the band. Today we even had the resident rugby yahoos yelling abuse from the balcony during our soundcheck, so that was a good sign. Basically, I mean if we were back home, let them be warned, 'cos if they fuck with us at the soundcheck then....
D: They had those sad girls with them as well, with the rugby top that said “Token Totty” on it. Thats sad.
M: Did I tell you about that time...

(There now follows a twenty minute reality breakdown in which AC Acoustics slag off rugby players and everything they stand for. Due to space limitations and the fear of getting the shit kicked out of us, we shall not be printing them, but anyone who fancies a laugh can come round and listen to the tapes)

Erm....snowboarding?
C: We're actually doing a track for a snowboarding video. We gave a track to a windsurfing thing and this time it's snowboarding.
D: Yeah, that was a kind of windsurfing video thing, that's one of our songs that's not yet been put out, 'Can't See Anything', was the background music to all these guys doing really groovy tricks.
P: Personally I think it's vacuous and boring.
M: Snowboarding's brilliant!
P: You kind like of slide down the side of a hill. Big whoopee-do. Your gloves get soaked, your hands go blue...
M: It's exhilarating and it's fresh, man. It's cool.
C: If we strapped you to a snowboard and shoved you down a hill, you'd find it exhilarating, Paul, I can assure you.
P: In fact, that's what it's like being on stage, it's like snowboarding!

You're dead excited about something involving your album and America?
P: Aye! It came out on the twenty-third [January] and they've got this college radio thing in Washington and Seattle..
M: Which has four times the listenership of Radio One...
P: And it went straight in at Number One...
M: Straight in at Number One...
P: Instantly, in fact. So it's a shame Kurt shot himself, because he won't be able to hear it on his local radio station.
D: That's probably why...
M: Couldn't handle the competition...
C: He could see it coming. It's not Number One in the normal charts, though, only in College radio charts.
M: Yeah, but I bet Garth Brooks is shitting himself now.

How come that can happen there, but we can't even buy your records, let alone see them chart?
C: That's something we're still trying to suss out ourselves.
P: The single was indie top three for six weeks or something...
D: It was in the charts for eight weeks..
P: But how it got there I don't know, because you can't buy the fucking records anywhere. This is a common problem with the record....
M: Well, it's not the record company or the distributor's fault...
C: It is the distributor's fault.
M: Yeah, you're right.
C: When it's sold out the first time, it just doesn't go out again. I don't know how it works.
P: It must have been buyable, because it whipped the arse of Gene and stuff like that..
M: At one point it was only Primal Scream that kept it off Number One and we stayed in it for another four weeks and they went straight out.
D: You can get it everywhere in London, so I can only imagine that that's how it managed to stay.
P: But the thing is, there is a mail order thing on the record sleeves...but if you can't get hold of the record in the first place I suppose that's not a lot of use.
C: The single is actually being repackaged and redistributed, because we moaned so much about it.
P: If it's any consolation, we don't have any copies either..
C: My Mum had to buy a copy, that's how tight the record company are...

OK, to finish off, can you sum up the musical experience that is AC Acoustics in no more than three words?
P: Big, bouncy and tentacle-like. That was more than three words.
C: I'd just like to say that he's the only one that's tentacle-like.
P: I like the one that Melody Maker used, with the spelling mistake. “A nosier Teenage Fanclub”.

AC Acoustics were talking to Tim and Malcolm, in January 1995.