Interview with Steve from Klammer

Leeds based rockers Klammer have just released their latest single Progress (or the lack of) from their The Day Before Yesterday album.

Taking influence from an assortment of arenas panning from post-punk, darkwave, goth rock and punk rock, Leeds-based KLAMMER embrace all things dark, loud, angular and melodic. The popular quartet have meticulously crafted a hugely distinctive sound that is crammed with integrity, loaded with dark pop sensibilities, and rife with layered edges that are hypnotic and deeply compelling.

Tomatrax caught up with Steve Whitfield to ask a few questions.

It's been three years since you were last interviewed on Tomatrax, what have you been up to over this time?
Well Covid kind of got in the way for a good chunk of that, but we managed to finish writing and recording the new albumduring and between lockdowns. The last track on the album called 'Alone' was totally written and recorded remotely andwith heavy use of the internet, we pulled it together.

For the rest of the album luckily I have a studio at home, so once the drums were recorded at another studio, everything else was done at mine.
The first lockdown I spent recording guitars by myself, and in another lockdown I spent it mixing.
We did squeeze in an occasional gig in when we were allowed, but that 2 year period was tough for us not playing many gigs.
Before Covid landed we also did a couple of cover version we are really proud of. I've always felt if you record someone's song you have to radically change it, I don't see the point in doing a 2^nd rate copy of the original. We did a guitar version of The Human League's Being Boiled and then we got asked to contribute to a tribute album for Pete Shelley from Buzzcocks. We picked a very electronic song from his debut solo album and again made it guitar driven.
Being Boiled I Don't Know What It Is You've just released your latest album, how does it feel to have it out? A bit of a relief! I'd spent so long writing, recording and mixing it during the various lockdowns that I was nearing the end of wanting to listen to the songs anymore. We finished itjust in time for me to still be enjoying it. Now it's out and getting a great response I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Your previous albums have received widespread acclaim. Did this make you feel any pressure when working on this album?
No not really, we just got our heads down and wrote and recorded. We tend not to get influenced by outside pressures.We just do what we do, kind of in a Klammer bubble!When I write music, it just happens. I'm not aware of my thought process at all. One minute I have a riff or a few chords and a few hours later I have a whole song finished and demo'ed.

Critics have implied that this album has seen your music get even darker, were you going for a darker sound than before when writing the album? It wasn't something planned, but yWe were very happy with this quote from the review in the UK magazine Vive Le Rock, "Darkness shouldn't be this catchy" eah I think it probably is the darkest thing we've done so far. Whether that is influenced by the state of the world at the momentYou've previously produced various artists' albums, have you been working on any other albums as a producer recently? There's a new band from the UK called Reardon Love who are ones to watch out for. I've done all their singles so far, and hopefully they'll be doing their debut album soon. Currently I'm taI'm also in the middle of putting the finishing touches to my other band'sWhat was the inspiration behind the video for 'Broken dreams in a crashing car'?
Now that the album is out what do you plan on doing next? We have 3 unreleased songs left over from the new albumsessions, so we are thinking of recording one more new one and putting out a four track EP. That and try to play as many gigs as we can. The live scene in the UK still feels like it's recovering from the last couple of years and now we have a down turn the economy. A lot of promoters we know are saying they are finding it very hard as attendances are well down from the old norm. Check out Klammer's website to find out more! It's an idea I had just before I went to sleep one night, I think I was in that limbo between being awake and asleep. The song is about a recurring nightmare, so I thought it would be good to get some thing with a slightly horror film feel to it.
A lot of people find ventriloquist dummies and clowns pretty scary, so we got them both in there! (Scenius) new album, which is a much more electronic affair. Think John Foxx/New Order meets LCD Sound System. lking with The Scaramanga Six, who I love, about doing their next album. They are such an under-rated band. , I'm not sure! I think that may be part of it, but personally I've always found dark music fairly uplifting and have always listen to a lot of dark music.

Where did the title "The day before yesterday" come from?
Poss and I were just wondering if the world was better in previous times. So many things have improved around the world during our lives but recently many things seem to have peaked and are now on the slid back down. So we came up the phrase 'The day before yesterday' to maybe hint about that.

What was the inspiration behind the album's cover?
It's a black and white photo that I took on film and I scanned it into the computer and then zoomed into a small portion of it. Hence it became really grainy, which I think really works with the feel of the album. I'll leave it up to people to decide what it's a photo of. We've had a few different ideas from people!

If you could produce anyone's work who would you choose?
I'd love to work with The Cure again, I was lucky to be the engineer on their album Wish. Also I'd really like to work with New Order and try to put a bit of edginess back into them.

Your previous albums have received widespread acclaim, did this make you feel any pressure when working on this album?
No not all, any pressure that we might feel would come from us wanting to at least make an album as good as the last one.First of all we do this to satisfy ourselves, that anyone else likes it is a huge bonus!