STACK NZ Jun #74

EXTRAS NEWS

visit stack.net.nz

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. 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

“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

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

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-

Ash & Ice by The Kills is out June 10. They're also in NZ next month for two shows; go to thekills.tv for details. BATEMAN IS SLY AS A FOX S urprisingly, Zootopia is Jason Bateman’s first animated movie – but he’s Bateman says acting in an animated film was a unique experience. “It's a completely

EXTRAS

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.

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

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.

MAY 2016

06

jbhifi.co.nz