A Conversation with Fanfarlo’s Leon Beckenham – HuffPost 4.23.12

Mike Ragogna: Let’s start out with the latest album. “Replicate” was a song that you released as a download for the project. What’s the story behind “Replicate?”

Leon Beckenham: Mostly to reflect the sort of music that we had been listening too, really. We slowly shifted away from that sort of folky, orchestral sound into something a bit more sparse, more spare, more minimal. We’ve all been listening to quite a lot of classical music–Steve Reich, that sort of thing–so that idea of repetition was something that we were really keen to explore. That is pretty much what “Replicate” was born out of. We had ambitions because the first album was quite lush and orchestral, so we made a conscious effort initially to try to get away from that and do something completely new. I think it’s fair to say the sound you hear in “Replicate” came out of that conscious desire to move things in a different direction. However, it’s probably not typical of the album because I think we actually, soon enough, realized that we fall into the lush sound, the orchestrated sound, very easily, and maybe it’s more part of who we are, it’s more natural for us to do. I think “Replicate” was more an experiment into what will happen if we pull things back and make things more minimal, but it didn’t feel that that was the natural way to go for the rest of the album.

MR: Now, we’re talking about the album Rooms Filled With Light. How would you sum up that album?

LB: It’s tricky because it’s a product of five musicians working together. We don’t all have the same idea of what we’re trying to do and it’s often a case of growing ideas together, throwing some out, including some, it’s a constant debate often, constant argument. For me, it’s basically a push towards more electronic sounds–more edgy, angular sounds–while not losing the good pop melody and the pop aspect of it–the hooks, the dance-ability, and the hum-ability. Still, we did want something a little edgier, a bit less twee.

MR: How do you guys get together and create the compositions which then become recordings?

LB: Well, it starts with Simon (Balthazar). He’s the songwriter. He comes into a rehearsal room with a new song and he’ll play it to us. We’ll just build on that, really. It’s been an interesting transition between the two albums because with the first one, so many of the songs came fully formed because he’d been working on them. He had pretty much every layout already worked out, and it was just a case of us tinkering with that. With this album, because we’re a fully formed band from the inception of this album, he would just come with the bones of a song, lyrics, melody, and chords, and then we would all get a chance to bring our own ideas to it. Obviously, we would just play through it and add bits, try to include our bits, and if they work, they work. There’s discussion as to whether things work or not, and there was always a lot more thrown away than was used in the actual songs. Whatever instrument we play tends to be the parts that you hear in the album that we create ourselves. That tends to be how it works–the horn parts will come from me, the bass riffs from Justin the bassist. Simon is the source of the songs, but they often go through many, many versions and many, many variations before the final one.

MR: When you’re bringing the keyboards into the mix, what’s your approach? During the process, are you conscious of who you are as a band with its own identity or is it just whatever is appropriate for the song?

LB: I think that’s the tricky question, isn’t it? We asked ourselves the question before we started recording this album. Who are we? What sort of band do we want to be? Obviously, we don’t always agree on that, but we do have a general consensus. How that translates into the actual composition of songs is interesting because something can sound good, but then the question that pops up becomes is this us now or is this old Fanfarlo. It may sound good to us, but is this the direction that we want to go? There’s very much that constant dialog between what may sound good to the ear and this idea of the direction we’re going. Sometimes they dovetail beautifully, sometimes there’s a beautiful keyboard that just really seems to be heading the right direction. And then there can be something else where it sounds great, but it’s a little bit in the wrong direction, so there is that constant dialog between that.

MR: And of course, there are influences. Who were some of your musical influences?

LB: Being a horn player, Miles Davis is a hero of mine. I feel like I got the opportunity to use his sound a little bit more, you can hear more muted trumpet and landscape stuff. It’s hard to say what else. I’ve been trained to play with layers of sound a lot more, layer of horns, which Miles Davis did in some of his later stuff. I was a huge fan of Tutu back in the day, that’s electro. I actually started listening to it again before we recorded this album to see how well it held up. It is very “of its time,” but I still think there are some amazing trumpet sounds in it, so I think I had that sort of sound in mind when I approached it.

MR: What’s your favorite Miles album? Would it be Tutu or would it be something likeBitches Brew or Kind Of Blue or…?

LB: Kind Of Blue stands out for me. That was one that first got me into it, his sound.Sketches Of Spain as well. For me, you listen to it and you were there, you can see the landscape, it’s incredible. Any of his stuff, it does it for me. I have a love for Spain anyways, so Sketches Of Spain. Kind of Blue also. It’s difficult, depends on my mood.

MR: When everybody is together and your guys are tossing about ideas in general for the band, not just for the creative element, do you talk about the evolution of the band? Is it a philosophical thing in addition to it naturally just evolving?

LB: I think it’s a combination of the two. I think as a band we talk things through a little bit too much. It has been said by people we work with, “You overanalyze, everything goes to committee and we discuss, discuss, discuss.” We realize that makes you miss out. With our great producer, Ben Allen, he’s turned around and said that we talk through things more than any band I’ve worked with. I don’t know if that’s because we have quite a strong democratic philosophy behind creating our music or maybe we’re indecisive, I don’t know. But we do talk things through maybe more than we should. We should maybe just get on with it a little more.

MR: Which nicely brings us to the question what advice might you have for new artists?

LB: That’s a tricky one. I guess just keep plugging away and getting the music heard has to be the priority. Obviously, with all the music technologies, it’s increasingly a writer’s and cacophonist’s landscape. There are so many new artists that have platforms, but I think it’s just a case of plugging away, plugging, plugging away. Very few artists have that big break anymore. Now it just seems to be putting in the legwork for each gig you do, each radio session you do. For each person who hears the music, you’re making that advance, even if just a tiny increment… It’s a marathon not a sprint. You just have to keep plugging away.

MR: Giving advice to Fanfarlo, what is the biggest challenge for you guys? What is it that you guys need right now?

LB: I guess it’s always a case of where to go from here. I think for us as well, it’s when do we start thinking about new material, because we’ve only just started really touring this album. I know with the first album, we self-released it first and toured with it, then got signed, then toured forever. I think by the end of that, we were a little bit jaded, because we’d played the songs thousands of times, as any band does on an extensive tour. I think personally, I would like to start working on new material before that actually happens. Fingers crossed, the second album will be as big a success or more so than the first one. We will be having offers to tour here and tour there, come back to the States. Hopefully, those offers will come up and it’s knowing when to say “enough.” We love touring, for me especially. It’s one of the best things about being with the band, to perform things and traveling. If those requests keep coming in, it’s difficult to say, “Okay, now it’s time to stop doing this thing that we love and actually start with the hard work of recording songs.” As fun as that is, it’s definitely work compared to life on the road.

MR: In addition to touring and writing for the next album, what’s in the future for Fanfarlo?

LB: It’s difficult, it’s so up in the air. You discuss and you try to plan as much as you can. We’ve got another six weeks on the road in the US, we’ve got a few days off, then we’ve got a few weeks into Europe, and then summer festivals. By then, so much is going to be dependent on how well the album is being received and picked up that it’s really difficult to plan that far ahead because we’re so dependent on these things that are pretty much out of our control–i.e. how much people like the album. It’s somewhat going to be based on that.

MR: Thank you very much for your time, Leon.

LB: Thanks for having me.

Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger