ADAM: Thanks for doing this interview. How's life treating you these days?
SILVIA: Pretty good. We've finished setting up our new home studio and are currently working on the follow-up album to our debut CD Flake,which will be released this summer.
ADAM: What can fans of Flake expect from this follow-up?
SILVIA: The new album will be titled Introspective Raincoat Student Music which is pretty self-explanatory. There's going to be only slow and mid-tempo songs on this album and we deliberately tried a more lo-fi approach since the last album was a bit too overproduced and clean sounding for my taste.
ADAM: What led you to forming your own label (Starfish Records) instead of finding a compatible label you were comfortable in signing with?
SILVIA: Simply put, there was no other label wanting to sign us when we shopped Flake around. However, we initially were approached by a couple of producers who wanted to work with us and pitch the finished product to the majors. But after some meetings we quickly realized that we would have to comply with a variety of stylistic and even songwriting requests that we felt were not consistent with our artistic vision.
ADAM: Can you tell us a little bit about Bloom 05, the other band you've signed to Starfish?
SILVIA: Bloom 05 is a European band, who is often characterized as a bare bones version of Tindersticks or early Lou Reed. Their singer, Pablo Rocket, has a very unique raspy low voice and I actually recorded a duet with him which is kind of in the vein of Nancy Sinatra / Lee Hazelwood and which will be included on the new Sugarplum Fairies CD. Starfish has just recently released a new Bloom 05 CD titled Stills & Honey.
ADAM: Getting back to your music, is there any interest in bringing a permanent bassist or drummer into Sugarplum Fairies?
SILVIA: Our current drummer, Keith Mitchell, is actually on loan from Mazzy Star and our bass player, Miiko Watanabe, is doing a lot of studio work and is touring with Dave Navarro right now. Though it's certainly not very cost effective to hire a drummer/bassist for every recording session or live show it turned out that this was the right direction for us to take, since we usually have the songs and arrangements pretty much worked out before we go into recording. This also takes care of any possible commitment problems on the part of full time band members, because people usually show up when they know a check is waiting.
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