My Toys Like Me : Interview

Since the origins of what someone christened ‘music’ hundreds or thousands of years ago, a deep-seated concept has been to preserve it’s evolution and convert it into whatever it’s modern day sound or association might be. 

Most artists/musicians/bands you name it, will swear theirs is a philosophy to create something as unique as possible, ensuring freedom from pigeonholing and getting stuck beneath a hundred different comparisons and obvious influences along the way. 

But the undeniable fact is that not everyone has the capability of making this a reality.  In other words not everyone making music will successfully create something original, groundbreaking and/or interesting.  Hence the vast quantity of bland music that gets disregarded due to an absence of vision and the blatant thievery of genres/artists/eras gone before it.  Lets face it, not every one of the music buying (or illegally downloading) public likes to be fobbed off with mediocre scenes and talentless purveyors.

So it was euphoric moment on an otherwise dull day when 4or The Record fell upon the sounds of London duo come quartet, My Toys Like These.  An electronica infused band whose aptitude of producing and playing quality genre bashing alternative dance is nothing short of striking in its brilliance.

Fronted by possibly the most stunning and enigmatic front woman in the business, Francis Noon, MTLM along with Noon’s fellow founding compatriot and producer Lazlo Legezer was a musical concept, which began in 2005.  3 or so years of exploring their potential as a duo and the creation of music which live could take things further than many bands exploring the realms of electronic fusion music, they became a foursome in 2008, recruiting Alfonso Pisanelli and Charlie Bound to their cause.  Subsequent performances have created a tidal wave of audience support thanks to their charismatic displays of glitchy genre bending, beat driven and sample heavy blend of new era poptronica.

Noon’s voice is both distinctive and fascinating, conjuring up colourful imagery of an elaborate version of kidulthood through its almost sweet and child like tone, whilst their name and lyrical contexts continue to denote an adolescent nature which strikes at the core of every track.  However that won’t fool you as to the careful dexterity of the lyrics Noon speaks and the music they are creating as a band, as their maturity retains a majestic edge that so many bands transcending this sound would die for.

My Toys Like Me release their self penned and produced 11 track opus, ‘Where We Are’ in May of this year which has already been regarded as nothing short of magnificent in its uniquity and compositive elements.  Its their stab at pushing the electronic music boundaries in every direction possible, whilst ensuring a freshness exists amongst tried and tested formulas and setting it against a backdrop of soundscaping which compellingly moves between subtle to grandiose throughout. 

My advice to you? Buy the album and better still go and see how their sound translates to their live performances.  It’s impossible to do them justice on paper despite my ornate attempt, because you need tangible evidence to appreciate how much potential this East London 4 piece has. 

The album ‘Where We Are’ is set for release on the 11th May and in the lead up we spoke up with front woman Frances Noon and producer and Lazlo Legezer.  Entertaining, thought provoking, generally nice people and oozing with ideas and talent. 

Meet My Toys Like Me……

4TR: The name My Toys Like Me implies all sorts of childish imagery, so is there a story behind making it your moniker?
Lazlo Legezer: [Laughing] I’m not allowed to tell anyone about the name.
Frances Noon: Yeah because it means whatever it means to anyone.
LL: I feel a bit like that when people ask me about lyrics, I never really want to just explain what we mean because they mean different things to people.
FN: I don’t think necessarily when you come up with things you mean what you mean, it’s just an instinctive thing and they can mean different things later, so it’s the same with our name. 

4TR: So when you are writing music or lyrics, do you work instinctively as opposed to having have an ulterior motive beforehand?
FN: Yes exactly!
LL: No I think we are really different when it comes to this actually, because I’ve heard you say that before and completely disagreed with you.   What happens is she is a bit of a genius in that she can just vomit out something magical but for me its not really like that.  If I have a bit of a melody there and we haven’t got words for it yet, I’ll spend days just listening to it and writing, so it’s a totally different process; we are opposites in a lot of ways so for me the music is much more instinctive, and the lyrics are something I really slave over so that I convey the emotion I’m feeling in the melody.
FN: It’s harder for you because when I am singing and coming up with a melody and lyrics, they are kind of already together, so if they don’t work that’s when I’ll take more time over things.  But I do like to try and preserve the initial magic aspect with each song.

4TR: Do your ideas ever clash or have you got to the stage where you work so well together you are working in sync?
FN: Well we did get to that stage, but then we became a four piece so everything’s changed again. 
LL: It’s quite exciting that for us because now there is different input from the other guys as well, so loads of new ideas.
FN: Yeah we just wrote a song in the last few weeks together, which isn’t the most complicated or intricate song, but it works quite well because everyone seemed to have their own area to focus on and then we brought it all together.  But us 2 definitely got to a stage where we were working quite organically as that just happened to be what worked best for us.
LL: We’re always pushing it as well, like whatever we did last we try to push it next time. I’d say between the 2 of us there’s remarkably few times where we’ll meet any resistance from each other.  More often than not it’s a case that one of us has kind of settled a bit and become kind of complacent and the other one kicks a little crutch out from that complacency and goes that’s not good enough. 
FN: And by complacency we mean musicality that has been done before or singing safe.  We don’t try and step out the box all the time, because we naturally like pop music, but we do try and surprise ourselves.

4TR: You mentioned that you’ve recently gone from a duo to a 4-piece.  Why did you decide to make that transition as a band?
LL: For gigs basically!
FN: Yeah and we always wanted it to go that way.
LL: Because standing up on stage with me behind a laptop and Frances singing always felt like something was missing. 
FN:  I think its the fun factor, you want to have fun onstage and you don’t want to just re-do the same thing everytime.  And you can only get that bouncing around when you’ve got more people doing the same thing with you.

4TR: The change in line up will have progressed the sound, but has it progressed in the way you expected it to?
LL: I think we’ve been incredibly lucky with the people we’ve connected with and how it’s developed. 
FN: If you believe in the strange forces of nature it’s a little bit weird how we found Charlie and Alfie; it’s like they just fell into our laps and personality wise it just worked, and we know how important it is for the personality to fit.

4TR: How has it has developed your live show?
LL: We have got the electronic sound, but we’ve now got an actual drummer playing and a bass player playing and they get into a groove together.  Actually the vast majority of electronic bands around are more electronic with the band just playing along to a groove that’s completely locked down and coming from a computer.  I’ve watched so many bands and I’m thinking you haven’t got the one thing that you can really get out of having from a live band and that’s a real live groove.  To me it’s the whole point. 
FN: I think people liked us as a 2-piece because it was a safe little package, but that was never satisfying for me personally.  But logistically it was hard to change at first, because you’ve got to be really careful how you mix in live instruments with electronic music as it can sound really clashing and awkward.  So we’ve done shit loads of rehearsal to get it right.

4TR: I wanted to ask you about a piece I read in The Guardian about MTLM, in which the writer compared you to the Ting Tings.  How do you feel about that?
LL: It pisses us off to be honest.
FN: We were in the midst of kind of honing our new line-up when the Ting Tings came out and I thought it was interesting that a band like that could get popular, so it was nice.  But to be now compared to them as the 4-piece we are now is really confusing to me.

4TR: But musically do you think that’s a fair comparison because to me there is no real relevance.  There are no similarities musically or aesthetically whatsoever!
LL: The only possible comparison is that they are mixing electronic sounds with pop songs.
FN: Yeah and they’re making pop songs from a slightly odd direction.  I don’t even think we’re really making pop music yet, but its this weird thing where we love pop music and obviously want to make music that’s popular, but we’re not going to do anything other than follow our instincts.
LL: There is either being creative or being re-creative and because pop music can be seen as formularised certainly in the structure of it, like you can say it wants to be 3 ½ minutes and has a chorus coming in quite soon and often, and that gets into the re-creative aspect.  That doesn’t interest me, I only enjoy creating something and I try and package my creativity which is weird and surreal into a succinct song.  That’s the pop aspect of what we do, but as certain things become a little bit more traditional about how we work and write as a group, it’ll definitely become a bit more pop.

4TR: My Toys Like Me has been bubbling away on the underground scene for a while with a handful of vinyl only releases to date.  Do you hope the album and interest surrounding it will push you out from there, giving you more of a mainstream identity?
LL: No because I think our 2nd album will be a lot more mainstream and accessible than our first album; but having said that its not because I plan to do anything different in how I operate, its just that what we’re doing has developed, we’re getting better as songwriters and are writing in a more traditional way.  I’m just going to let things evolve knowing that I need to always reign in all the weirdness and put it into a way that most people are likely to get.
FN: I think in some ways we always naturally strive to do something that’s more timeless than now, so that kind of eliminates something being immediately pop worthy.  I think our album will be one that you listen to a few times to kind of educate your ears to the mixed elements that are in it.  Actually that will probably always be the case because that’s the music we like. 
LL: Yeah because a fundamental motivation of ours is to make great albums and a hell of a lot of people now are constantly just trying to make singles.  Sadly albums are almost an old fashioned aim now.

4TR: But that’s so sad isn’t it, as albums inevitably stay around forever over and above singles.
LL: Well people seem to like quick fixes, its like you can look at anything like the buildings people are making to live in now and even they are not built to last, its crazy.
FN: We talk about sustainability as a new idea but its not a new idea, it’s a basic necessity of building a society.
LL: I can understand people saying ‘oh the end is nigh’ because people are going along with this mass collective thing where they’re thinking there’s no future for them and you can see that in everything, in music, in architecture, even in aspects of our culture, its so sad.
FN: But there is an audience out there that still has their feet on the ground and requires something a bit more sustainable that they can buy.  Music has a role of comfort to it, it’s part of your identity, you build your identity slowly as you grow up with the kind of music you like, so I personally don’t like to buy into something and then realize it was a bit thin on the ground to start with.  I like it when I see a band has produced and produced and not let me down over time and that to me is what’s really important about music, so is replicated in what we’re doing.

4TR: Your long awaited debut LP ‘Where We Are’ is out in May.  Has it ended up sounding how you imagined?
LL: Yeah there’s been this whole mad thing to the album and it feels to me almost like it was already there in the future and it just sucked us towards it until we got to it.  Right up to the last moment it wasn’t right and then through the mastering and the compiling it at the very end, and suddenly it was there as if it had always been.
FN: On the way it felt like we were trying to put everything that was dear to us musically into it and we just kept shifting round and round, changing direction with each song until we kind of had the ingredients.  But up until the end we were like is this a pie yet? And then it was like it needed a cherry on top and that finished it perfectly.

4TR: Are you happy with it?
LL: Incredibly happy and we’re so proud of it!

4TR: Did you keep all the production in house?
LL: Yeah it’s all done by me.  I started making dance music in about 1991 and it took me years to be able to finish a piece of dance music that I was happy with, but I’ve always had the mindset that music is about finishing things to a recording, that’s a finished article.  We’ve never been a band that has the songs and then needs a producer, it’s always been about getting all the elements together and finishing it ourselves. 

4TR: Again do you feel that adds something extra to your sound as you control all aspects of your musicality?
FN: It’s the only way it works right for us.
LL: To me it’s madness otherwise.  I think there’s something really wrong about when the technical aspect of what is required in the minds of the people who are producing something in a certain way is primary over the guys who play together and have a groove.  That’s something I don’t get it at all. 

4TR: The album is being released on Dumb Angel.  How did that relationship come about?
FN: We actually went to them with the finished product.  We always wanted to finish our album before we decided to even talk to labels.
LL: Yeah it’s a very different relationship to a usual record label relationship.  We had interest for album deals and even a firm offer, but we turned it down and said we didn’t want to talk to anyone then.  We were half way through writing the album when it happened and it distracted us.
FN: People got confused about who we were as well and it was like even we don’t fully know who we are yet either until this album is finished.  Hence the name of the album ‘Where We Are’.

4TR: That’s an interesting theme actually because your second album could be called ‘Where We Are Now’…
FN: [laughing] And our ‘best of’ could be ‘Where We Were’
LL: I always think that bands who put out a ‘best of’ are actually saying we can’t write anymore music.
4TR: Or just a label ploy to coin more cash out of a bands musical catalogue.
LL: Yeah exactly, [laughing] we’ll never do a best of.  Well ok maybe if we carry on putting out our own stuff, we won’t put out a best of.  Unless we get to the stage where we cant write anymore music!  Actually I don’t think that will ever happen.

My Toys Like Me: 'Where We Are' reviewed here...

http://4ortherecord.com/My-Toys-Like-Me-Where-We-Are.html

Words and Interview: Francesca Strange

Photographs: Nathan Hudson-Jenkins © www.nathanhudsonjenkins.com

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