The Cooper Temple Clause End The Waiting Game

It’s been three years since indie veterans The Cooper Temple Clause released previous long-player ‘Kick Up the Fire and Let the Flames Break Loose’.  It’s quite a while to have done a disappearing act in the world of music, but a lot has happened in those wilderness years. They’ve changed record companies and lost a bassist to a certain band called Dirty Pretty Things, but now they’re back with and evolved sound and their third long player ‘Make This Your Own’.

But not before they found themselves entangled in the saga revolving around former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko at the tail end of last year. The spy, of course, died of radioactive poisoning from polonium-210 in late November. Coopers frontman Ben Gautrey and guitarist Dan Fisher were on a British Airways flight where traces of the radioactive substance were subsequently found. It was something that put the

“Well, I’d be lying if I’d said concern wasn’t one of the emotions I felt. Dan phoned up BA and they told him in a very blunt manner that if he hadn’t been feeling sick he was alright,” Ben tells us. “Neither of us have been sick yet, or felt like being sick so fingers crossed we’ll still be here tomorrow”.

Thankfully they are. All this aside, there are more positive things to talk about, like the imminent release of their new album.  Work on the impressive ‘Make This Your Own’ (released on January 22) started in 2004 with Chris Hughes formerly of Adam and the Ants fame, at the helm. Dan admits that the process was a long and difficult one.

“Right from the start Chris said he wanted to challenge us as songwriters.  All the demos that we’d spent a few months recording were stripped down to just an acoustic guitar and a vocal and worked on the songs on a basic and stripped down level.  It was something we’d never done before and it was quite a challenge for us. At times it was very tricky and it didn’t come naturally to us, but we certainly learnt from it,” he explains.

“Towards the end we recorded a track called Head which was a very late contender. We recorded that with a guy called Dave McCracken who’s worked with Depeche Mode and Ian Brown. We took all the lessons we’ve learnt over that process and applied it to this track Head and we finished it in three days. I think we’ve become far better at the craft of song writing because of it, but at times it was very difficult”.