Interpol guitarist Daniel Kessler has returned with side-project Big Noble. Check out new single ‘All The Marbles’ below, as Kessler tells us about the cinematic new album and what’s next for the NYC indie icons.
Now 10 years on from debut album ‘First Light‘, Kessler and sound designer Joseph Fraioli (Tenet, Fallout, Lady Gaga collaborator) have announced details of their sophomore effort ‘It’s Later Than You Think’. Released next month, it comes previewed by the thundering yet atmospheric lead single ‘All The Marbles’, which was released alongside a moody video directed by Atiba Jefferson (Turnstile, Tyler, The Creator, Dinosaur Jr.) and featuring pro-skater Cody Chapman.
“The first record was more improvised,” Kessler told NME. “For this record, it was a bit more song-oriented. ‘All The Marbles’ has that. I live between Barcelona and New York now, so I was mostly in Spain when we were doing this while Joseph was in Los Angeles. It was a long-distance collaboration. This song has a movement to it.”
This sense of movement follows the album being described as what Kessler called “the soundtrack to the listener’s own personal movie – when they’re walking down the street, when they’re looking out the window of a train, when they’re watching people walk by a window in a café”.
Check out our full interview with Kessler below where he told us what went into the record, recalled collaborating with members of The Strokes and TV On The Radio, discussed his own love of movies, and nearing completion on Interpol’s “rock”-leaning new album.
NME: Hello Daniel. What do you get out of Big Noble that made you want to return to it after a decade?
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Daniel Kessler: “I’ve known my collaborator Joseph forever. I used to work at a record label and he was one of the artists on it. We remained friends, even when we both became quite busy. He’s a very talented musician and artist, and a lovely person as well. I was very excited to do something outside of the spectrum of Interpol. I made it a challenge to myself.
“For the first record, I was living in Brooklyn at the time and Joseph didn’t live too far away. He would come over to my apartment where I would improvise piano and guitar stuff, and he would do a field recording before taking it back to his ‘laboratory’ to add atmosphere. We didn’t know what it was going to be or where it was going to go. We just wanted to explore, and I wanted to do something different with an old friend.”
Is this more about drawing upon something more instinctual rather than angling towards more of a ‘pop song’ like you might with Interpol?
“Even for Interpol stuff, I’ve started every single day since forever just by playing guitar and watching a film. All of the stuff I’ve written for Interpol has been in that format of me just drinking coffee and watching a film to come up with something. I’ll have an idea and then try to expand upon it. Film is probably the biggest influence on me, more than music, and especially now. It’s just a big constant in my life.
“It made sense to do something that was inspired by ‘music for film’. Whether it was ever going to be put into a film or not, it’s more about that notion that you can be transported. If you’re travelling, you can just check out. If you’re in nature, then the sounds will all bleed into the music. That really intrigued me.
“I really love writing songs for Interpol and the format of verse and chorus. It changes and I enjoy it as much now as when we first started, but this is a different thing. It’s about repetition and leaving Joseph room to do his thing. It’s a nice change of pace, and the two modes of thinking work together. I’ll come up with something for Big Noble or Interpol, and one feeds the other.”
Is it a certain type of movie that inspires you? Do you get the same thing from watching an A24 film or flicking through MUBI as if you turn on the TV and they’re showing Marley & Me?
“You’d be surprised! Sometimes it’ll be like a Terrence Malick film or an A24 sort of thing, but sometimes it could be like a big Hollywood thing. That’s good! As long as I’m enjoying it. It doesn’t have to be a moody foreign film with a lot of atmosphere. It could just be something that gets my chemicals going in a certain way.
“I don’t have any predictability on what’s going to work. I can start the day thinking I’m going to be inspired and then I’m still sat there four hours later. Since I was a teenager, I’ve felt very fortunate to have that euphoric feeling or sensation when you do come up with something. It’s more about that.”
Like: ‘Oh cool, Flubber is on!’
“Exactly!”
The album features a ‘radical reworking’ of ‘All the Marbles’ from TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and his musical partner Wilder Zoby. How did that come about?
“I’ve known Tunde longer than I’ve known anyone in Interpol. We went to university together and we’re old, old friends. Even when we were at university, I had a digital fanzine and he did the comic strip for it. He’s a great illustrator, and I didn’t realise that he was such a great musician, singer and songwriter until I ran into him years later. TV On The Radio had just recorded their first demo in Brooklyn, and he gave me one. He directed a video from ‘First Light’ as well. I’m very proud and honoured to have had such a long-term friendship with him.
“There were many different chapters of our lives and so forth, so he’s the first person I think of collaborating with. He and Wilder did a great job and put a great spin on that track. They made it almost a completely new track. All the other tracks are instrumental so I was hoping that Tunde would sing, and there he goes!”
The record also features a different version of the song ‘No Sharing in Tech House’ by The Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti and his brother Leo…
“I’m really leaning on my friends here, aren’t I? Fab and I are good friends. He’s always been really supportive of Big Noble. Years ago, on the first record, I was doing a presentation of all the music videos in Paris with a Q&A and I ran into him in a cafe beforehand. He came to the presentation and he was super supportive. He really got the music and the album. I gave him an advance copy of this album so it made sense to see what he would do to this song. They really paid attention to the details and it’s another great reinvention of the song. It’s really beautiful and a great counterpart to the original.”
When it came to the filmic element of the album, were you imagining these scenes yourself or is that up to the listener?
“I think that’s up to the listener, for sure. The songs are quite different, and it switches quite a bit. I’ve always loved albums from start to finish. I don’t really think about ‘tracks’. I just love something you can put on for 40 minutes or so, then you’re transported to somewhere else.
“Those little sacred things I loved as a kid that just took you out of whatever your environment was and took you somewhere else. Especially when I’m travelling, the music can add to the escapism. It’s great when it just fits. What you’re seeing when you’re travelling becomes the film to your soundtrack.”
You’ve got the skateboarder Cody Chapman in the music video. Beyond that, do you think you might have a full movie of the album?
“That has a great skate video aesthetic. We have little things that we’ll be putting out as great companion pieces to most of the songs. I’d love to go into a full film, that would be ideal.”
Do you imagine you’ll tour it?
“Probably not. I’m too lazy in that sense! It would be such an endeavour to actually bring it into fruition and to find a way to make it work. Right now, there are no plans to tour. It’s more like finding visuals and videos. That’s probably the closest we’ll call it.”
It’s been three years since Interpol’s last album ‘The Other Side Of Make-Believe’. How are things progressing with the next one?
“Good, we’re very far along. It feels great. We’ve still got a little bit of work to do, but it’s really getting there. We’re all really excited about the results and the feel of it. It will be coming out next year.”
We spoke to Interpol frontman Paul Banks last year, and he said the new stuff had more of a ‘rock’ and full band edge to it?
“I think it’s got a bit of both. There are some upbeat tracks, but also some different atmospherics that I don’t think we’ve had before. There are different moods. It’s not all rock; some of it is more upbeat in a different kind of way to what people might think of Interpol. It’s been a really fun process. We finished touring after two and a half years in December and then started making the record in January. It just worked out calendar-wise.
“It’s the first album we recorded in New York in 10 years, and it has a very winter-time New York feel to it. The studio had an open floor, we could see the skyline, and it had this Gotham kind of setting for us. It’s got a sense of that, for sure.”
And finally, what was the last good movie you watched?
“I just rewatched Sexy Beast. I’ve seen it before, and you never know when you go back to a film if you liked it due to the time and place – but that film is pretty timeless. It’s for the ages in every which way. The acting is great, the music is great, the story is great. It’s a different kind of gangster story with a twist. It’s aged really well. Ben Kingsley, known for Gandhi, but I buy it – he’s really scary!”
I think of it as one of those really watchable films I’d like to unsee and then see again for the first time – like In Bruges…
“Exactly! I just watched that again recently as well. These films have great dialogue and just become plays. With In Bruges and Sexy Beast, you can enjoy it as much as you did the first time.”
Big Noble release ‘It’s Later Than You Think’ as a digital exclusive on Bandcamp on Friday August 15.
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