INTERVIEW: Sarah Blackwood, Client
'I like Command, it's so brazenly bossy. It's such a great album title."
Sarah Blackwood is giggling with pride. Eight years into her career with electro-pop group Client, the singer feels she and musical partner Kate Holmes have really hit their stride with album No.4. Now it's time the world sat up and listened.
Big, bold and brash with a sly sense of humour, it's pretty much everything the pair have been striving for. No wonder their 38-year-old Halifax-born singer sounds is brimming with enthusiasm.
"We are very pleased with it," she says. "When we started an album we never know what we are going to come it with. We never consciously start with anything. This one sounds a lot more brutal. We could not be bothered with flounciness."
The duo's conversion to "hard beats and pumping basslines" has much to do with producer Martin 'Youth' Glover.
"Youth said when we were doing Heartland (Client's previous album) that we were a dance band that nobody could dance to," Sarah explains. "So we sped it up, we made everything more energetic. We didn't faff around thinking about the snare sound."
Command certainly arrives at the right time, with the British charts suddenly full of fizzy synthesiser acts such as La Roux, Ladyhawke and Little Boots. Has fashion has finally caught up with Client? Sarah chortles. "I love it when people get 'overnight success' and they've been plugging at it for 12 years."
Sarah herself had a previous brush with fame. As vocalist with Nineties pop group Dubstar, she scored a string of top 40 hits including Not So Manic Now, Stars and No More Talk.
Around the same time Kate Holmes was plying her trade in synth pop outfits Frazier Chorus and Technique.
The pair were introduced in 2001 by a mutual friend in publishing. Keyboardist Kate, wife of record label boss Alan McGee, was looking for a singer to join Technique on a European tour with Depeche Mode.
Sarah, who'd "had a few attempts to be the next Sophie Ellis Bextor" after the break-up of Dubstar, leapt at the chance of performing to massive audiences in Hamburg and Leipzig. "Then they kept asking us back. It was, 'Oh my God, yeah!'" says Sarah.
Soon afterwards they started writing together and signed to Depeche Mode keyboard player Andy Fletcher's label Toast Hawaii. Three albums followed. For Command, Sarah and Kate have decided to take control of business themselves.
The mannequin on the cover of the album, explains Sarah, is an allusion to their Spinal Tap-like propensity to lose bass players. "They are our robots," she chuckles. "That's why we've got the dummy on the front cover, so it does not matter who's playing the instruments.
"We're trying to branch out and have Client as a brand rather than a band," she adds. "That's what you've got to do these days. We're selling a lifestyle."
Via their website – www.client-online.net – the band are offering fans the chance to buy their old stage outfits. For Sarah, it's a chance to clear some valuable wardrobe space. "We just thought they are going to collect dust or we could sell them to people who would really appreciate them. It's nice for people to have a little bit of Client."
She does, however, warn potential buyers they've been heavily sprayed in perfume "or else the armpits would stink".
Sarah's also jetting across the world DJ-ing – a sideline she developed on the advice of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller. "He said, 'You are not ready to play live yet, go to a club and start DJ-ing.'"
Client started a club night in London called Being Boiled, primarly for female DJs. It ran for four years until the band's touring commitments got in the way. "It got ridiculous trying to run a club from Estonia on your Blackberry," Sarah says. "In the end people wanted to see us live."
Nowdays she juggles stints behind the decks – "I play a lot of Eighties cheese and modern electro, a bit of Eno and David Bowie – you can slot all sorts of things into a DJ set" – with Client's gigs around Europe.
One of the countries to yet to have fallen under their charms is Britain. Apart from a minor hit in 2005 with Pornography, Sarah says people here "don't really get it. They like 'four chords and the truth'. They like four-piece boy guitar bands. This country is very conservative with the way they like their music. Abroad they seem to be more open-minded. If they see a computer on stage they don't freak out."
Hopefully that's all about to change with Command. Sarah says the band are open to offers to gig in the UK – and, local promoters take note, especially to perform or DJ in Leeds. "I'd love to," she says. "I've never been asked."
Command is released on Monday, June 15.
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