INTERVIEW: GINGER SNAPS

A couple of weeks ago, we were at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, running our own ‘Alternative Escape’ stage with Southern Comfort and Reverb Nation. I spoke to Jay Brooks of production duo Ginger Snaps about influences, music videos, and 80’s hip-hop ahead of his set:

KM: Tell us about how you started working together.

JB: Lee and I have worked with each other for nearly 10 years. The front man rotates but the process remains the same.

KM: Which artists do you look to for inspiration?

JB: Everyone involved is really into the late eighties early nineties hiphop! We love that D.A.I.S.Y, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers and Naughty by Nature era. The beats were all funk based and the flow was a little slower.

KM: How did you arrive at the name ‘Ginger Snaps’? Every time I google you guys I get at least one recipe recommendation.

JB: Lee used to make up stage names for me, mostly from ginger puns. A few of my friends used to knock up these awful fake Photoshop album covers of me with names like Fire Crotch, Copper Top or Ginger Snaps. (This was way before Lindsay Lohan)

So when Lee and I decided on a name for the project Lee said he wouldn’t be involved unless we used one of the awful ginger puns from my past!

KM: That sounds like a fair trade to me. You guys are often described as a ‘production duo’. What does that entail in terms of song writing and performing?

JB: I think the label ‘production duo’ takes us away from the pressures of being ‘a band’ in the traditional sense of that word. I think that sometimes putting labels like band or artist on something can pigeon-hole or box you into a genre.

Lee and I are excited about the Snaps thing cause of the lack of rules. Currently it’s only me that performs live but that might change…or not. With the term ‘production duo’ it’s expected that we will change our genre sound etc.. and that freedom is what we want.

KM: You’ve recently released a new single ‘Number Crunching’. What themes does the song explore?

JB: The song covers that feeling of pointlessness we all occasionally wallow in. It’s the sadness associated with the ‘live, work, die’ society and the joys we use to numb that pain (sorry that was a bit emo).

KM: We’re pretty emo-friendly here at Killing Moon. What’s the story behind the music video? What was it like to film?

JB: The music video is just a little joke about making that perfect pop product. It’s a statement about the current ‘race to be the most generic’ that pop music seems to be becoming.

KM: You’re due to play the Killing Moon stage at The Great Escape – are you looking forward to it?

JB: Totally, can’t wait…I love playing live with Snaps and really getting inside my own craziness. The girls told me I need to stop touching people when performing. I told them to not project their own inhabitations on others!

KM: Maybe we should have a warning before your set! What are your plans for the rest of the summer?

JB: Just making more odd pop music!

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