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For anyone uninitiated with the fantastically zany Clor, they’re a band near on impossible to pigeonhole. A glorious hybrid of bouffant haircuts, psychedelic riffs, electronic bleeps, bank clerk outfits, florescent pop leanings and down-right killer tunes – it’s safe to say they defy trends. Think an acid trip personified. Perhaps it’s their apparent eccentricity, their detachment from recent guitar band traits ostensibly needed to make it big time, that relatively few column inches have been dedicated to them. However, anyone fortunate enough to have witnessed the fivesome live, or has glimpsed the video to their single ‘Love and Pain’, is guaranteed to spout boundless superlatives afterwards. With a debut album out in July, it’s surely only a matter of time before Clor become hot news in the music world.
Immediately before the band’s final tour date supporting Tom Vek, Gigwise caught up with amiable frontman Barry Dobbin…
Naturally starting with Clor’s image, we question Barry on keyboardist Bob Earland’s tendencies to wear Kraftwerk-esque attire and his own insanely-curly hair. He admits: “Yeah, some people have said we look quite geeky, but I don’t know really… It’s not a big issue, we just wear our normal clothes. It’s something I don’t really give a lot of thought about.” Er, right.
Oddly, while their image plays an integral part to their onstage charm, their website is devoid of snaps of the lads – images that in our fickle society would surely be a fundamental selling point for the band? Rubbishing claims the band are trying to create an enigmatic aura, Dobbin says: “We did have some quite funny photos taken, but we all looked moody in them… the last thing we wanted was to be seen as a group of moody guys standing in front of a wall. I think the most important thing is that people make up their minds about us from listening to the music.” So, there’ll be no photos outside Salford boys club then.
Freely naming a variety of bands that sculpted Clor’s sound (Kraftwerk, Sparks, Brian Eno, and soul music, basically “anything that’s good”), when talking about the brilliant, madcap music that Clor concoct themselves, it’s an issue that Dobbin struggles to find words for. Writhing, he says: “I’ve honestly got no idea how to describe it. Thousands and thousands of people ask me this, but I really don’t know, it’s too demanding to explain” Clearly struggling, he eventually divulges: “I suppose it’s guitary, electronic music that you can dance to... let’s say ‘Clor music’.” Equally, Dobbin states their song lyrics are consciously ambiguous and hard to define: “I think it’s better to be open in your music; leave the songs open so that people can read into them how they want. People need to listen to it for just what it is.”
Incredibly, Dobbin reveals that creating their stunning music or even forming a band was not on the cards when the band met six years ago. Having moved down to London from his native Rochdale, eventually four and a half years ago Dobbin and lead guitarist Luke Smith recorded Clor’s first material, the aptly titled ‘Welcome Music Lovers’. He explains: “We recorded our first EP and after the reaction for that decided to form a band. To begin with there wasn’t even an ambition to form a band!” Fortified by the reaction to the EP, they cemented their status as a band.
Somewhat refreshingly, Dobbin explains that in creating their ‘Clor music’ for the debut album they were divorced from most outside influences. In fact, living up to the cliché, the band self-recorded the album in a “tiny” flat bedroom. Proclaiming the merits of working self-sufficiently, Dobbin explains: “It was all recorded in a back bedroom in a tiny flat, so it was home-grown and produced… It was much easier this way. In a big studio things are out of your control and at home we could write at the same time as we recorded it, so things were a lot freer and there wasn’t as much pressure. Tom Vek did it this way and it worked very well for him. So every angle possible made sense.”
In fact, Dobbin thinks the situation brought the best out of the band: “You end up doing things yourself that you didn’t think were possible… The thing is that home recording is so advanced nowadays, you’d get in a studio and have the same system and things would be more complicated and expensive.”
Forced to bring in outside sources to give the album, as Barry calls it, “some sheen”, the band drafted in the prestigious Alan Moulder and Deep Dub for editing duties. While also bestowing the virtues of having some experienced hands on deck, Dobbin admits the latter stages of recording weren’t without their strains: “It was easy at first to record, but the more people that came in it became more difficult. There’s just more people to please, more ideas are thrown at you… But the most important thing was that we kept the album exciting, how it all was when we first started.”
Similarly, in keeping with their idiosyncratic qualities, Dobbin is pleased the band are distanced from the media juggernaut of hype that surrounds some new bands: “I think it’s a bonus. It’s how we want it, people are just discovering us for themselves. There’s not really anyone pushing buttons or approaching us, we just do our own thing. I’m always quite wary of bands that get a load of media attention, but I suppose it works for some people.”
For many, their first proper glimpse of Clor has been through the video to ‘Love and Pain’ with its frankly insane dance moves. Dobbin explains: “A friend of ours called Madelyn Rogers, myself and Rachel Reupka, the director came up with the idea. We did a day’s dance workshop the day before we shot it and got the moves from there. There was a lot of good feedback to it. Rachel the director is actually an artist, she’d never directed before and now suddenly she’s become hot property. She’s definitely doing our next video!”
Talking about their next single, Dobbin says picking it was quite an easy decision: “It’s going to be ‘Outlines’. It’s a real poppy, happy song that I suppose is dark at the heart. People react to it on different levels, on one hand it’s upbeat, but there’s a slightly dark element under the music.” While deciding on the single was easy, the album title proved a logistical nightmare: “We thought up about 500 different names and really couldn’t agree on anything. So in the end we just wanted to ram the Clor name home, so we’re going to call it ‘Clor’.”
Looking forward, and following an extensive tour with Tom Vek over the last two months, aside from possible joint ventures with Hot Chip and the Envelopes, Clor haven’t been short of support offers: “There’s lots of tours with lots of bands we want to do. I can’t tell you because nothing has been confirmed and if I do, it’ll probably fall through. There’s loads of support slots we want to jump at really”. As for the distant future, Dobbin has quite modest plans: “I want to make records that I can look back on in ten years time and think, yeah, we did ok.” Don’t worry Barry you’ll do this and much much more.
Photos by: Timur Celikdag
