Interview: I Am Kloot’s Pete Jobson discusses new album ‘Let It All In’ (part one)


In between their busy touring schedule I Am Kloot’s Pete Jobson finds time to catch up with Live4ever to discuss their new album, working with Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Craig Potter and being in a band with the seldom seen kid…

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Hi Pete, thanks for finding the time to talk to us, and congratulations on the album, it’s fantastic. So, ‘Sky At Night’ was two years ago, how long has ‘Let It All In’ been in the making?

It’s pretty much been two years in the making; we haven’t really stopped writing and stuff. It takes a bit of time to get things together, getting hold of Guy (Garvey) and Craig (Potter), I mean they’re quite busy so that’s been a bit tricky. But things like the single ‘Hold Back The Night’ we must’ve recorded that like two years ago.

Oh I love that track. It has a real air of Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’ about it.

Ah nice one, I’d be very grateful if you print that one! The strings thing at the end! It’s got all the influences of like each member of Kloot, what we’re into. A real bluesy kinda feel to it, a bit of Portishead, a bit of Nina Simone and almost kinda Gershwin strings.

So has this expanded sound changed the way you record now? Your approach used to be to rehearse a song a few times and then record quickly while the sound was fresh.

No, that’s pretty much how we’ve recorded this. I mean the process of recording, the mixing and the overdubs that can take quite a while but the actual playing and putting down the tracks is still how it always was, pretty spontaneous, pretty quick.

So what was the starting point? Does John still turn up with a bag of songs that he’s just finished or is it more collaborative?



It’s still very much John comes with a song on guitar but this one it’s been a bit more collaborative. There’s a lot of middle eights and stuff that we’ve all written. With Johnny, if he writes a middle eight and it’s really good then he just uses that for another song, but when we’ve come to a bit where we’ve already got a great verse and a great chorus and we need a middle eight then there’s a been a bit more writing from my side on stuff like that. Also with all the overdubs, the string lines and horn lines – if anybody had an idea we’d record it and see if it worked and then decide what instrument to use to play it that would sound good.

How was working with Guy and Craig from Elbow again?

We’re such good friends and have known each other for so long. I mean we recorded our very first LP with Guy and that was in 1999. We’re buddies so it saves a lot of conversations about what you’re into and where you’re at.
But basically our standards have been raised a bit because, whereas in the past with what we’d  recorded we’d think ‘that was good’ or ‘that’ll do’ with playing it live in mind, now unless what we record enhances the song dramatically and everybody agrees and goes ‘fucking hell that’s brilliant’ then it just doesn’t get on the record. And I think that comes from working with Guy and Craig, the trust and respect that we have for them. Obviously there’s some talent as well but it’s kinda a match made in heaven really. I don’t feel we’d want to make a record with anybody else ever again. We’ve found our George Martin if you know what I mean.

Your last LP ‘Sky At Night’ had more chamber pop settings sections where as ‘Let It All In’ is more orchestral. Was this your original intention when you started?

Yeah, I mean that was the mood. ‘Sky At Night’ was the first LP we’d done where we had the LP title, knew what the mood was going to be – late night smoky jazz club kind of affair. But with this one it harps back more to the first LP we did, a bit lighter, and it’s got some frothy pop songs on there as well. But the ‘Hold Back The Night’ string thing at the end is like Led Zeppelin or Muse, which is what we love as well. When we put that line down it was like we can’t be timid about it, we’ve got to give it the full nine yards. I love the dynamic range of it. The start just vocal and bass but by the end it’s a proper wall of sound. It probably comes from our love of film music and musicals where you can do a hell of a lot with dynamics. When you’ve only got three people in the band you’ve got to use space and silence almost like a fourth member.

So did the heavier sound on tracks like that evolve over time?

Well the string line and the guitar that plays the same thing underneath that was added close towards the end of the recording session so it was a bit of an afterthought but we’d already had that track down so it was going apeshit at the end anyway so whatever was going to happen was going to have to be pretty dramatic.

Kloot’s ‘Kashmir’ moment..

Yeah, I was listening to Steve Lamacq’s Roundtable on 6 Music live from Sheffield and they had Jarvis Cocker, Tony Christie and some guy who was like a rock ‘n’ roll cricket player (Graeme Swann) and that track got top votes. They were all saying it should’ve been the James Bond theme. I mean Jarvis is a bit of a legend so getting the nod from people like that is great but I was thinking ‘too right, we should’ve been the James Bond theme’, that would’ve worked.

How about musical influences? Have they changed at all?

I listen to all kinds of things. I mean your big influences, the things you grew up with, are the things you love the most. But I imagine like a lot of people there’s a wide range. To sum it up, Johnny’s massively influenced by The Beatles and early Frank Sinatra but also Hawkwind. Andy’s influences are the Butthole Surfers, San Francisco early punk stuff, hip-hop and jazz and massively into Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath so his drumming style is very, very broad indeed! He’s has this old kit for ages, a massive bass drum and he’s just done a bit of research to get all the Bonham skins and how he tuned his drums – his sound is pretty fat at the moment with his John Bonham kick going on. And for me, if I only had to listen to Nina Simone and there was no other music in the world I’d be quite happy with that.

So is the album title a reference to Nina Simone’s 1966 ‘Let It All Out’ album?

Did she have one called that? That’s a happy coincidence! We let it all in and she can let it all out. If we’re in the same mindset as Nina Simone that’s not a bad place to be!

What about any recent bands you admire or rate?

Yeah, we’ve just come back from the Crossing Border Festival in Holland, you play a couple of gigs in Holland and then a couple in Belgium, it’s a bit of a travelling circus, there are loads of bands and they all play on the same bill. I got to see Spiritualized who were on after us and was absolutely blown away by Jason Pierce and the power of his music and what he does with dynamics. I know that’s not a new band but someone else on the bill was Gaz Coombes from Supergrass…

Yeah we reviewed his gig at XOYO in October..

He’s on fire!! We all came from inspiration of punk music, more the attitude than the music, but with Gaz he’s really got the punk thing, the Glam rock thing and he’s got this Elvis ‘68 comeback-special look about him. He’s done like this psychedelic LP and it was one of the best gigs I’ve ever fucking seen; he was amazing, a lovely chap too.

You mentioned about Andy and his John Bonham-thing so who would you say is your top bassist?

For me it was always the guy out of The Stranglers, Jean-Jacques Burnel. I thought he was amazing. He was always sort of playing lead all the time; a very distinctive style and a very distinctive sound as well which I imagine will have got a lot of influence from John Entwistle and The Who. But nowadays I’m kinda into doing the bare minimum. When you’ve got a drummer as good as Andy and there’s only three of you in the band you give him a lot of space cos his style is very busy and so the less I play the more that can come through and that’s a big part of why we sound like we do.

I’m a guitar player really, I picked up the bass because the band we were in previous to I Am Kloot which Johnny, Andy and I were all in, and a guy called Bryan Glancy who used to sing and write songs. Bryan is the fella who the album ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ album refers to – Bryan is the seldom seen kid. So I was a guitar player and the rest of the lads were in a band and the bass player fucked off. They were going to do some gigs in America and the bass player just disappeared and so that’s how I got started playing bass for the band. When we came back from America it was really good but I don’t suppose we had many ideas to keep it going, but because it sounded so good and cos we enjoyed it so much we kept at it.

Do you miss playing guitar?

Well on the LP a lot of the lead electric guitar stuff that’s all me so I get the chance to play the guitar quite a lot now. I don’t do it live and we have another fella doing it but when we record I get to do all kinds of stuff on guitar which is ace and very satisfying.

So when you play live do you have to have a bigger band to compensate for the orchestration on the new album? Are you following Elbow’s path of touring with half an orchestra?

No, can’t afford that but we have got a really good set up. We’re playing pretty much all of the new album now for the last few sets of showcase gigs we’ve done. We’ve got Tom Knott who plays the guitar and trumpet, Nicky Madden who plays saxophone and various samples, Alan Wells who plays keyboards and accordion and Jote (Prabjote Osahn) who plays violin. She does it in such a way with effects pedals so she sounds like an orchestra. I mean all the string lines on the LP have got electric guitar lines underneath them playing the same thing so with the guitar and just one violin with a load of effects we get that big sound. So there are seven of us in total now.

The band seems to expand with each new album..

Yeah when we first started, because Johnny and I used to be concert promoters in Manchester, we saw a lot of bands and that the money doesn’t split up so good if there’s seven or eight of you. But we were always massive fans of things like The Jam. Three piece bands – there something special about them so we always thought three was enough.

(Duncan McEwan)

Part two of our exclusive interview with I Am Kloot’s Pete Jobson can be read here


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