To celebrate the art of necroposting, here's an article from October 25th, 2010 for you guys. Think archiving purpose (:
Read the whole article under the cut
Rap-rock: a swear word that no longer applies
* Dan Cairns
* From: The Australian
* October 25, 2010 12:00AM
THE Californian band Linkin Park has, over the years, earned a reputation so scary that writers swap horror stories about interviews with the group.
Tales abound of heavy-handed management, glowering security guards, confiscated mobile phones, one-word answers and confidentiality agreements that stop just short of asking you to sign away your life.
That's going to be unhelpful for any band. For a band synonymous, arguably unfairly, with rap-rock, a genre reviled by many critics, it borders on reckless. Expectations, then, are set pretty low: 30 minutes, if I'm lucky, of frosty face time in this small fortress of a recording complex in Los Angeles, then I'm out.
That script can be thrown away. For starters, Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, one third of a band whose 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, sold more than 20 million copies, smile as they cue up the opening track from their new record, A Thousand Suns. And the realisation that this album is, sonically, one of the most ambitious and haunting of the year is, well, dumbfounding.
Were it by Muse, it would be praised to the skies. There are moments where the noises-off detailing and eccentricity recall the Who's Quadrophenia. It is safe to bet that neither of these observations will be the norm.
"When I started reading reviews at the beginning," says Bennington, the band's singer, "some guy in Seattle basically said I was the antichrist, and that we were the reason the world sucked, and I was like, 'Wow, we must be doing something really good if this guy thinks that.' At that point, I decided, 'I don't really care.' "
Shinoda, the band's rapper and the chief architect of its sound, says: "We're used to being beat up in the press, and to feeling uneasy when we walk in to do an interview. We hold the music so closely, it's so dear to us, that when somebody takes a shot at it we feel like they're taking a shot at us."
Shinoda is disarmingly honest about the conflicts that accompany huge success. Hybrid Theory flew off the shelves, but it also cemented perceptions of the band that, he says, hindered them more than it helped them. Before making the new album, the six-piece sat down to discuss their ambitions for it.
"I remember being really passionate, and saying things like, 'I don't care if nobody buys the record, I don't care if we don't have a single song that can be played on the radio, I'm willing to go completely in the other direction.' "
But life as a major-label artist is rarely that simple, he adds wryly. "I went home afterwards and kind of said to myself, 'If that is actually really true, and we're looking at the record two years from now and it has sold 50,000 copies, whether or not we are comfortable with that, people at large are going to see it as a failure.' Because that's the way it works. I mean, the record label is going to look at us and go, 'You're crazy.' Clearly, if only 50,000 buy it, as opposed to five million, then there's a lot of people out there who are saying, 'We don't like it, can you please do something else?' So I had to kind of get to grips with that."
They were supported in their attempts to square this creative-commercial circle by the uber-producer Rick Rubin, a man who clearly didn't edit his prescriptions. An early version of the new song Blackout provoked a reaction that would have felled many bands. "Rick came in and went, 'That song was awesome when it was on that really great record that came out 10 years ago,' " Bennington says.
Was he right?
"It was a cool-sounding song, but it felt like it had been done before, and done right by somebody else. And we thought, 'Maybe there's a good lesson we've learnt here.' We started thinking, 'We can just play piano, we can go in with an orchestra if we feel like it, we can play banjo and slide guitar, it doesn't f . . king matter.' "
It may matter, though, to fans: something the pair are clearly aware of. Shinoda's description of a recent interview with a metal-magazine writer is instructive. "He walked in, black Dr Martens, black jeans, long hair, piercings in both ears, tattoos. Without being told where the guy was from, I took a look at him and I knew. And we proceeded to have one of the most uncomfortable interviews for, well, for as long as I can remember. It was like being on a bad blind date."
The writer admitted that his favourite Linkin Park album was still Hybrid Theory, and that the new one had left him "confused". Shinoda adds: "The conversation kind of ended with me saying to him, 'Ten years ago, when we made Hybrid Theory, we were looking for a new sound, we were trying to do something that was different, that represented us and was kind of unique, and fresh.' But as time went on, it became less fresh, other bands heard it and thought 'We like that too', and did their own versions. And, to be totally blunt, if other bands can listen to it and do it too, how easy do you think it would be for me to turn around and try to do it again? That would be a lazy record."
"There's a rhyme on the new record," Bennington says, "where Mike goes, 'The blueprint is a gift and a curse / Once you've got a theory of how the thing works / Everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first.' It's really easy, once you figure out how something works, to keep going back to it.
"That's what people like, that's what they're familiar with. But the real challenge is . . . how are you going to create new architecture?"
On A Thousand Suns, Linkin Park has opened up. It's up to the fans now. And, of course, the critics. I think it's a beautiful album, pulling me this way and that, almost beyond genre, experimental, occasionally bonkers, invariably intriguing. Linkin Park, a surly, monosyllabic, control-freakish corporate rap-rock band? You may be in for a surprise.
Linkin Park plays the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, December 3; Burswood Dome, Perth, December 7; Adelaide Entertainment Centre, December 9; Acer Arena, Sydney, December 11 and 15; Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, December 12 and 13.
"When I started reading reviews at the beginning," says Bennington, the band's singer, "some guy in Seattle basically said I was the antichrist, and that we were the reason the world sucked, and I was like, 'Wow, we must be doing something really good if this guy thinks that.' At that point, I decided, 'I don't really care.' "
Shinoda, the band's rapper and the chief architect of its sound, says: "We're used to being beat up in the press, and to feeling uneasy when we walk in to do an interview. We hold the music so closely, it's so dear to us, that when somebody takes a shot at it we feel like they're taking a shot at us."
Read the whole article under the cut
Rap-rock: a swear word that no longer applies
* Dan Cairns
* From: The Australian
* October 25, 2010 12:00AM
THE Californian band Linkin Park has, over the years, earned a reputation so scary that writers swap horror stories about interviews with the group.
Tales abound of heavy-handed management, glowering security guards, confiscated mobile phones, one-word answers and confidentiality agreements that stop just short of asking you to sign away your life.
That's going to be unhelpful for any band. For a band synonymous, arguably unfairly, with rap-rock, a genre reviled by many critics, it borders on reckless. Expectations, then, are set pretty low: 30 minutes, if I'm lucky, of frosty face time in this small fortress of a recording complex in Los Angeles, then I'm out.
That script can be thrown away. For starters, Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, one third of a band whose 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, sold more than 20 million copies, smile as they cue up the opening track from their new record, A Thousand Suns. And the realisation that this album is, sonically, one of the most ambitious and haunting of the year is, well, dumbfounding.
Were it by Muse, it would be praised to the skies. There are moments where the noises-off detailing and eccentricity recall the Who's Quadrophenia. It is safe to bet that neither of these observations will be the norm.
"When I started reading reviews at the beginning," says Bennington, the band's singer, "some guy in Seattle basically said I was the antichrist, and that we were the reason the world sucked, and I was like, 'Wow, we must be doing something really good if this guy thinks that.' At that point, I decided, 'I don't really care.' "
Shinoda, the band's rapper and the chief architect of its sound, says: "We're used to being beat up in the press, and to feeling uneasy when we walk in to do an interview. We hold the music so closely, it's so dear to us, that when somebody takes a shot at it we feel like they're taking a shot at us."
Shinoda is disarmingly honest about the conflicts that accompany huge success. Hybrid Theory flew off the shelves, but it also cemented perceptions of the band that, he says, hindered them more than it helped them. Before making the new album, the six-piece sat down to discuss their ambitions for it.
"I remember being really passionate, and saying things like, 'I don't care if nobody buys the record, I don't care if we don't have a single song that can be played on the radio, I'm willing to go completely in the other direction.' "
But life as a major-label artist is rarely that simple, he adds wryly. "I went home afterwards and kind of said to myself, 'If that is actually really true, and we're looking at the record two years from now and it has sold 50,000 copies, whether or not we are comfortable with that, people at large are going to see it as a failure.' Because that's the way it works. I mean, the record label is going to look at us and go, 'You're crazy.' Clearly, if only 50,000 buy it, as opposed to five million, then there's a lot of people out there who are saying, 'We don't like it, can you please do something else?' So I had to kind of get to grips with that."
They were supported in their attempts to square this creative-commercial circle by the uber-producer Rick Rubin, a man who clearly didn't edit his prescriptions. An early version of the new song Blackout provoked a reaction that would have felled many bands. "Rick came in and went, 'That song was awesome when it was on that really great record that came out 10 years ago,' " Bennington says.
Was he right?
"It was a cool-sounding song, but it felt like it had been done before, and done right by somebody else. And we thought, 'Maybe there's a good lesson we've learnt here.' We started thinking, 'We can just play piano, we can go in with an orchestra if we feel like it, we can play banjo and slide guitar, it doesn't f . . king matter.' "
It may matter, though, to fans: something the pair are clearly aware of. Shinoda's description of a recent interview with a metal-magazine writer is instructive. "He walked in, black Dr Martens, black jeans, long hair, piercings in both ears, tattoos. Without being told where the guy was from, I took a look at him and I knew. And we proceeded to have one of the most uncomfortable interviews for, well, for as long as I can remember. It was like being on a bad blind date."
The writer admitted that his favourite Linkin Park album was still Hybrid Theory, and that the new one had left him "confused". Shinoda adds: "The conversation kind of ended with me saying to him, 'Ten years ago, when we made Hybrid Theory, we were looking for a new sound, we were trying to do something that was different, that represented us and was kind of unique, and fresh.' But as time went on, it became less fresh, other bands heard it and thought 'We like that too', and did their own versions. And, to be totally blunt, if other bands can listen to it and do it too, how easy do you think it would be for me to turn around and try to do it again? That would be a lazy record."
"There's a rhyme on the new record," Bennington says, "where Mike goes, 'The blueprint is a gift and a curse / Once you've got a theory of how the thing works / Everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first.' It's really easy, once you figure out how something works, to keep going back to it.
"That's what people like, that's what they're familiar with. But the real challenge is . . . how are you going to create new architecture?"
On A Thousand Suns, Linkin Park has opened up. It's up to the fans now. And, of course, the critics. I think it's a beautiful album, pulling me this way and that, almost beyond genre, experimental, occasionally bonkers, invariably intriguing. Linkin Park, a surly, monosyllabic, control-freakish corporate rap-rock band? You may be in for a surprise.
Linkin Park plays the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, December 3; Burswood Dome, Perth, December 7; Adelaide Entertainment Centre, December 9; Acer Arena, Sydney, December 11 and 15; Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, December 12 and 13.
Source: The Australian
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