Add N To X: Avant-Hard Rockers On Hard Drugs

"We're not completely anti-drug these days but they become a problem when you get on that repetitive cycle where you go round someone's house and they get the cocaine out." Knocking back what appears to be her third or fourth beer of the day (it's 1pm), Ann Shelton laughs as she recalls the drugs that have accompanied Add N to X's career. Sitting opposite her in an anonymous North London hotel suite, band mate Steve Clayton is equally forthright.

"All the albums have their own drugs, too. On The Wires of Our Nerves was about speed and skunk, Avant Harde was coke and smack (Ann, laughing, "yeah"), while Add Insult to Injury was red wine, rose' and pastis (grappa)," he says.

Together with third producer Barry Smith (today inexplicably absent), Add N to X have released three previous albums, developing an experimental and distinctly punk rock concept of music that's become surprisingly contemporary for the start of the 21st century. Forming in 1993 and developing an unhealthy interest in vocoders, vintage analogue synths and theramins, their music has varied from "wilfully difficult" (as an American magazine put it) to startlingly sweet, earning them plaudits on the fringes of both electronic and rock culture (though NME loathe them).

"I can imagine us being bypassed by the media again as something peripheral, because we don't fit in," Steve admits. "Even though we've always talked about sex and electro. Now you get these girls licking each other out on stage. So has the scene caught up with us- Yeah in a way but we've already done our sex thing and we've kind of moved on."

Asking the questions was (mineral water quaffing) Skrufff person Jonty Adderley


Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): Was this an easy album to create-

Add N to X (Steve): "We got the go-ahead to start work on it about a year ago then we had to extract some money from the record company to start working. Mute are not like other record companies that give you a big advance and let you do what you like with it, instead you have to use all the money you get, so you have to give them a really detailed plan of exactly what you plan to do."

Add N to X (Ann): "And when this was happening I was living in Idaho (Central USA), Steve was living in the Outer Hebrides (Scottish islands in the middle of nowhere) doing a film and Barry was in London, so we all started recording separately. We continued like that then reached a point where we all sat down together and went through each others' music going 'shit, crap, good, alright, whatever,' and compiled this album like that. We didn't know if this method would work or if it would still be an Add N to X record, but it was."

Skrufff: You've previously recorded in Sheffield, yet in a recent interview you did Ann, you said, 'I'm never going back there again, it's always pissing down with rain, my friend owns a bar there, it's a dirty old men's bar that stinks of piss', have you been back since-

Add N to X (Ann) (both roaring with laughter): "It is grim up there and it's always raining. You always end up going up there wearing a summer dress and shivering, having goose-bumps (goose pimples)."

Add N to X (Steve): "She's got a good way of avoiding Sheffield now, she just sends the musical parts up there to the studio with instructions, then they're sent back."

Add N to X (Ann): "When we were recording On The Wires of Our Nerves there we had to stay at a certain friend's house, bless him, and he let us stay because we didn't have enough money for a hotel. The sheets were something else (Filthy); Steve and I had to share the bed and Barry got the sofa, lucky sod. It was horrible. There was loads of speed and it was kept inside a sheep's skull on the shelf and we ended up just taking speed all the time…."

Add N to X (Steve): "And we'd also smoke that really heavy, in-bred skunk that they have up there. I'd be thinking 'I'm really rushing on the speed, I'll come down with some of that weed', but instead o Tags

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