Drift Reality

When I visited Paris last winter, I observed an exchange at an H&M that prompted me to write a satirical piece on the stereotype of the crass American tourist.

One year later, I had a moment where I thought for a second that I may actually be that crass American tourist.

On Friday, following the first of a series of inductions for my graduate program, I decided to grab a bite to eat with someone I had met from my program. After walking up Kingsway for a bit, we found a nice Italian restaurant and stepped inside.

As we were entering the establishment, it occurred to me that I did not have any cash in my wallet. Seeing as how I hadn’t seen the credit card indicators on the front door of the restaurant, I quickly asked a nearby waiter, “Hey, do you guys take credit cards?”

He looked at me with a hint of annoyance, and I then realized that he was about to seat a group of people who had walked in ahead of us. He nodded abruptly and responded, “Yes, we take credit cards,” before proceeding to seat the group of people.

My companion shook her head with a slight smile and remarked, “You’re such an American.”

The observation stuck in my head because I have never thought of myself as a typical American. First off, I’m two-thirds of the axis of evil. If that doesn’t get me off the hook for being a typical American, then the fact that I’ve spent several years of my life living abroad should, right?

Well, the comment stuck in my mind heading into the next evening. After my third (and final) induction, I had several drinks at a departmental reception before meeting a group of my friends out at a bar called Smollensky’s.

I was fairly buzzed by the time I got to the bar and when I saw a couple of my friends, who happen to be European, arriving at the same time I bellowed an emphatic greeting. What I got in response were a couple of bemused smiles. One of my friends leaned over and conspiratorially mentioned that I wasn’t in America anymore so I should tone down the volume of my voice.

“Well fuck it,” I responded. “I am an American. I don’t care where I am.”

Suddenly, a flurry of memories rushed through my head: singing What a Wonderful World at the top of my lungs on a night bus in Trafalgar Square; dancing and singing in Sinhalese (which I don’t speak) at a bar in Kandy while a room full of horrified Sri Lankans looked on; trying to get a Thai “working woman” who didn’t speak any English to sing Jack and Diane with me at a karaoke bar in Bangkok…

It was then that I had a frightening thought – maybe I am a crass American. Maybe all this time that I had been thinking of myself as a cultured “citizen of the world,” I have just been parading around as an ugly American tourist.

But then, another flurry of memories rushed through my head, and saved me from this dreadful line of thought: Ducking my head into a random car on M Street in Georgetown and high-fiving a six-year-old sitting in the back seat; getting into a shouting match with a cab driver who refused to tell me what country he was from while he drove me home from Adams Morgan; and getting kicked out of a Baltimore Orioles game for heckling the opposing team too loudly – and all the while, being reprimanded by friends and relatives.

It was then that I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that I’m not a crass American.

I’m just crass.

I arrived into London Heathrow after a restless seven-hour flight from Dulles Airport, during which restlessly toggled between Sin City, Adam Sandler’s remake of The Longest Yard, and Jet Li’s film, Unleashed; while periodically helping the 80-year-old man seated next to me open and shut his folding tray. Needless to say, I was in an absolutely discombobulated state of quasi-reality when I stepped off the plane in my linen pants and t-shirt, apparel brought on by the sweltering DC heat, and was hit by a blast of cool air.

”Welcome to England,” I thought to myself as cold-inspired goose bumps began to appear on my arms.

After walking down a maze of Heathrow Airport corridors, I finally arrived at immigration and was presented with the first queue of my visit to England and it was a memorable one. It probably is a good thing that the first experience awaiting visitors to London is a one-hour long queue because it does a great job preparing you for the first noble truth about London: you will inevitably stand in queue.

After winding my way through the immigration line, I went through to baggage claim where I found my bags awaiting me. I immediately headed through into the general section of the airport and began looking for an ATM machine.

After walking several circles around the main area of the airport, and eliciting a number of dirty looks for the barge of suitcases I was pushing in front of me I finally found the ATM machines. I walked up to the first and was pleasantly surprised to read that the ATM machine “did not charge a service fee.”

“Well,” I thought to myself. “There is one thing about London that is better than the United States.”

Reaching for my ATM card, I realized that the machine was out of service. Looking directly to the ATM machine adjacent to mine, I quickly realized that this ATM machine was also out of service – as was the ATM machine adjacent to that one. I grimaced as my gaze panned right of the third ATM machine, to the fourth and final ATM machine - and the long queue that stood before it. A three-word phrase began to manifest in my mind as I stared at the queue.

Welcome to England.

After another half-hour of waiting in line I looked down at my watch, which read 9:00 AM. After two hours of being in England, I was still at Heathrow Airport.

After grabbing a fistful of bills from the ATM machine, I found myself breathing a few words of thanks to God that I had managed to enact a simple function like getting money from a money machine. While heading to the platform for the Heathrow Express train, I remembered the second noble truth of life in London, a truth learned through countless hours of aggravation and despair during my first visit here: to take nothing for granted.

The fifteen-minute trip from London Heathrow to downtown London was actually quite simple and after arriving at Paddington Station, I made my way through the station to the taxi platform where my third and most ridiculous queue of the day awaited me: the queue for a taxi cab.

As I waited in a line of taxicab riders waiting for a taxi cab driver, I looked to my right and saw that there was a long line of taxi cab drivers waiting in line for taxicab riders. Both lines intersected at the top of the station, where a station attendant was matching riders with cabs. “Welcome to London,” I sighed to myself.

After another twenty minutes of waiting in line, I finally managed to get into a cab. As we headed for the student halls that I am to call home for the next year, I looked at my watch: 10:00 AM. Three hours after I landed in London, I was in a taxi headed for my student halls.

I arrived without further incident and after meeting with the pleasant woman at reception for a few minutes orientation to the student hall, I had a key and was headed to my new flat. The student hall literature had described the student hall and “old, with character.” Being the naïve American that I am, I had though this to mean “old, with character” in the way that a quirky grandparent might be. As I walked through the halls, I realized that what it actually meant was “old, with character” in the way that a crazy homeless man wearing a burlap sack with ketchup on his face is “old, with character.”

Making my way to my flat – an alleged “Grade A” flat, I opened the door into something that looked a little like the apartment from “Coming to America.” It was rather spacious, but the extra space really just highlighted the drabness of the place. Even worse, it had two large windows with broken locks that faced the street in front of the halls. Not only did this insure I could hear every passing car, pedestrian, or dog; but I also felt about as safe as a freshman girl at a frat party.

The room was spartan to say the least: There were two old bookshelves, a wardrobe, a desk with a chair, and a bed that was the size of a box of kleenex. Even more disturbing (and I’m not joking here) was the lack of a DSL connection in the room. I realized with horror, that the “Internet Connection,” the hall literature had boasted of, was in reality a dial-up connection.

Laying down on my new bed with my feet dangling over the edge, I thought about how I had woken up in spacious bed that morning, in the newly rennovated three-bedroom townhouse in Northwest DC, owned by my parents. After taking a hot shower, I had eaten a pastry from Starbucks while browsing e-mail in my gorgeous sun-lit office. I literally felt like crying.

After feeling sorry for myself for an hour or so, I pulled myself to my feet and headed to the reception office where I requested a different room. All that was left was a “B Class” room facing the courtyard, which I gladly accepted.

The new room was actually half the size of the first, but with slightly newer furniture and more importantly, a good degree of privacy and quietude. After unpacking a few things, I plopped down on my bed and shut my eyes and fantasized about my life in DC before drifting off into a deep sleep.

Although Mary had consolidated a flight from London to Paris for the preposterously low fee of 6 pounds sterling per ticket, her catch would be dissolved by a simple five-word question, asked two minutes before arriving at the Victoria Station tube stop.

“Did you remember your passport?”

Instead of responding to her question, my eyes darted to my watch, in order to determine if we would have enough time to go back to her flat near Goodge Street for the passport, return to Victoria station, and take the hour-long bus to Luton airport in time to catch our 7:30 PM flight.

It was 4:30 PM - we had time.

A small sense of relief seeped into me, soon dwarfed by a greater self-awareness of how stupid I could sometimes be.

“I forgot my passport,” I responded and she gave me a look that was 75% amusement and 25% fear.

“You’re joking, right?” she responded.

“It’s still early,” I responded. “We can go back to your flat, pick up the passport, and still make the flight.”

“You’re not joking,” she answered gravely

“I wish I was,” I shot back. Looking down at the God-forsaken suitcase I had been struggling with for the past twenty minutes, I made a feeble attempt to be optimistic, “If one of us stays here, at least we don’t have to lug this thing back and forth.”

“That’s true,” she responded with an exasperated sigh as she handed me her monthly tube pass, which would save me the trouble of having to purchase an additional ticket.

After spending any length of time with me, most people grew to know my thriftiness.

“Do you remember how to get to my flat from the tube station,” she asked with a sense of genuine concern in her voice.

I’ve always thought that there are two types of girls as far as relationships are concerned, and both types will love you for being the man you are.

The only difference is that the first type will love you for the man you actually are and the second type will love you for the man they manipulate you into becoming.

Mary is certainly the first type and has a sort of loving resignation of the fact that I am a complete moron when it comes to direction.

I stared at her blankly for a few moments as my brain attempted to visualize the route.

“Okay,” she began, realizing that I most certainly did not know how to get to her flat from the tube station.

She began giving me directions and it was not long until her words became an incomprehensible jumble of directions, streets, and landmarks. A flood of memories began entering my mind: me at age six, getting lost at a playground that was two blocks away from my house; me at age thirteen, getting lost walking home from school - an epic voyage that encompassed all of one mile; me at age 18, getting lost driving home to Cleveland from DC and almost ending up in Detroit.

“Here,” I said handing the pass back to her as the tube stopped at Victoria. “Maybe it’s better if you get it.”

She nodded in mutual acknowledgment of my dreadful sense of direction and stepped off the tube.

“Where should I meet you?” I asked.

“Meet me at the coach station, where the coach buses depart,” she said and with that, headed off to catch the tube heading in the opposite direction.

“Okay,” I said as I watched her depart.

Tugging at our suitcase, I headed towards the tube station exit, scanning every sign for the word, “coach.”

After a few minutes, my eyes alit upon a sign that read, “Coach Station.” Following the signs, I found myself in a small gallery across from the main train station. Although there were a few buses passing through, this certainly did not seem like much of a departure area.

In a state of confusion, I did what I had told myself thousands of times not to do, and followed my instincts. Heading back towards the main station, I decided to position myself near the information desk, which lay across from the ticket counter.

My theory was that the area where I had exited from was in fact, the coach station. At some point in time, although she had told me to meet her at the coach station, Mary would realize what I had - that the coach station looked dreadfully inadequate and it made much more sense to wait in the main train station. Then she would realize, as I had, that we obviously needed to get tickets. Walking towards the ticket counter, she would see me, waiting for her at the information desk.

I stood there and looked at my watch. It was 4:45 PM and I knew it was going to take at least thirty minutes for Mary to return to her flat, retrieve my passport, and return to Victoria. I had thirty minutes with nothing to do but wait.

It was then that time did a funny sort of thing and slowed down.

Like instinct and logic, time has always been an enemy to me. As I looked at my watch, I could actually see the minute hand decelerate to a crawl.

Boredom began to set in and I made the brilliant decision to wander around in the station.

Glancing around, logic began working its evil machinations once again and whispered in my ear, that it would make much more sense to wait in front of the tube exit in the station. This would be much more direct than waiting in front of the ticket counter.

Although I knew in the back of my mind, that there were about four exits from the tube stop, my instincts told me that Mary would inevitably decide to use the tube exit that lead directly into the station.

I sat in front of the tube exit and looking at my watch, realized about two minutes had passed since the last time I looked at my watch.

For a while, I stood in front of the stream of people exiting the tube station and thought about how stupid I was for leaving my passport at Mary’s flat.

After looking at my watch again, I then spent some time thinking about how shameful it was that I had asked Mary to retrieve my passport while I waited in the train station.

Although I tried for several minutes, I could not think of one book or movie in which the guy was the one waiting at the train station. In every situation, it was the guy who sent the girl to wait at the train station while he went to settle the score.

“How shameful,” I thought.

Then, my mood brightened a bit as I realized that at least I was being original.

I looked at my watch again and realized that only 10 seconds had passed since the last time I looked at my watch.

Things proceeded in this manner for the next hour, until about 5:45, at which point I started getting a little nervous.

Time sensed my fear and begin accelerating.

As I watched the minute hand speed up, I began to feel more nervous and did what any rational human would do in my situation - take money out of the ATM machine. No matter what was to come in the ensuing hours, I was not going to face it with an empty wallet.

After withdrawing cash and standing around for another fifteen minutes, I decided that something had gone fundamentally wrong and began scanning the station frantically. It was then that my eyes alit on a sign at the far end of the station that read, “Coach Station.”

Again, logic outraced emotion and I began contemplating how much time we had left. It was 6:00 PM and the bus was supposed to take about thirty minutes, which left us with a good hour of leeway.

I darted in the direction of the sign and passed through a series of hallways that lead me in the opposite direction from where I had originally thought the coach station existed.

Continuing to follow the signs, I soon found myself outside the Victoria train station and found that the coach station signs had completely vanished.

Turning to a man selling newspapers nearby, I asked, “Do you have any idea where the Victoria coach station is?”

Nodding his head, he pointed down the street and said, “Two blocks down, on the left.”

Grabbing the suitcase under my arm, I began sprinting in the direction he had pointed me. At the end of the first block, I decided to ask another newspaper vendor for confirmation.

The man muttered something unintelligible and pointed in a direction that was somewhere in between the street the original vendor had pointed down, and the street perpendicular to it.

“I’m sorry,” I responded. “What did you say?”

Opting for quantity in favor of quality, the vendor proceeded to exactly repeat his original grunt and gesture.

For some reason, I flashed back to my time spent teaching English to five-year-olds in Korea as I responded, “Is it this one?” while pointing to the first street, “Or is it this one?” I said while pointing to the second.

The man, now looking visibly perturbed, pointed at his imaginary route once again and grunted louder.

I shook my head in disgust and made the brilliant decision to do the opposite of what my instincts were telling me, and headed off in the direction that the first vendor had pointed, lugging my suitcase as if it were a disobedient, obese child.

It was not long until I spotted a building on the corner of the block with a large sign that read, “Coach Station.”

Mary was waiting in front with a bewildered look on her face.

“Where have you been,” she asked, to which I responded with an incoherent deluge of words:

“Train station. Ticket. Airport.”

“You thought the coach station was in the main train station, waited in front of the ticket counter for fifteen minutes before finally realizing the coach station was located outside the original train station, and are now nervous we aren’t going to make it to the airport on time?” she asked.

I nodded and we headed into the coach station.

The ticket salesperson directed us to a corner down the street, where a bus left for Luton airport every fifteen minutes.

Rushing to the stop, I asked a group of British travelers, “Is this the bus to Luton airport?”

“Yeah,” one of them responded. “It should be here any minute now.”

As if on cue, a bus turned the corner and began heading towards our stop. I looked down at my watch. It was 6:30 PM and our flight left at 7:30 PM. As long as we were there by 7:00 PM, we would be fine.

It was then that I noticed Mary was staring down the street at a bus containing the word, “Express.” The same look that she had given me when I had initially told her I forgot my passport - 75% amusement and 25% fear - reappeared on her face.

“What is it,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing,” she answered confidently. “But…”

And that is the point at which I knew we would never make it to the airport on time.

For me, the word “but” is the bridge between truth and pretense and more often than not, confidence is the sound that demarcates which side of the fence pretense is on.

For instance, when someone spends thirty minutes struggling to find the perfect sequence of words to describe how irritating someone is, and then concludes by saying, “but I love him/her,” or ” but he/she is a great guy” in a confident and conclusive tone of voice, I always feel like answering, “then why the hell did you just spend thirty minutes talking crap about them?”

At any rate, it was not long until we found out that the bus we were actually waiting for was to take an hour to arrive at the airport, which would, for anyone keeping track, get us there at 7:30 PM - the same time the place was destined to depart. The last express bus to Luton airport, the bus that only took thirty minutes, had left at 4:30 PM.

In other words, we were fucked.

“What do we do now?” Mary asked, looking totally flabbergasted. The tide had turned and her look was now 75% fear and 25% amusement.

There were really two options at this point in time - gamble that a cab could get us there in thirty minutes, which would give us sufficient time to board the plane, or try to grab the Eurostar.

“How much is the Eurostar?” I asked.

After thinking for a few moments, she responded, “About 35 pounds each.”

Not too bad, considering the circumstances. If we could get out of this only having to spend 70 pounds, I would be happy.

Hailing down a cab, I found that the driver estimated the trip to the airport to be about 80 pounds. Not only was this more expensive than the Eurostar, but we would be taking a gamble with time, which as I’ve already mentioned, is no friend of mine.

I could almost see time lacing up its track shoes: ready to start racing the moment we entered the cab.

“It’s cheaper to take the Eurostar,” I muttered and we headed off to find our fate at Waterloo station.

We arrived with no further mishap on our way to Waterloo and made our way to the Eurostar ticket counter. The departure screen indicated there was one more train heading to Paris in about fifteen minutes.

“Two to Paris,” I told the woman standing behind the ticket counter.

“Well, you just made it,” she said as relief flooded through my body.

“Passports please,” she beckoned. “Are you both younger than twenty-six?”
Although it had been about two months since my twenty-sixth birthday, something - either a sub-conscious refusal to believe I was on the wrong side of my twenties or an institutive belief that younger people pay less for things - compelled me to answer, “Yes.”

“Okay, it will be seventy pounds each,” she stated bluntly as my heart dropped slightly.

Slowly, I reached for my wallet and began to take my credit card out. All the while, I could feel Mary’s eyes on me, full of concern that I was about to have a nervous breakdown.

Time slowed as I handed my card across the counter while the woman behind the ticket counter scanned my passport.

“Are you older than twenty-six?” she asked.

I looked at her blankly, not wanting to answer. After a few uncomfortable moments, I answered lamely, “I’m not older than twenty-six.” Which technically, was a true statement.

Shaking her head in annoyance, she decided to change her line of questioning and asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-six.”

She then made the sound that Londoners have perfected - a loud sigh that simultaneously tells you first, how difficult their lives are to begin with; and second, how your presences has managed to make their life infinitely worse.

“Well, it’s going to be 140 pounds then,” she said.

“I already knew that,” I answered.

“No, I don’t think you understand,” she responded. “It’s going to be 140 pounds for your ticket, plus the 70 pounds for her ticket, for a total of 210 pounds.”

Doubts about Paris began flooding my mind. After all, hadn’t I heard about how rude the Parisians were? I never really liked French food very much, and museums had always made me feel like I was about to die of suffocation and boredom at the same time.

I then looked at Mary and thought about how she had gotten plane tickets for both of us and made reservations at a hotel for four nights despite the fact she was a student with no income, and had been talking about the trip for the past month.

For some strange reason, a memory flashed in my mind of an evening in San Diego spent at a trendy restaurant with my girlfriend at the time and her roommate, a lovely woman in her mid-thirties named Maggie.

As we were finishing up, I was startled to see we had somehow managed to accumulate a $250 bill. Seeing that her two companions were obviously distraught over the size of the bill, Maggie had grabbed it away and despite the fact she wasn’t in the financial situation to do so, swallowed the entire thing herself.

She silenced both my companion and my demands to chip in with a single phrase - “It’s my choice to spend my money however I want.”

For some reason, her simplistic conclusion seemed overwhelmingly profound. Although I’d be lying if I claimed my own cheapness and secret desire to not pay a dime didn’t have something to do with my acceptance of her statement, there was something in the way she had said it which signified something deeper.

Ultimately, there was not question about what I was supposed to do in that situation. Maybe it was my karma that had put me in the situation, but it was my choice to pay the equivalent of $400 so we could get on the last train to Paris. Somehow, the knowledge that it was my choice filled me with a sense of relief.

Perhaps I would be condemned to a diet of ramen noodles when I returned to the States, but for now, I was heading to Paris.

Looking up from my reverie, I saw the woman staring at me impatiently.

“Do you take MasterCard?” I asked.
 

When I was in London the first time, I lived in Wolfson House, a dorm reserved for students attending both Kings College as well as the nearby Guy’s, Kings & St. Thomas’ Medical and Dental Institutes. If you were to walk through one of the tunnels that passes underneath the tube station and continue on until you hit the Thames, you would find yourself in Hayes Galleria - a quaint little plaza that contains a number of kiosks, stores, pubs, and restaurants.

It was here that I used to get my morning coffee and bagel, sit near the HMS Belfast, and gaze across the river at the Northern part of the city. I would think about the papers I was working on for my coursework at Kings, the events that had transpired the previous night, the friends I had made in London, my friends and family at home, and when and if my hangover would dissipate.

If you were to start at Hayes Galleria and then travel east along the Thames, the path would wind away from the river and you would find yourself walking through an area of small cobblestone streets surrounded on both sides by coffee shops and restaurants. For a fleeting moment, you could almost imagine yourself being in Venice.

After a few blocks, the path would lead back onto the waterfront and there would be a succession of trendy restaurants with outdoor seating overlooking the Thames. Continuing on, you would pass by numerous apartments with balconies hanging over the river and contemplate the astronomical fees that their residents must pay to live there.

Eventually, the apartments would end and you would find standing on a patio next to a pub called, “The Angel.” All of a sudden, you would realize that something was different about this place compared to all of the other places you had visited up to this point. Less than two miles away from the tourist-populated Tower Bridge, you would find yourself surrounded by absolute silence.

It was here that I suddenly thought of being in Rock Creek Park in the middle of DC and that wave of the simultaneous similarity and difference in the world hit me.

It reminded me of being young and seeing something for the first time, yet also feeling that I had seen it before. Perhaps it was just something that I hadn’t seen before, but always felt and just not realized it.

Standing next to “The Angel,” I felt like I was standing on the train from Gatwick airport and in Rock Creek Park in DC at the same time.

Then it hit me.

I hadn’t had anything to eat in about five hours.

I remember that one of the restaurants I had passed had a two-course meal for about 8£ so I stopped staring at the Thames and headed back from where I had come.

When I got off the plane at Heathrow airport this past Thursday, I realized it had been over five years since I last stepped foot in London. That first trip to London eventually became the inspiration, which has filled me with the compulsive urge to travel every chance I get.

I remember the first time I arrived, it was at Gatwick. I had two over-sized duffel bags which I couldn’t carry for more than about one hundred feet before I had to stop and rest. To make matters worse, I had arrived on a Monday morning during rush hour and the only way to get to my dorm was to take the ridiculously crowded above-ground train.

Standing amidst a swarm of men and women in business suits, I stared dumbfounded out the window as waves of British neighborhoods streaked before my eyes. Although they shared all the intrinsic characteristics of any neighborhood you would expect at home: windows, roofs, chimneys, gardens, etc. - there was something inexplicably (in my simple mind) different about them that made me smile in wonderment.

Five years later, that initial sense of wonder at how the difference and similarity of the world can blare into you simultaneously, once again hit me as I was visiting my old digs in Southwark, near the London Bridge tube stop.

“We’re in our little studio in London, our little bunker,” explains electro newcomer, Henry Binns. “We’re in Swiss Cottage, about thirty minutes away from Camden.”

Then, after thinking for several moments, he corrects himself, revealing his rather excessive propensity for correctness and detail.

“We’re actually about ten minutes away from Camden.”

It was this sort of attention to minutiae that made Zero 7’s Simple Things an enigmatic — and international — curio du jour. As the mad professors behind Zero 7’s downtempo soul-tronica, Binns and partner Sam Hardaker are pleasantly down-to-earth when off work. Binns’ new love is cooking, and his favorite accoutrement may explain why Simple Things has been called “whoopee album of the year,” by at least one beat-drunk critic.

“A bottle of red wine,” is usually in the recipe, he says. “Well, not a whole bottle.”

Binns is a sensualist — a trait not usually associated with lap-topping beat freaks. Simple Things is even more unusual than most of the blips and bpms to circulate this year: The album was nominated for Britain’s highly-coveted Mercury Music Prize and won the “Best Newcomer” award from Muzik magazine, propelled by the U.K. hit, “Destiny.”

“The best thing is being acknowledged and knowing people are listening to our music,” Binns says. “The worst thing is that we don’t feel, as two old mates, that we fit into this celebrity role. We weren’t hungry for the spotlight. I suppose in a vain, fuzzy way, we let the music speak for itself.”

Like so many suddenly popular purists before them, Binns and Hardaker have eschewed the shortcuts to, if not the spoils of, success itself. Childhood chums in Northern London, they bonded, not just alchemically, but out of necessity.

Although a young Binns preferred soul and R&B, while Hardaker was drawn towards hip hop, they found musical fruition in fertile London, which Binns describes as a “funk revival with a lot of new hip-hop and house.”

The two friends knew they wanted to contribute, but neither of them was particularly keen on playing musical instruments.

“Neither of us wanted to be in a band, [but] we wanted to be in music,” says Binns. “So we decided to get into the studio side of things…

“Sam had the bright idea to do that.”

Shortly after college, Binns and Hardaker began working at Mickie Most’s RAK studios with another aspiring producer named Nigel Godrich — who would eventually produce both Radiohead and Travis.

“I can’t quite think of him like that,” Binns admits, regarding the now Big Name Talent of Godrich. “He’s kind of an old-school friend.”

Funny, since Zero 7’s break came when Godrich asked them to remix Radiohead’s “Climbing Up the Walls.” A remix of Terry Callier’s “Love Theme from Spartacus” was soon followed by remixes for Lenny Kravitz and the Sneaker Pimps. Binns describes the arc of their sizable accomplishments as “a whole process that has constantly never ceased to amaze me.”

When asked about Zero-7’s decision to not sign with a major record label, the conversation turns towards this year’s Grammy
Awards, in which a relatively obscure Ralph Stanley won album of the year for Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?.

“It’s always been manufactured, but now it’s ridiculous,” says Binn. “The music is so secondary to everything that has been driving it. O Brother comes out and it is honest music and everyone listens up.”

Is honest music what drove Zero-7 to avoid signing with a major label? Binns jokes, “That and I don’t think a major would have had us… A producer-artist group without a lead singer? They just run a mile from us.”

Well, sort of. Zero 7 released Simple Things on the ostensibly indie Palm Pictures, which is owned by Island Records founder, Chris Blackwell.

“It’s important to have someone who can say ‘I don’t think that is right,’” Binns explains. “It took us a while to get over getting offended with one another. . . That took a good five years.”