earthtone9 interview
Publication: Metal Hammer
Month/Issue: August 2000
Writer: Darren Sadler

In a world where fashion seems more important than music, it's refreshing to meet earthtone9 - a band with a deeper passion for their craft than what colour socks they should be wearing. Darren Sadler (wearing white) travels to Barcelona for an insight into Nottingham's artistic mavericks.


Long, tiresome but enjoyable - that's how avant gerde shouty boys earthtone9 would describe the last eight weeks. Why? They've been touring Europe with fellow Brits Kill 2 This and Sweden's Misery Loves Co - all in one bus! The co-headline extravaganza has already taked Holland, Germany, Italy and when Metal Hammer caught up with the entourage, the quintet are in sunny Spain - Barcelona to be precise. While we green eye the group of young ladies camped outside the venue all afternoon, hoping to meet Kill 2 This' lanky guitarist Mark Mynett (the band have played here before, supportig the mighty Slipknot), the 'tone9 content themselves with signing a Spanish fan's guitar case.

But that's not to say vocalist Karl Middleton and his cohorts (Joe Roberts, guitar/vocals, Simon Hutchby, drums, Owen Packard, guitar, and Dave Anderson, touring bassist) are actually bothered with rock 'n' roll groupies. Y'see, first and foremost, earthtone9 are interested in creating music.
A city renowned for its eclectic culture and ambient surroundings, Barcelona seems an entirely appropriate place to talk about the relationship between earthtone9, art and music. And as the rest of the band soaks up the heady atmosphere, it's up to Karl and Owen to discuss what's what.
Before beginning his stint with earthtone9, Middleton spent most of his time buying and selling limited-edition art prints, dealing with clients such as the Tate Gallery in London. Owen meanwhile, was formally employed as manager for Cottage Industry Records - a small label which made a few waves in the mid-90s with the stoned-out bluesters g.o.a.t., who featured one-time Little Angels members Bruce Dickinson and Mark Richardson (now of Skunk Anansie fame).

Music was inevitably going to feature particularly prominently in the lads' lives, as Karl explains: "I went to art college and I think art and music always go together; there's a link in that sort of environment. Look at The Beatles, David Bowie - they were all art school dropouts. I didn't drop out though, I finished my thing and then became a bum!"

But does that mean earthtone9 subscribe to the belief that music is an art form and not just, in the case of rock music, some shouty arse that's designed purely for fustrated teenagers?

"Oh, it's purely interpretative," smirks Owen, while Karl offers a slightly deeper view on the concept.
"When you label things like that, you have to assume the head-up-arse stance really," he wryly suggests. "In the terms of art supposedly being a creative response to what you feel, then music is, but I wouldn't really label it as a such because it sounds like you're full of yourself. "Anything you do in your own time is a response to a feeling, so you could label almost anything as art - graffiti, kicking in a door - I mean that's a response to a feeling, a response to an emotion, so you could label anything as art."

Having taken the plunge to become a full-time musician, rather than regretting not joining the band, Karl is clealry driven by a desire to reach complete artistic freedom and self-sufficiency; something comparitive to a cottage industry.

"That's my dream," he reasons. "It's my ideal because then you don't have to worry about anyone else. I'm sure that if you spoke to most bands, that would be an ideal scenario for them, too. We just want to pay our bills, eat, create in that envirnment and not worry about anything. It's nice to stray away from the herd and keep doing what you do your own way."

But that's not to say the band aren't realists, as Owen acknowledges: "The notion of having a long-term game plan is a bit farcial really because it doesn't worl like that. You have to learn to respond to what's around you; if you plan it then you'll be disappointed by it as nothing ever goes quite how you planned.

"Part of the enjoyment of our situation is the amount of freedom we have. If you start setting out tracks for you to follow, it's just replacing the tracks for you to have all this freedom in the first place."

Choosing not to follow the easy route of pre-packaged, marketed bands would have been simpler, but earthtone9 are a group with slighty more integrity than certain American bands who seem more than happy to let themselves be moulded into fashion victims.

"If you say music is art... well if you take that view - that it's easier to allow someone to pre-package it and sell you foward like that - then it's not art is it? It's just a product," claims Owen.

"And that's necessarily a wrong thing. There's always this notion that art has gone terribly wrong in the last ten years, but hey, look at The Bay City Rollers, look at even the way The Beatles were marketed...

Karl butts in: "It's always existed, it's just people wear rose-tinted glasses when they remember things."

The conversation veers into debates on Led Zeppelin, Jane's Addiction and Tool - all maverick bands that earned success and credibility purely on the grounds of their musical merits. ET9 are clearly unimpressed that the main focus so often lies on image and marketing plans, rather than music. And it's been an issue which has plauged the band ever since they shaved off their collective barnets, Karl grew a beard and the lads donned silk shirts half-way through a UK tour last year.

"I find it a bit tiresome when the best thing people can come up with when talking about earthtone9 is: 'the heroically bearded Karl Middleton and his cohorts of shiny shirt wearers'. It bothers me because I think it's totally incorrect."

"To us it's irony," continues Owen. "To us, it's a strange thing. The whole notion was that we were a band that had no image, so we were like, 'Okay here's an image' and then people were like, 'Hey look, they had no image and now they've got an image', and we're like, 'Yeah, we know, that's why they did it'.

"Everyone's looking for the soundbite aren't they?" questions Owen.

"People's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and it needs to be encapsulated in a perfect way, otherwiswe people aren't interested."

With that in mind then, how would earthtone9 like to be perceived by people; what would be the quote that best reflects the whole philosophy of the band?

"No - we wouldn't need to be perceived, because people would know what we were about; it's the music. We don't want to seem aloof, we just think we've said and done enough by putting out music," deadpans Karl.

Owen adds his tuppence worth: "In the context of art, you don't paint a picture and put it up and tell people what this picture is about. You put up a picture, people look at it and take what they want from it."

"If you write a book, you don't write the forewore saying: 'When I wrote this book I was trying to really talk about some particular subtext'; you just put the book out and people take from it what they want. I don't think music is any different from any other art form. And it shouldn't be."

Away from image, earthtone9 have also been frowned upon for featuring rather ludicrous song titles like 'tat twam asi' 'i nagual eye' and 'vitriolic HSF2000' to name just a few. The notion that they're too intellectual for music fans, however, is also misleading.

"I don't think that at all," claims Karl. "But that's another irony; by not saying anything, people assume you're above saying anything and we're not, it's just music. That's all.

"We don't put lyrics on our records because they don't matter. You hear what you hear and make a judgement based on that. You don't need me to tell you what it is. Every time you give people a piece of information, it's like a carrot for the donkey; you want more and more and more and more, so for us it's about just leaving people with a clean slate. Whatever your response, it's right, because it's your response."

"My lyrics are just notions; literally just notions, like I've had a bad day. I generally don't think they are of enough importance for people to warrent worry time or thought about them, but because they are on an album people seem to think that they are.

"We basically have a belief that people should have a freedom of thought. If you give people too many clues, then we're basically telling you what to think."

"But the great thing about music, is that it can be all things to people. To sit there and say lyrics don't matter to someone like Rage Against The Machine is wrong, because that's how they express themselves.

"Do you listen to Kodo drummers (traditional Japanese) and say 'where's the words, I can't enjoy this because there are no lyrics? I don't know what the songs are about'. No. You can take from that a sense of aggression or melancholy, and you can convey emotion without saying 'I am sad, I am angry. That's why music is an art form: it's the ambiguity of it."

At this point the duo are dually called for soundchecks leaving me to ruminate on our discussion. Woven inextricably into the whole argument appears to be the concept of how people deal with everyday life and other people, which Karl ponders on before wondering off.

"Life is about developing your own personality, your own individual thoughts. The notion that you have to fit in with other people is intrinsically wrong; you don't have to do anything. You find common ground between people and that's what makes unity. You don't have to overlap completely and just be like some jigsaw that if you're the right shape piece then you'll fit in and you'll be accepted, that seems odd to me."

A few hours later, the gig is over and we find ourselves in a 24-hour lorry park, giving
everyone a very good reason to get some shuteye before heading off to sunny Madrid. Before we do, though, there's just time for the 'Hammer crew and Kill 2 This bassist Caroline Campbell to indulge in the viewing of some other forms of artistic pleasantries.
But that, my friends, is another story entirely...