He's the voice and name of the band Rasp Thorne & the Briars - and here he is, shooting hard and fast about the debut album "The Lecher’s Waltz" - that's out on 15 December 2012!

With strong ties to the live art, and theatre world Rasp Thorne & the Briars have played all sorts of venues. From the decadent dandified Last Tuesday Society to the whiskey sleaze of Gypsy Hotel and fetish freaks of Torture Garden; from Camden pubs to posh "institutions" such as The Roundhouse, The Lowry and The Crucible, they’ve left their scratches on many a disparate atmosphere. Along with splitting bills with the likes of Alabama 3, Kid Congo Powers and The Urban Voodoo Machine, they have most recently finished a critically acclaimed two week run at The Old Vic Tunnel’s as the in house band and live soundtrack for the immersive live art spectacle Carnesky’s Tarot Drome. Rasp Thorne & the Briars, album launch party at The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, London N1 9JB on Saturday 15 December.

RR: Has London treated you well since arriving from Brooklyn two years ago?
Rasp Thorne: Yeah, London’s treated me alright. I feel a bit soggy from time to time and it aint from my teardrops. Luckily I started performing at clubs when I arrived and got introduced into different scenes right away which was great but you still have to piss out your own territory and find your own crew of people you can stand to be around. People are competitive and aggressive in a different way here than in New York. I think it’s in the water. Maybe it’s the beer.

RR: Tell us about the band – how did you come to get together?
Rasp Thorne: I’d been doing solo shows at some different nights at Barden’s Boudoir and The George and looking around for people to start up a new project. I also put on some artsy fartsy performance club nights at The Bethnal Green Workingmen’s Club for a while. I like putting on clubs and doing solo shows but much prefer the energy and all round power of a band. Nothing had come to much until my former band from Brooklyn, Ryder Pales, came over to play Glastonbury and some gigs in London. At one such gig at The Black Gardenia I ran into Duncan DeMorgan who I’d met when I split a bill with his former band The Woodsmen. We talked and then a few months later ran into each other at a GG Elvis gig in Stokey [Stoke Newington]. I always thought that was quite suiting, being that the Briars utilise aspects of chaotic stage shows along with the occasional crooning melody. That’s where we decided to try working on some songs. He said he’d play bass. We met up a few times in your typical mouldy practice space which had a sticky piano in it. After a few weeks he got a previous bandmate in - Pete Moriarty. Pete’s a great all round musician who plays a right-hand-strung guitar left handed and also plays a mean piano and organ.

We’ve gone through a few different line ups over the past couple years. It’s always a bitch to lose or replace someone once you’ve been working together for awhile but it’s always worked out for the better. We’ve got a great balance now, and have come to rest as a five-piece with Claire Rabbitt on backing vocals and tambourine and Andy Marvell on drums.

RR: What was the greatest demon in the making of your debut album – and did it feel good to tame it?
Rasp Thorne: This album, “The Lecher’s Waltz”, has been a long time a coming. We’ve worked with some great people on it; Alex McGowan at Space Eko Studios engineered and mixed it; Harvey Birrell form Southern mastered it. It’s pretty epic and frenetic though there are a few slower dirge songs on there too. The biggest beast would be getting all the damn words in - and no I haven’t tamed that beast yet, but am trying to pare it back a bit - it’s not really working.

RR: Other than live (if only we could have you and the band in our company at all times), what's the best way to listen to the album?
Rasp Thorne: The easiest way is to go to our website where you can download it there through iTunes BUT the more lush way is to buy the CD either by e-mailing rasp_thorne@yahoo.com or you can buy it through our online distributors at The Genepool. It’s pretty much the same price as the download and comes with a lyric booklet with great photo’s and artwork from Venus Raven. We also have a video of the opening track from the album on the website and youtube. The song is called “Operator Taunt No. 3” and was shot on “Carnesky’s Ghost Train” in sunny old Blackpool.

RR: How was it working with your wife, the sensational Marisa Carnesky on the Carnesky's Tarot Drome?
Rasp Thorne: Very “immersive”. Very full on as usual. It was an ambitious project to get off the ground and functioning in those dank tunnels but we got there in the end. Marisa is extremely hard working and great at pulling a team together, directing and collaborating with performers. For the “Tarot Drome” I created the soundscape for the promenade section of the show and the Briars played a live set for the choreographed rollerskating bit. It was great to work with the skaters and the choreography from H. Plewis worked very well with the music. We wouldn’t mind having a chorus line of dancers gyrating ‘round in sequins and glitter and rollerskates for more of our shows. I guess you could lose the rollerskates if you really had to.

RR: Who are your all-time greatest influences?
Rasp Thorne: Off the top of my head W.B. Yeats, Homer (not Simpson), Cormac McCarthy, Johnny Cash, Klaus Kinski, Diamanda Galas, Paul Celan, Nick Cave, Rimbaud, Artaud, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Jesus H. Christ, Jack Nicholson... there’s a lot. I didn’t grow up in a city, I’m from a small town in Montana and the internet wasn’t big yet so I had to rely on older friends or sheer luck to find out cool bands and artists besides the shitty pop country on the radio. I love real country music, the good old boys like Hank and Merle and Cash and Waylon but they don’t really play that on the radio anymore. I had to dig for outside influences. I remember when I was 12 or 13 that I found a “Best of the Velvet Underground” in some used bin at a record shop. I bought it and thought I’d discovered something completely new, that this was going to be the new hip band. Had no idea I was 30 years behind the times. In a way books were a bit more accessible. It seems like authors are always namedropping other authors so it’s easier to follow a certain movement or generation. I’d also always imagined I’d like to do some sort of chaotic non-linear theatre type show before I knew about performance art. When I went to live in Germany for a year when I was sixteen I became bombarded by all sorts of different influences; performance art, german expressionism, Goethe, Kinski, Celan, punk, industrial... Everything seemed to snowball. It’s exciting to discover new artists. But I gotta say I’m a lot more selective now on what I really get in to these days. I suppose I’m not 16 anymore but if you are 16 or aren’t overly cynical and jaded you can still discover new music in the form of the brand spanking new album “The Lecher’s Waltz” by Rasp Thorne & the Briars available for sale at raspthorneandthebriars.com

RR: Could you treat us to a Rasp Thorne London anecdote?
Rasp Thorne: Yes, I have a “Rasp Thorne” anecdote. It happens all the time. London and Londoners are alright enough but there seems to be a bit of an unbridgeable language barrier over my name.  First of all it’s Rasp with an “a” sound not an “ah”, but I can forgive that one due to the accent and teeth but what I cannot tolerate is when people call me Ralph Thor, Rat Throne, or even Rip Torn. I know, I appreciate it’s not a very commonplace name and that people need to equate it with something but it’d be great to go for a week in my life without after being introduced to someone them not saying: “O, like Rasputin?” or less commonly but still at least a few times a month “O, Rasp, like the berry right?” . No “utin” or “Putin” for that matter but above all definitely no fuckin' “berry”. Once I had this ditzy blonde girl who was playing bass in one of the first groups I was in in NYC. We were trying to come up with names for the band and she actually said: “How about Rasp and the Berries?” Needless to say, she didn’t last too long.

Official website: www.raspthorneandthebriars.com

Rasp Thorne & the Briars
Saturday 15 December
album launch party
at The Lexington
96-98 Pentonville Road
London N1 9JB