Iggy Pop‘s contribution to the Death In Vegas‘s The Contino Sessions is the brutal, unnerving track ‘Aisha’. Claustrophobic beats clamber for attention as Pop‘s twisted spoken word emoting goes beyond mere schlock horror to taps into a primeval vein deep in the soul. nme.com quizzed him (fearfully).
How did you get involved with Death In Vegas?
“They wrote me a letter and sent some music, and thing that I could relate to most is the track they wanted me to sing on. I just thought the fuckin’ track really smoked. I really liked it, so we decided we’d do something.”
Did you immediately know what you were going to sing? “No, I thought this is really fucking good, there’s nothing I can do to it, let’s just put it away and not think about it for a while. Then one day it was time to do it, so I sat down and did my homework. I had some things happening to me personally, so I had some fuel for writing a song. I tried to kinda talk over it.”
Writing a song about a serial killer is pretty extreme, isn’t it?
“Do you think so? I like it. Actually, I was going out with a girl called Aisha at the time, ‘Convenient,’ T thought, ‘That’s a nice name, it’ll make a nice song.’. It’s evocative.
“The thing that’s amusing is that I meant everything I said. It’s all real. The things I tend to say are so over-the-top, no-one ever believes me. Everyone listens to it and goes, ‘Ho ho ho, that’s pretty wild’, but I meant everything I said. Beyond that I’m not going to elaborate. It’s just like anything else I write, you try to dig into your personal life and your own feelings.”
Have you heard the rest of the album?
“Yeah, I like it. A lot of the other stuff us more darky, darky. It’s like a band, it’s a pretty cool album. The first time I heard it I thought it was pretty cool, but real morose. The packaging is really cool too, the fetish shoe, very nice.”
Apparently, in America they’re calling it ‘new goth’
“It sounded real goth to me, that’s why I used the term morose. It sounded goth as hell to me. Can I just say they were gents by the way? It’s important for me to say that on the Tom Jones level of things.”
You will be able to watch Death In Vegas‘ London show Sunday 7 November live here as it happens on nme.com from 9pm.
Click here to see Death In Vegas live.
Click here to see Death In Vegas‘s projection show live from the venue.
To view the webcast you will need the Windows Media Player. [url=]Click here to download the player.