Scene Point Blank: Your contract with Virgin recently expired, and there has been a lot of buzz around whether you intend to resign with them or notâ?¦
Steve: None of your goddamn business. (laughs)
Stefan: It's too early to call at this point. We try to keep our business and private lives out of the public eye. It's safest that way.
Steve: We've been burned in the past.
Scene Point Blank: Through out your career the media's focus surrounding your band has been largely revolved around your aesthetics and sexuality. At this point it's redundant to ask those types of questions, but why do you believe this has been such a large topic when dealing with your band?
Stefan: It's just the easiest aspect to criticize and comment on. We come from a very tabloid, journalism, mentality in England and that's kind of what the world first read about Placebo. They just bought into the character, and it became a character assassination after awhile. I think it's just the superficial, celebrity obsessed, media world we live in right now. There is a shallowness that's become so much more present in the last couple of years. We don't like it, we don't want to be part of it. I think the whole issue of our sexuality and our personal lives have been written about so many times to a point where it's really fucking boring to talk about.
Steve: It's the day and age of analyzing on anybody. Whether you're famous or not, anybody who's anybody, people want to fucking tear apart. Nature of the beast, really. It's a modernist thing, isn't it? Obsessive.
Scene Point Blank: What you've said in other interviews is that the point of your music is a communication of emotion, but you've been doing this for quite along time now. What I was wondering is if the basis of this ever changes, or just evolves with you as you're maturing and growing up?
Stefan: Oh. I think by the nature of not trying to be something we're not, you can still hear in this last album Meds, though it's our fifth album, it still sounds like Placebo. There is still a red line that connects it to the first couple of albums. To be honest with you, it's not something we consciously think about when we're writing and recording. If we all hit off on the same ideas and lyrics then that's what becomes a Placebo song. We don't say not that we've done that we have to go off and do our Kid A for example, or we have to sound like the Velvets or the Stones on this one. Now it's cool to do a new wave or an electronic punk album or something, but it's much more organic when it comes to the way that we work. By the fact of not trying to be something that we're not, we're still here. It's not something that we analyze reallyâ?¦
Steve: We always make music in a vacuum anyway. We never listen to anything else when we're in the studio so there is a sense of purity there. If we all agree then it becomes a Placebo thing. We've never been cool or trendy, so we've never had the problem of having to find the next step. Just really on our own root. pretty much just the same way as Radiohead, we're just doing our own thing so we never had to contend with what's hip, or worry about it. I think that's been a saving grace of the band.
Scene Point Blank: Your tour schedule has been quite extensive, and goes into September, when you're finished do you intend to head into the studio?
Stefan: We intend to sleep. (laughs) This has been the most intense tour we've ever done with about 130 shows in nine months last year, and we're going to go until September. So when we get off that I think we'll need a bit of a breather.
Steve: It's been nothing but rock and roll.
Scene Point Blank: I assuming there is no sort of premeditation regarding the next album
Steve: No. (laughs)
Stefan: That's the answer to that one.
Scene Point Blank: A pet project of mine has been getting everyone I've done interviews with to attempt to define art. So why do you guys create music and what does that do for you?
Steve: First and foremost it's about expression. That's the bottom line for me. You have many ways of doing that. From making records comes other things like videos. I've had many channels to produce art but it all stems from expressionist feeling for me.
Stefan: We're very lucky to be doing it, it's not a bad job. Art is art, and everything else is everything else.
Scene Point Blank: That's a good place to end it, thanks for your time. Any closing comment?
Stefan: It's good to be back, and hopefully it won't take as long to get back next time.
Interview: Graham
Graphics: Matt
