Music

1 Co-leader Mike Lindsay is still excited about meeting his hero
Lindsay: ‘I used to be something of a metaller and Slash was my childhood hero. So, I went up to him on the plane and said, “Hi, can I, erm, shake your hand and say thanks?” He had his curly locks, his silver Aviators on and then, when we landed, the only bit of hand luggage he had was his top hat, which he’d put in the overhead carrier.’

2 The meeting has inspired Lindsay to revisit his metal past
Lindsay: ‘I tell you what I wouldn’t mind doing, a metal version of the first album [“This Is Tunng – Mother’s Daughter And Other Songs”] and call it G-nnut… Tunng backwards.’
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3 Tunng recently discovered the existence of Icelandic prog rock
Lindsay: ‘There’s one band that I’ve been listening to a lot. They’re called Flursaflokkurinn [sp?]. I went to Iceland for New Year’s Eve and the friend I went to see, her uncle was in this prog rock band. I’ve never heard anything like it, loads of wonky time signatures that change every five bars. Some of the songs make Phil [Winter, bandmate] and I piss ourselves.

4 They use unusual percussion…
Lindsay: ‘Martin’s got a bit of string with whatever he can find tied to it, including these horse teeth that I got from Brazil. They’re supposed to be for a Macumba devil necklace. And he’s got these, well, he says they’re bear toenails, but I don’t know. They’re certainly beastly.’

5 …and samples
Lindsay: ‘We can’t actually clear them because nobody will own up to making it, but they’re from a record called ‘Man’. It’s this poetry record made for educational purposes in the ’70s. All the voices are old headmasters and it’s really lovely, English sounding nonsense.’

6 They’ve started an indie beef
Lindsay: ‘On [second] album “Comments Of The Inner Chorus” we sampled that film, “Fahrenheit 451”, which is about books. The sample says, “Books are rubbish, they’ve got nothing to say,” and everybody assumed it was about US indie act The Books, which it was but in a friendly hip hop kind of way. We played with them once but they didn’t know who we were so I told them about the sample and they were like, “We do know who you are.” They’ve not retaliated yet.’

7 Mike used to work in porn
Lindsay: ‘I used to make title music for Television X. Really appalling music. I’d get asked for a Eurohouse track with thrash metal guitar on it. Everything that you wouldn’t put together… unless it was for a porn channel. I didn’t have to soundtrack cum shots or anything like that though.’

8 They made the first two albums below a lingerie shop
Lindsay: ‘It was more like a woman’s boutique, but they did sell sexy underwear. You had to go through the changing room because it was built over the stairs down into the basement studio. If anybody was changing, you were trapped down below and could see their feet at the top of the stairs.

9 Band member Ashley Bates used to be in Chapterhouse
Lindsay: ‘I was still into really bad heavy metal then, but it’s amazing how many people worship his band and that whole shoegazing scene. We actually got a remix done by Dntel for our new single and it’s pretty shoegazing. I thought Ashley would love it but he’s like, “yeah, it’s alright”. I think he wants to leave it in the past.’

10 Europeans like them for the wrong song
Lindsay: ‘We did a cover of a Bloc Party tune, but we’ve never heard from them whether they like it or not. They must have heard it because, to be honest, it’s actually the song people in Europe know us for. In Holland and Germany, they ask us to play “Pioneers” all the time. But we didn’t write that fucking song!’