computerclub |
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computerclub are four young men from Birmingham, United Kingdom. The
genesis of the band has been as painstaking and gradual as the path to
perfection must inevitably be, but the motherboard sparked into life a
few years back when old schoolfriends Paul Hampton (vocals) and
Jonathan Baker (lead guitar) met over a pint, spilled all about the
tedious, cliché-ridden bands they were stuck in, and decided to send
out a beacon for Birmingham's other inspired musical refugees. Fate was
clearly at work, because three separate leads would point to Stephen
Brookes - a local drummer whose propulsive, metronomic pulse plotted a
new, exciting vector. The foursome completed by bassist Matthew Cross,
the band were complete - but for a name. The group's first choice,
Stella Starr, was stymied a couple of months in by the fact there was
another band called Stella Starr, and they had a full page advert on
the back of The Fly magazine. So instead, Steve suggested the name
computerclub - not as an ironic nod to '80s nerd culture, but as a
gesture of togetherness. "The idea was to build a kind of collective
mentality," explains Paul. "To have all our fans in this club, to make
everyone part of something. The idea of outsiders coming together."
If the tech-friendly name suggests to crazy synthesisers and
fantastical feats of post-production trickery, think again. There's no
hidden peripherals, no synthetic add-ons to computerclub: these four
young men are you classic self-contained unit. "We like making big
sounds, but we'd rather do it with the raw elements that we've got. We
don't want people to come see us live and be all like, oh, it's not as
good as the record, or do what some other band do and get in some
shadow member to play keyboard and not even mention them." |
And while computerclub might yield some inspiration from rock's more
melancholic touchstones - think: The Cure, The Smiths, The Stills -
this is no gloomfest. "Optimism's a good thing," says Paul. "You can
have the same atmospheric feel to those bands and not sing about
killing yourself. That would be contrived, and we're not out to fake
anything." Take the single, 'Snobs', for instance. A prickly,
adrenaline-spiked tale of dancefloor seduction, it feels, if not quite
like the first time, every bit as exciting. "It's all about my
ex-girlfriend who I've been with for four and a half years. Out of the
blue one day she just wanted to end it. I hadn't done anything with my
life, so I spent the next year or so just going out solid. getting
wasted, meeting as many girls as I possibly could." |
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