Sunday 31st August 2014 by Andrew Trendell

Behind El Pintor: Interpol on movies, books and music

Interpol takeover: We ask the band what they've been enjoying

Sam: "I was listening to a lot of David Bowie during the making of El Pintor. I bought the deluxe box set version of Station To Station in the midwest for like $100. I wasn't diving into that per se, it was just 'on the frontal lobe', if you will. I was kind of just obsessing over 'TVC15' and the song 'Stay'. You really can't draw a parallel between our record and those tracks, but there was something to the dynamic of those songs in particular. How they transition and lift without adding any extra instrumentation. That was really inspiring to me. All of that stuff was played live and there were no Pro-Tools tricks."

Paul: "I'm really into hip-hop. A lot of the time when I'm working I like to listen to Kool Keith. I think that he's a rare artist of purely unadulterated inspiration at all times. I've never heard him do something that didn't feel inspired to me. Lil Wayne has a place in my heart in the same way, in that this guy is just art. I find inspiration in a lot of different places and I'll always go back to Kool Keith."

Daniel: "The last film I saw was a screening of the Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth. I thought it was great. Beyond being an admirer of Nick Cave as I am, as a piece of film I thought it was really original. There was a fantastic fantasy element to it that follows that line he's treaded as a writer. It's an original outlook on how to do a documentary: there's facts, a great playfulness, some great interviews, authenticity with people from his past and a lot of it is about the creation of his last record, Push The Sky Away. All of that together make for a really original piece of cinema. I walked away from that film really wowed and it stayed with me."

Sam: "Alt-J. I heard a couple of the new tracks on satellite radio on my long drives to the airport when I come back to Athens, Georgia. Something is going on there and I'm digging what they're doing."

Paul: "I recently picked up a Vonnegut book that I've never read because I realised that I needed an easy re-entry. I realised that I'd exhausted the few authors that I was interested in, and then I picked up Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay which I'm still in the middle of, but my reading discipline lately is terrible."

Daniel: "While making El Pintor, I wasn't listening to any rock music. If I was listening to anything, it was probably more on the instrumental side of stuff. I really like Forest Swords, I'm a big fan of his work. This isn't stuff that seeped into the record, but stuff I listen to away from it. I'm really into atmospheric and ambient stuff that heads in a different direction from the record that we were making."

Paul: "I think Beck's in the top five most influential artists for me in my career. Whenever he does something I have to check it out. "

Daniel: "Childhood - they're fucking great man. I love them, and they're really cool dudes. I love their vibe and we asked them to play with us because we met them and were into what they do. We asked them to play four shows with us and they're great." (Photo: Gigwise/Charlotte Patmore)

Paul: "Snowpiercer: that's a fucking great movie, man. I've gotta say, Chris Evans picks some great roles outside of Hollywood mega-hit movies. My favourite Danny Boyle film Sunshine, he was great in that. The Ice Man, which was a decent movie about a serial killer, and now he's in the Snowpiercer which is just a great movie, man. I'd really recommend that."

Dan: "I've heard some pieces of King Krule that I really like. I really dig his vibe a lot."

Tags: Interpol

Interpol are a band of three very individual artists, with a myriad of tastes and influences behind them. Like all their records, El Pintor is a rich texture of sounds and ideas - adding up to an album that's as cinematic and poetic as it is rhythmic and real. So, as part of Interpol's takeover of Gigwise, we asked them what they'd be listening to, reading and watching over the last year.

Refreshingly, it's not neccessarily what you might expect. You won't find the normal names that are unfairly thrown at the band, but instead their picks of the best hip-hop, rising alt-rock, arthouse and blockbuster cinema, as well as a few legendary names thrown in for good measure.

Here's Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino telling us what they've been enjoying in their spare time lately.

Behind El Pintor: Interpol on movies, books and music

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