BAND NAME: THE FLIES
BAND MEMBERS: SEAN COOK, BOB LOCKE, TIM NORFOLK
LOCATION: BRISTOL, ENGLAND
WEB LINK: www.myspace.com/thefliesmusic
www.the-flies.com

MUSIC VIDEO: 'HIGH'
LIVE PERFORMANCE: The Flies Live on Channel M

INTERVIEW WITH: SEAN COOK
WRITTEN BY: RANCE D. REED FROM GREENLANDLIVE.NET

The Bristol, England based band The Flies began in an informal and incremental way. Sean had worked with Spiritualized and Lupine Howl for many years whilst Bob Locke and Tim Norfolk (aka ‘The Insects’) had spent a lot of time writing and producing music for film and TV.  A few years ago the guys found themselves working in the same studio complex whilst Sean was doing some session work for Massive Attack.  Bob and Tim asked Sean to come upstairs to listen to a piece of music that they had initially written for a movie but then decided that it would work better as a song with a singer.  Sean volunteered and did some vocals on the track, they all thought the track worked well so they decided to take things further. Over the following months they recorded some more tracks and increasingly began to feel that they had the beginnings of a project that they should pursue.  As they began to build a body of work they started to attract interest from labels; “label interest encouraged us to make an album.” The result was their debut L.P. “All Too Human” which we released at the end of 2007.

Because The Flies began in an informal way, they had made quite a lot of music before they started to think about naming the group. In fact, they only began to consider finding a name for the band when they were about to be signed by Universal. “We needed a name in order for the lawyers to draw up the contract and the only name we could agree upon was ‘The Flies’.”  The Flies draw influence from all kinds of things; personal experience, books, films, music, things that happen in the world etc. They listen to a wide variety of music, on their debut L.P. ‘All Too Human’ artists such as Roy Orbison, The Shangrilas, Esquival, Dr John, Kraftwerk and film soundtracks all influenced the album in some way.  I asked Sean, ‘How would you describe your audience?’  “To be honest I am fairly ignorant of what kinds of people like our music. Obviously there will be some people who are aware of my previous projects who would be interested in The Flies but I have also met people at our gigs who are unaware of stuff I have done in the past.”  The Flies main goal in their careers right now is to continue to make music and avoid having to get a “real job!”  According to Sean, The Flies do not  have a particular message for the world through their music. “I don’t care what people think or do. Furthermore, I don’t consider myself to be in a position to influence peoples’ thoughts and actions – if I was in such a position I think it would result in a fairly unhealthy state of affairs.”

The Flies like to be free of any remit or manifesto when creating an album or song because the world is an evolving and changeable place. Similarly, people are changeable, inconsistent and contradictory. “Lyrically, the songs on ‘All Too Human’ are deliberately ambiguous time capsules of fleeting thoughts and observations I had at the time.“  Admittedly most of these thoughts and observations are slightly dark and misanthropic in nature because that is the kind of person that Sean is most of the time.  “It’s a strange thing to look back at records you have made. I have recorded a lot of songs over the years. It is rare for me to listen to these recordings but when I do I am often struck by the absurd – sometimes I barely recognize myself.”

All three of The Flies are multi-instrumental and they all have a go at pretty much everything. Obviously Sean does the vocals (with Bob doing some of the backing vocals). As far as the instrumentation is concerned, broadly speaking Tim plays most of the guitars. Bob plays most of the keyboards and does a fair amount of the drumming. Both Bob and Sean are bass players so they both have a go at that. Occasionally they get people in to play stuff like strings and brass. 

GreenlandLive.net would like to THANK Sean Cook from The Flies for taking the time to chat with Rance D. Reed of Greenlandlive.net!

GO PICK UP THE FLIES LATEST ALBUM “ALL TOO HUMAN” ON ITUNES UK.

Come check out The Flies on www.greenlandlive.net or www.myspace.com/thefliesmusic