Interview with Incubus on 19th October 1999 at Sony head office.
Present Brandon (vocals)
How long have you been in bands?
We've all been a band since we were 15 years old, it's all our first band. We got together when we were in high school and we used to play in our guitar player's garage and play parties then bars then clubs in Hollywood and we met our old producer Jim when we were sixteen or seventeen years old and he put us in a studio in Santa Monica and began recording demos, which is what we made our first independent record called Fungus - a - mungus out of and then we got signed to Epic shortly after and put out Enjoy Incubus which is 6 remix versions of songs from F - Among - us and we went on tour with Korn and we've been touring ever since so we've been a band for almost nine years

Always called Incubus?
Yes we didn't really mean to be called Incubus forever we chose the name because we had to play a party like two weeks after we started playing songs and Incubus was the one that was the least stupid

What else did you come up with?
Chunk-o-funk, Spiral Staircase, Chimera, Incubus was the only one we could agree on and then it never went away

So are you out playing the new album?
Our first tour with the new record is with Primus in the States going into next year. I've always been a Primus fan, a huge fan, my favourite song is Mr Know It all or Winona's Big Brown Beaver, the video for that is insane, so we were so happy to tour with them, they really influenced us in the beginning. We've been invited to open up for some really cool bands and when we're headlining I guess we can pick the bands, we'd like the Rolling Stones to open please (laughs) We've been lucky Korn and Limp Bizcit were so professional, when we toured with them we got sound checks, it wasn't painful but sometimes there just isn't time and we'd just put our faith in the soundman so we'd go out and the kids are all like - hey third song now I can hear his voice

You've got a new DJ?
New from Science but DJ Kilmore has been with us for over a year and a half now. We had a bit of a falling out with (Kid life?) but it was time to do that, he had become something of a sore spot and he wasn't happy either but because of this we met Kilmore who was made to be in this band and is an incredible musician. He used to be in a DJ battle crew from the East coast called the Jedi Knights where there'd be like six DJ's on each side and they'd battle each other with these really intricate routines and then he finished his degree in film and then he met us and we ruined his future career and stole him for the band

You've got whales singing on your new record?
That's Kilmore, that song the Warmth, Michael had written the instrumentation for it and I had written a poem and they just went perfectly together the syncopation and we all felt when you listened to the song, for us at least, it was like floating in warm water and Kilmore just let this record he had of whales singing to each other spin and it become part of the whole thing

Nice tattoos, they're very unusual
There's a fish swimming around an eye, from one of my weird trips, they're all pictures I've drawn or pieces of them. These are both crop circles that were found in England and this a Tibetan Buddhist mantra that is usually written straight across in sharp sanscript but I sort of redesigned it to make it individual to me and I put it in a lotus flower

Are you amused by the media portrayal of you as an intellectual rock boy?
It's better to be a smart ass than a dumb ass I guess