Banks & Steelz unites Interpol's Paul Banks and Wu-Tang Clan mastermind RZA

By Randall Roberts

Aug. 22, 2016 11:20 AM PT

On paper, the collaboration between the two musicians who are releasing their first album as Banks & Steelz seems a little ridiculous.

One of them, RZA, is best known as a hip-hop producer, rapper and cofounder of New York collective Wu-Tang Clan.

The other, Paul Banks, co-founded the New York post-punk band Interpol, whose oft-grim guitar songs captured the essence of the city in the post Sept. 11 era and whose best-known song opens with the line, “Rosemary, heaven restores you in life.”

Despite their parallel aesthetics, though, the two got to know each other in New York over games of chess and in the years since grew comfortable enough with one another to contemplate a joint project.

The result of that effort, “Anything But Words,” comes out Friday on Warner Bros. A relatively seamless convergence of two dominant and distinctive sensibilities, its dozen tracks move with the propellant fury of recent work by Run the Jewels..

Dense with hardened electronic and hip-hop beats, a bunch of prime RZA verses and soaring Banks vocals and hooks, it features cameos from rappers Kool Keith, singer Florence Welch (Florence and the Machine) and fellow Wu-Tang members Ghostface Killah and Method Man.

The group will perform on Sunday as part of the FYF Fest in Exposition Park.

I always loved the intro to ‘Billie Jean,’ and I feel like I chanced upon that energy wave.

— RZA, on “Love and War” by Banks and Steelz

Speaking from New York, Banks said he’d long been a fan of RZA’s work, so much so that he admitted to being nervous at the start of the process.

But, said Banks, “there’s just something in the aesthetic of the music that RZA creates as a producer that sort of sets me off down a path.”

Banks, whose syrupy baritone makes a striking contrast to RZA’s rapid-release phrasing and thoughtfully imagined lyrics and beats, recalled in-studio work in which endless avenues within RZA’s many beat sketches were available to riff on.

Chuckling as he described his beat-making process in scatological terms, RZA said, “You want to be in the bathroom by yourself, so that’s how I am when I’m making the foundation of a beat. But once we got past the foundation, it would be all kind of changes and ideas.”

Born Robert Diggs in Brooklyn, RZA appears to have no shortage of ideas. Since the rise of Wu-Tang Clan in the early 1990s, he’s become a successful film composer, actor (and new academy member), director, author (“The Tao of Wu”) and, of course, a chess enthusiast.

RZA, who also goes by the moniker Bobby Steelz, hence the act’s moniker, said that by the time he and Banks were in the studio together, “I was comfortable with Paul adding, subtracting and rearranging.”

Of his collaborator, he said, “a person’s got to have the talent, ambition, the creative motivation to do something like that. And then a producer or another songwriter has to have the humility to let somebody take a chance and play with their painting. Complete their painting.”

But, stressed RZA, unlike many contemporary collaborations, the songs he and Banks made were done so while they were in the same physical space “instead of just sending tracks back-and-forth through email and working separately. We have a record that’s a full collaborative effort.”

It feels that way in the sense that few could imagine RZA steering his fellow Wu-Tang members toward a propellant beat-based work such as “Ana Electronic,” which sounds like a mutant disco track.

Nor would one expect Banks to be singing hooks for a song that teams him with RZA and Kool Keith. Their song, “Sword in the Stone,” couples a trippy, circular bass line, a wending, feedback-laden guitar tone with a rapping RZA barking in double time.

Banks’ hooks and vocal interjections make the songs pop, said RZA. “He has those one liners that make a good MC. He’ll say a line that sticks.”

One of the album’s highlights, “Love and War,” rolls along with a bumping, conga-heavy beat and a wobbly trumpet line as Banks, RZA and guest Ghostface Killah ponder the end of an affair.

“I love how that song came out,” said RZA. “To me, there’s something about the intro — and I’m not comparing it to this song in no form or fashion — but I always loved the intro to ‘Billie Jean,’ and I feel like I chanced upon that energy wave. We tapped in on that energy wave with ‘Love and War.’”

Whether Banks & Steelz can ride that wave at FYF Fest is a question that the two seem a bit nervous to ponder. They played their first show a few months back at the Roxy in West Hollywood and are in the beginning stages of a tour that carries them down the West Coast before heading east for gigs that extend into October.

“To me, that’s a challenge,” said RZA when asked how the performance preparation was going. “Hopefully we will rise to the occasion. May the music guide us. May the energy guide us.”

Banks called live performance “another animal” and said they were trying to straddle the challenges of replicating the record and reinventing the music as a live act.

“We are going to find that balance as we go,” said Banks, “but in any iteration we’ve explored, it’s fun and it sounds good.”

That the two will be carrying a chess board on tour is a foregone conclusion. Asked who was the better player, both were momentarily silent.

Then Banks spoke up. “Yeah, RZA is better at chess,” he said, sounding defeated. “Every time.”

There’s a lot of terrible music out there. For tips on the stuff that’s not, follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

ALSO:

Review: Blood Orange’s ‘Freetown Sound’ resonates with its of-the-moment topicality

FYF Fest: 10 acts that make it worth braving yet another music festival

France’s Air revives its ‘slow motion music’ for a visit to FYF Fest