Electric Soft Parade

Last month Electric Soft Parade were chosen ahead of the likes of Travis to record the fastest video ever in association with HMV and Microsoft's new XP system. Don't ask us for the technical gubbins but from start to finish it took 4 hours to record, edit and beamed on the web so its pretty impressive by anyone's stretch of the imagination. The Electric Soft Parade hail from Brighton and at the core are two brothers Alex and Tom. We caught up with Alex to find out about the world record attempt and the forthcoming album "Holes In The Wall".

Q: The name change from the plain and simple "Soft Parade" to the "Electric Soft Parade". I think everyone agrees it sounds better?
A: It was all a bit mad really. When we got signed the record company were like "we need a band name by tomorrow" and Tom was talking about the Doors album "Soft Parade" - little did we know that some American covers band would threaten to sue us.

I'd rather be Electric than acoustic...and in that case I love it!!! I don't think that you necessary have to be quiet to be beautiful. A band like MBV would turn up with some mad guitar thing that was so full on it would hurt your ears but it was the most gorgeous lush vocal melodies you'd ever heard. Bands like the Boo Radleys.

Jeff Buckley - because Turin Brakes are acoustic and are compared to Jeff Buckley there will be people out there thinking he's this acoustic singer. Jeff Buckley was a rock god!!! But Elbow are one of the best bands to come out of Manchester in a long time, just because they don't sound like a Manchester band and that's great. I'm sick of these bands coming out of Manchester going "You've heard the Smiths, you heard Oasis, sort of Happy Mondays-ish thing". Its like fucking original!!!
 

Q: When you talk about influences you mention the like of The Boo Radleys and The Charlatans. They're not your usual reference points are they?
A: People ask us for our influences and we try to come up with something a little bit different. To me there's not point in saying something like the Beatles because obviously you're influenced by them. Its such an obvious thing to say you're influenced by Oasis or Blur. How can you not be influenced by the Beach Boys or the Beatles. I never listened to modern indie until about 1995, before then it was the Beatles and Elvis.

Q: I heard you're not on best terms with certain elements of the music press?
A: NME likes to think that they're the Kings of indie but most of the journalists there are nothing more than tabloid journalists. In an interview you might just say "Haven aren't my cup of tea but they're a lovely bunch of lads" and all of a sudden its "Alex from the ESP hates Haven and wants to kill them". Since when did music become about fucking mobile phone ring tones!!!

Were not rock & roll people. We don't take loads of drugs and kill people with sticks!!! And fighting with people over nothing is just unbelievable.
 

Q: What can people expect from the album "Holes In The Wall"?
A: A whole load of mad stuff. If your not desperately been into the singles then you might actually get into the album. I'm quite into pop songs and quite formulaic pop songs and can appreciate say a Steps song - I may hate Steps but I can still appreciate the song whereas some people will just have a blind hatred of things!!! Parts of the album are quite dark and introspective and we've even done a Cher and chucked a vocoder on there.
 

Q: Tell us about this whole Microsoft world record challenge then?
A: Basically Microsoft are showing how fast their new system is and there trying to make the fastest pop video ever made. It was between Travis, Feeder and whole bunch of other bands....and they chose us!!! We did this BMG sales conference and the head of HMV put our name forward for the record attempt.

Basically we went on the top of HMV in Oxford Street, we shot the video and edited in the store. Then it went onto the web so people can view it. The video that used to hold the record was the Jagger / Bowie "Dancing In The Streets" video for Live Aid, which took about 4 days.
 

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"There's A Silence" is out now
The album "Holes In The Wall" follows early next year

For more info:
www.electricsoftparade.com
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