Arguably the most consistently great – and consistently underrated – band in the UK right now, Fujiya & Miyagi released their ninth album, Slight Variations, in September. Lead singer David Best took some time out from touring, sending out Bandcamp orders, and doing the band’s accounts and PR to answer my questions, in a most revealing look behind the scenes of this most enigmatic of groups…
Firstly, I absolutely LOVE the new album. Like all your best albums it distills everything that’s great about the band & adds a few new twists. I know it’s your newest & every band loves their newest record, but where would you rank it in the F&M canon?
Thank you. I think the best three are Transparent Things, the self titled one from 2017 & Slight Variations. I’m not quite sure which order I’d put them. Transparent Things sort of defines us but maybe sonically Slight Variations has more interesting things going on. We’ve been recording for so long it feels like one thing to me, & each subsequent record wouldn’t have turned out the way it did without the ones that proceeded it.
There’s a very subtle 80s feel to Slight Variations – I can hear the bassline from ‘The Only Way is Up‘ and a bit of New Order guitar on the title track, as well as a bit of Jam & Lewis on ‘Sweat‘ and The Beloved on ‘Feeling the Effects‘ – was this deliberate, did it come from your subconscious, or am I completely imagining it?
None of the above was deliberate, although I enjoy all those reference points. I was listening to a lot of Prince as lockdown began & that song came from that period & experience. We used to have reference points when making records but we’ve been doing it so long now we are more likely to reference ourselves. Having said that I initially did want to get a similar feel to the record as that on Grace Jones‘ ‘Nightclubbing’. I think that was soon forgotten as the songs you come up with tend to dictate the direction more than any outside influences.
Talking of New Order, you seem to have made a huge effort throughout your career to maintain the kind of mystique & insouciance NO exhibited during the Factory years – the minimalist album sleeves, the opaque song titles/lyrics, the lack of promotion etc. Was that a deliberate stance from the start, or is it down to shyness? Have you never been tempted to try & reach a wider audience?
One of the first records I ever bought was Unknown Pleasures and I was always taken with the artwork. We’ve never had a picture of us anywhere on our records. That is in part to let the music speak for itself but also because we hate having our photograph taken. Other than distribution and live shows we pretty much do everything ourselves. I send all the Bandcamp orders out as well as the accounts. If we could have been more successful it’s not for the lack of trying on our part. When people mention that we should possibly be more successful than we are it makes me feel a bit deflated cos I thought we were doing pretty well.
Is it true that when you first started you genuinely wanted people to think you were Japanese? Are you popular in Japan?
We began in the period of faceless electronica duos so the name made a little more sense then. In the late 90s Japanese culture seemed so exciting & different compared to having union jacks painted on your guitar. I do regret the name though. We’ve never been to Japan although we would love to. I imagine the name would confuse people which is maybe why we haven’t got over there yet.
When I first came across F&M – 2006’s Transparent Things – you sounded like a band who’d somehow tapped into my brain and made an album based on all my favourite stuff. I can hear Happy Mondays, Kraftwerk, New Order, 70s funk, acid house, Japanese city pop/future funk in there…what would you say are your main influences and how have they evolved over the years? What are you listening to at the moment?
Personally my two main influences are Can & Prince. When Steve and I began working together we were trying to meet in the place where 90s electronic music met 70s German music, via a bit of Sly & the Family Stone & Talking Heads I suppose. Those influences are probably still in the background somewhere but perhaps not quite so obvious. Through the years we’ve absorbed lots of different genres such as northern soul, Italo disco as well as things that are happening now.
As mentioned before nowadays the influence on our music is more likely to be each other, our past records and/or the technology we are working with. It’s a lot easier to make records now than it was when we began. It’s an exciting time to be making music in a DIY fashion. I’m listening to lots of dub & rocksteady at the moment. I’ve also been listening a lot to The Dreaming by Kate Bush & some of the 80s King Crimson records. Currently listening to the new Bill Callahan one. I always look forward to his records. The Duncan Marquiss record on Basin Rock is another relatively recent favourite.
A lot of your song titles & lyrics relate to medical conditions or human anatomy – ‘Collarbone‘, ‘Ankle Injuries‘, ‘RSI‘, ‘Serotonin Rushes‘ etc – is there someone with a medical background in the band or are you just hypochondriacs?
I have thought a bit about this before. I wonder if it’s to do with not going out much so the subject matter of the songs are internalised. It would explain lightbulbs too. Our music is quite physical sounding, as in it’s more rhythmical than it is melodic. Maybe that feeds into writing about the body.
Talking of lyrics, ‘Extended Dance Mix’ is one of the best – maybe only – songs about getting older & being in a relatively obscure indie band ever written. Now, this is probably a personal question but, given the fact that you don’t sell millions of albums, don’t tour much and aren’t getting featured on Marvel soundtracks, how do you keep the band going financially? Do you have day jobs or side gigs? Does your ongoing – and to my mind, utterly scandalous – lack of fame ever become discouraging?
Some of the others teach in a college & Ben used to work in a record shop. Steve & I manage the group & run the label so that, coupled with being a parent, keeps me busy. I’ve also started making the videos with our friend Bob Brown which zapped up a lot of my time over the summer. We own all our our music & there’s quite a lot of it so that does generate a little digitally. Owning all of our music is more important to me then being on a label that has more sway in getting on the radio or getting in playlists. Success is sort of meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I just want to make records that I would like to listen to & I think we are getting better at doing that in the last 5 years or so.
‘To the Last Beat of my Heart‘ is one of the most romantic songs of the last few years, unusually for a band whose lyrics are so oblique. Can I ask who – or what – inspired it?
It’s quite a nice one as Steve did the music for that one whilst waiting for his daughter to be born & I wrote the words inspired by some things my son said to me. It’s basically about unconditional love. It was quite liberating to not put any barriers up to mask the meaning behind it. That and ‘Extended Dance Mix’ are like two sides of the same coin in that respect.
Finally, you’ve been unusually prolific recently with four albums in the last five years. What’s next for F&M?
I think we want to go in two different directions simultaneously. We’d like to capture on record how we are live, so even more stripped down than on record and a little rawer. We’d also like to see how far technology can take us in terms of places we’ve never visited before. These two ideas may remain separate or they might morph into one another. The problem with releasing records yourself is it’s quite a lot of work that stops you from making up the songs which is the most important thing, so I’m looking forward to get back to doing that soon.
BIG thanks to David for finding time to answer my questions. Slight Variations is out now on Impossible Objects of Desire.
https://fujiyamiyagi.bandcamp.com/
