Manchild

Last month Manchild made their comeback with the thumping four to the floor disco stomper "Nothing Without Me". it was far cry from the big beat indie loving welsh guys who collaborated with the likes of Kelly Jones (Stereophonics) and Andy Cairns (Therapy). Old fans need not despair as alongside the recent love of classic dance music the guys still love to rock out once in a while as will be displayed on the album due early next year. Named collaborations include hotly tipped rock combo Lost Prophets amongst others so keep your ears to the ground and read on.

Q: "Nothing Without me" - totally different vibe from the "Untied States" album. Why the change in direction?
A: Its a progression I think really. Its not a million miles away from some of the stuff if you look at tracks like "The Bitch", but we are going more dance orientated. Its one of those things that if you listen to the rest of stuff were doing at the moment it fills in the area between "Untied States" and the single.

I think with the last album we were exploring a bit more because we had so long to write it - pulling in all our experiences from year dot basically - and now were concentrating more on working our sound. We did a few remixes last year and few of them were sort of four to the floor bass.
 

Q: How did Arianne get involved with you guys?
A: She's actually working with a band called Yoshi which was put together by Mike Edwards of Jesus Jones (were mutual friends of Mike after he produced a couple of tracks on Untied States). And we just wanted to get in a female singer purely because we hadn't worked with one before. Then we found this wicked sample, which turned out to be Arianne, so we thought why not put the two together.
 

Q: After Kelly Jones and Andy Cairns on the last album everyone will want to know who you're working with this time. What collaborations are on the cards for us?
We've probably written about half of the album so far and it coming together nicely. We've got a few more tracks with Arianne, we've also got a rapper from London called ET who's featuring on a couple of tracks. Were enjoying writing with this new talent that's on the rise cos' it gives us the versatility to really work a track.

One of the tracks we've done with Ian from Lost Prophets. This is probably where it ties in with Untied States and is a mad Eminem / Dr Dre but then goes into a Rage Against The Machine type of vibe. We recorded the track about 6 month ago and in that short time its just blown up for them. They're managed by Metallica's management and re-recorded some tracks for America with Guns & Roses producer.
 

Q: This time you do seem to be heading for the clubbier end of the market, rather than the leftfield dance music side of things?
A: We've never been particularly contrived about what we do, more that its just a culmination of what me and Max happened to be listening to at the time. We've always listened to dance music and more club orientated music and a certain amount of disco tunes as well so its always been a sort of progression to take those influences as well.

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"Nothing Without Me" out now on One Little Indian
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