At Mutant Music last month we played host to Aberystwyth boys Convoi Exceptionnel. Lovely lads they are too, and clean. We managed to get most of their set bootlegged off the soundboard and Gunslinger Duck (AKA Christopher Stevens) agreed to talk a bit about each track for us.
N.B. we didn’t get their cover of M.I.A.’s Paper Planes on tape so the boys have very generously offered us an exclusive download of the studio version of the same track. Enjoy!
We always play this song first cos we like how it starts, it doesn’t really give the audience an idea of what we’re gonna be like when we get going.
Glyn had seen this photo of Muhammad al-Durrah, a Palestinian boy killed by gunfire from the Israel Defense Forces during a clash with Palestinian Security Forces in the Gaza Strip in 2000 and wanted to write a song about friendly fire. It snowballed into an anti conflict song, the crux of which is that photograph, taken by Talal Abu Rahma.
I guess this is the first song we wrote that we were really happy with, the main riff and rap came together very quickly then Glyn slapped an A Tribe Called Quest beat on it, sung the hook and mixed it down. It’s been through a few incarnations but this is how we like it now.
This song is bilingual, half of it is in Welsh. The title means “Sound of the Police” and it’s a sort of pastiche of british hiphop acts that act gangsta. The lyrics tell a story of a kid getting caught smoking dope by a policeman, trying to bribe him and get him to smoke with him then trying to convince him by defending his choice of drug. We used to play this song with a different band and we always really dug the riff and chorus so we kept it around when we started Convoi Exceptionnel.
Glyn’s girlfriend Angharad wrote a piece of poetry in Welsh while they were travelling in Asia together that expressed how fleeting love can be and he decided to use the lyrics for a song, he layered guitar tracks on top of each other which gave it a really latin feel so we went with that. I added some lyrics which Glyn thinks translate the vibe into english perfectly.
We got invited to play this song on Welsh music tv show Bandit so we did it properly with 3 guitars and live drums, which was really good fun.
This is a cover of an M.I.A track, I really dig the original so I started fiddling around with a guitar and came up with the main loops, Glyn put it all together and put some sweet backing vocals on it to space it out even further and we went with it. The chorus has quacks instead of gun fire because I’m the Gunslinger Duck.
I found a gypsy band’s version of the Russian folk song Kalinka that had some good parts in it so I sampled it and cut it up and then I wrote these rhymes about hiphop complaining about what it’s turned into today. The chorus is an homage to the Fugees.
This is our obligatory rap song talking about where we’re from, in an old hiphop school style. We’re from Aberystwyth in Wales which is a very pretty coastal town and we love it there so this is our ode. It’s got a really good vibe to it, is really good fun to play and we both really like it.
It helped us get new band of the week on Radio Wales after we got it online and got on BBC radio 6 thanks to Tom Robinson.
This title (pronounced pu) is a Daoist metaphorical expression that translates as “uncarved block”. Glyn wrote this song about his Grandad’s influnce on his life, it’s really heartfelt and pretty with great spaced out vibes but also has some chaotic drum and bass breaks. It’s a really great song and is awesome to play live. Glyn does some rapping on this and has some sweet singing parts too, it’s a good juxtaposition. I added some synth and my own raps which help tie the lyrics together.
I got given an old Casio keyboard by my grandparents recently and it’s got some fat sounds so I played a chord sequence and put some electro beats on it. I wrote the lyrics about graffiti and writing songs. It’s got some video game sounds in it. Glyn added some bass and wah guitar but we’re still finishing this one off – you guys heard it only a couple of days after I wrote it.
Gunslinger Duck (AKA Christopher Stevens) is vocalist/keyboardist/producer/percussionist and Glyn Langham is guitarist/vocalist/percussionist/producer of Convoi Exceptionnel. They are playing next at The Twisted Wheel, Glasgow, on 18/03/09 (more dates on their myspace) and will hopefully return to Mutant Music later in the year.
Also, check out the video for Paper Planes here.
