Make Some Noise

My roommate brought home a videotape last April with the video for (International) Noise Conspiracy's song "Smash It Up" on it. It was four guys and a woman in matching suits playing the catchiest song I'd ever heard. It's the kind of song that makes you want to dance and to start a revolution. We watched that video probably 20 times that day. After a few months we lost the tape. I've been crushed ever since.

Formed in Sweden in 1998, TINC released a number of 7-inches that were eventually compiled into an album, The First Conspiracy. Earlier this year they released Survival Sickness, an album that melds sexual energy and politics in a 60s garage pop atmosphere.

Nearly every song on Survival Sickness will keep your head bopping and your feet moving. You can't help it. Keyboardist Sara Almgren's Vox organ powers many of the songs, creating a vintage sound brought up to date with the group's raw energy. Inge Johansson's bass lines and Ludvig Dahlberg's drumming keep the dance groove going. And Lars Strömberg's guitar riffs recall early Rolling Stones. The searing vocals and brilliant lyrics of ex-frontman for the now legendary hardcore band Refused, Dennis Lyxzén, top off the band.

The album lists alternative titles for their songs on the back cover. "Smash It Up"s alternative title is "The Creative Urge to Destroy Bourgeois Culture." While a perfect description of that song, some might think TINC a bit pretentious, but this is clearly a band with a sense of humor. Inside the CD they list ways you can participate in revolution in everyday life. These include "Play acoustic versions of Angry Samoan's songs at posh cafes" and "Write 'THIS WILL BE YOUR DEATH' on every piece of money that passes through your hands."

Progressive hero Emma Goldman is credited with the quote, "If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution." Were she alive today she'd definitely want to be a part of TINC's revolution.

I recently had the opportunity to talk on the phone with Dennis about two of my favorite subjects, politics and music, as TINC was preparing to depart for their first U.S. tour.

We're really excited about you guys coming over here and touring the States. Are you guys excited about coming here and touring?

Yes, yes. We're very excited. The last time I toured America the tour was a fiasco. So I'm gonna try and go in there and do it properly and two of us have never been to America before. It'll be fun.

What went wrong the last time you came here? Was that with Refused?

Yes. Well, nothing in particular, apart from the fact that we broke up (laughing).

Well let's hope that doesn't happen this time.

(Laughing) I hope not. I think we're better prepared this time around.

I imagine it can't be much tougher than touring China was for you guys? (TINC played in underground, often illegal, rock clubs in China last year and could have been arrested on a few occasions)

No. Probably not. It will be, you know, a walk in the park.

So how'd you hook up with At the Drive-In, Murder City Devils and Blue Tip for the tour?

I don't know. Someone asked me, "Do you want to play with them?" and I was like "yeah, of course." I mean there was this girl called Margie that books the tour and she knows people. I don't know anyone. She just did it. And she asked us a bunch of bands that we would like to play with and we just wrote down a list and we ended up playing with some good bands.

Yeah, some great bands. Have you been following the election over here, the campaign this year?

A little bit. Not too enthusiastically because I feel there's not really too much to pick from. There's not really much of an election to take place. But I mean yeah, yeah. I know the candidates. I know sorta' what's going down.

We've got a third party candidate that looks pretty good, Ralph Nader, but they won't even let him into the debates. What's your view on something like that occurring?

America's had that two part political system for a long time. I mean there's always been room for a third eccentric billionaire getting a couple of votes, but most of the time it's been the Republicans against the Democrats. And I don't think they're interested in letting anyone else into power. If a third party were to come into America and say something slightly, slightly, I wouldn't even say radical, something slightly, slightly reasonable, then people would see that choosing between Bush and Gore is not a choice. It's like choosing between Stalin and Stalin. That's basically what's gonna happen. If a third party comes in and appears to be, well, Mao Zedong, people will be like, "Well here's a guy that actually says something a bit different from these two parties that are supposedly the opposite of eachother." Well, you know what I'm talking about. I'm just trying to get at the fact that the political spectrum of parliamentary politics in America is pretty slim.

Definitely. Obviously you sing about revolution in your songs a lot. It seems like there's been a movement of revolution brewing a bit. Like in political bands, and with what happened in Seattle, and what happened in Prague recently. How do you see this movement growing and what role does music play in it?

I think music doesn't really have that big of a part. Music can probably add a little bit of fuel to what is happening. Like the people in Seattle, they need a good soundtrack to smash up Starbucks with. So that's maybe where music comes into place. And also music is very good at highlighting these sort of questions. When we travel around the world we talk about the Seattle demonstrations and we talk about what happened in Prague, we talk about these issues when we play shows. Hopefully someone will be like, "Oh, wow. I'll check that out and see what's happening." So hopefully we can inspire some people to get involved in the actual process of doing the demonstrations. I think that we'll see that will happen is these sort of grassroots movements like what happened in Seattle and what's happening in Europe with this attack movement.

What do you see as the goal of your band or the mission, if there is one?

There is a mission. You will always need a mission. You can't just be a band that just wants play music, that'd be boring. There's several different missions, but I mean, one of the most important ones is that we want to play music that makes people inspired, makes people think and makes people dance. If we can be a fraction of the bands that we got into politics because of, then that's great. If we can be a tenth of Born Against or Dead Kennedys. Then we're doing something right and that's sort of the function we want to have.

I definitely think you're inspiring people to get more interested in politics just from what I've seen. I read an interview where you said, "We want to put the passion back into revolution. Making sure that instead of the whole tired left with all their self sacrifices and how they crucify themselves for the cause, ours should be about living, and the revolution of everyday life." I was wondering if you could just elaborate on that a bit?

The leftist movement - and I've been involved in the leftist movement for a great number of years - the leftist movement is very boring in a lot of senses. The leftist movement, as far as like, the organized and political sort of movement is very stale and unsexy and unhappening. There's a lot of like, "All right (sighs), I'll pass out the fliers for the cause."

It's noble and all and I think that it's good that people are actually doing it, but I've seen so many people get turned off by political struggles, just because, every time you talk about political struggle people always equate it with boring. Equate it with boring meetings, demonstrations that are a drag because no one's having any fun and just generally it's not fun. People just give their whole lives, they'll sacrifice their spare time just to be, you know, a revolutionary. I think it's much more revolutionary to try to be passionate about what you're doing and try to incorporate that passion into a subversive struggle instead of just taking on the Lutheranian morals of self sacrifice and sacrifice yourself for the cause. I just see that as sort of hurting people and making people afraid of committing themselves to the thought of political struggle.

Is that is how you see the musical side of your band? It's sort of a sexy, 60s garage sound. Is that how it relates?

Definitely. That's how it relates. We're trying to capture the feeling of enjoyment and fun and playfulness that we want to have it in the political struggle. So, yeah, that's definitely what we're trying to capture.

Are there people on the left that have a problem with that, with bringing fun into politics?

I don't think generally. I don't think anyone would say, "No, I want my politics to be boring." But, the thing is, dogmatic people always have a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And for tons of people we're doing it the wrong way. We're not doing the political struggle as you're supposed to do it. Which I think is the good part about us. We're not doing it in the old stale ways. We're doing something that we can relate to and that hopefully a lot of other people can relate to and get inspired by and break away from that whole monotony of repeating the same pattern over and over again. And also to break from the pattern that there's actually one right way to have a political struggle. We're just trying to show them like we always say, there's not one right way to struggle politically. There are tons of different ways to struggle politically. Everything from the small do-it-yourself punk band that steals gas to go on tour, to a band like Rage Against the Machine, to the demonstrations, to study groups of Karl Marx, to writing books and fanzines, to talking with your friends. It's all good. It's all needed. It's not like we can only have one way to struggle politically. Everybody needs to work everywhere in the ways they feel inspiring and enjoyable.

Are you optimistic about the future?

Well... I think... I mean...Yeah, I think I am. I'm fairly naive. Still I'm fairly naive to the world. I'm optimistic or else I really wouldn't be talking about these issues. I wouldn't be talking about revolution if I didn't think that it would happen. I've been all over the world. I've been traveling and I sense the feeling of despair. And I sense the feeling of, "It's time to stand up against the man." That's the same feeling I get when I travel to China or Hong Kong or Germany or Spain or Norway or Sweden or America. People always have that feeling, "I'm fucking sick and tired of being treated like shit." That is something that people generally feel all over the world. It's starting to happen. A thing like Seattle proves that. I didn't think that such a thing could happen in America. But it did. After that there's been tons of demonstrations outside of the Republican convention and things like that. It's a beautiful thing to see that people are finally saying, "I'm fed up. I won't take this anymore." So, I'm kind of optimistic, yeah.

More on the musical side. How did you guys develop this sound and what bands influenced you?

No bands in particular. More like the feeling of the playfulness and innocence and, I wouldn't really say simplicity, but the way you recognize music. Like 60s music especially. We're not a retro band. We hate retro. We hate the people that just take something in the 60s and try to relive the 60s. That's just futile. That won't work. But we definitely hear those 60s bands and when you hear a lot of those bands, like when you hear the Kinks or when you hear old Rolling Stones and you hear the riff and you're thinking, "Wait, I know this song! No, I don't really, it's another song that sounds like that." That was sort of the feeling that we wanted to have on the band. We wanted to band where we start playing and people be like, "Ahh yeah, wait, this song!" And they'll be like, "No it's not that song, but it's pretty good. We wanted to be catchy and we wanted to be, more than anything maybe, danceable. We came to the conclusion that we're not really black enough to be a soul band, but at least we try to make people dance. Try to make people feel the music in their feet as well as in their heads.

I've heard a lot of good things about your live show and am totally excited about you guys coming here. Could you explain what your live show is like a little bit?

It's just uh...

Just going crazy?

Yeah, I mean it's pretty much your average dressed up, guys and girl in suits, sort of jumping around screaming political slogans (laughing).

That's sounds pretty good.

(Laughing) That's pretty much , you know, the basic thing.

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