The Editors

The bleak light of the Editors' maudlin pop dresses up with a lick of colour for their third outing.

Snatching a few moments during their rehearsal schedule at their North London studios, Editors' guitarist Chris Urbanowicz and drummer Ed Lay are in a relaxed, jovial mood as they give me the low down on new album, In This Light And On This Evening.

RG: I understand it's a bit more synth.

Ed: Well it's certainly turned out that way. There are guitars on it but there are definitely a lot of synths too.

C: We haven't ditched them completely, we were just bored on using the same old sounds. So we just changed the formula a little bit, changed the way we write and kept it fresh.

RG: When did you make that decision?

C: Before we'd finished touring. We did a demo and I had a little keyboard and I played on that rather than guitars. I've never really liked the sound of a guitar so it made sense.

RG: Why did you start playing then?

C: I liked people's hair that played guitar, they had good hair.

RG: That's important isn't it. Name one good guitarist that doesn't have good hair, apart from Joe Satriani maybe.

E: I was going to say Brian May but his is good.

C: He's got amazing hair.

RG: It's the best, Slash even tried to emulate it.

E: Cocked it up with the hat though didn't he.

RG: Before you guys became the Editors there were a couple of other names floating about. What was Snowfield about?

C: It was nothing to do with either of us.

E: Wet. Horrible. I wasn't in the band at the time. Well I came in on that name...

RG: But you were like, I can't be a part of this?

E: It would have come down to that, we actually didn't sign any contracts under that name. I mean imagine if we had kept that name and we were sat here right now and we were called Snowfield. I wouldn't be able to look you in the eye.

C: I'm struggling now just talking about it.

RG: Flood produced the new album. What's your favourite Flood produced album?

E: Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails.

RG: Did you use him because you wanted a more classic sound?

E: We just knew he'd be a guy who would fuel a bit of creativity and make us a bit more confident in the way we record. We've always recorded in the traditional way and we were really bored of that; we thought most of our recordings sounded too clinical, so we wanted to essentially play live and add all these sequencer and synthesizers to the mix. He said we could do that no problem.

RG: With it being more electronic are there any remixes lined up?

C: This is a matter of contention. We sent off to our label a list of names that we wanted to be on the remixes and then they came back to us with three remixes by people we didn't even know. Tiësto was a good one to get though. I didn't realize how big he is, he's absolutely huge.

RG: He is, questionable dress sense though.

E: You don't need good dress sense to be a DJ.

C: In fact it helps if you don't have any.

E: It must help his coffers because he's sponsored by Armani Exchange I believe.

C: Exchange! Armani's budget label.

RG: So who did you want to use?

C: Well I wanted James Murphy to do one but I think that was deemed out of our price range. Who else? I think Chemical Brothers were out of our range.

E: They were definitely out of our range.

C: We tried to get Pet Shop Boys for the last album but they wanted £20,000.

E: I mean it's a remix, you're not recording it again.

C: It's like 'fuck that', goodbye car.

E: Burial came up as well, but obviously that was on our list that didn't make it through.
C: We blew the whole budget on Tiesto.

RG: What are some of the themes of the album?

C: London, cities in general, the nighttime, god I think pops up in places.

E: Love, thats on there.

C: Money, meat, houses, shit like that.

RG: You guys seem pretty happy, what's with the darkness?

C: Yeah we're fine. We're just crap at happy music. It's sounds shit, it's boring and it doesn't interest us. It's more interesting making scary noises.

E: There are plenty of Jack Johnson's and the like in the world to put on while you're surfing.

C: We don't like surfing.

T: I don't like the water.