OAKLAND, Calif. -- British soul/rock band The Heavy burst on the U.K. music scene a couple of years ago with the release of their startlingly original debut album 'Great Vengeance and Furious Fire' on the renowned Ninja Tune label. Creating an artful collision of distorted guitar riffs, Curtis Mayfield-style falsetto vocals and gritty hip-hop production, the group founded by guitarist Dan Taylor and singer Kelvin Swaby craft soul music that ignores the compartmentalized standards adhered to by modern day, cookie-cutter R&B. Along with such maverick outfits as Detroit's soul/punk mainstays The Dirtbombs and King Khan's MC5-meets-James Brown revue with European backing band The Shrines, The Heavy are forging a new path. The band draws from an even broader palette with its latest effort on Counter Records, 'The House That Dirt Built,' mixing in elements of reggae, two-tone ska, rootsy country and even Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks with crushing guitars and soulful hooks. KTVU.com caught up with singer Swaby on the eve of the band's latest U.S. tour to promote the new album.

KTVU.com: You and Dan Taylor are the principles and main songwriters. When you started, was there more of a drum machine/hip hop approach to the first album than the new one.

Kelvin Swaby: It was just a whole heap of programming and samples. And not just drum machine programming, but lots of sampling old 45s; finding a beat here, and a snare here, and a kick and a crash there. We were still putting in live drums as well, trying to play them like the Meters. We’d all have a go at the drums and then chop it all up. It was a real cut-and-paste method to getting things right and making that record sound like it did.

But this is product of a band that’s been working for a fair few years together, having been on the road touring for Great Vengeance. So we wanted to keep that cyclic feel and hip-hop production style, but we just wanted to sample ourselves. So we looked back at the influences that inspired us or however many different genres that inspired a particular track and we just wanted to nail it and get it right. We worked hard at that on this album, to make sure things sounded authentic so you couldn’t put an artist to it. So you’d say ‘Well, it sounds like, but it’s not.” Except for like the Screaming Jay Hawkins [the song “Sixteen” interpolates the Hawkins classic “I Put a Spell on You”]. We snatched the idea from that, but we didn’t sample it…

KTVU.com: So that’s just you guys playing that loop?

Swaby: Yeah.

KTVU.com: That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. Like the song “How You Like Me Now?” has a definite James Brown feel to it, but it’s obviously a live band playing the groove instead of pulling from a record…

Swaby: Yeah, it’s us playing along with a horn section we brought in. We mixed like an old record, and then we sample it. Treat it like a sample. But the best thing about being able to record like that and treating your sound like a sample is you actually have control over all of the elements of it. Where a sample is just a stereo file; you only have control over one or two things. This way, we can manipulate it more. You can manipulate the horns, boost the bass, and mess with the drums. It’s good to go about it like that.

KTVU.com: To some extent I guess that’s what Portishead did on their second album. They’d record in the studio, press what they recorded to vinyl, and then purposely put some wear onto the vinyl so it would have scratches and crackle to it. Then they’d build the songs by sampling those records. So you’re not press to records, but it seems like the same aesthetic of playing the music yourselves and figuring out how to use it.

Swaby: Yeah, it’s just taking that two-bar loop that you know just jams. You’re still being incredibly finicky about it. And then the best thing about it is you learn how to play it like that. The best musicians just play a song; they don’t improvise over the whole thing. I think the best musicians are the ones who play less. I think that’s what we try to do. And that’s what I love about hip hop. You’ll find that amazing two-bar loop and you’ll chop it up. You just want to hear that repetition. And that’s what we kind of do. I believe we’ve become quite good at it.

KTVU.com: Did you or Dan do any work with hip-hop production prior to The Heavy coming together? Did anything lead up to the approach you’ve developed together?

Swaby: I used to work in a project called Heavy Tactica; it was called Tactica in the final days of it. It was signed to Tricky’s label that he originally released “Aftermath” from his first album on. Then he got signed to Island and left the label behind, but we were on that label as well. We released a few things under the name of Tactica. But when that ended, I kind of wanted to do something completely different. I didn’t want to just do beats with female vocals over them. I was always kind of doing the guide vocals to the female singers to say “This is what I want you to sing.” Then me and Dan got together and we thought “We can actually write great songs together.” And the idea of having a male singer over all these beats that we were chopping up from all kinds of sources was great.

The whole hip-hop production approach is just an easier way of working when you can’t get in a room full of musicians. Trying to get people in the same room can be difficult, so we’d look to the Yamaha SU 10 [sampler] and make our own beats and use an acoustic guitar and piano to write songs and put them on a four track. I love hip hop. I’ve loved hip hop since I fell in love with it in 1981 or ’82. So that was the way it was always going to be; there was always going to be that element in there. And there kind of is on this record as well. There’s still that idea of being so cyclic, but now we have more control over what we do.

KTVU.com: There’s more influences and a broader sound on this album than on Great Vengeance. There’s your first stab at reggae on “Cause For Alarm,” while album closer “Stuck” has a rootsy, Exiles on Main Street county feel to my ears. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a spaghetti western soul ballad before I heard “Short Change Hero,” with the added drama of the thunderclap sound effect and boots walking across a wood floor. How did you end up mixing those elements in with the sound you’d already established with The Heavy?

Swaby: Well, as far as the spaghetti western thing, originally we were going to have a spaghetti western theme all the way through the album, you know? Then things kind of started to change, but that track was the reason why we were thinking about that theme. We had that track left over from Great Vengeance and Furious Fire. I’m so happy we didn’t put it on that album, because the way it sounds now is the way it always should have sounded. It was great to work with live strings and sing the line you want to hear and they play other lines. We built it like in a western, just like Ennio [Morricone, the iconic Italian western soundtrack maestro].

We come from that era when cowboy films were on all the time. With the sentiment of the song, it needed to start with the sound of the villain walking into town. That feeling that there’s going to be hell to pay; so who’s going to pay? So that was absolutely essential.

KTVU.com: “Love Like That” has a ‘60s soul vibe mixed with ska and dub…

Swaby: It’s that whole kind of call and response, you know? When we came up with that rhythm, for us it felt kind of like a Cuban danzon [a traditional, African-influenced dance style from the Caribbean island nation]. And as soon as we had Dan’s vocal on it – because he sings a lot more straight than I do – I was kind of responding to what he was singing. We did it sort of like The Specials [British 2-Tone ska revival band from the late 1970s]. That’s how that kind of song works. I love how it sounds in amongst all those other tracks, like an undisputed champion. I knew it was going to be that way. It’s short, it’s sweet, but it’s so bass heavy as well. I love it [laughs]…

KTVU.com: So it seems these are all influences you already had as a band, but they came out after being allowed more time in the studio and having more time to develop the new material…

Swaby: I think the thing with this latest record was we weren’t working [other jobs], so we had more time to apply what we wanted to do without making anything sound too contrived. [On “Cause For Alarm”] we took an element of reggae, but reggae doesn’t play with the beat like that. And the way Dan was playing his piano part, it isn’t really like a reggae part. We just took influences from all manner of places. I feel that time was definitely on our side with this. It didn’t feel like a pressured second album. Everybody keeps saying ‘Did you feel pressured?’ And we didn’t. Some songs were left over from Great Vengeance, but then other songs came really naturally. We feel quite blessed the way that it came out.

KTVU.com: How did participation by The Noisettes come about? Singer Shingai Shinwa contributes backing vocals to three songs. While I wouldn’t say her vocals make the tunes, it is hard to imagine the songs without her once you hear them…

Swaby: It was funny. We had a live sound engineer named Joel Greg who we became huge friends with. He was working with The Noisettes and had been on tour with them and was kind of playing our stuff. And Dan [Smith, the guitarist with the band] was like ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Joel said ‘Oh, they’re the other band I kind of work with.’ And Dan said ‘If there’s any time you’re going down to see them, I’d love to meet them.’ So he came down one time when we were in our studio in Bristol and he just went crazy. We were overdubbing drums and going from track to track. He was like ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You guys are going from genre to genre and you’re not conforming at all. It’s incredible.’

Those are his words, not mine. So he kind of stayed around the studio for two or three days. On the third say I could see he was really itching to play something. So we asked him to play piano on “Long Way From Home.” I said ‘Let’s just play it like a ragtime thing.’ And he did it and it was amazing. Then he said he could hear piano on “How You Like Me Now.” He has great musical knowledge. So we’ve become really good friends.

And then he went back and told Shingai that he’d kind of hooked up with us and she should hear it. So we started talking to Shingai and she wanted to do the vocal for “Oh No! Not You Again!” Jim [Abiss, who has worked with Arctic Monkeys, Adele and Kasabian] – who was helping us produce the album by this time – started play other stuff and she was like “Can I sing on that? Can I sing on that? Can I sing on that?” [laughs]. We said “Listen, we’re not going to go Shingai mad, but yeah you can sing on these couple.” It’s not like we have Shingai on absolutely everything.

But what she does on “Sixteen” sounds kind of like Etta James or something. It sounds amazing. And on “What You Want Me To Do?” she comes in with kind of that T-Rex vocal. For “Oh No! Not You Again!” I heard her described as like a one woman street gang. It was great. We’ve all remained friends. It’s that kind of connection. It’s great to see what’s happened with them. They’ve gone quite … not main stream, but they’re being sought out and they’re touring all over the place. It was great to have them come in with us and make something so raw. And they were so into it. It was a good time, having them on board and making friends at the same time.

KTVU.com: When I saw you before, you were the core four-piece band plus a woman on keyboards and vocals. It the touring band the same as it was, or are you augmented by more people? I was wonder how you’d pull off the horns and other elements…

Swaby: No, we cover the additional vocals ourselves as a four piece. We don’t go out with the girl anymore. She found it very difficult to tour. It works as a four piece. We use samples live. It’s like your traditional rock and roll band. We go with the hip-hop vibe and run stuff off samplers. [Otherwise we’d need] to take another six people, which makes it difficult to tour on an independent. You can’t do it. But they’re tracks we play absolutely live and they still sound as great as the record. I think when people go and watch somebody live, you don’t want it to sound exactly the same anyway, you know?

KTVU.com: I think that was what I appreciated most about the live delivery. Even the songs that didn’t necessarily have that garage-rock guitar sound had a rawness and intensity that just floored me. You’re one of the few bands bringing together elements of soul and funk with garage rock. I was wondering if you were familiar with other acts like King Khan and the Shrines?

Swaby: We haven’t had any contact with them, but I’m sure our paths will cross at some point. They were playing a load of festivals last year that we were playing at, but they’d be there the day after us or the day before us. I think it’s just because people like a show. That’s what we try to go out and give. We don’t just sit behind the microphone and sing the song. There’s no fun in that. You want to sing the song like it’s supposed to be delivered. I look back to the old greats, like when you see clips of Sam and Dave doing “Hold On, I’m Coming.” That’s a show. The song is a great song anyway, but the performance just enhances the song so much. It’s great to see that there’s a crop of new people that are willing to go out and shake their feet a little bit.