purveyor of: a hitch in your giddyup

Feel like rock music has lost its zazz? Hip hop has become a parody of itself? Pop music is amoral? Jazz sucks? Looking for something fresh to clean your palette? Look no further. Ross Hawkins, as Idle Tigers, makes music that sounds like an empty circus. Ryan McLaren sat down with him and found a man as endearing as his music. And he's got one of those accents that make you swoon.

You've got a really unique sound going on. It's kind of minimalist electro cabaret.  Care to explain how you came to make this band?

Well, the tendency towards minimalism happened out of necessity, making bedroom recordings on cheap 4-tracks, but it's a habit that I intend to stick with. I like the idea of making music that has a little bit more empty space than feels quite comfortable on a pop record. If there's a cabaret element (and I do listen to lots of old European cabaret and English music hall recordings) then that's just the result of me being drawn to telling stories or playing roles -- thus teasing out a shy theatricality in me. This kind of honest role-playing and pretending seems preferable to rock music's insistence on "authenticity", whatever that's supposed to mean. And that's what the synths are doing -- producing fabricated sounds to suit my fabricated moods and personalities.

Are there specific influences that you draw from?

Lots! I'm often quite masochistically "influenced" by people who can do things that I could never do, so at the moment I'm perversely drawn to rich or extraordinary voices like Scott Walker, Klaus Nomi, Antony, Diamanda Galas... which are all, in their way, a million miles away from my little whisper of a voice. Then there are tale-tellers like Jacques Brel, Momus, George Formby; confusing entities like Bowie and Fad Gadget; and Idle Tigers began as an almost entirely instrumental project, following the example of Pauline Oliveros and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

What kind of gear do you use? I'm imagining some weird DAT tape loops and a few Casios.

A technical question! Yes, poorly circuit-bent Casios have served me well, and they're becoming nicely unpredictable with old age. When playing live, I prefer using chunky analog synths for the same reason. I like my technology to have a rusty/rustic sound. I also try to use a mandolin, mostly because I can't.

You have a couple other projects on the go that are mostly conceptual, correct? Can you explain a little bit about them?

How did you know that? Music-making began for me as part of a three-person alliance with two brilliant fellows, Jonny Opinion and Kieran Mitton. In a sense, Idle Tigers remains just a single shelf in that cabinet, otherwise known as The Shadow Cabinet. 

The Exploding Myths is the barely-musical, transvestite, womandolin project of my shy female self, Rose. She's useless.

Do you approach Idle Tigers as a conceptual project?

That's a tricky one. The name is plural because although there's only one member, I want to remain open to the possibility of multiple versions of myself. I do approach individual shows conceptually. I have quite a lot of material at my disposal, so each set list is put together with a particular theme in mind. In that respect I'm influenced by radio DJs, actually.

Let's say you’re applying for a grant. What would the blurb to describe this band look like?

I beg your pardon but I'm going to be rather lazy and supply my favourite parts of the writing that Jonny made for me as suggested sleeve notes for the album I'm making at the moment: "Idle Tigers are deeply suspect" (which is true) and "the human race does not deserve something so pretentious".

You're originally from Britain, correct? How has that influenced what you do?

Firstly, nationality doesn't really mean anything, and I consider myself, if anything, European rather than British.

However, my songs are very dirty with local colour. I'm from Bradford, in Yorkshire, and I'm interested in a kind of Northern Gothic which is a camp or exaggerated type of provincialism, often leading towards the supernatural. It's in the novels of the Bronte sisters, it's in the famous hoaxed photographs of fairies made by young girls in Bradford in the 1910s, and it’s in the songs of Jake Thackray, my very favourite Yorkshireman.

My engagement with Englishness as a cultural identity is essentially nostalgic, since I'm living in Canada now. Luke Haines, another English songwriter who I've listened to a lot, coined the term "hostalgia" to describe his complicated obsession with the country's recent past, which combines hostility to the past with an unresolved longing for "home".  I find that understandable.

Music: for love or money?

I'll turn to Luke Haines again--"I'm like an off-duty comedian at the end of bad night: / Easy to admire, difficult to love..." I wouldn't want people to love me for my music. Music is what the entire order of the universe is created from. It's not that important.
I don't understand money.

Money: for love or music?

I flatter myself that I could make money from either, if I weren't so afraid to get my hands dirty. As a young lad in Bradford bus stations I was often mistaken for a rent boy, but I also took home a tidy sum from my last show, thank you very much. This is the Great Casio-Cabaret Swindle--ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

What advice would you give to all the people who are about to watch you play?

Pretend.

by Ryan McLaren