Some things you said about Sneaker Pimps...

                        "... if you can't find it in your heart to love such
                        brilliantly stupid, stupidly brilliant pop stars, the
                        joke's on you. " Stephen Daiton, NME

                        "... the girlish voice delivered sage and stinging
                        lyrics, the rhythms defined themselves as fluid and
                        inventive, the arrangements were gently atmospheric.
                        Anyone for digital folk punk?" Jim lrvin, Mojo

                        "... if you're sfill looking for a reason why Sneaker
                        Pimps are set to become one of the greatest pop bands
                        to emerge from Britain before the end of the
                        millennium, then their love of pop culture and their
                        contextual knowledge of pops finer workings must
                        surely be it. " Tobias Peggs, i-D

                        "... a stunning impersonafion of Bill Drummond
                        hijacking the rhetoric of early Manic Street
                        Preachers after a week i . n a cupboard with the
                        texts of Jacques Derrida. " Roger Morton, NME

                        "... at least a thousand times more exciting than
                        Oasis... or the average techno purist." Rob Fearn,
                        MixMag

                        Some things you probably already know about Sneaker
                        Pimps...

                        Their debut album, Becoming X, released in 1997, went
                        gold in the UK quite some time ago. It has now
                        cruised past the half-million mark worldwide.

                        Becoming X spawned three top twenty singles (or four,
                        if you count Six Underground twice: on first release
                        it reached #l 5; second time around it soared to #g
                        ).

                        Armand Van Helden's remix of Spin Spin Sugar has
                        become something of a speed garage anthem. In
                        typically contrary fashion, however, the band have an
                        ongoing love/hate relationship with remixes.

                        Singer Kelli Dayton, who was originally drafted in to
                        sing the songs the band had demoed for the first
                        album with Chhs on vocals, is no longer part of the
                        band. Both parties are, you suspect, relieved. You
                        can find their last song - the appropriately titled
                        Velvet Divorce - hidden away on the soundtrack to
                        Danny Boyie's film A Life Less Ordinary. Sure,
                        Sneaker Pimps will talk about what happened... but
                        yes, it will be unprintable. Their new singer? Chris,
                        of course. A star-in-waiting waits no longer.

                        And now..

                        Sneaker Pimps have made a brave, brilliant new
                        record. It's not the record anyone expected. It is,
                        however, pretty damn close to the record they always
                        wanted to make. It's not likely to sit comfortably on
                        anyone's coffee table; much of it is not pretty, but
                        most of it is very beautiful. What does it sound
                        like? You want reference points? Try: soundscapes as
                        inventive as Tricky's Maxinquaye, the
                        self-examination and widescreen vision of Radiohead's
                        OK Computer, the prickly atmospherics of David
                        Syivian's Secrets of the Beehive, the unexpected
                        spiky sweetness of My Bloody Valentine's Isn't
                        Anything. All at once, and nothing like that. Really,
                        it's a huge, intimate, vicious, passionate collection
                        of songs. It's a surprise.

                        'It's been a long time really, it's taken a year,"
                        explains Liam. 'We'd toured really more than we could
                        mentally sustain: Becoming X was a studio album and
                        we were hoodwinked into the touring circus lifestyle.
                        You need to have sawdust in your blood to enjoy
                        touring. The year before last we spent eight of the
                        twelve months in America and.. it was a strange thing
                        to do,it just drove us a bit loony, "offers Chds,
                        drily. So loony, in fact, that Liam flew home in the
                        middle of the final tour, a plot-losing crisis-point
                        the band had seen coming for a while. "We'd got to
                        this place in Tennessee, a filthy, Deliverance-slye
                        place, " Liam recounts. 'A truck went past and they
                        shouted, 'Fags! We're gonna kill yer! 'I was walking
                        round the town, I couldnl sleep. I had headphones on
                        and I was listening to my favourite Scott Walker LP,
                        Scott 3, and I just thought, I'm desperately unhappy
                        here. So I called a cab and said, Take me to the
                        nearest airport, which happened to be Nashville.
                        Luckily the bag I had had my passport in it and I got
                        a ticket home. I was feeling very, very fragile. We'd
                        played the game and agreed to so many things and sold
                        our assets along the way and even if we could have
                        gone double platinum it wasn't going to be worth it.
                        It was doing us harm: we weren't very excifing on
                        stage. We had to get back to what was most important,
                        which was writing and recording music. We came back
                        at Christmas and had a week off and then we started
                        the new material. Kelli was still involved but it was
                        becoming distant.. It was drawing a line on the
                        tarmac saying, we have completed the Becoming X
                        experience. But I love that record and still feel
                        it's very important.

                        Chris: "I find it difficult to listen to. "

                        Liam: 'We still have the recordings of the Becoming X
                        demos with Chris singing on them and there's
                        something amazingly precious about those songs."

                        Chris: "I'm so confident about what's happening now.
                        It was fighting against a corporate concept that if
                        you've gone gold in America and the UK, why the fuck
                        are you changing? But we want to, we're not chugging
                        down that road. It's a bit David and Goliath... sort
                        of There were a thousand doubters...

                        How does he feel about stepping into the singer's
                        spotlight?

                        Chris: "It's natural, that's the thing, I'm
                        absolutely full of conviction for the writing. I
                        couldn't think of any other way of doing it. In a
                        way, I don't want to be pushed to the front, because
                        I want it to be the whole band. I never wanted Kelli
                        to be pushed either, I want people to know what it
                        was all about in the first place. "

                        Liam.. 'There is the theory that the more you pass on
                        your ideas the more diluted they become. There was a
                        thinness before, a lack of confidence. It came across
                        the way it did because of the gap between concept and
                        interpretation. When Chris sings it's genuine. He's
                        not singing this for anyone else. This is a record we
                        like listening to. It's a different band, bar the
                        name. "

                        And so it is, in a way. Not only is their guitarist,
                        Chris, now their singer, but everyone's position in
                        the band has changed.

                        Dave: 'We weren't a band before, really. We weren't
                        designed to perform songs live, we made the best of a
                        bad lot. Now it sounds like a band playing songs
                        together. Joe played the drums as much as I have and
                        I've played as much keyboards as Liam, so it's all
                        swapped around. "

                        Joe: 'It's a more emotional record, less considered
                        in a way."

                        "More Cagney or more Lacey?"

                        Joe: 'Definitely more Lacey. "

                        Dave: 'We're all very proud of it.

                        In many ways, they're unlikely pop stars - which is
                        partly why they're so good at it. They are four
                        funny, gentle, driven, too-smart-for-their-own-good
                        people who stumbled into something they didn't quite
                        expect and turned themselves inside out to survive
                        and understand it. They love music as much as you do.
                        And they have done what very few bands manage to do
                        successfully: they have confounded expectations.

                        Dave.. 'I have the idea that Sneaker Pimps is a brand
                        new thing.

 "You've caught her on the right night. We'll all be covered in vomit by the morning."

                              "At one point we were violently anti-guitars. It got to the stage
                              where I was hiding my indie records. It took a little while to pull
                              them out of the cupboard."

                              "There are two different approaches. One's making an album with
a folk ethic of song structure, melody and lyric. The other is making it as sonically contemporary as
possible. Which means embracing the entire discourse of dance music."

"Trip hop is just the 90s version of goth"

You might think the Sneaker Pimps are an indie band, but their spectral brand of guitar-laden beats
would never have existed without dance music. Founders Liam and Chris started out making trip
hop, and a score of dance remixes have even put on speed garage pirates. Now on to the Nike
tattoo, the dreams of vomiting fish and how Chris gets all the girls that Joe falls in love with. Writer:
Rob Fearn; Photographer: Eitan

"WHERE'S the tuba?" Sneaker Pimps' guitarist Chris Corner launches into Teutonic mode, as five
foaming beers are plonked on the Bierkeller table around which the group are huddled. Today's a
rest day in the German town of Freiburg, on what drummer Dave Westlake calls "the sobriety leg"
of the band's European tour. But not that you'd notice. The Sneakers might be carving a niche at the
head of the post-Portishead breed with the spectral trip hop of '6 Underground' and the
Garbage-style electro-pop of 'Spin Spin Sugar', but right now they're intent on just one thing. Getting
royally moosed. Chris points at the Swoosh design tattooed on his wrist. "I went a bit mad in the
States and that was the result. They were giving away free merchandise. I was going,
'Give me Nike!' I think I was after an endorsement." On the same US visit Dave fell in love,
while Liam (Howe - keyboards) injured his knees jumping out of windows in the home of techno ("I
was shouting, 'I sacrifice myself to the streets of Carl Craig!'").
"You feel a million miles from anything you know, so you lose it a bit," confesses singer
Kelli Dayton. "But I remained rather calm and very sober throughout. I'm through my madness
phase. I was the first to crack, and I'm fine now." Even so, the tiny 23 year old, whose Brummie
accent sounds completely at odds with her svelte appearance and smooth vocals, is already on her
third shot of schnapps. According to Chris, Kelli only gets drunk once a year, an event that's usually
marked by the destruction of plate-glass windows and the snogging of complete strangers. "You've
caught her on the right night," he says. "We'll all be covered in vomit by the morning."
Luckily, the only ill-effects of Kelli's binge turn out to be strange, schnapps-induced dreams. For any
amateur psychologists, the Sneakers' singer dream consisted of finding a body, which looked like it
had been dragged out of the water, in the bunks of the tour bus. Liam pumped its stomach, causing
the corpse to spew wriggling sea-creatures, which Kelli was forced to eat. "The thing is, I don't
like sea food at the best of times," she says afterwards. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kelli soon
professes herself cured of the urge to drink.

FROM Freiburg, the Sneaker Pimps travel over the border to Thun, a small lakeside town in
Switzerland, and home of the infamous Caf? Mokka (slogan: 'Fuck This Town'). Backstage Liam is
attempting to explain how he and Chris, friends since their teens, went from peddling what they call
"bedroom-bound beats" as F.R.I.S.K. and Line Of Flight to the Sneaker Pimps' 21st
Century rock n' roll. "At one point we were violently anti-guitars," says Liam. "It got to the
stage where I was hiding my indie records. It took a little while to pull them out of the
cupboard."

Now the guitars are back, but their debut album 'Becoming X' remains a record that could never
have existed without dance music. Sink into the moody, Nellee Hooper-mixed waters of '6
Underground' and the Massive Attack squelch of the title track. Cue up the widescreen beats of
'Post-Modern Sleaze', the rolling, trip hop rush of 'Low Place Like Home'. It's easy to see why both
dance and indie camps are trying to claim the Sneaker Pimps as their own. If the Sneakers are a
dance band, they're one that's overcome its blind hatred of guitars and re-discovered the
song-writing traditions that were vapourised by acid's big bang. If they're an indie band, then - like
Garbage - they're one that actually sounds 'modern', state-of-the-art, the way a rock band ought to
sound in the late 90s. Either way, they're at least a thousand times more exciting than Oasis... or the
average techno purist. "I don't think it can ever be bad to be in more than one area," says
Kelli. "I think we're desperately anti-purist and, as people, incredibly indecisive..." Liam
says. "...and scared of being just one thing," Kelli adds. Liam, 26, and Chris, 23, both grew up in
Hartlepool in the North East of England ("He was poppin' my sister for eight years," Chris
explains. "I couldn't avoid him. He was coming around all the time.") Drummer Dave, 26, and
bassist Joe Wilson, 24, are two more of the five piece Sneakers' DAT-free live incarnation, although
it was Liam and Chris who wrote the music and lyrics on 'Becoming X' along with unseen 'sixth
member' Ian Pickering. "A lot of the lyrics are quite tongue-in-cheek," says Liam, a former
art-school student. "I suppose they're critical or satirical or disposable in various ways. But
I don't think they're weighty. Just quirky, cultural anti-statements." Anti-statements like
'Tesko Suicide', inspired by a drunken argument Liam and Kelli had about the glamourisation of
suicide, where Liam suggested that suicide kits might as well be available in supermarkets.
'Post-Modern Sleaze', meanwhile, dissects the 'Thelma & Louise' syndrome, whereby seemingly
happily married women ditch their partners for a trashier lifestyle straight out of a magazine. Kelli
prefers the words to 'How Do', based on traditional folk songs from cult 70s black magic film The
Wicker Man. Liam and Chris spotted Kelli singing with her band The Lumieres in a pub's backroom in
1993. Back then, the two were making music as Line Of Flight. Having no pretentions to soulfulness,
the feisty, punk-reared Kelli fitted their needs exactly - someone to drag their productions kicking and
screaming out of the studio. "Soul music is something we feel unqualified to involve
ourselves in," admits Liam. "We're more interested in English music. The new wave. That's
a lot more what we're about." "I don't think it's an agenda," says Joe. "It's just purely
about honesty." In a way, Sneaker Pimps' darkside fusion of widescreen breakbeats, PJ Harvey
and feline punk is just a logical extension of what's been happening in trip hop for some time - in the
millennial blues of Portishead or Tricky's howling noisefests. "Trip hop is just the 90s version of
goth," agrees Liam. "The Sisters Of Mercy was a kind of slowed-down breakbeat. They
(the goth scene) really embraced machinery, even someone as desperately goth as
Alien Sex Fiend - they didn't have a bass player, they had a keyboard player." Direct and
friendly, a golden-skinned lover of 90s nouveau punk outfits Sonic Youth and the Pixies, Kelli grew
up in Birmingham's Bartley Green area. She left school at 14 and started playing in punk bands. The
singer met her boyfriend, Bill - a 36-year-old Canadian - in the mosh pit of a Cramps gig. She thinks
the other Sneaker Pimps are jealous of him. They certainly seem to enjoy calling him 'Billy Tiny Willy'
(he's six foot two). Kelli, though, gives as good as she gets when it comes to the 'on-tour banter'.
Liam: "I mean, when me and Chris grew up, which was..."
Kelli: "[quick as a flash] ...last week!"
"I was watching Nirvana on the telly the other day," says bassist Joe at one point, "thinking,
how the hell did anyone fall for that shite?" "It's not shite, though, Joe," says Kelli. "That's
just your opinion. It's not like you know about music. You know what you like, that's all.
It's not like everyone else has got these blinkers over their eyes and you're the
enlightened one..." "Yeah, but Nirvana are shit, though, aren't they?" says Liam.

THE Sneaker Pimps are the first to admit that they enjoy taking the piss out of each other. Liam
claims that most of the arguments centre on women. "What usually happens is that Joe
brushes past some girl and falls in love," he explains. "Chris then swoops in, gets off with
her. Joe's pissed off for about a week. At this point Chris forgets entirely. 'Eh? Who was
that?' Meanwhile, Joe's still reverberating from luuurrve!" Sneaker Pimps take their name
from a posse employed by The Beastie Boys to make trainer-buying runs to New York. The Beasties'
Mike Diamond turned up at one of the Sneakers' LA gigs, although, according to Liam, he doesn't
remember coining the term. ("He did say it though - on The Word.") Mike D wasn't the only hero
they met in the US. The band recorded with goth shock rocker Marilyn Manson for the film Spawn,
which features several other rock-dance collaborations. Elsewhere on the soundtrack, Rage Against
The Machine team up with The Prodigy, Metallica with Goldie and - in an inspired piece of casting -
Def Leppard with Alex Reece ("He cut his arm off in tribute," jokes Dave). On top of the link-up
with Manson came the Bjork 'incident', a late-night meeting between Chris and the Icelandic
chanteuse, the mention of which prompts the other Pimps to delight in a hilarious rant about both
her and her current love interest, Howie B. "You should have seen Chris's face the next day,"
says Liam. "He came back to the studio at 11am having not slept, going, 'I want her
babies!'"
"That's enough about Bjork!" says Chris sharply.
 The Sneaker Pimps

CAF? Mokka is a grotto-like building, the only decent venue in Thun, with an open-air stage in the
beer garden. A wild-eyed longhair called Peter books bands from all round the world, much to the
displeasure of the local authorities, who later that night threaten to close him down. "All they're
interested in is ringing their fucking bells!" he growls. Kelli spends the 45 minutes before the show
running through vocal exercises. Dave, now with spiky punk hairstyle, concentrates on consuming as
much alcohol as possible (the Swiss hosts having laid on absurd amounts of free drink). Chris,
meanwhile, goes hunting for women. Miraculously, by 9.30pm the Sneakers are ready. The several
hundred fans are standing in the darkness smoking spliffs and drinking beer. When Peter Longhair
introduces them ("Great Modern Indie Rock From The UK" say the posters), there's a polite cheer of
approval.

                                 Bathed in red light, the Sneakers provide a faultless
                                 run-through of the album. Kelli beams throughout, sounding
                                 even better than on record. Chris, meanwhile, seems to have
                                 attracted a gaggle of female admirers, who are gazing up at
                                 him. When the last song has finished, the Pimps scuttle off
                                 under the fairy lights and back into the Caf? Mokka. At which
                                 point the kids go mental, stamping their feet and hollering for
                                 more. After about five minutes, Peter has to come out and
calm them down. "There are two different approaches," Liam had said before the show. "One's
making an album with a folk ethic of song structure, melody and lyric. The other is making it as
sonically contemporary as possible. Which means embracing the entire discourse of dance music.
Those two things are conflicts, but that's what we're trying to do. Make disposable sounds for
timeless songs. A bit like alchemy." And tonight, Sneaker Pimps made their alchemy look effortless.

The album 'Becoming X' is out now. The single 'Post Modern Sleaze', with remixes from DJ Sneak,
Salt City Orchestra, Reprazent and The Underdog is out August 18th. Both on Clean Up

          WHO'S YOUR FAVOURITE SNEAKER PIMP?
          "AT first everyone kept going on about how different we were to one another," says
          Sneakers bass-player, Joe. "A bit like the Spice Girls." It's true that, despite the
          angst-ridden nature of their songs and their unparalleled knowledge of 'the ways of the
          breakbeat', the Sneaker Pimps can be reduced to the same 'something-for-everyone'
formula as the nation's favourite girl group. Which brings us to the burning question of the hour -
who's your favourite Sneaker Pimp?

GOTH SNEAKER
BIRMINGHAM'S answer to Siouxsie Sioux. Not best disposed to bright light, from which she hides
behind a pair of space-age shades. Ardent admirer of 'Anti-Christ superstar' Marilyn Manson.
Favoured by those with a predilection for pointy boots and black eyeliner. Kelli: [in disbelief] "Oh
God!"

TECHNO SNEAKER
TWIDDLER of knobs and addict of rare 12" vinyl. Techno Sneaker's fuzzy, tennis-ball haircut belies
his previous incarnation as an Acid Jazz-style 'beathead'. Listens to Kraftwerk on the tour bus and
memorises catalogue numbers to obscure Carl Craig records. Liam: "Can I change mine from
Techno to Electro, please?"

ROMO SNEAKER
SELF-confessed critic of Romo's laughable 'new wave'. Claims to have only ever liked one New
Romantic icon, David Sylvian, yet is forever tagged a wedge-barnetted 'woofty'. Fails miserably,
however, to provide satisfactory explanation for his nail polish and eye make-up. Chris: "Musically I'm
not that interested. Visually, er, now and again..."

WIGGA SNEAKER
A 'MAN mountain' of considerable girth, baggy trousered and rolling of gait. Constantly demands to
know whether fellow Sneakers are down with 'the programme'. Bitterly regrets suggesting Spice
Girls analogy to 'honky' journalist from Mixmag. Joe: [quietly] "I don't think mine's very accurate..."

SPORTY SNEAKER
DRUM-stick wielder. Often sweaty. Dresses exclusively in nylon sportswear and has big
bass-speakers built into his stool to keep him in time. Dogged by terrible inferiority complex, not
helped by Romo Sneaker's superior strike rate with 'the laydeez'. Dave: [to Chris] "I'm not Sporty, you
fucker! Have I got to be fucking Sporty Sneaker, the unpopular one?"

REMIX MAYHEM!
"I FUCKING hate Van Helden's mix. It's absolutely algorithmic, formulaic, dull, anthemic house
cack!" Looking through their press cuttings, you'd be forgiven for thinking Sneaker Pimps were none
too happy about the remix mayhem their tracks have inspired. But no. The above outburst, Liam
explains, was made before he'd heard the track! Why did he say it, then? "Cause he's a cock!" says
Dave. "There was a strong possibility that it would be a piece of shit," Liam says. "As a rule, I think
house music is a spent force..." "That's why I liked the Van Helden mix, because I was expecting so
little from it." adds Chris. "It actually re-established my faith in dance music." Just as well, as it's
meant Kelli's "spin spin sugar" refrain has been dominating London's speed garage pirates ever
since. So, from 'anthemic house cack' to 'faceless techno bollocks', here are those Sneakers
knob-twiddlers in full...

AQUASKY
('Tesko Suicide')
Out-of-body drum n' bass spiralling heavenwards with liquid synths and 'so-so' samples. See you at
the check-out...

TWO LONE SWORDSMEN
('6 Underground')
Messrs Weatherall and Tenniswood evoke piss-streaked concrete tunnels with loads of
wibbly-wobbly noises.

NELLEE HOOPER
('6 Underground')
The Soul II Soul man gives his dub a dose of the jitters. Like space transmissions from some very
paranoid aliens.

FILA BRAZILIA
('6 Underground')
Souped-up breaks beneath a pitched-up Kelli. Warm and gooey and worth its weight in, um, Pork.

ARMAND VAN HELDEN
('Spin Spin Sugar')
Gothic oddness, mutant basslines, cyber-vocals. Armand's mix is dark enough for London speed
garage station Freek FM.

FARLEY AND HELLER
('Spin Spin Sugar')
A fist full of Sneakers! The deep house maestros draft in some spaghetti western vibes for this
dubby work-out.

PHLUIDE
('Spin Spin Sugar')
Kelli and Co are spooked by darkside techno and rogue sub-bass. Er, who is Phluide, anyway? (It's
their sound man, actually.)

ATTICA BLUES
('6 Underground')
Trainerspotting with the MoWax beatheadz. Angelic vocals, queasy breaks and wicked scratching.

SIMON WARNER
('6 Underground')
The Umbrellas Of Ladywell equals full-scale orchestral action and 1960s spy film vibes. Beautiful.

DJ SNEAK
('6 Underground')
Chicago's finest goes for a thumping house injection with a hint of disco loopery. Relentless but
groovy.

NUSH
('6 Underground')
The Brit-house merchants send arms aloft with this pumped-up trainer bender. Get funky!

JAMIE MYERSON
('6 Underground')
Speaker-worrying dub and the sound of Kelli stuck in the orchestral loop from rated Philadelphia
junglist Myerson. Very strange indeed.

RICHARD H KIRK
('6 Underground')
Dubwise droid funk. The Cabaret Voltaire man goes head-to-head with glassy-eyed machinery.

PERFECTO
('6 Underground')
Oakenfold and Osbourne get back to their indie-dance roots. Cut-and-scratch guitar-action rules!

back: issue august 1997