Bamboo are back with their second album The Dragon Flies Away, telling a story that loosely revolves around the Hannya demon masks in the Noh theatres' Dojoji story. Bamboo’s vivid journey through the emotions that the Hannya mask is capable of portraying (obsession, jealousy, sorrow and rage) is a gorgeous mixture of intriguing world influences and electronic mysticism. The project brings together two of music’s most innovative brains, Nick Carlisle (of Peepholes, Don’t Argue) and Rachel Horwood (of Trash Kit, Halo Halo), I put some question to them both to find out more about Bamboo.

Where did you grow up?
Nick: I grew up in Northern Ireland, mostly in the countryside and later I lived in Belfast before moving to England.

Rachel: I grew up in Bedford which is just north of London

Is there much of a music scene there?
Nick: There was a pretty vibrant music scene in Belfast when I was there. This was in the 90s though, I’m not sure what it’s like now but back then punk still had a big influence on a lot of what was going on.

Rachel: When I was about 15, I started going to a venue called Esquires where indie bands use to play. It was a bit random and sometimes you would turn up and there would be nothing on. But I wasn’t really playing in any bands when I was in Bedford, I just use to play piano or guitar on my own or sometimes with my sister.

Do you think where you lived or live now has influenced your music?
Rachel: I think moving to London definitely influenced my music because I finally met people to play music with.

Nick: I think growing up in the countryside, and living by the sea now, does have an influence. Although I play synthesizers and work on the computer a lot, so I always try to make sounds that seem a bit weathered and which are maybe more rural than urban sounding. I suppose I’m definitely at some level thinking of some imagined place when I’m putting sounds together, as opposed to something more man-made and polished.

What kind of music were you brought up on?
Rachel: My parents liked to listen to classical music on the radio and then it was stuff like Abba, Billy Joel, Queen and Freddie Aguilar.

Nick: I didn’t have the sort of parents that had big record collections and were regularly going to gigs or anything, so apart from hearing a few Chic and Michael Jackson records that my mum would play I sort of discovered music on my own and with some help from my brother. I suppose we did always watch Top of the Pops though, one of my first memories is hiding behind the sofa every week when they showed the Bohemian Rhapsody video. I think being a toddler in the 70s was quite good for the imagination actually; when you’re that age and you’re absorbing everything with your emergent brain and what you’re seeing are all these weird looking characters like Roy Wood and David Bowie, it all seems so strange out of the adult context and definitely fires your curiosity.

Can you remember the first album you brought/owned?
Rachel: The first CD I ever got was a single of It's Like That’ by Run DMC featuring Jason Nevin and I think the first album I got was The Spice Girls’ Spice. Actually before then my favourite tape was The Simpsons Sing The Blues, that’s probably the first album I ever owned!

Nick: I always loved music and so I got my first album when I was eight, it was Shaky by Shakin’ Stevens. But hey, I was only eight.

Has your style of music stayed the same?
Rachel: I think that is something that is constantly shifting. We definitely have a particular sound which is in part down to the instruments we choose. I think we have and will be influenced by different things over time but I think it’s important to always put a part of yourself into what you’re making, which I think then unintentionally means the music somehow still retains some sort of consistency.

Nick: Bamboo are slowly evolving as we go along, but we’ve both played in different bands and explored different styles as we’ve gone along too. I’ve always thought it was the kiss of death for people to decide to do a band because they really like one genre of music. I like the idea of a band changing radically over the years, so you can hardly believe that one album is by the same band that did this other album five years later. Bamboo are only on our  second album at the moment, so the change isn’t too pronounced but The Dragon Flies Away is definitely more theatrical than the last one, a little bit darker and less immediate, maybe a little more from the unconscious than the conscious mind.

How was Bamboo formed?
Nick: Rachel and I have known each other for nearly ten years now, we met through often playing on the same bill in our other respective bands, she in Trash Kit and me in Peepholes. I briefly joined another band she was doing called Halo Halo, and when that reached the end of its life we kind of carried on the collaboration more intensely as Bamboo.

Rachel: It just seemed like a natural thing to ask Nick if he wanted to collaborate.

Is there a story behind the name?
Rachel: There’s a song by the French singer Alain Chamfort called ‘Bamboo’ and I really liked how the word sounded. I was also thinking a bit about the objectification of Asian women and also I really like how Yellow Magic Orchestra have always played with ideas of what it means to be Japanese/Asian so I wanted a word that was connected to that part of the world. I’m half Filipino and half White English and sometimes I feel like I have to over compensate or present myself in a particular way because people are often unsure of my race.

What are the band's main influences?
Rachel: Kate Bush is always an influence for me and also Yellow Magic Orchestra including their solo projects but, more recently, I’ve been getting really inspired by Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Also in regards to our first album, I was really inspired by Arthur Russell's songwriting and also my good friend Rozi Plain.

Nick: Each other really; I’m mostly influenced by the instrument I’m playing and who I’m playing with, responding to what they are doing and how they are reacting to what I’m doing, maybe with one ear to the background noise of what’s happening that year.

What inspires your lyrics?
Rachel: A mixture of personal experiences but I also like to draw on myths and different stories. Sometimes it can be quite hard to write and then perform lyrics that are so personal, so I often like to channel them through a different character or someone else’s story.

How do you approach the writing and recording process?
Rachel: Well as it's just Nick and I, then yes I guess you could say we hide ourselves behind closed doors. I would be interested in the future to record with other musicians and to limit ourselves to the amount of instrumentation, we record at the same time as writing and sometimes it can be quite challenging how to figure out how to interpret the songs live so I think it would be interesting to try things the other way round.

Nick: With writing the music it sometimes involves one of us recording a demo idea, like a few instrumental verses repeated, and then the other writing the chorus, something like that. ‘Auroch’ off the first album was written that way, with Rachel sending the verse through and me providing the chorus. Same with ‘Like A Sparrow’ off the new album. Or sometimes we’ve met and jammed together and then I’ll work up some of those ideas later and we’ll record them properly.

Tell us a bit about the The Dragon Flies Away?
Rachel: The Dragon Flies Away is an idea I had which was inspired by the story behind the Hannya mask which is from Noh theatre. I really liked the image of the woman turning into a Dragon, but I’ve kind of altered the story in some ways and made it a bit vaguer. I wanted the audience to be able to put their own interpretation on the story and, like I said before in regards to lyric writing, I channelled my own personal experiences and feelings into some of the songs. Though I also took more of an approach that writers take when writing for a musical. It surprised me how the story sort of evolved into something else as we were working on it. It started out like a love story but then became more about someone understanding and being confident in who they were and for me the two characters became more two halves of one person.

Nick: As far as putting the music together, we initially met at Power Lunches in London one day and just jammed for ages, lots of good stuff came out including the basis of the title track. Most of the rest of the songs were ideas we had individually that then the other would add to, for instance ‘Wake Up Your Heart’ started as a song idea I had had that was intended for the Prince Pansori Priestess album but we never quite finished it; ‘Thinking Of You’ was an idea of Rachel’s that I worked up a bit more. So it’s a real collaborative effort as always. I remember noticing this time around when I was recording Rachel’s vocals at my house that she was singing in a range of different voices, going in and out of character; I think that is a big component of what makes this album feel almost like some kind of weird pantomime.

What has been a musical eye-opener?
Nick: I think my musical outlook changed a lot around 2004 when there was this club night in Brighton called The Do. It was run by the people that were doing the 20 Jazz Funk Greats blog at the time, it was such a good time for music and every week they’d get some other amazing band over from the U.S. like Channels 3 And 4’s or someone. That really shook up my relationship with music at the time I think.

Rachel: I think watching the Ex. My other band Trash Kit have played with them quite a few times and I find it so inspiring that they’ve been playing for so long but they still have this amazingly fresh and vibrant energy. I think the fact that they’ve been a band for ages gives them this really awesome deep and complex sound while still just using a pretty simple set up of guitars and drums. I just really like seeing older musicians still playing really exciting and relevant music because it makes me feel like I’ll be able to do that too.

Who would be in your perfect supergroup?
Rachel: Probably Kate Bush, Prince and all of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

If you could work with any artist, who would it be and what would they bring to Bamboo?
Nick: I’ve already sent one of our demo song ideas to Jon Anderson just in case he wanted to sing on it. I’m not even sure if Rachel knows I did that actually (laughs). I haven’t heard back from him yet.

What music are you listening to at the moment, any recommendations?
Rachel: I’ve been really enjoying Tutti Banana by Squeakeasy and also Dip in the Pool's first album also called Dip In The Pool is a record I always keep returning too.

Nick: I’m listening to an album by Wendy Carlos called Sonic Seasonings, it’s from 1971 and so has to be a contender for the first ever ambient album as it beats Brian Eno by a few years. In fact, the sleeve notes almost coin the phrase, referring to the music as “Sonic ambience that enhances the listener’s total environment”. It’s totally beautiful but in that quite otherworldly way that was characteristic of Wendy, but this time it’s quite understated. The music is like the aural equivalent of some strange manmade landscape. In fact, I think it reminds me of being on the Mary Peter’s track in Belfast sometime in the 70s, lots of fir trees and astroturf. I bought the vinyl off eBay and as the guy only lived around the corner I popped over to collect it which was pretty lethal, I think I was still stood on his doorstep three hours later talking about music and Mellotrons and what he was up to in 1971.

Do you get to go to many gigs?
Nick: I do go to what I can but, of course, most of the gigs I attend we’re playing at. So I get to see a lot of bands without trying. We played with Klein last year, that really stood out for me. She was amazing, a totally inspiring combination of beats and background imagery.

What are your future plans till the end of the year and after?
Nick: We have The Dragon Flies Away coming out on Crumb Cabin Records on the 12th September, then on the 23rd September Upset The Rhythm Records are re-releasing our first album Prince Pansori Priestess on CD for the first time. It will have a bonus live album included, Live at Cafe OTO, which will also be available separately as a digital download. So that’s three albums in one month technically, (laughs). We’re supporting Silver Apples at Patterns in Brighton at the end of the month, that should be fun! I’ve played with him before when Peepholes supported and he’s obviously a very interesting guy, still completely engaged with culture at 78. I think we’ll be touring in October hopefully. Also we’re working on what will be the Bamboo studio album for next year all being well, we’re about half way through so I guess I’ll keep tinkering away at that too.

Rachel: I have a few shows with my friend Rozi Plain who I often play banjo and sing backing vocals for. I think we’ll be playing some more shows this winter and do a launch for the album, although I'm not sure when yet.

Website: bamboosongs.co.uk
Facebook: facebook.com/bamboosongs
Twitter: twitter.com/bamboosongs