STACK NZ June 2016 Issue 74

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visit EXTRAS NEWS
06 MAY 2016
EXTRAS
TRY A LITTLE TENDON-ESS
Jamie Hince of The Kills explains why a
serious finger injury forced the band to
explore new sonic directions on Ash & Ice.
J amie Hince is remarkably buoyant
for a professional guitarist who
almost lost a finger to gangrene.
“It went really dark red,” the sweet Brit
explains to us. “The weird thing was there
was just no definition on my finger. There
were no knuckles or anything, and it just
became this cylindrical, painful, throbbing
thing.”
Although he’s recovered from the deep
infection that “rotted [his] whole tendon”
(the result of a cortisone injection into a
badly broken bone), he can’t play guitar – at
least not like he did on The Kills’ previous
albums. But that’s OK.
“Something like this makes you really stop
and re-think everything,” he muses. “I was at
a point where I was a bit disillusioned with
guitar music. I felt like it was so referential
and not doing anything new. I decided I was
going to spend more time being a producer,
so I put a studio together.”
Inspired by the dub methods of
iconoclastic Jamaican
producers Lee “Scratch”
Perry and King Tubby, Hince
bought a 1968 mixing desk
with "old compressors and
echo chambers and reverbs",
and started experimenting.
But writing the songs for
Ash & Ice – his fifth record
with bandmate and vocalist Alison Mosshart
– occurred far away from that environment.
A fan of Russian art and literature (shout-
out to Bulgakov!), Hince spent two weeks
penning ideas in a carriage on the notoriously
barren, almost 10,000 km-long Trans-Siberian
Railway.That intensive writing time and
Hince’s new studio have given Ash & Ice
a powerful, reverberant feel which the
musician credits to some kind of consistent
thread that’s knotted around himself and his
partner-in-musical-arms.
“I just love that about programming and
drum machines; that no matter how lug-
headed your guitar sounds, you can make
your music sound like anything. One record I
wanted it to sound like The Cramps, the next
record Cabaret Voltaire, and then I wanted
it to sound like Massive Attack. I always
wanted that for my band, to be able to make
totally different music that somehow is held
together by me and Alison. Even if the song
is like a string quartet, it still sounds like The
Kills.” Zoë Radas
Ash & Ice by The Kills is out
June 10. They're also in NZ next month
for two shows; go to for details.
BATEMAN IS SLY AS A FOX
S urprisingly, Zootopia is
Jason Bateman’s first
animated movie – but he’s
certainly no stranger to the genre.
”It's honestly an honour to be a
part of a Disney film,” he explains.
“They're the only films I get to see
nowadays because I've got two
little girls, 8 and 3, so I've become
a big fan.”
In Zootopia he voices the
character of Nick Wilde, a
charming but sly con-artist fox who
reluctantly helps the city’s first
bunny cop Judy Hopp (Ginnifer
Goodwin) solve a mysterious crime.
The film features 64 different
species of animals and the Disney
animation team spent 18 months
just researching animals and
their behaviour – so for Nick, the
animators paid careful attention to
his elbows and shoulders to ensure
they didn't appear too human-like.
Bateman says acting in an
animated film was a unique
experience. “It's a completely
different process," he says. "I just
tried to give them as many options
as I could dream up, different ways
to say each line. The filmmakers
make the cocktail later.” Adam Colby
Zootopia is out on DVD and Blu-ray on
June 29 and is reviewed on page 22.