Says Rob: One day a couple of years ago, there was a knock at my front door. I was in the shower at the time, and answered the door with a small towel around my waist. It was two gentlemen from the Pentecostal denomination if I remember correctly. They were going door to door, spreading the Word, and as I’m of an inquisitive nature, I invited them in to hear their pitch, and to see if they could satisfactorily answer any of the many burning questions I had. After about fifteen minutes, it was obvious to all of us that Pentecostalism wasn’t for me. As they were about to leave, they asked if they could pray for me. I couldn’t see any harm in agreeing, assuming they’d go back to their church and include me in with all the other helpless souls they’d failed to save that day, in one big special time-saving prayer. But they immediately dropped to their knees on the carpet in my front room, eyes closed, murmuring to God. As if on cue, my flatmate at the time walked through the front door to find two whispering, middle aged men on their knees in front of my mainly naked body. Without pausing or commenting, he cheerily said hello, turned on the TV and sat down next to me. I doubt there’s any connection or correlation, but I started what became the first madnomad song about three days afterwards

Tell me what you aimed to achieve with Madnomad?

Recently, it was to complete the album, Tamper Evident. It took a lot longer to complete than I anticipated…about 4 weeks in real time, but spread over about 8 months. This was due to a whole host of mitigating circumstances, double bookings and technical fuck-ups, but I’m not overly concerned about the length of time it took. Penicillin was discovered by accidentally allowing something to fester. It was never going to be a case of going into a studio and banging it out… Now it’s time to move on to the next thing which is tentatively a concept album about the art of deception, called “Schmuck”.

Is the band a solo project or a fully operational collective?

that way. I like to fuck around with styles and genres. I’m a competent editor and producer, and don’t claim to be any kind of expert in anything. For shows, there’s currently a hardcore of 4 musicians who regularly assist, and a further 10-12 people that I can draw on depending on the kind of event we are performing and the amount of dirt I have with which to blackmail them. I’m very fortunate. I’d be more fortunate if I was Elvis fronting The Butthole Surfers.

Musically - pigeon holing is a press necessity - is Madnomad just rock music thrown into an electonic blender?

If anything it’s the other way round. All the songs originate in the digital domain of the computer. That adage of “You can play a good song on an acoustic guitar” is a redundant, tired crock of horseshit. And I don’t have the discipline or inclination or time to sit in a room learning how to play an instrument “properly”. In the same way that a complete novice wouldn’t be able to play a complex piece of written music, a classically trained pianist would be unable to come up with the same kind of raw expression as someone who’s picked up an instrument for the first time. They’d require untraining from their perception of the dogma of “How to play properly”. Some of the songs appear practically fully formed, others are the result of playing around with noises, oscillators, analogue filters etc.

This is the most enjoyable part of the process, creating the songs electronically. As the song takes shape, it usually transforms…whether through accident, programming error, ineptitude, machine malfunction, or when other humans become involved…I don’t know…“Something’s missing from this track….it needs more…Trauma.” Songs that start off as gentle ambient/electronica can mutate into aggressive slabs of terror. “Like this?”… “No…Louder… HARDER.” It’s like no matter how many times the bucking black beast of rock throws you off, you always have to clamber back on to the fucker, and cling on for dear life. You can’t deny the joy felt from listening to or creating a full-on racket, whether it’s from electric guitars or analogue synthesis. And you can often get way more suitably aggressive and nastier noises with synths.

By the way, I’ve seen reviews where madnomad has been described as “Square_pusher mating with Mark E. Smith”. Or “Kraftwerk doing Sabbath. From behind”. (What’s with all the fuck metaphors with reviewers?)

Where do you draw your inspirations from?

Where to begin? Whatever I’m reading, listening to, overhearing, mishearing, watching…daily reverberation… everyday exchanges…you could treat pretty much 
anything you came into contact with as potential source material, waiting to be sifted and edited, or sampled and chopped, compiled for use at a later date. Words can be so ambiguous and loaded that I can spend far too long wondering about a phrase I’ve read or heard. We’re bombarded and our senses are constantly assaulted with so much brightly packaged information that we don’t necessarily ask for… adverts, buzzwords, pop-ups, strap lines, images and sound that are floating around, waiting to be picked up on and taken out of context. It only seems right to use them to your own ends. Like billboards or advertising hoardings that are screaming out to be modified to reveal their hidden truths, sometimes they only need a small nudge to change them into what you believe they are REALLY trying to say. Appropriate wherever appropriate, y’know? At other times, when your receptors are 
faulty, you have to actively search for what you’re looking for- like an obsessive who continuously checks every wipe of the toilet paper for blood.

Why are people assholes? Do you really hate people that much?

How much? Is that the impression you get? The spleen-venting character in the song is wholeheartedly promoting equality while at the end of a particularly short tether. Basically, he’s resentful of the continuous infringements of personal space. The song doesn’t claim that all people are assholes, and hell isn’t other people...well, maybe when you’re fourteen it is. By the same token, life obviously isn’t sweetness, light and tripping through the daisies, coz for every good Samaritan there’s someone ready to swindle a pensioner, or stamp on a kitten’s head. So, no. I don’t hate people. That song is a snapshot of someone’s state of mind. People can agree or disagree with the sentiments. There’s a guy that I buy…erm…things from called Filthy Luca. He’s the only person I know who is like that all the time.

Tell us about the pig? What's its significant. Why do you want to kill it/burn it?

The pig was such a small part that began to dominate proceedings. It had to be overcome, at any cost. It’s a totem or icon of that which threatens you. It has many historical references and has many guises in different cultures. It is not one thing alone. It can be easily misconstrued and can come to you with its true intentions cleverly disguised. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shake it off.

Your lyrics seems very sharp/ honest - almost bitter and cynical but not quite - is this a fair statement? Where would you position yourself in with regards to your lyrics?

Well the samples aren’t my lyrics, but they all resonated enough for me to want to use them. I don’t agree with bitter and cynical. Surely there’s some hope in there, isn’t there? The song “Period” is a monologue from a 23 year old angel dust addled rent boy about events in his life, and some of it, as 
you’d expect, is pretty fucking grim, y’know…addiction, depression and parental death? But he relates the story in this weirdly stoical, deadpan, accepting way. It works because this dark tale is juxtaposed with such inappropriate jaunty, swinging, happy music. And as he’s talking, you find 
yourself rooting for the guy, wanting him to succeed and for good things to start happening for him. And then there’s the possibility of redemption when he finds LOVE. There’s a way out! And he starts talking about how good life is becoming!… but sho’ nuff, life has a predictable tendency to pull the 
carpet from under your feet, and the song ends at the point where he doesn’t know how it’s going to pan out or if he’s going to suffer rejection. I thought the album as a whole could represent the internal dialogues of a roomful of silent strangers.

What's happened/ happening on the live front?

Things are frequently on the verge of total collapse. I try to approach every performance differently and not to give in to the impulse of giving an audience what I think they expect or want. A spontaneous action can quickly become a tired cliché when repeated. I’m interested in pushing the limits of 
what’s acceptable and attempting to provoke extreme reactions. Anyway, an intense experience isn’t necessarily someone grunting while guitar goes chuggachuggachugga… there’s something perversely attractive about attempting to perform a collection of gentle piano ballads to a Motorhead audience. You’d probably get to see a live genital mutilation… “Is that an extreme enough reaction for you?”… I can only imagine what it must be like for bands that play the same set of songs in the same order, night after night after night…it must be like clocking on for work in Nietzchean Hell. On the other hand, if I go to see my favourite boy-band, I’m definitely not leaving until they’ve played all their “Hits”. Life’s full of contradictions, isn’t it?

To what extent is the name a reflection of you as a person?

Mad as in angry, disgruntled or insane? It’s not a reflection. I’m a well balanced healthy individual, who gets as pissed off probably as much as the next person (unless the next person is Luca). You know the saying, “everyone is normal until you get to know them”. There was a time I was almost convinced that behind every drawn curtain on the street, my neighbours were 
dressed up in strange costumes, shitting on each others chests for the benefit of internet web cams, but I now suspect this may not be the case.

Is Madnomad just music or is it art?

We Are Duchampion, my friend. There’s a real precious, negative connotation to the word artist, although with most of the artists I know you can’t doubt how seriously they take their work. And sometimes themselves. Anyways…whaddya mean JUST music? Music has the power to unite bodies and 
minds, and (when played at the right volume and frequency) can cause people to involuntarily evacuate bowels, cause distress to dogs, and cause South American dictators to surrender to opposing armies.