The Cooper Temple Clause are no ordinary rock band. This much became evident in 2001 when they toured the UK with Muse and broke into the top 40 with the single Let's Kill Music described by The Guardian as an 'awesome, rampant electrical charge.'
"We're challenging people to broaden their horizons." Fisher says, "We want to push the sound and form of rock music, to take people to places they've never been."
The six members of The Cooper Temple Clause, all in their early 20s, came together in Reading at the close of the '90s. It was on the outskirts of the town, isolated in a pokey lock-up adjacent to a pig farm, that they constructed their powerful, idiosyncratic sound. With the aroma of pig shit in the air, the band met every night after working day jobs, jamming for hours on end - sometimes for an hour on the same song.
This freeform approach goes some way to explaining why The Cooper Temple Clause have drawn comparisons to the heavy, hypnotic noise of Pink Floyd, Primal Scream and The Verve, yet they have also been likened to artists as disparate as Led Zeppelin, the Stone Roses, Simon & Garfunkel and the MC5. Moreover, their personal tastes range from Beck to Oasis, Blur to Neil Young, Mogwai to Radiohead. "There's a lot of white noise in what we do," Fisher says, "but we try to pull melodies from it. There's power and trashiness but also melody and beauty."
And that weird band name? That's something that people can work out for themselves. "We hear different meanings all the time, some of which are very odd. We prefer to let people speculate. Keeps it interesting."
"There's something about The Cooper Temple Clause's demented conviction that
will leave anybody wanting more." - The Guardian
|