9 o'clock Nasty On the Making Of “Bad Vegan”
What was the initial spark or idea that led to the creation of "Bad Vegan?"
Sometimes it is hard to say what the first moment or spark was for a song - they form through conversations and ideas that get kicked around the band. In the case of “Bad Vegan,” there was an almost complete demo version with drums and bass and some guitars that was about a minute of madness without any lyrics and one day a friend described someone they didn’t like as a “bad vegan” because they made a huge deal out of their moral choices but then never really lived up to them. A phrase like that is like gold because you can tell hundreds of different stories from that starting point.
How do you feel this song represents your artistic identity?
We’ve gradually explored more hip hop, electronica and drum and bass in the last 12 months, which has been hugely interesting and rewarding. But sometimes you need to just go into a small room and play guitars and hit drums as hard as you can until your ears ring and you have lost your voice. So “Bad Vegan” is the product of an undisciplined, amped up escape from our normal creative process.
What was your favorite moment in making the music video?
We used a 360 degree camera for the first time, so we were facing each other for the whole shoot, sometimes less than a metre apart. That gave us a lot more freedom in the edit to pick out smaller moments and make it feel like the camera was spinning around.
Can you tell us more about you as a band?
We live in interesting times. Just in that small instant where it is possible to reach a global audience as an indie band and before corporate AI removes all traces of humanity from Art. We’ve never really been a band in the traditional sense as we don’t rehearse and we don’t have fixed instruments. We write songs together and play them to our friends over the internet. People watch and laugh or shout or cry and that is exactly what we want.
Are there any specific themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?
The songs tell us what they want to convey. It’s a bit like that Michelangelo quote - “we just keep knocking off all the bits that don’t look like the song.” We edit and cut and sharpen until we find the song. We write about politics and culture and sex and death. We hope that people feel that there is love in what we do.