Jurassik Lark

There’s a part in Tom And Jerry where Jerry pulls Tom’s whiskers and it makes a plucking sound, now that’s called pizzicato. I didn’t know that though! I can’t read music so I’d have to go round the houses explaining what sound I wanted in these crazy ways and they would have to interpret it. It was a really interesting way of working! I’m really proud of the arrangements though,” says Serge Pizzorno.

The Kasabian guitarist and songwriter is explaining the unusual working relationship he developed with the 20-piece orchestra that feature on the outfit’s latest album Velociraptor!.
Pizzorno has been the main songwriter since the departure of keyboardist Christopher Karloff in 2006. The two albums he has helmed since, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum and the current opus, have made the lad-rock title with which they were initially tarnished redundant.
His more complex, experimental approach to the craft stands in stark contrast to the songs on 2004’s self-titled debut and 2006’s Empire.
The first two records spawned a slew of hits such as ‘LSF’, ‘Empire’, ‘Shoot The Runner’ and ‘Club Foot’ (which Sky Sports used on its soccer advertisements). Support slots to the Gallagher Brothers, a similarly voracious appetite for partying and frontman Tom Meighan’s general gobbiness also bolstered the LR label.
But now, it seems the troupe have come of age. Pizzorno has become a father and claims to have given up drugs to write the current album. The fervent partying has quietened and Meighan’s outbursts have tapered off.
Result? Perhaps their most accomplished work yet.

When Hot Press catches up with Pizzorno, the band are en route to Transylvania to play the Peninsula Festival in Targu Mures, a prospect about which Serge is “really excited”.
The softly-spoken guitarist thanks me profusely for my praise of the album and throughout the exchange is faultlessly pleasant, polite and unwaveringly enthusiastic about the band’s current trajectory.
Hewn in the wake of a Mercury Prize nomination which garnered numerous plaudits, Pizorrno baulks at the suggestion of a weight of expectation on Velociraptor!.
“We didn’t feel any pressure,” he states. “I think it’s sort of dangerous to overthink things like that. The songs actually came really quickly and it was done within six months so we didn’t have time to think about it too much.”
Rather than stymying its successor, the multi-award winner gave the band a new creative freedom.
“The last record was very experimental so it gave us licence to do the opposite to that, which is go out and I suppose in our own way make more of a pop record,” he reflects. “That’s a bit mental because you’re supposed to do it the other way around!

“I think it just gave us a freedom, rather than being bogged down or weighed down by any expectations. It just gave us an opportunity to go any way we wanted.”
The album is a melange of styles, from the middle-eastern tinged soundscapes of ‘Acid Turkish Bath’ to the trippy Beatles-esque ‘Le Flee Verte’ via the primal electro beats of ‘Switchblade Smiles’ and multifaceted bravura of ‘Days Are Forgotten’.
“I wrote the album from when the baby was a month old, then on in, so it was a bit crazy,” laughs Pizzorno. “I don’t really remember too much about it because of the lack of sleep, you don’t really sleep a lot when you have a newborn baby in the house, but it was great!”
Serge and his partner Amy welcomed baby Ennio last August and fatherhood seems to suit the guitarist down to the ground.
“I had no idea what it was going to do to me, whether I was going to start writing lullabies or what!” he smiles. “It has had such a positive effect on every aspect of my life. It has been amazing.”
The latest album also sees the band once again reunite with Dan The Automator who manned production duties on the last album.
“The last record went so well it was just the natural thing to do,” states Pizzorno. “I had the songs and we thought, ‘Cool, let’s go start where we left off.’”
Dan was also responsible for bringing ‘Days Are Forgotten’ to the attention of legendary hip-hop icon LL Cool J, who was so taken with it that he has remixed the track.
“Dan played it to him and he really liked it,” nods Serge. “He hasn’t done anything for a while so it was really great, but it all happened really naturally.”
“It’s such a strange fit but it works because he wanted to do it,” he continues. “It wasn’t like we sent it out to the coolest rapper out there that everyone is buzzing off. LL is a legend. He’s the first port of call for a lot of people. He really killed it, it’s really great.”

Sky Sports have also chosen to feature the original track on their soccer ads, following on from their use of ‘Club Foot’. The band (under the moniker of Kasabian FC) recently took to the pitch to challenge a team of Sky Sports pundits.
“It was all scripted though, we had to lose,” says Serge forlornly. “I like to think we could have won but they were good, there were a lot of world class players. It was a lot of fun, everyone was really sound.”
Meighan has declared his highpoint of the showdown to be ‘nutmegging Neville’ which he compared to being ‘up there with playing Wembley’. Pizzorno reserves his comments for ex-Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp.
“He has definitely got a bit about him, he’s really quite a phenomenal player,” he enthuses.
After a failed attempt to get Pizzorno Senior to be the gaffer, the team secured Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels star Nick Moran.
“Yeah, we did try to get my dad involved because he loves his football but he was there on the sidelines, he was buzzing off it!”
Serge originally had intended to start a career in football. At school, he told his career adviser he wanted to be centre-forward for Leicester City and when this option was given the thumbs-down he set his sights on rock stardom. And we are all the richer for it!
A committed soccer fan, Serge and chum Noel Gallagher were at Wembley in December 2010 to make the draw for the FA Cup Third Round. There were allegations of the draw being fixed after both drew their favourite teams – Leicester City and Manchester City – to play each other in a Third Round tie. This was denied by the FA, Pizzorno and Gallagher.
On the subject of his home team, Serge is full of praise for manager Sven Goran Eriksson, the former England boss.
“Ah! He’s absolutely… I love him. I think he’s going to be the man that takes us back into the Premiership without a doubt.”

Turning to other extracurricular activities, Pizzorno also recently scored the soundtrack to the British film noir London Boulevard based on a Ken Bruen novel and starring Colin Farrell, Ray Winstone and Keira Knightley. He even contributed vocals to some of the tracks. Director William Monahan (who wrote the screenplay for The Departed) wanted to take a fresh approach to the soundtrack.
“William was just in need of someone to help finish with the score. He had this mad idea of getting someone like me in who had never done it before!’ he laughs. “It was very exciting, I wrote the score over three weeks. It was a wonderful thing to do and I’m really, really proud of it. I’d love to do more in the future.”
And how did he find working in such a different medium?
“It was quite challenging, I didn’t really know what I was taking on. I just knew I wanted to do it,” he admits. “I didn’t realise what it involved and it’s a lot of work. It was amazing though, I really enjoyed it.”
One track ‘La Fee Verte’ (The Green Fairy) has made it onto the new album. As the title indicates, the track is inspired by Absinthe, a drink about which Pizzorno is quite vocal.
“When you go on to Absinthe you’re taking it there!’ he exclaims. “It’s like the tardis, you go in there and you can go anywhere you want. It’s the escapist’s drink, when you really do want to check out of the hotel that’s where you go to.”
The band has also maintained a gruelling tour schedule, headline shows, festivals and they also guested on the U2 360 tour.
“I have never seen anything quite like those U2 shows, they have taken the live experience to a whole other level,” he says. “It was just huge.”
“Shows like that are difficult to play because you always have to accept nobody is there for you and you have to accept that you’re there as part of a U2 performance,” he adds.

Did they get to hang out with Bono & Co.?
“We only met them briefly and I have to say they were very charming and very sweet,” Pizzorno says. “It’s great because you never know how the world affects them as people but it’s good to know that they are just sound, sound musicians.”
“When we met Bono he thought we were playing the next day and he said, ‘Let’s go out for a beer tomorrow night!’ and we were like, ‘Ah mate we’re not doing tomorrow’. He said it was a shame and we’d have to do it next time.
Like U2, the roots of Kasabian can be traced back to school. This longevity is something Pizzorno admires.
“What I really love about U2 is that they were mates at school and they’re still in a band together rocking around the world. That alone for me, there’s something really special about that,” he states. “They’re just four lads that met at school and took on the world and there’s something really great about that.’
The band have also completed a slew of Festival appearances, including The Isle Of Wight, Rockness, Rock Werchter and Sziget, in most incidences as headline act.
“Yeah, we’ve worked hard. It’s taken us a while to get there but closing shows, headlining shows, it’s such an honour,” Serge says. “The shows at the moment are really great, the set and that sense of bringing people together, there’s a great community feel in the crowd. When we’re on and they’re on, it’s like nothing else.”
Although Kasabian have just announced a UK tour for later in the year, I bemoan the fact that no Irish dates have been included.

“We’re definitely coming across!” he confirms. “We actually filmed the gig we did there a couple of years ago in the O2 and that was an un-fucking-believable show. It was one of those really special moments. I don’t have exact dates but rest assured that Dublin and Belfast are definitely in the schedule.”
(Note to fans: the DVD of Kasabian Live at The O2 in 2009 (the occasion of our last chat to the band) is available with the deluxe edition of Velocirpator.)
One of the highlights of the festival season for the band was closing the Isle Of Wight Festival. Their slot followed that of chum Liam Gallagher’s outfit Beady Eye. Serge is enthusiastic on the subject of his old pal.
“It’s always really nice to see Liam,” he says. “He’s just a beautiful man, he’s a special human being. There’s not many of them around, there are not many of them left. They were great, they’re such a great band.”
Has he heard any of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds material?
“I haven’t actually!” he exclaims. “I speak to Noel frequently on the phone but I haven’t seen him for a while because he’s been busy recording and we have been out on tour. In a lot of ways I’m looking forward to hearing it on the day it’s out, the old-fashioned way, there’s something great about that.”

Kasabian were the support band on Oasis’ last tour. Was there any sense at the time of the impending split?
“I don’t really know, it was none of our business,” he asserts. “The guys have always been Oasis and from the moment they came out on the scene there’s always been incidents so you didn’t think anything of it. We didn’t at the time.”
Following the tour, Noel gave the band the use of his studio to record their next album, 2006’s Empire. The bands socialised together frequently and even declared themselves ‘mates for life’ in the NME.
“The split is really sad,” notes Serge. “But the positive thing about is that we get two fantastic bands. We’ve already had a great album from Beady Eye and I’m sure Noel’s will be incredible as well.”
Speaking of Noels, another good friend, Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh fame, helped out the band by appearing in the video for ‘Vlad The Impaler’. He also joined the band on stage for their performance of the song at the 2010 NME Awards.
“He’s a really good friend and I was so excited when he said yes to doing the video because he’s just a genius,” enthuses Serge. “We were really lucky he agreed to do it. There’s no better person in the world to play that character.”
And were there celebratory tipples when filming was finished?
“Yeah, we always like a drink, me and Noel!”
With a jammed schedule to date, there is no break in sight for the Leicester lads. The rest of the year will see them undertake a punishing tour schedule.
“It’s just touring; mental, mental touring!” he laughs. “We’re in the process of putting together the show for the arena tour and it’s going to be something else, we’re really excited about it.”

Admirably, Pizzorno strongly feels that all concert-goers should always get maximum bang for their buck.
“We want to make sure people will be going away having had the night of the year,” he says. “We appreciate people work hard, you get a few quid and you go and buy a ticket. People want to go to see something magical and they want something magical to happen. We’re going to try our best to do that.”
Pizzorno himself appreciates being on the receiving end of a good gig. He was recently spotted in the pit watching The Chemical Brothers at the Sziget festival this year.
“Yeah! We were really, really having it!!” he laughs. “It was a great thing to do because you don’t get to do it very often. It’s different in Europe, it’s not like in Japan or in Australia, in most of the countries we play you wouldn’t really get away with it.”
Oh yes, and one final thing. Why ‘Velociraptor’? Are they all dinophiles?
“I love the way it sounds!” he enthuses. “They’ve all got great names, dinosaurs. It felt very modern and futuristic. We’re not massive dinosaur fans or anything, we just love the word!”

Velociraptor is out on September 16 and gets a live airing when Kasabian play the Belfast Odyssey (November 25) and Dublin O2 (26).