Edinburgh trio, FOUND, is Ziggy Campbell, Kev Sim and Tommy Perman. The band began as an art collective, who played improvised music at their exhibition openings. This experimental, multimedia spirit carried through to factorycraft, which was recorded in one week on an industrial estate in Glasgow at Chemikal Underground鈥檚 own Chem 19 studio. Ziggy tells us how their unusual mix of garage rock, melodic pop and electronica comes together.
What鈥檚 the story behind FOUND; how did you form?
We first met at art school in Aberdeen, and after graduating, we all moved to Edinburgh with this romantic notion of becoming artists. We managed to get a few exhibitions and decided to play music at the opening nights, mainly to avoid talking to people and becoming part of that hypocrisy. Luckily, a promoter from Glasgow saw us play and offered us a slot opening for Luke Vibert at a techno club night. I鈥檓 sure it was terrible, but somehow we kept getting booked for more shows. I hope we鈥檙e better now than we were back then!
There are undertones of Pavement and The Jesus and Mary Chain, how would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard it?
I describe our sound as a psychedelic explosion in the factory, but that鈥檚 probably a bit abstract. One tabloid journalist described us as a 鈥減unch up between Paolo Nutini and Captain Beefheart.鈥 Someone else said we were like a cross between Big Country and Battles. These descriptions always make us laugh, but sometimes they can be alarmingly accurate.
Aside from releasing factorycraft, you鈥檝e also won a BAFTA for Cybraphon. Can you tell us more about this project?
Cybraphon is an autonomous emotional robot band. It looks like an orchestration from the turn of last century and in the same way plays music mechanically. The difference is that we designed it to behave like a self-obsessed contemporary indie band 鈥 incessantly checking emails, Facebook, Twitter and Google 鈥 playing happy music when it gets enough attention and sad music when it doesn鈥檛. Cybraphon constantly craves attention, just like FOUND!
Cybraphon is almost an art-installation 鈥 what experience are you trying to create for the listener/viewer?
Cybraphon has become very popular all over the world. I think this is because people recognise their own idiosyncrasies in it and can identify with this level of digital narcissism. We had planned that some of the attention it received would feed back to FOUND, but that didn鈥檛 happen. People have whole-heartedly bought into the idea of Cybraphon as an autonomous individual 鈥 Cybraphon has thousands more fans on Facebook than FOUND does.
FOUND has had an amazing few years with a debut at SXSW in 2009, radio sessions and festivals; where do you see the band heading this year?
We鈥檙e doing a few more festivals over the summer then another tour of the UK. Then we鈥檙e off to India in November to do a short tour. All the while we鈥檙e working on a new sound installation called Unravel which is a collaboration between the band and Aidan Moffat. That鈥檒l be revealed early next year, possibly, with a collaborative record to follow. We鈥檝e started writing material for the next FOUND album too. .
Bethany Rex
