Quench
Mysterious charm
Luke Sellers delves into the surreal world of the Mystery Jets as they opened the Cardiff Leg of the NME tour.
By Luke Sellers
Secure Cabin Doors For Take Off. “Zoo time! Zoo time! Zoo Time!” An eerie, tribal chanting fills the Great Hall. Onstage strides a boyish man in an oversized leather jacket, a couple of Dickensian street urchins, a hyperactive Indian and what appears to be someone’s Grandad (he is in fact the lead singer’s dad). One of the urchins starts beating a ferocious rhythm on some old pots and pans at the front of the stage and the Mystery Jets kick off the Cardiff leg of the 2006 NME Tour leaving many of the audience completely baffled. “I think it’s a lot to take in first time you see us,” reasons bassist Kai Fish.
Rather than be deterred by the difficulties of being unknown to many in the audience the band have embraced it. “There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain, though its been hard, like an army boot camp,” claims Kai.
Previous NME tours have seen rivalry and disharmony between bands, so has there been any bad blood between this year’s line up? Kai: “There’s no competition because the music’s too different, we’re mates with them all.”
The Mystery Jets are a band brimming with new ideas and concepts. They use old dustbin lids and kitchen items as percussion instruments, record in strange places such as staircases and bathrooms and wanted to do their album tour in aircraft hangers. What is the next unusual scheme the band have devised? “We want to do an acoustic tour in churches and cafes. We’ll do matinee gigs and evening gigs in every town,” enthuses guitarist Will Rees. “We’ll turn up like troubadours and serenade people, even busk. We might even play at country pubs!”
The mention of country pubs sparks Kai back into life: “Ah country pubs! We’ve got a book that takes you to pubs with the most amazing food ever! You get to go to these towns you’ve never heard of where the people are like three foot tall.”
Surreal as the conversation has become such is their boundless enthusiam that it is hard not to become entangled in the madcap world of the Mystery Jets. It is this ability to include you in their warped, romanticised world that is at the core of the bands appeal.
This is evident in debut album Making Dens. “Every song is like a den, a little world you can escape to for that period of time,” explains Kai. “These songs belonged together, they’re like a chapter of our lives,” continues Will. “It’s been a long time coming and now it’s out in the world it’s quite scary.” What are their ambitions for the album? “We want to sell as many as we can, to reach a lot of people,” says Kai.
Not content with living in the present the band are already thinking about their next adventure. “We want to go to Istanbul and use one of theirbig orchestras,” declares Kai. The Mystery Jets: so crazy they might justwork.
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