Speak Easy Circus On the Making Of “Gros Michel”
What was the creative process like for this particular single "Gros Michel?”
The initial idea for ‘Gros Michel’ came while I was watching the tv show ‘Narcos’ and messing around on the guitar - in fact for a long time it was saved in my phone as ‘Narcos idea’.
The song really began to take shape when I brought it to the rest of the band and we moved the main riff onto the horns, which added the funkiness, and then the hi-hats that gave the song the driving beat behind it.
This is one of our favourite songs to play and it was also a lot of fun to write!
Could you discuss the lyrical themes or messages conveyed in this "Gros Michel?”
I wrote “Gros Michel” because over a period of a few weeks last year I became weirdly obsessed with bananas and watched as many videos and documentaries about them as I could. I was amazed and shocked that something people loved - bananas - could be sold by companies that were so evil - La Chiquita. Some of their transgressions (read crimes), include poisoning communities, causing birth defects in children, funding terrorism, and massacring workers. And yet we still eat bananas. What type of system is created in such an exploitative and evil way? What does it say about us that we are a part of it? It feels very serious, but overall the whole thing made me feel a bit weird, and I wanted to write a song that would reflect that absurdity.
How did you work with the producer or engineers to bring your vision for this single to life?
We worked with Luigi Pasquini at Dystopia Records, a studio in Partick, and had a fantastic time recording there. We had a pretty strong idea of what we wanted going into the session and Luigi really helped us achieve that.
We wanted the sound of the single to more closely reflect our live sound, so we tracked the song live to give it the energy we were looking for.
The groove of the song is really important to the track, so we spent a long time working on the drum sound and extra percussion. We were really influenced by disco-style drum beats so along with Luigi we worked to give the song that same big, driving feel.
How would you describe your musical style or genre?
We normally describe ourselves as indie/funk, although that doesn’t quite cover all of our songs! We all come from very different musical backgrounds which contributes to the varying style of the band. I grew up listening to rock music primarily, whereas our horn section Fen and Jon listened to a lot of jazz and funk music, our bassist Chats played in soul bands, our drummer Frazer played in punk bands - so really our music is a mix of all these different influences. That is actually something that we see as a positive and is something we strive for!
How do you continuously grow and evolve as an artist?
We are always looking to make music that we would want to listen to, and naturally as our tastes change over the years our musical output changes as well. The changes often occur slowly over time, you sometimes don’t even notice them until you listen back to something you released a few years previously.
So always keeping our ears open and being open to influence keeps our music fresh and new for us and also our listeners.