Today I interviewed a lovely songwriting duo, Cubinoid (AKA Ben) and Tixia who go by the name of ‘Moth’. I came across their stuff because of my own interest in all things steampunk (I have a steampunk inspired album you know…)
1. When did you start writing songs? What kind of musical education have you had?
Cubinoid: I started writing songs when I was a kid – I had piano lessons when I was really young, then drum lessons, sax lessons, a few guitar lessons…weird thing was loads of musicians used to use the loft of our Victorian house in Clevedon for jamming, and they’d leave their instruments in our loft. I learnt loads by just being around all these great players and using their instruments whilst they were gone. My mum and dad had a keen interest in Jazz, and I used visit late night jazz sessions and sit in with the local jazz bands. After I left art college, I was going to go to Manchester Uni, but I went to London and joined a band instead. A few years later we had landed a record deal in Japan with the Polystar label, and I was writing and composing with the band (Boa) for the next eight years!
Tixia: It was shortly after I met Ben – initially I only wanted to write songs, and searched for someone to sing them – until one day someone heard me singing my own songs and said, “Why don’t you just sing them yourself?” So, I took some professional singing lessons from Celia Civiic and we started to get the band together from there.
2. If you had to pick one of your songs to show someone exactly what Moth is about, which one would you choose and why?
Cubinoid: My favourite song is the title track of the album “Children for a Day”. It’s got piano, autoharp, accordion, mandolin and a weird instrument called ‘Waves of Nightingales’. I guess the style of that song sums up what Moth are about – weird little acoustic trip hop songs with melodies. I like it ’cause Tixia wrote it for me!
Tixia: One song? There are so many… Probably “Tree Snow” because of the video (above) – we made an animated video last year and stuck it up on youtube.
Took ages to make because we made the robots ourselves and did all the animation.
It seems tales of artificial intelligence robots in a Victorian setting appeals to some people!
3. All songwriters steal from others. Which songwriters have you stolen from the most? Er, I mean ‘been influenced by’:-)
Cubinoid: Actually, this is the thing – our music is a reaction against that. There are very few artists that I actually like – I have a handful of CDs in my collection, and our music doesn’t sound like any of them at all, really. You might find traces of genres rather than artists, but we definitely don’t nick music ideas or structures if we can help it. We are looking to create something unique and different – and this is why our music has such limited appeal (laughs). It takes a very discerning ear to truly appreciate a Moth album. The select few who love our stuff say, “Whoa! That’s really different!” and buy all our tracks, but the white herd majority are like, “What? I don’t get it. Let’s put some Oasis on.”
Tixia: I get influenced mostly by films and sometimes write songs about situations or characters, or real life situations. Sometimes I’ll take a bit of dialogue from a film and mould it into a song, but I don’t steal others lyrics – I work hard at my writing, and just wouldn’t do that…although, I am aware that there are songwriters who have stolen my lyrics outright! But, you know, it happens. Imitation is said to be the best form of flattery.
4. Music or lyrics?
Cubinoid: What’s the question?
Tixia: I write all the lyrics. The melodies just seem to drop into my head, I sing them and then he puts the music to it – and we are really prolific. Last year we released five albums! Usually I hum a melody and you just write the music around it, don’t you?
Cubinoid: Yeah – she sings the melody into a dictaphone, and then writes the words around that. I’ll pick up a guitar, or sit at the piano and we work together and rough something out. When we are happy we can play it all the way through, we start to record it; one of the luxuries of owning a recording studio! I play a whole bunch of different instruments too, so that helps. When the song is finished, we compile it into an album and release it on http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/Moth
Tixia: Or on our weird little website that no-one seems to understand: It’s a bit like a video game – you have to click and find out how it works…
5. ‘What musical ideas (chords structure whatever) do you use too often?’
Cubinoid: Well, hopefully we don’t use any structures too often! All our songs tend to be uniquely crafted, although in terms of time signature, I am fond of writing in 4/4 time. Some of our songs are 6/8 and there are a few waltzes in there, and a few songs have quite odd time signatures with bars of 5/4 and 4/4 mixed together. Chord wise, I think there is a variation – particularly as I compose for orchestra – there are lots of instruments in a Moth song sometimes that create unusual chords and textures. There is an eastern scale that I am fond of, but it doesn’t feature too often…actually – I know a structure we use a lot – many of our songs are in a similar tempo – it seems to just feel right that way.
Tixia: Perhaps we write songs about real life situations too often? I don’t if that’s a bad thing necessarily though…but we do it a lot.
You can check out Moth’s music on their website.
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