What would your definition of success for The Blueprint be? What would you like to see come of the band?

Matt: Our primary aim is just to expand the music to its full potential. We're proud of everything we've done so far, but we don't feel at all that we've done our best work yet. So success for us would be able to keep pushing forward and to have the time to get it done and not have to worry about where our next rent check is coming from.

Karl: In the long term I'd like to see it flourish into a full-time touring, major label band. I think that we've got strong enough ideas, strong enough songs, and a strong enough identity for people to be interested in us. It's just a question of getting into the right places, really. That's all music is ever about: getting pushed in the right direction, and you pick up fans along the way.

Having been down the roads you have, what advice would you offer to kids who've become enamored to The Blueprint and are interested in starting their own bands?

Mark: It's something I've been thinking about. UK schools that offer serious music courses have been asking myself and Jason Bowld [drummer for Pitchshifter] to appear and both lecture and play for students. So I've been thinking about putting something together to give advice for bands. It's too much to go into now, but my main points would be: If you're going to turn out a demo CD, don't make it more than three tracks, because it won't get listened to otherwise; don't keep playing your home town, because it won't do anything for the band apart from making you hate each other; and you've just got to believe in the band and keep going -- ignore negative reviews and just keep going.

Karl: You just have to be self-intelligent as a person. You just have to know and be confident that what you're doing is good, because that belief is the most important thing you can have in a band. But at the same time, you can't blindly leap into it believing that you're great when you're clearly not. You need to have a considerable amount of self-awareness to be in a band and be very realistic about what you want to do. Obviously, any good band can get to the top with the right push, but you shouldn't be foolish in what your aspirations are because it's a long, slow, arduous process, and unless you're aware of it and are prepared to do it then it can lead to disappointment.

Matt: Do your own thing and don't lose sight of that. It's all too easy to start seeing what's going on around you and get fixated on the music industry, thinking, "Oh, if we just change a little like this or if we move towards that scene over there..." I think it's very easy to get caught up in that kind of thinking, and you just gotta stick to what you do and remember why you started doing it in the first place, what the music was that you wanted to make.

That seems to be the essence of The Blueprint. You all have been through the business end of the music grinder, and you've all come from bands that you spent a lot of time working on and building up, and here you are again starting over with no one forcing you to do it the way you do it. So, I guess that's an obtuse way of giving the band a compliment, a very sincere compliment, on staying true to your passions in a such a way that benefits you, your bandmates, and the music.

Matt: Thanks!

What is the one thing you'd like both Pitchshifter and Earthtone9 to be remembered for, and what is the one thing you'd like The Blueprint to be known for?

Karl: I'd like to Earthtone9 to be remembered as a fucking killer band who were probably slightly ahead of its time in writing dynamic, really heavy, music. And I think I'd like The Blueprint to be known as an amazing live band, because that was the thing that I felt was always lacking from Earthtone9. With The Blueprint I think we have more presence as a live unit, and so I just want to be known as a killer live band with good tunes, really.

Mark: That's a tough question. I'd like Pitchshifter to be remembered for being steadfast and not giving up. We're still seeing it now. It's so hard for British bands to get anywhere at all. With both Pitchshifter and The Blueprint I'd like to show British bands that it's possible to go out there and do it. With The Blueprint I feel it's all very fresh and new, and I'm very excited about it. It's the energy from The Blueprint that I hope we can convey live when people come and see us. That's what I want them to see and remember.

Matt: I think the key thing is that we really enjoy what we do. We enjoy playing these songs live. We've played these songs hundreds of time now, and there's still bits that blow me away. "Minus 10," the first track from zero*zero*one, is the first track we ever wrote, and there's still bits of it that when played live makes my hair stand on end and I think to myself, "Yup, I fucking love this song!"

One of the things I've noticed is that when you get energy moving between the band and the crowd, you start to feed off each other. If it's a good crowd we have a tendency to go more nuts, and the crowd follows suit. Even if it's not going so great we can't get down about it, because if we do that's when we start to have a really bad show. The crowd picks up the negative vibe and it just spirals downward. If we just keep trying and just treat it as fun and enjoy it regardless, things start to pick up. There have been shows when things have been really dead and we made the effort anyway. Shows where the crowd reminds me of something Bill Hicks once said: "The crowd staring like a dog who's just been shown a card trick." We've had crowds like that, but we made the effort. And even though they didn't show it during the set, afterwards a lot of them will come up and say, "You guys are fucking amazing!"

To which you reply, "Yes, I could tell by the stony-faced expression you wore the whole set!"

Matt: [Laughs]

But yours is a valid point. It's not the fault of the five people, or however many happened showed up to the show, it's not their fault that they're the only ones there. I think that there's an obligation on the part of the artist to give it up 100 percent no matter who or how few there are in the crowd.

Matt: There is, definitely. It's the stupid cliché where they say, "Hey man, you gotta play the same show whether it's to ten people or 10,000." But it's fucking true! Because whether there's ten or 10,000, those ten people have still paid the same amount to get in through the door.

And those are going to be the people who, some years down the road, will still be talking about that one particular show, telling their buddies that it was one of the greatest shows they'd ever been to. And suddenly, there will be 10,000 people claiming to have been one of the ten there. It all comes back around, I think.

Matt: Exactly. The question that always comes up, particularly in e-mail interviews, is, "Where do you see the band in two years time? Where do you see the band in five years time? What do you want from the band in the future?"

I just want the band to still be talking to each other. If we can do that it will be the greatest achievement I've ever made in a band. If we can still keep working together, keep our heads together, and not just fall apart in terms of interpersonal communication, I'll be so proud of that. If we keep growing like this, in five years time I think things will be good for us, and I'll be very proud with what we hopefully will have achieved.

Karl: The main problem with Earthtone9 was just the frustration from the lack of communication. The one thing I came away from it was that a band should be a unit, a band should be a team, because otherwise you just turn on each other. The bottom line is that a band is five people making music. There doesn't need to some dirty, personal wash going into the situation, you know what I mean? So the most important lesson learned was to stand together and not let petty shit get in the way.

On the web:
The Blueprint

Inside Earpollution:
Interview (January 2003)
Ecliptic album review
zero*zero*one album review