Music

Internet Forever

John Rogers | Friday 8 June, 2012 14:10

Internet Forever have always been a strange and wonderful band.

They started as a duo: a talented, super-niche solo artist and scene-star with pop aspirations called Laura Wolf, and Heartbeeps, aka Craig Nunn, a lo-fi musician and photographer with a knack for eye-catching imagery and ear-catching songs. Their first demo of “Break Bones” illustrated both a striking capacity for pop songwriting, and a sensibility that redefined the lower limits of lo-fi. It swept the blogsphere like wildfire, right up the the heady heights of Pitchfork. “That version of Break Bones was all we could manage with our mad skills at the time,” says Craig. “It’s not like we were intentionally part of a lo-fi scene. I think we were always destined to make a straight-up pop record.”

With that in mind, the band set to work (torturously slowly, for their fans) on a debut album. With acclaimed producers Dreamtrak and James Rutledge behind the desk, working alongside the band’s final recruit and musical fulcrum Chris Alcock, they recorded a set of songs that reflects the crackle and hiss of those lo-fi roots, but with enough clarity and sheen that the songs wouldn’t sound out of place on daytime radio.

“We were lucky enough to have James Rutledge record a version of our song Break Bones,” says Laura, “and when we heard it we all stepped back totally amazed at what he’d created. He had raised the game entirely. After hearing that, we could never go back to what we were doing before.”

The band’s recent album party at the Old Blue Last reflected this sense of growing ambition, featuring a expanded onstage lineup, including Oli Dreamtrak himself on keys and additional brass and woodwind musicians.

“In my opinion, no song, no matter how satisfied anyone involved in creating it is, is ever finished,” explains Chris, also an occasional improv player in Braindead Collective. “Putting together the album launch we were making changes to structures that part of me wishes could be integrated into the album. It’s evolution as opposed to intelligent design – there is no ideal shape to anything.”

The band’s visual world has developed alongside the music. The self-titled vinyl album is adorned by a grainy photograph of a temple, and the record’s stickers bearing a circular pattern that spins perfectly like an endless optical clockwork. “Originally we were going to use the circular designs for the cover too,” says Laura, “but Chris and Craig outvoted me!”

The photograph in question is Craig’s handiwork. “It’s a crop of a photograph I took in Chandigarh in the Punjab,” he explains. “It was taken on colour-slide film that had spent a long time in a hot window somewhere in Rajasthan, which as given it its grainy look. The figures are made of scrap and household objects. They’re part of an open air sculpture park called the Rock Garden which was established in secret by a gardener and is now a government-owned tourist attraction. The designer Tim Green actually suggested it as the cover.”

Internet Forever, Break Bones from Tom Blyth on Vimeo.

The video for Break Bones, conceived and directed by Tom Blyth, is equally striking, featuring Nunn and Alcxxk as an undead mariachi band with Wolf as a UV priestess, interspersed with that circular design grinding like a cosmic gearbox, and a computerised woman climbing a temple. “Tom took it all super seriously and we even had a stylist and on the day of shooting,” smiles Laura. “There were a ridiculous amount of people on set! Every time I moved they brushed my fringe so it looked perfect and I had to wear heels that hurt my feet, having never worn heels before! It was pretty weird.”

“I think it’s pretty fitting to pair a hi-fi video with the definitive hi-fi version of Break Bones, right?” adds Craig.

After a long pause, the album was released on Laura’s own micro-label, Tape Alarm. “I feel like we fell so deeply for music industry tricks of waiting, waiting, waiting for the perfect thing to come along,” she sighs. “We stalled and stalled and tried different things; we were in the development dungeon. In hindsight it all feels like a massive waste of time, but if we hadn’t of done all that, we would have a scrappy lo-fi piece of crap for an album instead of what we have now, which feels like an actual achievement, so maybe it was worth it. “

“I decided to release it myself because I was tired of the waiting,” she continues, “and answering to other people, and running to their schedules. “You can’t take the album to a label until you’ve got a perfect live show.”; “You need x months lead in to a release.” I just thought, screw that; let’s just get it out! I saved 1/3 of my wages for 4 months in order to release it but then we sold so many on pre-order that I didn’t even have to spend that money. We don’t owe anyone anything and whatever we make from selling albums goes straight into our pocket. We don’t have to play shows we don’t want to play, and we all get to keep the day jobs that actually pay our rent. I feel like we won.”

The album sounds like it, too. “Pages Of Books”, like many of these songs, has matured with time – the extra arrangements and and electronic flourishes the song from breathlessly exhilarating to euphoric. A prophetic early blog post said Internet Forever’s demos sounded like “the first rush of new love”, and on these perfect, pulse-racing recordings that sentiment couldn’t more accurate.

So, with the album finally out on their own terms, will the band continue? “I always thought that getting the album out might feel like the end.” says Laura, “but now it’s actually out I don’t feel like that. I never want to play a toilet circuit tour again but I’d like to make some more music. I might suggest we go away for a week or two somewhere and write and record another album. Get it done much quicker!”

Let’s hope so. Internet Forever: forever.

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