Edward Larrikin - The Pan I Am

I’m told to meet the singer under the London Eye at noon on a brisk winter’s day – it all feels like a modern literature romance. When Edward arrives we head down to the British Film Institute, which was officially opened by his grandfather, to conduct the interview.

Larrikin Love came to the forefront of the London music fringes in 2005, riding on the short-lived Thamesbeat movement which saw the band name-dropped with Jamie T and Mystery Jets. With an eye for history and a Morrissey-esque distaste for contemporary Britain some argued that the band had more to say then their peers.

But when their sudden break-up was attributed to the ‘we're pursuing other projects’ clique many thought that was the last we'd see of any of them. Not so. Back with a completed album Edward Larrikin is the first phoenix to rise from the flames with his act The Pan I Am, and with record deal offers interrupting our interview it looks as if he could be sticking around for longer...

Virtual Festivals: Why did Larrikin Love split up? Did you just decide to go your separate ways?
Edward Larrikin: “I think so, I wanted some fun.”

VF: Were the band too focused in just one direction?
EL: “No not at all, I think it was a complete lack of that.”

VF: Your new band is called The Pan I Am. How did the name come about for that?
EL: “The Pan I Am came about because Pan is a Greek god and a character in Greek mythology and I think I’m related to him on a level.”

VF: You seem very well read in literature and history and you even name check Hamlet’s Ophia in one of your new songs. Is literature a big influence in your writing?
EL: “Yeah definitely. I don’t think it’s an influence in the way I’ll pick up a book and think ‘Hmm I’m going to write a song about this.’ I think the more you read and discover new things, and discover new writers, and discover new ways of writing, and discover new alleyways to go down on paper, all of that really influences the way some of my songs are coming out, especially the new ones. I’m starting  to shape them in a variety of different ways. I think that depending on the music that one wants to do it’s very much the more you explore things the more your horizons broaden. So you can make songs that people aren’t making anymore, or haven’t made yet, and you can then form them differently. On this new record I’m really excited about the way a couple of the songs have been arranged. I don’t think people have been so formulaic about the way they are setting out their songs and I’m talking lyrically here too. There is a particular song on the record that never really repeats itself lyrically or musically and I think that's far more exciting than anything else in the world.”

VF: Musically who are your influences at the moment?
EL: “At the moment I really like Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. I bought The Birthday Party albums which I thought were just fantastic. I really love PJ Harvey at the moment and I really like Bjork – a lot of powerful women.”

VF: During interviews about the Larrikin Love record you mentioned Rimbaud being a big influence. Do you follow his ‘complete disorientation of the senses’ ethos, which encourages killing off different senses with different drugs and writing about it?
EL: “Not really. I think the thing with Rimbaud is that his life was every teenager’s wet dream. I don’t think he’s fantastic and I wrote an essay about him for a book. At the end I kind of really shoved him into the ground and I feel a bit bad now, but it’s because he’s sited by absolutely every fucker. He was an amazing and radical writer and he’s certainly an influence to anybody that puts their lyrics at the forefront of their music – he was the first punk I guess.”

VF: The ‘official’ debut of The Pan I Am is at a Blue Flowers night at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre ,which mixes both music and poetry – are you excited?
EL: “Yeah very much so. It came round in a really exciting way. Alice, who I’ve been collaborating with, has curated the night. It’s been great and Blue Flowers have been fantastic. They’ve given us free reign because I know the guys at Blue Flowers and they’re very sweet people. They said they really wanted to do the first The Pan I Am show. So we came back to them and said: ‘Fantastic but let’s take it to another level. Let’s not just do another gig, let’s tackle it and put on an evening and an event that isn’t seen very often in London, except perhaps in tiny nooks and crannies.’ We also wanted to do it on a larger scale as well. So we turned it into a multi-arts event with three music events, four poets, a whole indoor marketing foyer which is selling book arts, jewel and product design - a myriad of different things. Then we have films being screened by Jonas Mekas. He was a film maker for the [Andy] Warhol factory, he worked with Salvador Dali, he worked with John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono] – he’s an absolute legend. He’s from Lithuania and probably around 86 now [he’s 85] and he’s good mates with Patti Smith. And she’s another one totally influenced by Rimbaud, probably more than any other band – she wanked over him basically.”

VF: You’ve got people like Patrick Wolf performing with you at Blue Flowers. How important do you think it is to listen to what your contemporaries have to say?
EL: “I don’t know how important it is but I think it’s certainly exciting especially for fans of gigs. Patrick [Wolf] has such a bizarre fan base – they’re complete and utter psychopaths which makes the evening very exciting for them. I don’t know how important it is hearing what anyone has to say anymore.”

VF The night will be the ‘official’ showcase of The Pan I Am, but you did play a secret gig last night. How was that?
EL: “It was fine. It was a complete and utter 30 minute warm up job with a couple of friends and some unsuspecting public. It was really cool.”

VF: Talking about the unimportance of listening to your contemporaries a thread through the Larrikin Love record was your distaste for modern England. Do you still follow that thought?
EL: “Well I’m moving.”

VF: Where to?
EL: “To Greece, so I guess it’s still there. Did you see the way the NME ripped apart Morrissey? It was unbelievable. It’s unbelievable because if you actually read the interview he’s said nothing wrong at all. He’s said fair points about everything but because [the NME are] being the sensationalist fucks that they are they have to build people up and knock them down constantly.”

VF: It’s all about selling papers for them...
EL “Or selling the lack of them.”

VF: Do you think there are enough acts out there that are talking enough about the state of contemporary Britain?
EL: “When I first wrote the first Larrikin Love album, which is about six years ago, it was a whole different band and with my lyrics now I don’t want to comment on anything. I don’t want to comment on social bollocks. I don’t want to sing about London. I don’t want to talk about England and I don’t want to talk about how terrible it is that factories close down and I spend my weekends in the pub and riding my bike around London – I don’t give a fuck and it doesn’t interest me. I think it’s really, really boring that the new crop of mockney, straight out of theatre school acts, who are lucky they don’t have a posh accent so they can try get away with it and they sing about bollocks. I know you know who I’m talking about. There are enough girls out there that have cropped out of nowhere, and they are shite. They are so bad it’s unbelievable – they have no soul!”

VF: That angers you more then the state of Britain?
EL: “Yeah. When they say terrorism is a threat…”

VF: Kate Nash is a bigger one?
EL: “Well you said a name, I didn’t say a name. I tell you who I do like is Lily Allen, who I would categorise with Nash, because she was at the forefront of all that, she started that. Also Lily Allen kind of knows her flaws and I think she’s alright, but I think there are some people who don’t deserve that. Coincidently in that NME issue, after reading the Morrissey interview, I was flicking through it, trying to find a reason to throw it away - and didn’t find one because there was a couple of other things I wanted to read. This chap called Alex Miller, who is one of the writers for it, wrote a fantastic piece on the Remi Nicole album. Have you heard of Remi Nicole? ”

VF: I’ve seen her a couple of times.
EL: “Well she sounds like wank. Unbelievable – she just sounds appalling! He gave her three out of ten for her album and tore it apart, but he backed everything up with a snippet of a lyric here and a snippet of a lyric there. The girl’s an idiot. Sorry you’re not friends with her are you?”

VF: No.
EL: “That’s, and I don’t mind actually saying this, dangerous stuff. That’s really dangerous that people are marketing that – putting her out there with a pair of trainers with her name on them. She wears a tie and she sings about rock and roll. I think that’s disgusting.”

VF: I think the thing about Remi Nicole...
EL: “You sound like you’re defending her.”

VF: Well she plays her own instruments and writes her own songs.
EL: “Does she? Are you sure?”

VF: I’ve seen her live…
EL: “But does she write her own songs? Because I’ve seen her on a TV programme and she’s worse than me on guitar and I’ve got quite good actually and she was just terrible. And another thing is that if she does write her own songs then that’s worse because that means she’s responsible for that tripe! If I had those songs on my album I would say: ‘No it wasn’t me it was a bunch of producers sat in Notting Hill Gate writing them.’”
 
VF: But wouldn’t you rather see people writing their own stuff rather than having people marketing and producing for a niche market like the charts?
EL: “Yeah, but I think Remi Nicole isn’t what you’re making her out to be. You love Remi Nicole don’t you? What t-shirt have you got under there?”

VF: My Remi Nicole one. You say you’ve got better on guitar; do you play more instruments on your new album?
EL: “The really exciting bit about this album is that there are only two of us recording it, so I had to play a whole host of instruments including bass and stuff which was like ‘Woah!’ Then we’re playing a lot of organ and we’re using a lot of experimental electronics like this circuit board called a Clementoni, which was really fun. And then picking up that guitar again and getting to grips with the whole thing. I’ve always had this thing with the guitar where I don’t want to know any fucking chords. Obviously I know chords, but if someone said: ‘Give me a F sharp minor,’ or whatever I wouldn’t have a clue what it is. What I’ve really enjoyed is finding my own chords and then I just memorise them and then that will make the formula for a particular part of the song. We did that for a lot of songs and then we had people like Drew McConnell from Babyshambles, actually not from Babyshambles, in his own right – Drew McConnell. He’s probably my favourite person in music at the moment and when he came down and recorded on the album he was like: ‘What chord is that?’ He was trying to work them out and I was like: ‘Drew, I don’t have a clue mate, I really don’t have a clue.’ I think that’s far more exciting than being trained in an instrument.”

VF: Did anybody else help out on the album?
EL: “Yeah, there’s a song on the album with Fife Dangerfield from Guillemots. It’s a beautiful song and I’m really happy with it. He sung on it and played a bit of slide guitar. He’s another person that is just extremely talented and not recognised for it. No one recognises how talented that man is.”

VF: How is the album shaping up? When are you hoping to for a release?
EL: “I’m hoping for a release in July.”

VF: Is it a summery sounding record?
EL: “No, not at all. The record is already finished. It’s done. It's nine songs but I wouldn’t say its summery, no. There’s a couple of summery songs in there but not Remi Nicole summery.”

VF: If you’re moving away are you planning to tour the album before you move?
EL: “The thing with my house is that I won’t be able to live there for 12 months of the year, but I’m certainly going to make my best effort to be there as much as I can. But yeah I’m lucky because I have a house here as well. I’m going to try and tour this record, but not a huge amount because I’m not the biggest fan of touring and I want The Pan I Am shows to be much more an event than a weekend down at the Barfly because I don’t think that’s very interesting.”

VF: No festivals then?
EL: “We’ll definitely do some festivals.”

VF: Any you particularly like to play?
EL: “I’d love to do All Tomorrow’s Parties and stuff like that because I think that’s the most interesting one there is. I went to Glastonbury this year and I loved it, then I hated it, then I loved it, then I hated it and then I got home and I loved it again.”

VF: It was an odd year this year and the weather played a big part.
EL: “It was just being woken up at six in the morning by pure thunder and lighting right above me and it freaked me out. I hate lighting! And I was in a tent and I didn’t even know the person. I just stayed in his tent. It was horrible.”

VF: Would you go again next year?
EL: “If I’m onstage then yeah. But I was such an idiot. This year me and Alice just decided to go with Patrick [Wolf]. We got on his tour bus, went there, got there, he played his gig and then he went: ‘I’m going.’ We were like: ‘Where are we going to stay?’ I was wearing a suit. No change of clothes, no sleeping bag – nothing. Nowhere to stay – nothing. Me and Alice were like: ‘We can sleep under the stars.’ But it gets cold at night, even in the summer. We were wondering around and then we came across a couple of people we met in Sheffield, a band called Tiny Dancers, and they let us sleep in their tent. The next night we got a touch of luck when a B-List celebrity had their own chalet there or some bollocks and they left and said we could have it.”

VF: How did you get home?
EL: “Blue Flowers! We found Chris from Blue Flowers when we were stumbling around and he was absolutely a shadow of his former self. We said: ‘How are you getting home?’ And he said: ‘I’m driving,’ and we were like: ‘Yey!’ So he gave us a lift home and we stopped off at Pilton for breakfast.”

Find out more on The Pan I Am MySpace.