Simon Gilbert sits in his back garden in Bangkok, watching lizards scrabble over the hot rocks, wondering how he blundered his way back to a career in pop music.
“After Suede, being in a band is the last thing I wanted to do,” reminisces the drummer. “In fact, I moved to Thailand specifically to get away from the music industry.”
Gilbert, drummer for all of Suede’s ten-year history, may have been ready to give up on music, but music wasn't ready to give up on him.
Six months after relocating to Thailand – drawn, he says, by the “sleaze and the glamour” – he fell in with fellow ex-pat musicians, David Croker and DJ Bee (real name unknown) who, under the ephitet Futon, were investigating major-league melodies and stadium-rock choruses.
You can hear the result of their collaboration on Futon’s debut album, a juddering soft-rock extravaganza called Love Bites. Set next to Futon’s lascivious anthems, Suede sound like weedy indie nerds.
“At the time I came upon Futon they didn’t have a drummer – it was just a drum machine,” reminisces Gilbert. “You could already see they had potential. These are big, big songs, man. Songs that need, demand, to be heard on the radio.”
With Love Bites vaulting to the top of the charts, Futon have blossomed into Thailand’s favourite rock act. This, says Gilbert, is a more modest boast than it might sounds.
“The rock scene here really isn’t that big. Outside of Bangkok you won’t sell any records. Even within Bangkok, we don’t really fit in because the music scene is very exploitative. It’s all conveyor belt pop acts, so anything different is bound to stand out.”
Gilbert says he harbours no ill memories over Suede, who, unlike most bands of their age and stature, were spared a messy death: on the cusp of irrelevance, the veteran Britrockers drifted apart in 2000.
“It just felt right,” says Gilbert of Suede’s last days. “There’s no use flogging a dead horse. If I’m being honest, we were getting a little bit bored. It had started to feel like a routine.”
Does he keep in contact with his former band mates?
“Funnily, I was never particularly close with anyone in Suede to begin with. There’s no bad blood, at all. But we’re not on the phone to each other every second weekend, either.”
Having conquered Bangkok and the, er, surrounding villages, Futon now have their sights on global, or at least European, domination.
“We don’t have a major label behind us, so it’s up to us to make this happen for ourselves,” Gilbert reflects. “What makes it so interesting for me is that some of the guys in the band were Suede fans as kids. Now, we’re doing this together. It’s totally crazy.”