Taking a pop at the boundaries

Published on Saturday 13 May 2006 00:08

IF A SCULPTOR, A PAINTER and a printmaker decided to form a pop band, what would they sound like? If the band is Found, their debut album sounds a bit like a funkier version of the Beta Band, with a hint of Brian Eno. Except, as is usually the case with this fascinating Scottish trio, it's more complicated than that.

The worlds of pop music and visual art collide constantly, from artists collaborating with musicians (Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, Blur and Damien Hirst) to musicians aspiring to be artists (David Bowie, Patti Smith) or just bands with a visual aesthetic shaped by time at art school (Roxy Music, Franz Ferdinand). Found, though, are that rare thing - a group who seem genuinely at home in both worlds, and whose adventures in one world are inseparable from their activities in the other.

Here are five things that Tommy Perman, Ziggy Campbell and Kev Sim, Found's core members, have done in the past two years: 1. A show called Homespun, where they improvised music using sewing machines and staplers, which they also used to make sleeves for a CD recording for the audience; 2. A touring art exhibition called Stop Look Listen, at which visitors were invited to "remix" the show's poster; 3. Flight Path, a live art event at which sounds were generated by the audience throwing paper aeroplanes into beams of light; 4. Edinburgh Music Exchange, for which the trio spent a day creating sounds inside an industrial storage container and 5. some pop gigs - including, last week, T in the Park's T Break competition.

All this can be a little confusing for audiences. "Someone who had been to see us at the Royal Scottish Academy came to a gig at the Bongo Club," recalls Perman. "And he looked quite angry. He said, 'That was alright, but where are the lasers and the aeroplanes?" Indeed, Found are one of few pop bands who upset their fans by not being arty enough. And how often does money made from fine art get used to fund pop music? They have become quite skilled, they reveal, at applying for funding and then - with the best of intentions - bending the rules about what they're supposed to be creating. "We really like to work to a brief," says Campbell. "If someone just puts you in a field you don't know where to go, but if they put you in a field with a fence, then you immediately want to climb over the fence."

Found met five years ago at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. All three were doing separate courses - Campbell studying sculpture, Perman painting, Sim printmaking - but were introduced by tutors because, as Perman puts it, "we were the guys who were always messing around with sound". "There have been attempts at various different manifestos but they're always changing," he adds; what it boils down to is that "everything is valid". Hence the name Found; like the Wombles, the trio love to create new things from any mundane object or situation they might stumble across.

"Right through my visual art career I've had to battle with people who say graphic design isn't as valid an artform as fine art," explains Perman. "I did painting, but my tutors would always say, 'You do flat colour and very geometric designs - face it, you're a designer.' And I'd say, 'What about all these historic artists who paved the way for modern graphic design - the Bauhaus artists, the Russian constructivists? Why do I have to decide I'm just a designer, or even just an artist?' For me it's all about chance happenings. The reason I'm so happy to go with making pop music now is because it doesn't come that naturally to me, so it's more of a challenge. I relish that."

This attitude makes Found much more fun to talk to than most pop bands. Passionate and serious about what they do, they get as annoyed with "elitist and quite pretentious" performance art as they do with formulaic musicians who, as Campbell puts it, "make album after album that's essentially the same thing". They do, however, make life quite difficult for themselves. Feeling they should promote the band more, they recently began recording podcasts (internet radio shows). "The first three or four were, 'Come to this gig, we've done this remix', let's get some fans," recalls Campbell. Then they got bored, began approaching it as an art project, and turned the podcasts into "absolutely nuts" ambient soundscapes.

"I ended up spending six hours a week producing this 15-minute podcast," laughs Perman. "And," adds Campbell ruefully, "it doesn't have any of our music on it." If Found ever have a hit single, you can bet they'll follow it up with a career-sabotaging 20-minute instrumental consisting of samples of rustling leaves.

Found's more eccentric ideas often begin with daft suggestions from friends. "We must be like that guy at school who you just dare to do anything and you knew he would do it," says Campbell. "The stupider the idea the better, really," agrees Perman. "We worked really hard on Flight Path, just to see if it was possible to do it. What was a flippant comment at the beginning became 300 hours of work for me. We're keen that maybe in the future it doesn't take quite so long."

Which is perhaps why they're now making pop music. Out this month is Found Can Move, their debut album (although, strictly, it's not; it's just the first CD they've made that consists mostly of pop songs instead of music made with sewing machines). Even this is being approached as an art project; for the launch party, Found have organised a colouring-in competition, in which fans can design their own variations on the album's simple black-and-white cover. This is another key part of the Found philosophy - what other people can make from the building blocks Found come up with is just as "valid" as what they make themselves.

Endearingly, Tommy Perman sounds as excited by the colouring-in competition as he does by the album. "I love colouring in," he enthuses. "I love felt-tip pens, so it was the obvious choice for me. We couldn't not do it because our whole thing has been about reprocessing. The winner will be the cover of the remix album."

• Found Can Move is released on 29 May. The launch party is at the Bongo Club, Edinburgh, 24 May. More information at www.surfacepressure.co.uk/found