Manchester-based rock trio Amplifier opened Download with a healthy dose of prog and a barrage of rock, in their biggest ever festival show. Singer Sel Balamir tells Eleanor Goodman all about gigs, pigeons and the new album.
How did it go today?What people don't realise is that you can't just turn up and do a gig at one in the afternoon because you need to prepare for it. So in order to prepare for this show I went out yesterday and made myself tired so that I could come back in, go to bed at 6 and get up at 2 in the morning. The peak of our working day is now, because normally I'd be playing a gig at 9 o'clock and that's what my body chemistry is designed for. So it took two days preparation just to come and just play half an hour! It's great, really weird. It's an odyssey.
So how did it feel to play after such a long build-up?There are so many people, even though half of them might be going 'YAY!' half of them aren't. So you think 'does anyone like this?' It's really detached and I don't like it to be honest, because we mostly play little clubs like the Roadhouse or the Hop and Grape and everyone's right there; I think it's better as a spectator. Well it is for me, I'd much rather go and see a band where I can smell them!
You opened with a really long jam, what was it?We started with the intro to our new album that's coming out. We were the first band on, we thought we needed an intro, so we just played that. We're going to use it as the opening for our tour anyway, when people know it. We've also got to play all these new songs, and it's really hard to play things that people don't know - especially at a festival. It's like you've got to win them all over again.
Do you think you won some new fans today?No idea! I think that even if one person in every hundred likes you, and they all go out and buy your album, that's quite a big percentage of 10,000 albums. It's nothing if you've sold a million, but for us, each one's an affirmation. When you're like Tool, you can go 'oh, another million albums,' well maybe not that blasé, but maybe "oh, another 10,000". If we sold 10,000 albums you'd see me walking down the street like a pigeon with my chest puffed out!
What kind of pigeon?One of those big wood pigeons - the big fat ones!
How did the recording of the new album go? What is it called? When is it out?Our new album should be coming out in August or the beginning of September. It's called 'Insider'. We started in November and haven't done any other shows since. It turned into an odyssey; it just turned into a Herculean epic. We had to get it out by May this year and then just after we started recording, Matt, our drummer, had a death in the family. So we had to deal with that. We recorded all of the bits and then took it back into our room on Whitworth Street and I worked every day of December and January. Christmas day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, and did all the vocals and just had no idea what it sounded like, at all.
Did things go smoothly from there?No, we started mixing and the first studio broke, so we moved and then that one broke, so we had to move again. Then we finished the mixes and went back to listen to them and all the drums on the left-hand side were missing, so we had to go back and do them again. It was just ongoing like that. Every time it was getting somewhere, the devil farted in our faces. One night I just sat down and listened to it, and just thought "fucking hell, it's brilliant!" and even now I can't quite believe how good it is. So we were all absolutely chuffed.
How does it compare to your first album?It's a little bit different. A lot of it's up-tempo and just heads down, it's not really spacey. A lot of people didn't get that at all, they were very shocked. You've got to listen to it 20 times and see what you think, and I had to do that with people at our record company, they were shocked.
Who produced the album?I produced it. And I recorded it with a friend of mine, Steve Lyon, who co-produced the first record with me, and Chris Sheldon who mixed our last album. So it was like the old gang. It was much better this time. On the first album Chris just did the mix and I was like "yeah, sounds great," whereas this time I was much more specific about what I wanted to hear. The guitars are always really really phat. When you're in our rehearsal room and you take your earplugs out for a split second you're like, 'whoa.' It's just under an hour and it's got 12 songs on it. It's so heavy, listen up.
So are you staying at Download all day?Yeah, we're going to stay for the day. Me personally I'm going to see Deftones and Tool. I fucking love the Deftones man. We supported them at the Apollo years ago, we opened for them, and watched them afterwards, and it was really amazing! [Balamir suddenly looks pained and touches his tooth] Do you know what happened to me onstage today? See my cracked tooth? I hit myself in the face with my guitar. I cracked it and there's a massive crack up the enamel. I can feel it now, I couldn't feel it before. My girlfriend was like 'don't get a fucking gold tooth, don't get a gold tooth!' So I was like 'I'm getting a gold tooth!' I think maybe some mother of pearl. No, not really, I'd be mugged! I'd be mugged for my fucking tooth!
