Lab 4 interview:
How long have you been running?
About 5 years as LAB-4, though Lez and I have been working together for about 8 years.
Where did the name come from?
An old French Sci-fi film called “Mad man from LAB-4”. It was about a scientist who tried to make a gas to make people love each other.
What has been your best live experience?
It would be impossible to pick one but it would be between Universe’s 2nd birthday at Club UK, Pendragon Solstice party at Brixton Academy, our launch party at Samsara and the first Match Made in Heaven at Fevah.Having said that we have never had a bad gig at Havok in Manchester!!
How has “Neuricide”, your new album, been doing?
Neurocide has been selling really well, the feedback from the people who have bought it has been overwhelming.
Why did your distributors put it “under investigation”?
Something to do with the name “Neurocide”…we think!!
Are you looking forward to the USA tour?
America should be good fun, hopefully we can show them how the English can rock at a rave like no-one else!!
What are your future plans?
We are playing at Dance Valley in Amsterdam in August, where we’re also being interviewed for MTV Europe.
We are going to Japan on the 11th and 12th of September, taking the rest of the year off, then playing somewhere (secret at the moment) and then we will hopefully be doing a new album for March 2000.
Do you plan to get more involved in remixing?
The trouble with remixing is it’s time consuming and it’s difficult to decide where to draw the line e.g. whether or not to ‘give away’ new riffs or sounds. In general we prefer writing new stuff. Having said that, there is a certain amount of freedom that comes with remixing someone else’s work. Usually if we hear a track that we like so much, that we would want to remix it, then it’s already in it’s perfect form. This makes it hard to know what to do with it!! We could do a different take on it but it’s kind of unrewarding when you still prefer the original!!! Or it might inspire us to write a completely new track. Having said all that we have done quite a few remixes eg. Chemical Imbalance (Alien Trax), See No Evil (Hinotori), Mask Hysteria (One Inch) etc.
Personally, “Alien” is one of my all-time favourite albums. Could you tell us a little about the ideas being it/making it?
When we did the Alien EP we didn’t really know what we were doing!! It’s very natural in that it was just our very instant take on the electronic music at the time. XL5 was just intended as the biggest crowd wind up, we could come up with! It was basically us finding our way!
Where will you be at the time of the eclipse?
Tuesday 10th Megadog festival (about 4pm)
Tuesday 10th Pendulum/Insanity at the Sunshadow festival (about 9pm)
Wednesday 11th Midday Mooners – between St Augutall & Truro
Thursday 12th Pendragon at Sunshadow (about 8pm or 9pm)
When is your next single “Orphan” being released?
Mid August..I think on One Inch Records. It will be Havok Vs Lab-4.
How do you think the internet is changing dance music?
Hopefully it will make the music more widely available, people often find it difficult to get hold of our stuff. We are a bit worried about bootlegging, although we would love to give our music to anyone who likes it, we also have to earn enough to have time to write it! Also the quality may not be very good. But the internet is making music more globally linked, and accessible from everywhere which is brilliant.
You’ve already built up a healthy Net presence. Do you plan to develop this further?
Our web site is organised, designed and run for us by André Flitsch. We don’t actually have any internet access yet, so we rely on Annabelle and André’s help, getting messages to people etc. We get loads of questions and really nice comments from people through the web site. The internet etc. is something we would like to get more into, we are also working on a deal to get our music available online.
Any parting messages for your fans?
Thanks for all your continued support – we love you all – particularly the really mental ones!!
