IAMX

Those familiar with the former Sneaker Pimps front man, Chris Corner, are no doubt familiar with his 80’s inspired electro band, IAMX. With their new release, The Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, IAMX has upped the emotional ante. Abundant in vulnerability and raw in sentiment, Chris Corner has created a rich album rife with dramatic crescendos and complex lyrics all under the veneer of a dark, tender sensuality.

BRM talked with Chris Corner about The Kingdom of Welcome Addiction as well as his thoughts behind the making of his duet with Imogen Heap (think incest and reverse gender roles), being somewhat of a control freak, the process of letting go and being vulnerable, and his future little Berlin utopia among lots of other interesting thoughts.

BRM: How did you come up with the name of the album? What was the overall concept?

Chris Corner: IAMX for me has been a way of creating an alternative existence through the art and through the project as a whole. Through the performances, theater, imagery…the visual aspects of it. Through the attitude of it. We’re trying to create a new independent way. An alternative place. The title of the album, even though I hate to analyze it too much, because I’m not very good at it--I mean, the meaning fluctuates so much, but today this is what it means to me. It means laying down the foundation for this kingdom. This small, strange, art world and using the word slightly provocatively. The addiction angle is sort of a reference to the maybe sexual and hedonistic aspects of IAMX. I don’t mean it in the literal sense but more the message it sometimes gives off or the psychological explorations of that form and so it’s a reference to that. It’s also a reference to what I think can be the positive by product of addiction in terms of being driven in art or be driven maybe sexually it can be a positive thing or whatever. It doesn’t necessarily mean a negative thing is what I mean. That’s the basic foundation of the album…and I also quite like the words [laughs].

It’s interesting because when you think of “welcoming addiction” it sounds very provocative; it sounds like you are welcoming something you are aware is harmful to you and you should not be using. So welcoming an addiction is kind of the opposite of what we’ve been conditioned to think.

Exactly. There’s something about western culture today and also religious culture where you have all of these rules where you shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that and regardless of the negative effects that they [these institutions] have, and they have a probably more negative effect than a certain drug or drinking or whatever. So I guess it reflects the imbalance in our society. If you look at things in a different way and if you’re responsible with things why not use it and why not play with it and experience these things.

Life is meant for living right?

Yeah and that’s part of the attitude that IAMX fully embraces—that concept.

What really struck me about this album is how vulnerable it is. There’s a lot of polarization; it’s very gritty, but also very tender. Do you feel this album expressed who you are as total person and how cathartic an experience was it for you?

Well put. It really is I guess expressing the full range of my frequencies. With this album I pushed the sensitive side a bit more to the front but the person that I am now, in my everyday flow, I’m more of that relaxed, sensitive, shy person which over the years has driven to become more aggressive towards myself. I luckily have the vent of music and that really helped me. It’s a very cathartic, therapeutic process to be able to do that--to go on stage and just rip your self-apart without doing damage. I think every record sort of reflects those two sides but definitely with this one I felt brave enough to expose that fragility that I didn’t really want to show before because I wasn’t really happy with that part of myself. I didn’t think it was cool or sexy or whatever. I had all these pre-conceptions of who I thought that part of myself was and after years of working on that with music, therapy [and] relationships it was time to pull it out of the bag.

You once said: “I’m such a sensitive person I fear it is best to work alone.” On this album you do a duet with Imogen Heap. How did the collaboration change the creative process for you?

Well, I was still very clear about the control boundaries from the beginning. I’ve worked out when I do collaborate which isn’t very often, I have to make it clear that if it is my record I have to have complete control. I think I’m just obsessive about that and with that it was hard enough to say ok I ‘m going to do a duet…but somewhere deep within I’ve always had this desire to have this duet thing and the reason that became attractive to me, was that I kept having these sort of visions of this fucked-up incestuous maybe brother sister relationship and not a traditional duet. I sort of imagined this very strange, fucked up relationship. Maybe her as the man or me as the girl. It just kept on going around in my head so I asked her if she was interested in experimenting with that and she was. So I just had to kind of get it out and I somehow allowed it, which was quite unusual. It was a good experience. We weren’t physically together in the room doing it. It probably made it easier for me in some ways.

How do you record a track when the person isn’t physically there? What is that process like?

We had many discussions through email and on the phone about the lyrical content and what we thought it would sound like. I’d already laid down the foundation for what it would sound like but I was asking her to write a second verse so I wanted to have a good concept of what it would be. So I sent her the MP3 over a bare track with no vocals on it and she adds her recorded vocals to that and then I listen to it and go I like this I don’t like that, and then we go back and forth with it a few times and she sends the separate files, the vocal files, and I mix it.

It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

Oh it’s great—it’s really opened up a whole new world of experimentation between artists.

When you talk about creative control how difficult is it for you to let go? How do you balance that?

It’s hard and sometimes I find it very frustrating that I don’t allow it more. Sometimes I would just like to enjoy the experience of working with more people and have a light working relationship. Unfortunately, I’m not really programmed like that. I don’t really know where that comes from. I think the work ethic comes from my dad. He was a hard-core working class guy. I think it comes from there and I’ve been programmed from that. So I’ve taken that into the arts and mixed that it into a sort of work-obsessed thing. The arts got kind of mixed up into a control freak. If I really trust the people and over time we develop a relationship and I really can accept that their views or opinion is…it’s not about being better it’s not about whether I think it’s better or worse. It’s about if it’s right for my music. For instance, producing for bands is easier to let go of those other things because I’m not writing about the spiritual nature of the work. I’m mixing a bass drum…it’s more of a scientific process that’s easier to work with people but when it comes to lyrics…

There’s an attachment?

Yeah.

Do you feel like you can let go after you’ve finished an album or a song? Is it easy to move on to something else?

In one sense it is. In the sense that you have to let it go otherwise you torture yourself forever about mistakes you made, lyrics you didn’t write, sounds you didn’t record. You have to let go and that’s one of the great things about having a physical product is that there is completion to your work somehow. There is completion to the diary of your life in that period and again, it’s another sort of cathartic process and seeing it and saying ok, I’m moving on. That’s one side. On the other side, there is the producer in me who is constantly listening to it and thinking shit, I wish I’d done that again, I should have mixed it this way or mixed it brighter and you can endlessly go on and it can never end. So at some point you have to accept the mistake…you have to accept the incompleteness and move on and revel in the imperfection of it.

That’s very Buddhist.

Yeah, if you can do it. It’s fucking hard but that’s sort of my musical utopia to be able to do that.

In terms of influences on the album let’s talk about location. I know you moved to Berlin from London over two years ago. How did Berlin affect the record? Are there pieces of the city in this album?

The city has many things and one thing I love about it is the sense of psychological space that I get when I am there as compared to other cities. It has the feeling of a city but it doesn’t have the oppression or suffocation of a city. In fact it’s the very opposite. It’s very cheap and very liberal—extremely liberal. There’s just so much artistic possibility there. It also has that slightly heavy feeling, that weighty feeling of its recent past mixed up with the decadence of it and the dark knight culture and the club culture. There’s just a lot of life there. There’s a lot of life in every city but it just sort of fits with my concept of living and it has fed into the music. One thing it has given me is the confidence to really explore myself without giving a fuck about others in terms of other peoples opinions and the music industry and forging this independent root…and meeting the people in my band and my manager and all of these different people from different cultures and just becoming less of an island. I mean, living in England is a real island mentality and I never felt particularly connected to English culture anyway. I mean, my grandfather is black and he is from Seychelles and stowed away to England. I never felt really particularly English and moving to central Europe was a real eye-opener for me because you see there’s a whole other world out there and being from England particularly in the music industry, there’s a high level of self importance and arrogance…it just opens up a whole new way of existing and I thank my lucky stars that I moved there.

Big cities tend to be so over stimulating that perhaps as an artist, you have to work a bit harder to find peace or that space to create.

You do. You’re concerned about external pressures of just surviving monetarily and also expectations, ambitions, competition. All of these things which in small amounts can be good for art but not necessarily…it depends on the person but for someone like me, I just couldn’t deal with that expectation or being concerned about what people expect of my art. It really stunted my expression being in London and living there and being surrounded by all of this music I just didn’t feel anything for. But then I still felt that to achieve something there I would have to somehow, conform with what was expected of me.

What about the live experience? What is that experience like for you? Can you even articulate it?

I once said that it was like having sex with hundreds of people at the same time in the room. That’s one side of it. There’s a deeper psychological thing going on that I don’t quite know how to describe. It’s not really about the adoration. I think it’s more about my own personal space and how I have the opportunity to completely and utterly let go.

It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. So maybe the stage is the place where you can 100 percent let go.

It is. It is. This is where the beast can be revealed. It’s almost like being hypnotized. It feels like a sort of voodoo act. It feels so extreme. So rewarding, so right that it’s almost like there’s no thinking involved and I’m constantly thinking. It’s very hard for me to switch off that sort of frontal thinking part of my brain and this is my opportunity to just become animal and really enjoy it.

It almost sounds like you’re elevating to another level of consciousness.

It really is. Because you’re really at one with your body as well. Because it’s a very physical show. That’s something I always wanted to explore more with my body. To just become more connected with this physical thing. I did Kung-fu for a while and that was great--but then I moved into the music thing and I wanted to somehow incorporate that with the music so the stage thing became that and it is my way of physically expressing everything in my…soul? Can I use that word? [laughs].

How important is this to you that this is really a performance more than a show? That you’re incorporating all of these visual elements?

It’s really important. Sometimes technically it becomes a bit strained because there are so many pieces in the puzzle that we have to construct this whole audiovisual experience but if it all works, it’s really important that that is there. I can do a show without it and I can let go and say fuck it, it’s not working, let’s just go for this whole audience contact thing. But when it’s there, it really feels like it expresses a whole other dimension to the music. Film for me is my second love and I do most of the visuals myself. I think there is a subconscious thing going on that when I make a visual, it’s just an extension of a lyric or a melody and that combination just really makes sense for me so putting it on stage with the whole atmosphere really describes the whole project better than just standing there playing a song. That’s great--but music isn’t everything for me, it’s great but I feel more like an artist. It just happens to be that music…I was kind of quite good at and it just became a way of expressing myself.

You mention film as one of your loves, which makes sense—your music is very cinematic. Do you have any dream fantasy actors or directors or locations you would love to work with?

I was really obsessed with Tarkovsky, a Russian art director, sort arty films from the seventies. I loved his kind of spiritual, depressing, very abstract but somehow overall made sense films and they were all made in communist Russia so he didn’t get a chance to get out very much. I think I somehow romanticized Russia for a while as a place I’d like to go and suffer in (laughs). I spent some time in Russia and I don’t think I’d want to do that now but perhaps I still have a fantasy about that Russian psyche thing. Fellini I love. [He’s] a lot more playful and theatrical I guess, more real in some ways. I think Fellini’s films have had quite an influence on me as a performer and dressing up and accepting that sort of freakish part of my nature. And accepting that it’s just something I love to do and not something I have constructed. It’s just a real part of me that I like to play with. I see his films and I see the way he plays with people and he’s kinda fucked up and freaky…and I feel really connected with that. I imagine also, somehow IAMX working really well in theater so maybe that would be some dream to have some kinda film that is incorporating IAMX in a theatrical sense somewhere in a backwater in Moscow.

What about your thoughts on the state of mainstream music today? Being that you’re someone who has successfully kind of broken free of that?

That’s interesting. I just had a small epiphany when you said that. It doesn’t really feel like that. Broken free sounds very amazing and grand but I don’t know enough about that world anymore that I can really comment. In interviews often people ask me what are you listening to? What do you like? I don’t really listen to music that much anymore. I don’t really know what’s going anymore. That was a choice I think I made to put those sort of blinkers on and take my path and see what happens. Obviously, there are some things you can’t avoid. You see some guy falling on Eminem’s head because you were in a hotel and the TV was on. I can’t always get frustrated and think "fuck this is awful absolute junk culture" and turn it off. I have to look and maybe relate it to my life and what people think of it. I think there is just so much input and so much out there. That to me is about business and not even about music. In the commercial industry that’s exactly what it is. I don’t even see it as being related to what I do. The closest connection and what’s great about the Internet is that there are a lot of projects out there and you can have the opportunity to see what’s going on. It seems to be much more polarized. So my comments on it would be is that it’s obvious what it is. I don’t think it’s worth enough to talk about. That’s my opinion. I would always go and try to find something a little bit deeper. I think when people work to receive their art there is so much more reward then what is being fed. This sort of McDonalds junk…in some ways that is what it has become in the industry.

Well music is a gift right? Being vulnerable is the gift. So many artists are afraid to be vulnerable so in commercial music you’re not really getting anything when you listen to them. People know when someone is being authentic.

I really agree and I think that’s why I felt comfortable enough to do it [express vulnerability] because it did feel so real. I don’t think I had that confidence in the past because I had that doubt. If I do do it, people might just not get it and might think well who the fuck does he think he is? Why do we care? There’s always this feeling like, why would someone give a shit about someone else’s personal pain? But then pain is a dramatic word…I don’t mean that but in terms of vulnerability. You said vulnerability is a gift and I find that really interesting that you say that because that leads to a whole sort of muddy waters aspect of the download era and the value of art in general and the subconscious of the downloader. I really want to open up that discussion to people to get closer to the audience or my audience and see how they really value their art or their music. It’s not just about me but art in general and how depreciating [the value of] art is going in some sense...because the more you download for free, you’re not buying into the responsibility aspect of it. At some point, you can just pick it out of the air and get all of this stuff. You’re not really understanding where it came from, how it was made, the process, the struggle, whatever. I’m not saying paying for that does that completely but it makes you think about it for a minute because you are giving something that you own.

It’s an acknowledgement.

Yes it is and it just happens to be that our system is based on money and it’s unfortunate because I think it’s a bad system but we just have to deal with that.

Most people feel like ‘why should I pay for music’? They don’t have faith in artists anymore. They feel like they’re buying a couple of hits instead of a body of work.

That’s really interesting and you’re absolutely right. It’s part of the possibility of the Internet and part of the responsibility of the music industry that has dumbed down everything and has made it a MacDonald’s culture so people are saying, “why should I pay ten dollars for a Big Mac?”

In terms of your art and IAMX, what do want to continue to offer?

I want to keep getting better, whatever that means. I would like to be a part of this new way of artistic exchange business or whatever—I don’t know if business is the right word but have this little project be a part of...I think it’s important that that somehow succeeds even if it’s just completely separate to the music industry. That’s fine as long as we get to this audience. I think it’s important that this way succeeds. I’d like to be part of that. I’d like to explore other art forms very much. I’d like to make a film I think. I have a project in Berlin that I’m kind of working on and it sounds a bit vague and a bit like a mini-dictatorship. I have this little place just outside Berlin and it’s an old sort of a factory place and I want to have artists working there and people in studios and thinkers. I sort romanticize it to be something like the Bauhaus artistic design movement but with musicians and artists. I’d like to have a little social network of like-minded human beings and move forward together.

Sounds like my idea of utopia.

Yeah. My own little utopia in Berlin.

 

Words by: Jahan Mantin
Photos by: Michelle DeLorenzo

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