George Pringle is electronic, poetic and opinionated. She likes Garageband and dislikes drummers. Her debut single "Carte Postale" is released 3rd December.

We met with George and her manager Sean "Mr DiS" Adams shortly after her set at The Bestival on the Isle of Wight. It was Sunday, we were overdosed on great music and everyone was pretty tired.


Roy: What's next for George Pringle? E.P? Album?

George: At the moment, I've got two bodies of work and some stuff that comes just before stuff I've been working on recently, which I thought it'll be good to release on an E.P. It kind of pre-informs people who will listen to anything after. That's basically what I'm thinking at the moment. Pretty soon there will be an E.P. I want it to sound like it was made in the room next door but also fat enough to play in a club. I want it to sound a lot more polished but still sound accessible. It's kind of a work in progress.

I think I'm going to work towards an album for next year sometime so it'll be late spring/summertime I think.

Roy: Your live set started kind of slow spoken-wordish and developed into a very electro feel...

George: I'm looking, in terms of an album, to make it kind of like my set. I want it to build velocity and then you get to the end - a bit of a storytelling asthetic. Sort of like a concept album but not quite. I thought I would do a concept album about every month of the year but then I just thought that mood is more important than restricting yourself to that.

Roy: What did you enjoy most at The Bestival?

George: I can't remember his name but the guy after me. He was just fun. Normally on a small stage they push people that are doing acoustic stuff and I noticed the band who came on after said "He just had to plug in and we have to tune our guitars", making it seem like its some sort of a noble thing. I don't know.
I was really excited about seeing The Beastie Boys but you know when you are so obsessed with something when you are young and when you see them it's just never going to match up to the whole image you had in your mind. I saw Madness yesterday by accident. I used to quite like them when I was younger but it felt kind of sad in a way when these older bands get rolled out to reform and do a set when their heart is totally not in it. I think you should just stop when your time has come. I don't approve of all these bands that just keep gigging. It's kind of like someone getting old disgracefully in front of you.

Roy: So would you stop making music when you're old?

George: Yes. As long as your intrigue runs out what's the point carrying on, I don't understand it. It comes to a point where everything you do becomes a joke and I don't want to get there.

Roy: Who are your favourite poets?

George: I really like Emily Dickinson but I ended up kind of studying her by accident on A-Level and I think she is great. What she was doing was actually really forward thinking. It was really good the way she used to play with punctuation and stuff. It was kind of like a free form thing and she could put a dash in the end of one line and carry on into another line, it didn't have to be restricted into perfect stanzas and stuff. It's really forward thinking. If you think she was a woman at the time she was writing, it's quite phenomenal.
I also love Ogden Nash, he is an american poet. He writes slightly comic prose and poetry but he is just really very funny. I used to really like Edgar Allan Poe when I was younger just because he is so dramatic it's really really dark and I really like him. Er... it's really interesting. Interesting is a terrible word, I really shouldn't use it. Y'know when you write your CV, don't say "I'm really interesting", say "I'm really good at". I think the things that influence my music are more like authors and comedians and bands and films. A lot of it is films. Cinema is a really big component to what I do. Also authors... Haruki Murakami really influences me but it's not about the style of writing, I just like his approach to stuff.

What I'm doing is like advanced beat poetry but I'm trying to make it more accessible. I'm a big fan of pop songs as well, as long as they are not the Kate Nash variety, kind of like crap. Yeah... she writes songs about beans on toast and cheese on toast and discos but like... some of my favourite artists have done some really obscure stuff and some really classic pop songs. I like pop songs by accident, I don't approve of verse, chorus, stanza and all that. I hate it. I think its so restricting and people should throw it out the window. What's the point of restricting yourself? I think everyone is so hellbent on sounding good at the moment and having good voices blah blah blah but they're lyrics are so shit and boring. I also enjoyed Patrick Wolf this weekend, I thought he was really good... do you like him?

Roy and Greg: Well.. it's good but he's just really poppy and not like his old stuff...

George: Do you think it challenges your sexuality with him being kind of... yeah, I know a lot of guys who can't like Patrick Wolf just because he is so camp. It's a weird thing for them and a lot of people find it difficult to get into it and enjoy it without feeling like they should be some sort of a raging San Francisco 1979 kind of thing but my main point about Patrick Wolf is that he makes you listen to stuff.

Greg: I was so convinced by his early stuff.

George: Yeah, I know but I like it as a performer, how he sort of progressed. I saw him about 11 months ago and he was just so shy on stage and now people in the mainstream like him and it really enhances his performance and he mixes such interesting sounds. Much sort of like a Bjork aesthetic, taking industrial beats and adding strings on top. I think it's really good to be diverse. That's why I'm playing with lots of different sounds.

It's so personable now in a funny way. Everyone's so nice to people now. You think about recent people like Lily Allen la la who get a lot of attention and stuff. You feel like you can talk to them and they are your friend and that's not really intriguing. I don't think that's really important. They could sing whatever they want and people wouldn't care because they are who they are and they are pop stars and they're great but...

Greg: So they are so friendly that people listen to them just because they think they are their friends?

George: Yeah, you feel like they are your friend and they are not some person that created something that you are in awe of and that's not how it should be. It should be that you are in awe of people who can do something you can't do and musicians are just a personality now. I don't think it's the point and I'm a bit depressed about the current state of things at the moment. I mean... it's a lot better than it has been for a long time because people are trying lots of different stuff and are becoming more open minded but equally its a difficult time in terms of not being put in boxes. It's difficult.

If you're a woman making music, people would try and pigeonhole you into Lily Allen, Kate Nash blah blah and it all comes to that... and it shouldn't be about being a female solo artist but it should be about being a good solo artist. People should have no time for you unless you're good. The term 'musician' spans to so much. It doesn't mean you need to just stand there with a guitar but you can also program beats and teach yourself stuff. The thing with Kate Nash where she was sold on her Garageband thing and when you see her live it's a live band so... I thought she would be a really important thing for women producing music for themselves because all the big producers are male so... apart from Bjork, you don't have anyone that tries to sit down and learn this stuff and get really good at it. That's what really depresses me. A lot of women get to a certain point like Kate Nash and then they have a whole band on. All she needs is a guitar or a piano and a laptop and it'll be all the more intriguing.

What I love about electronic music is that you can program something that actually sounds like a drum player. That's the big progression we have and people can program stuff on laptops and make it sounds really good and stand up on soundsystems. What's the point of having a drummer? Drummers aren't even human they are just... sorry, I just have a thing about drummers... drummers are completely wasteful, when you've got a machine that can do it for you all that matters is the melody and words and things.

Greg: Are you worried about being lobbed in with the spoken word artists and not being able to cross over?

George: It's a tricky ground because it's either you are with Kate Nash and the Mini Allens or you get lumped together with the obscure beat and drum. That's not what I'm about. I'm trying to make spoken word stuff accessible without it being rap. Which is basically where I'm coming from. So many people are good singers, play good guitar . It's actually about reflecting stuff.
Unless you are beautiful musically enough (I'm not talking about Explosions In The Sky, they're bullshit) or you program such amazing beats people want to dance and do their tits off on pills to, you got to either have the words or be a fantastic singer and I think it's really difficult trying to cross that boundary and bringing stuff from everywhere but... equally I think it's quite a good ground to try and break.

Roy: Can you summarise your current mood in a rhyming couplet?

George: Jesus, I'm not Dizee Rascal... my mood right now? Bestival, Festival? I don't know. I think it's hard. Rhyming couplets are difficult.

Sean: Once there was a girl called Georgina, she drank Orangina?

George: She sat on a bean bag, was called a sad old hag. I don't know.

Roy: Do you know Boulderdash? It's a game where you make up definitions for odd words. Let's play a version of it. The first word for you to make up a definition for is - Vanaspati.

George: That sounds Italian. Vanaspati is a really intricate detail in a van. Say, you've got a really nice dashboard, it's a tortoiseshell lever that you pull and a bed comes out at the back of the van, so that's a Vanaspati. It's like a pimp-my-ride bullshit and you pull your Vanaspati in a camper-van and all the beds come out and a coffee machine. Boom and everything's there.

Roy: Second word - Posset.

George: It's a little purse that you wear around your waist, bit like a sporran, but a posset is old English, people who do fishing and hunting use a posset to store their bait and a little flask of whisky. It sounds Scottish to me.

Roy: Last word - Gloaming.

George: It sound like some sort of a rave term. Oh, the gloaming on that track is like totally amazing. Y'know what I mean. Like some weird production term. It sounds like something a producer would say, I love the gloaming on that.

Roy: Can you please draw us a self portrait?

George:

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