Articles of 2010 Part II: Chrome Hoof

So while I'm listening to the soothing white noise assault of Cementimental - definitely the best way of calming all the broiling bad feelings about impending, extortionate self-employed tax bills - it's the second installment of my alphabetical list of my own favourite articles of last year about bands.

Chrome Hoof are not just exceptional fun to listen to, but also fun to chat to and interview. This was tremendous fun to write perhaps because they were so good natured. Also they touch upon how it might be to craft as a writer, which is always interesting. Anyway, here it is. NB: no header or standfirst, perhaps because I was creatively tired out by this point.

As fellow music obsessives, there's one thing we can probably all agree on: that there is music out there demanding to be made against whatever odds are thrown at it and regardless of who will listen. Chrome Hoof are in a unique place. The core duo Leo Smee, bassist of UK doom metallers Cathedral, and his brother Milo, on drums, formed an electronic side-project which has gathered musicians, absorbed genres and adopted an indelible image of a collective adorned in disco/sci-fi hooded robes. On the day of their sit-down show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's Southbank as part of Ether Festival's programme of exploratory music, they number 22 including two guitarists, a violinist, lead vocalist Lola Olafisoye, a trumpeteer, a saxophonist, a synth player, a full choir and a harpist. It's an arresting sight, and that's before the eclectic dynamic force of their performance. With the sheer amount of troops they're leading though, it's no wonder Milo – ever smiling, ever so slightly amused – confesses to feeling a little anxious. “I'm never confident. Keeping on high alert throughout the day and getting ridiculously stressed on the day of a gig is normal for me and, hopefully, being like that raises my game by 1%. If it doesn't it's just wasting my time, which is an even more joyous thought,” he says good humouredly. It doesn't help that because of the awesome power of nature, or Eyjafjallajökul as most people are not calling it, prevented Milo flying from his home in Berlin to the UK for rehearsals.
“The new album is obviously quite epic with complex time changes and allthat nonsense,” says the softly spoken Leo. “So with only two days (rehearsal) we're gonna be a bit on the edge but I think that'll add to it. As long as 22 people start and stop at the same time it doesn't matter what happens in the middle.”

Self-deprecating to the last, Chrome Hoof undersell themselves dramatically. Their latest opus, Crush Depth, is their third official album since their 2004 self titled debut and follows the funkdiscometalorchestratronica of Pre-Emptive False Rapture. Straddling the entirety of music like some globe spinning titan, Crush Depth is an astonishing amalgamation of freeform ideas. Gutteral guitars stand alongside funk bass, warped disco synthesizers, demonic choral chants, hi-hat shuffles, cantankerous strings and all embellished with self-styled diva Lola's enigmatic vocal and lyrical bent. It's as hard to describe as it is to imagine. The only option is to listen. Milo at least attempts to explain how it all flows together.
“I actually think what these Chrome Hoof tracks end up sounding like is just an ongoing unconscious progress that everyone has. If you're a writer you'll have that going on and you'll sleep on stuff and a nice way of putting something will come to you. You don't have to sit and think how am I going to approach this one, shall we do it like this or this. It just starts unfolding you start doing stuff that subconsciously you've been working out in your head at other times.”

Working from jams, the very nature of a blueprint or formula seems alien to Chrome Hoof. That there's nothing here that could easily be distilled or co-opted by a lesser collective is tribute to the wild imaginations at work, as well as the decades of experience at the helm; although Milo confesses to a real lack of band experience, his kit skills belie that and Leo has spent his time in Cathedral since 1989. Despite this, Crush Depth was a real effort for everyone involved.
“It was pretty chaotic and quite high pressure actually. There's a little bit of a connection with the album title and the pressure of being deep under sea and things like that. Basically we've got a manager who has done a lot to make this happen because this is a massive undertaking especially for this band to create something like that. The amount of people we've had to rope in and ask favours from...”
“We've got zero budget really,” adds Leo. “Me and Milo's relationship has gone through some funny moments but we've had to stick together whatever happened. We've come out the other side. We're sponges for our life and the music we listen to, things we dig and the styles we like and it comes out, like all the bands, unconsciously, consciously and it's not until the end result when you can sit back and think 'oh, that's just happened!'. In a way, we quite ruthlessly plan something and at the same time we do jam around it. I think the album does show the year we've had through the music, through things that have happened. I don't want to sound too corny but that's how music comes out most of the time.”

It's difficult to reconcile the tough times with the glorious utopian funk soundtrack of Sea Hornet or the pounding symbiosis of Third Sun Descendent despite their fractured, schizophrenic fluidity which suggests madmen at work. Yet it's all so enthralling, it stirs the blood and feeds on your response like an emotional vampire. It's almost as if those robes, adopted early on, have cast a relentless shadow upon the music, and vice versa.
“The image feeds into the music and the other way around,” agrees Milo. “Without an overview of what it was gonna end up like, this is how things have turned out and there are reasons for that and you can make those reasons up for yourself. We've just stuck to what excites us and just just tryied to be honest with ourselves. Stuff that excites us is gonna take priority over what anyone else thinks. If you stick to that then it will go in a certain direction.” Milo smiles wryly again. “We're trying to keep the essence of what we started with although we mostly lose it.”

Brad Barrett