Ladyhawke

LADYHAWKE


The bar was old; a long ago given a sniff of paint type of boozer that had been providing a scrap of goo-plated carpet and scent-soaked atmosphere for the pint swillers of Lexington and Broadwick streets. Pip said it was meant to be haunted, though who knows why any ghost would hang around in such a dingy outpost of an other-time Soho.
We settle down to a cheap draught lager and Pip Brown starts filling me in on the details of her alter ego Ladyhawke.

Two and a half years ago, living in Sydney she started writing songs for herself, fed up with being a player in a band and wanting to do something that had her signature on it. She made a demo called ‘Back of the Van’, and after giving it to a friend found that things just started to snowball for her. Before long she had the same manager as Lady Sovereign, was being feted by some of the coolest record labels around, and was moving to London.
Ladyhawke makes the sort of music the very name suggests; an updated take on the synth heavy eighties pop that could have been the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. Pip writes songs that Pat Benetar, Cyndi Lauper and Stevie Nicks would all have happily endorsed, but at the same time songs that throb with more of an electronic buzz, that bear in mind the twenty five years or so that have past since.
“I wasn’t trying to specifically capture the eighties,” offers Pip, “but I do wear my influences on my sleeve so I wasn’t afraid to emulate my heroes. I’ve always wanted to write pop songs, but cool pop songs. Not corny - actually, no, god, my songs are pretty corny, but not like bad pop. I want to write cool pop.”
Pip looks every inch the writer of cool pop songs and completely at home in this part of Soho fresh from her shoot for this article. When she speaks though she is the consummate Kiwi girl; her diphthongs strong and clear, and her New Zealand heritage also belied by a genuineness and unguarded honesty that is so rare - not just in the music industry, but anywhere. She shows no compunction in telling me about being a geek at school, about not fitting in and so completely devoting herself to her love of music. Growing up with mum being a singer and dad a jazz drummer, she was surrounded by instruments at home and got her fix any way she could.
“We weren’t in a well to do family or anything,” confesses Pip. “We didn’t have a lot of money so we had this record player that didn’t work properly, so for me to hear records I had to put a record on and spin it around and put my ear up to it. I was going through my mum’s record collection listening to Pink Floyd and The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac and putting my ear right up to the records to hear the songs. I started playing in the Masterton district brass band when I was fourteen, pretty geeky I know,” she laughs. “I was the percussionist and it was wicked. I used to do all the dawn marches for ANZAC day and won some competitions for percussion. I was in my high school band too as a drummer. I was always the drummer, didn’t start playing guitar until later.”
Her first sortie into playing guitar was when she started up the Wellington based band Two Lane Blacktop in 2001 with singer Matt Harrop. The hard rocking band met with success in both New Zealand and Australia and their 2003 7” release ‘The Rat/Hellhound’ was placed on rotation by John Peel on his Radio 1 show in England. The band successfully toured America, even playing at the legendary CBGB’s, returned to New Zealand to begin the recording of their album but then abruptly disbanded days before an Australian tour which would have seen them go on to play at SXSW.
“The band was on shaky ground,“ admits Brown. “Things weren’t right and there were differences and peoples motivations were different. All I wanted to do was be a musician and be in a band. Some of the others had their sights set on other things outside of the band. There were hard feelings for a little while but we’re all still really good friends. It was good in the end because if it hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be doing this, I’d still be in some shitty rock ‘n’ roll band in NZ,” she says with a chuckle. “There’s nothing wrong with that but I think it was a blessing in disguise.”
Having already made up her mind that Australia was part of her future Pip got on the plane and landed in Melbourne. Before long she was in another band, being asked to join Teenager, an offshoot project by Nick Littlemore, one half of Sydney based electro/house outfit Pnau. She moved to Sydney and for the next two years performed with Nick, penning some of the songs with Nick but ever aware that this was his baby and she still had something in her that wanted to get out.
“It was Nick’s thing,” she admits. “I always enjoyed doing it and Nick’s a really friendly guy and very talented, but I wanted to do my own thing. Nick was really encouraging me to do it and always saw the potential too.”
And so Ladyhawke was born. After the demo of ‘Back of the Van’ generated interest, a friend introduced her to Zak Biddu, a born and bred Londoner who happens to be the manager of Lady Sovereign. At the time Pip was contemplating a move back to New Zealand, saying that she’d lived away for years and was missing not just her family, but also the new Zealand music scene, feeling like she was missing out on what was going on there.
“Zak said it would be really good for my music and career so he said to try it out and I said I didn’t know. I had made this decision that I would go back home when Zak told me to come to London and I agreed. It’s been good - I do miss my Mum a lot and family and stuff but it’s been interesting. It’s a very big place, but everything’s kind of blown up for me, much more so than I could have hoped for or expected. To tell you the truth my plan for Ladyhawke was to release and album on a small indie in NZ or Australia and then keep doing Teenager or some rock band. I really didn’t think it would turn in to my main thing.”
Things have happened quickly though, and it appears that the fortune Brown has met with so far is just the beginning. She was in label negotiations before she left Sydney and is now signed to Australian electro tastemaker label, Modular, home to The Presets, Klaxons and Cut Copy among others. Being on the label alone has immediately put Brown into a higher league, having already played gigs at Fabric with The Presets, and being included on the bill at a couple of Vice parties. Not all of her gigs have been dripping with cool though; in fact some have just been downright ridiculous, notably a tour sponsored by English chav teen telly drama, Skins.
“I did the Skins tour. I’ve not seen the show but I was told it would be fun,” Pip says with a smile creeping on to her face as she sips from her glass. “It was more funny than fun though. At each show, wasted out of their minds, English teenagers. They were so trashy, these trashy little sluts with their skirts so high and horrible guys that were feeling up all these girls. We were playing and no one was even watching, they were all making out and spewing on the floor. Even when Crystal Castles played the vibe was the same. Each show was like an audition for the TV show because they’re trying to find new cast members so all these kids turned up all done up and there are camera crews going around with cameras so they’re all acting up too. It was really horrible.”
Most recently though Ladyhawke has been supporting Soulwax on their English tour and will this summer be playing a string of festivals around Europe including Glastonbury. Not bad really considering she’s only had a band together for the past couple of months. Made up of friends and friends of friends, the band boasts the drummer from Lady Sov’s band, Dolf de Datsun’s younger brother Tom on bass, a young maverick guitarist and the Lexicon (basically a rack synth sequencer that plays all the synth parts until they get someone to play them).
As well as the summer dates looming for the band, the release of Ladyhawke’s self titled debut album is not far away. The finishing touches are already being put on the mixing of the album which was completed just before the band was assembled, and as befitting the rest of her fortune so far, the album has been graced by a handful of virtuoso producers who have all added their deft touches to Brown’s songs. That gifted roll call includes Greg Kirsten who works with Peaches, Jim Eliot from the band Kish Mauve who counts Kylie as one of his other production credits, Anu Pillai from London house outfit Freeform Five and Pascal Gabriel who most recently co-wrote and produced Miss Kittin’s latest album BatBox. Pip worked with Pascal the most out of all of the producers as they had the most fun and best chemistry in the studio.
“His synth collection is incredible,” enthuses Brown. “He has every toy you can imagine and going in to his studio to work with him is so much fun because he’s got everything you can think of. He’d order all these bizarre musical things from the internet and when they’d arrive we’d spend all day playing with them. We did about four tracks together because working together was just so much fun.”
With a little cajoling Pip goes on to talk about her love of synthesizers, an interest - it turns out that is rivalled only by her love of video games and perhaps cats. Wii is a hot topic (specifically the new Medal of Honour game and the potential double console wonderland that will ensue if she moves in with one of her band members) and we chat about the absurdly cute feline worship website icanhaschzburger.com of which she is a loyal fan.
Pip is poised, it would appear, on the verge of some big success, but is much more comfortable taking about home comforts, and home itself.
“I’m still not the biggest fan of London. I do miss my family but I’m giving myself at least a couple of years here to do some hard touring and trying to make this work. Where I’m at right now is trying not to think about the future because there’s always the chance that it could go horribly, horribly wrong. I’ve just got to expect the worst and then if something good happens from it I’ll be surprised and happy.”
I wonder though where this feeling of uncertainty comes from, being that the future looks incredibly bright.
“The thing about me is that I was a very unassuming child and I never thought anything of myself, I had very low self esteem,” she confides. “I did what I did purely for the love of it so everything that has happened to me has really taken me by surprise. One thing I did know is that I would never have an office job, I always felt that. From a really early age I knew that all I wanted to do was play music and I accepted early on in the piece that that meant I was going to have a very hard, poor life, sleeping on a lot of couches, and that’s the life I’ve lived. I’ve had no stability in my life, just doing music and drifting around.”
The future may not be written just yet, but with Peaches signed up for remix duties on the first single from the album ‘Paris is Burning’ and the media hype machine only just beginning to spin it’s looking like Pip Brown is going to have to get used to being taken by surprise.