KOOPA Record with Mark Hoppus
KOOPA Interview on New Album and Working with Blink 182's Hoppus
Interview with Joe Murphy of UK pop-punks KOOPA on signing with Pied Piper Records and recording their debut album with producer Mark Hoppus, formerly of Blink 182.
Having made history as the first unsigned band to break into the UK Top 40 on download sales alone, Essex pop-punks KOOPA have now signed to Nashville's Pied Piper Records and are due to record with ex-Blink 182 / current +44 frontman Mark Hoppus. Suite101 recently spoke with them in an exclusive interview.
Suite 101: How did you end up choosing to sign with Pied Piper?
Joe Murphy (bass/vocals): “Well as you can imagine, after last year when 'One Off Song For The Summer' went in the Top 20, there were a few labels sniffing around. Towards the end of last year we had a meeting with every label that was interested in any way whatsoever. Pied Piper had the money to do what we needed to do but they weren’t just talking about money, they were talking about ideas and that’s basically why we decided to work with them. As you can imagine, some of the more major labels were talking about image and audience profiles and direction and all that. We just write our songs, they sound how they sound and we try to get them across as best we can for people who want to hear them. And that’s kinda what Pied Piper were saying.”
Mark Hoppus to produce KOOPA
Suite 101: Are you excited to be working with Mark Hoppus?
Joe: “Well, obviously we’re massive Blink fans and it’s great to be working with him. And again it proves that Pied Piper Records were the correct label to go with because something we were talking about was getting the right producers in and making the album sound good. We put a few names out there and they came back having got hold of Mark Hoppus, which was great. We wanted someone who was quite young and quite fresh but who also has a bit of experience and he seems to have it all. The key in that is also going to be the engineer Chris Holmes, who engineered all the Chili Peppers albums and all three of us are massive Chili Peppers fans. We’ve seen them live a number of times and BloodSugarSexMagic is an awesome album. He was the guy who engineered and mixed that so we're working with tope people here.”
Suite 101: Do you have the album written?
Joe: “Pretty much – the problem with us is, we’re quite prolific and we’re writing songs the whole time so we’ve got quite a big back catalogue. Since the end of last year we’ve been demoing new stuff and we’ve got about 20 brand new songs that no one’s ever heard plus we’ve about another 20 that we’ve recorded over the years that people haven’t heard plus the back catalogue. I’d say the album is 95 per cent there. When we get out to Nashville there’s a studio in the house we’re in so we’re just going to finish off a few of the demos and tidy a few things up. Obviously Mark will have a listen and see what he’s got to say but it’s pretty much there.”
New KOOPA songs
Suite 101: Will there be any surprises on there?
“It’s a slight move on really, a little bit more mature than what we’ve done before but still in the same vein. When we first started it was a bit more pop-punky but now I’d call us more of a rock band. We’ve still got that energy in the songs and they’re still catchy I guess. You can still sing along to them but we use more than three chords now.”
Suite 101: You've learned that elusive fourth chord then...
Joe: “We’ve found the elusive fourth chord and we don’t mind experimenting a bit. We wanna still keep it to the basics – drums and guitar – simple stuff we can take out live but as you say, we’re not afraid to use a fourth and if we have to even a fifth chord.”
KOOPA are:
- Stu Cooper - drums
- Ollie Cooper - guitar & vocals
- Joe Murphy - bass & vocals
Click here to read about KOOPA's most Spinal Tap moment.
