H	A	R	D	K	N	O	X
An Interview with Steve P and Lindy Layton

What type of background did you have before starting up Hard Knox? What attracted you to this style of music?

Steve : For me, I was sort of a drum and base sort of guy. I was into hardcore and those sort of things before that, and met up with Lindy in about '94, five years ago, and that's when we started Hard Knox.

The freshness of the music got me into it. When I first heard the things they were just so off the wall. I'd sort of gotten into hardcore first in '90, '91, and people were just sampling everything, pitching the vocals high and everything like that.

And there was just something totally fresh, and it was also I suppose the little-kid-being-rebellious thing, where you just want to be into something that your parents don't like -- just a bit more underground that all your friends are into.

And Lindy, you were in Beats International?

Lindy: That was my little introduction into the world of music. I met Norman [Cook] when I was 17, so that was my kind of kick into it. I just kind of stuck around in it ever since, but kind of rewound the way I work.

I learned about writing and production and stuff after that, just sort of night clubbing and listening and DJing and writing, just to find my way really after that.

With Norman, I toured the world and then kind of struck out on my own, stilling keeping in touch with all the Beats people.

Do you have any formal musical training?

Lindy: No, my background is that I went to a theater school when I was a kid, so I was always into singing and performing and dancing and all that. That was my way of getting into it.

I started out in a girl band before meeting Norman, so it was kind of performing-stage background rather than music studies.

Steve: I did do music at school, but I never learned to play anything -- ever. So, no, not really, just general music things at school where you didn't actually learn anything.

How has Hard Knox evolved since you started the project?

Lindy : It's sonically matured quite a bit.

Steve : Yeah, it started off a bit more like it could fall apart at any second.

Lindy : Our kind of connections were a bit more obvious. We kind of started off writing songs together, and then we wanted to start playing our music out in nightclubs. So it turned around from being a vocal thing to a dance-floor thing.

The studios advance quite amazingly, so obviously the music is much more sophisticated in production.

Steve : Computers, yeah. I mean basically when I started, it wasn't really about the computer. I mean the computer was at the heart of it all, but now you can do so much more manipulations of sounds. You can really get into it deeply, which just wasn't the case before.

Do you find it dangerous at all, having so many sound-manipulation options?

Lindy : Yes, wasting quite a lot of time fiddling around!

Steve : That always pays off, as well. When you learn something that no one else knows, then you're one step ahead of the game and have one other thing up your sleeve.

Is it difficult at all keeping up with the electronic gear?

Steve : No. If it were difficult I don't think we'd be making music for the love of it. For me, that's why I en joy it.

Lindy : We love to shop for new stuff. It's a bit of a relaxing thing, as well as a working thing. It's kind of like a switch off: You go and shop and look at the new thing. Then switch on: Get on and mess around with it. Kind of like a big circle.

Is there a particular piece of equipment that had a big effect on how the album turned out?

Steve : Well, if it was the way the album turned out, it would probably be the 50p mic, which was the first microphone we had. And this little guitar effects, a Zoom.

Lindy : That was the most fucked-up thing that we had for a while, but I really did some really wicked things with vocals, noises and stuff. The 50p mic was used for all the good samples, vocal samples and little bits and pieces we put on there. We spent about 8 grand on a new one, but it's not as good.

Do you have clearly defined roles within the band?

Steve : We sort of do have individual talents, but they change from day to day, as well. Obviously, I don't sing or write lyrics. And Lindsey also is sample-finder extrodinaire, and I'm more the programming type.

Do you have a favorite source of samples?

Lindy : Favorite stuff for sampling is just being in the right place at the right time with the mini-disc. That's just priceless when you're somewhere and you just get that special something.

But that doesn't happen very often. You can kind of go back to the same place at the same time and try it again, but it doesn't work.

We live in west London where there's four record and tape exchanges, so I go and buy the most mad-looking records. I just go through vinyl really, more than anything.

Does clearing samples ever pose a problem?

Lindy : Yes, constantly. We sampled much more than we ever thought we had with this album. We thought we'd been really careful, but it was like we could have been an eight-piece band with the publishing on the album.

It's like the obvious samples. You think, "Well, it's a sample you've heard before, so you can't go there. It's going to cost a fortune." And then go and get some obscure blues, 1932 guy wailing away for like two seconds, and you think no one's going to know about that. And that is the dude that's going to charge you.

So that's been really quite fascinating to see how the most obscure things are the most awkward to clear and find where the bloody hell it came from. And half the labels aren't still going.

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What's your live show like?

Steve : It's basically the two of us, and it's not like guitar and things like that. Lindsay's on the decks and turntables, and we play tracks on the decks and mix them. And I've also got special mixes of some tracks on CD, so I've got CD decks and also samples and sort of use it like a sampler, drop things over.

Have you tried working with other musicians when you play live?

Lindy : That's how we started off when we were with Skint. It was like "Right, you've got to play live now," because we were doing the festival thing. It didn't work. We didn't like the way it was attempting to create the same sound and make it look like a big, exciting bands thing when that's not what it's about.

Steve : It's not keeping it real to the track, either. You make the tracks sound a certain way that only electronic music can and spend ages producing it. And you just can't do that live, where you've got 20 minutes to set up. It just doesn't work out. So we thought that's the best way to get our sound across.

Why did you choose the name Hard Knox?

Lindy : It started off as a club. We did a club called the School Of Hard Knox, which was on a Sunday. We decided to make a sort of soundtrack to the club, so we started doing tunes, and with the club, that was sort of hard work. So we decided to stick with just the tunes and abbreviated it to Hard Knox.

How long did the album take to make?

Steve : It took 3 1/2 years. We just tried to do too many things at once, basically. We went from releasing our first EP to being in a position where the record label said, "You've got to play out live."

Also, DJing every weekend.

Lindy : Getting back Monday after hammering away at yourself all weekend DJing and looking at your studio, it's hard to go, "Right, where were we?"

Steve : Remixes as well, helping us get along, because we hadn't actually signed a deal at that time, so we had to keep ourselves afloat.

Going into it, did you have an idea of what you wanted the album to be like?

Steve : It was sort of "Do it and see how it turns out" at first, I think. More toward the end, we knew how we wanted it to be.

Lindy: We wanted it to be like the story of a life that's just had a hard time. Kind of like the soundtrack to a real sort of troublesome journey, like "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," where you do things and it keeps going wrong -- from one situation that is sort of on the edge to the next.

What's your approach to remixes?

Steve : We sort of approach it differently each time. It depends on what we have to work with.

Generally, it's sort of nicer to work on things that aren't dance music, because otherwise they've sort of gone halfway to what you're doing straight-away. So it's quite nice to do rocky things, or things where it's a whole band and you've got things to play around with.

Lindy : You've got lots of things to pick out, nice little hooks.

Of the remixes you've done, what are your favorites?

Steve : Faith No More, Orgy, Jungle Brothers, Crystal Method, Stroke, Eskimos in Egypt, Transglobal Underground. We did an Iggy Pop thing. We did quite a lot, really.