Snouting About Some Wildbeat Grooves:

Ross McLennan chats with Michael Smith

When Ross McLennan pulled together Snout, way back in 1992, he saw the band very much in terms of a classic pop rock thing, with plenty of 60s references like the Small Faces and the Kinks, and he was thinking it way before the whole BritPop thing exploded again with the Verve and Oasis.

And to a great extent, Snout has continued on that "classic" pop rock path, producing some great records along the way, with their most recent album the wonderful Circle High and Wide. But their latest release is an EP, Stockinged Feet Grooves: Authentic Wildbeat Sounds (Birdhipped/Shock), which is precisely that - quirky retro pop remixed for urban beats and grooves, as close to club remixes as a popster can get.

"It takes it out of the realm of being a band and more into a realm of being able to twist this in a studio way", is how McLennan sees the release, "which we've tended to hold back on on albums and A-sides. We've always gone a bit wacky with the B-sides but this is the first time we've done it on the front foot, kind of. It's just something different to do. It's something that I've always ben into, but it's just another way of creating. I like all ways of creating, the way different things happen, because I'm a pretty big believer in the idea that process is not a benign thing, that whatever recording technique you use, is really contributin as much to the creativity as the initial germ of an idea.

"There's not much rhyme or reason for the selection other than I guess we wanted to have things off the last album. There were just a couple of things that we wanted to do, things that we thought would be really good fun to muck around with. Though, having said that, (opening track) Get In The Car was probably the one idea I had before all the others, before all this was even going to happen, just mucking around on the piano, playing some ham-fisted jazz. The selection I suppose is a good example of the fact that there have been a million different processes involved in all the different remixes and consequently is an odd assortment of songs."

The Snout boys essentially did the whole remixing thing on Stockinged Feet Grooves themselves, and I wondered if it might not feel a little weird to be taking a song they've done a million times one particular way on stage and "deconstruct" and redesign it.

"Yeah, but its probably more weird for the listener because they naturally have a more fixed idea of the song than I would because they only know the released version where after the song might have been through three incarnations before that which the band would be familiar with looking back. There's certainly nothing sacred about any of these songs where I'm concerned."

Of course, the thing about remixes is that you can do them a million different ways.

"Even songs that we're recording at the moment for the current album are tempting. When Shane O'Mara, who's recording the album, has been pulling up mixes of things, I've been sitting there with an acoustic guitar playing a backing in a different key, thinking 'My God, that's so much nicer than I ever envisaged'. That's the beauty of remixes. It's almost like you're another party coming into it again. You definitely come up with fantastic ideas you couldn't have possibly thought of sitting down in a traditional sense. Once you've done it, I guess it's like any enlightening experience, you incorporate it as part of your process. In that sense the remixing was a really good thing to do because I think it's going to help with arrangements with the stuff that we're currently doing."

Not that that necessarily means you'll be getting a remix album alongside the forthcoming Snout album.

"The EP is really just a one-off. Unless we really need to do it again, I envisage that they'll be relegated back to B-side territory. Some of that kind of idea I'm sure will creep onto the album proper, just because we're using the sampler a bit more, and it's a bit of fun."

Snout, in company with the redoubtable Youth Group, play the Annandale Friday 25, the Excelsior at Surry Hills Saturday 26, a luchtime show at the UTS Broadway Tuesday 29 and another lunchtime at Newcastle Uni Wednesday 30.

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