Bullshit-Free

To date, TV On The Radio have released six albums, their first in 2002. Their latest effort, Seeds, could just as well have been a simple compilation of singles, all released at a staggered rate beforehand anyway. But Adebimpe and the band soon realised recording was simply too much fun and as a collective, their privilege was too strong to ignore. “Last summer, we put out the Mercy and the Million Miles singles, and that just came out of putting the band down and being in a place that was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s gonna happen again,’ but it was actually fine because we were happy with what we’d accomplished and we weren’t embarrassed about anything. But then we ended up just hanging out like we always do and making some songs... We just decided we’d make a couple of songs, put them out as singles, and when we had enough to make a record we’d just put it all together as a compilation with just a few extra new tracks. Then everyone brought their demos in and it became obvious that we had a lot of stuff to work with,” he laughs. “We went into it thinking it’s just great to be doing it again. You’re doing what you love, and we’ve been doing in for 13 years. We’re winning on a lot of points. It was really inspiring to get back into it.”

That said, it didn’t stop the band from churning out a record quicker than ever before, though Adebimpe believes other factors also came into play. “The goal was to finish one song every two days, and it was really fun to do that and not dwell on things too much. It was just a lot more direct this time, and you know, you get older, and you’re out of bullshit, we’re all collectively out of bullshit. The nicest thing is that we’ve finally realised, especially with working quick on this record, that we actually know what we’re doing. It’s a horrible analogy, but it’s like, say you’re skating for years and years and you’re figuring stuff out and you’re breaking your arms and legs and you’re doing some shit that looks cool but you have no idea how you’re doing it – now we kind of know what we’re doing and we can expand on that in a quick way. Also, being out of bullshit too, I feel like when we started the band, there was this sort of arrogance and uninformed energy, and the bottom line of that energy is that everyone else is stupid and we don’t have to give a fuck what anyone else thinks. I feel like we’ve never deviated from that so much, but we’re better than saying everyone else is stupid – we still don’t necessarily care what everyone else thinks. It’s something we want to share, but we’re in our own tunnel.”