Bent Interview - Answers BY Nail Tolliday

After a monumental 10 years dominating the electronic scene, the legendary Bent kindly graced us with their company…

Kat Warburton

Date published: 15th Jul 2009

‘The Best Of Bent’ promises to be the retrospective album of the summer - Nail Tolliday and Simon Mills, AKA Bent, are back with a highly anticipated best of collection, due for release on the 20th July. Spanning the career of one of the UK’s most influential artists – famous for hits such as Always, I Love My Man, Swollen, Magic Love and To Be Loved, it respectfully nods to their past, present and future – further proof why Bent remain not just important to the development of UK electronica, but to contemporary music altogether.

Nail Tolliday kindly graced us with his company to answer a few short questions;

What does Bent mean?

It stands for "Because Everybody Needs Trousers" - something i for one wholeheartedly believe in.

Tell us about your main influences.

Queen, Wendy Carlos, Barry Manilow and Jean-Michel Jarre. At the moment i'm listening to a lot of stuff from San Francisco/CA: Worthy, Claude Vonstroke, Justin Martin et al. But it may be something else next week.

You have a second CD of brand new material on the Greatest Hits...What can we expect to hear?

Mainly instrumental pieces, a couple of them are quite odd.

What’s your favourite song off the unreleased CD?

"Bone Idol", without a shadow of a doubt.

Even trickier, what’s your favourite song to date?

By Bent? Erm... probably "Moonbeams".

You’ve not played since The Big Chill in 2006, where can we expect you to be playing this year?

Well, there's our Best Of Bent album launch on the 22nd July at the Garage in Highbury, a charity gig for a friend of ours in Nottingham called Bobstock on the 2nd August. We're in the process of sorting out stuff after that.

What makes a good festival?

Good weather and clean toilets.

What’s your most memorable memory of a live concert over the last 10 years?

2004 at The Big Chill was pretty special.

Also, how do you approach a live situation? Do you DJ or do you utilise software such as Live?

We run stuff from Live and have live bass, keyboards, guitar, percussion & vocals.

Your music has been compared to that of Air, is this a massive compliment or an annoying tag?

I'd forgotten all about that, to be honest.

Who’s your favourite up and coming group/producer/DJ?

I quite like the Martyn album, although wether you'd call him up and coming or not, i don't know.

You’ve also been described as having a “mischievous style of recording.” Tell us why.

We like to dress up.