Hi what are you up to at the moment?
I'm at work, the band isn't exactly earning us money, it's something we do because we believe in it, not for the money.
How did you get together? How long have you been together?
Three of us met at school, Spencer - the drummer, Lewis - the guitarist, and myself were all at school together playing in bands doing cover versions of Nirvana songs and things like that. Then we met Ali, about four years ago when Spencer went to university and we formed the band that way. We started writing songs together, not in any grand scheme of doing lots of touring and live shows, but just because we wanted to write songs and form a band. Then after a couple of years, once they'd finished university we decided to take it really seriously, and we've got an album and we're doing tours.
You're in the middle of one I believe, how's it going?
Absolutely fantastic, we're just between dates, we've got a gig with One Republic on Tuesday. We haven't played any of the big venues yet, but I've got the feeling it's going to go very well. We've played one or two large gigs over the summer with Scouting For Girls, and Mystery Jets and the bigger the stages, the better we seem to play. I think our songs just seem to suit a really large stage because they are epic.
Yes, I think your songs do as well, your music sounds like it's perfect for the open air, that epic quality to it, and big audiences, have you been approached by any festivals to play next year?
You reckon? That would be amazing, we love going to festivals, we all go to festivals whenever we can. That would be incredible. No festivals have approached us yet, I hope that's not because they don't want us to play, I hope it's just that they book bands a little later on.
You say you've all gone to festivals a lot, is that's what's influenced you with those epic soundscapes in a Coldplay, Keane, and Radiohead way?
Possibly, I imagine so. We get compared to Coldplay and Keane an awful lot, which is fine if that's what people hear but that's not what I'm intending. The Radiohead influence is a lot stronger for me, that's much more where my songwriting lies, to do something that appeals to an awful lot of people but in a slightly obtuse kind of way, to get there by an alternative route, not the most route. I don't want to ever seem predictable in my approach to music.
Presumably you are musically trained?
Yeah actually, I played piano when I was quite young and the violin as well, which appears on the album, I played the violin parts myself.
So how do you do that live?
At the moment there's only one song which has got full integral violin parts, we've actually recorded them onto a hard disk recorder and then when we play live, we have all the string parts on that hard disk recorder, and that plays in the background we play along to it.
Other than Radiohead who else has influenced your musical stylings?
Bjork was one of the first artists that really changed my life when I was about eighteen, and Scott Walker, singer/songwriter from the Walker Brothers, he really has gone quite weird recently, he's been off the map musically.
So how would you describe your music?
I hope you will hear it as energetic music, it's alternative rock music, I hope people will hear it on the radio and enjoy listening to it. But I also hope that there's enough that when people listen to it more than once they start to hear new things in there, and that's really important.
You feature in the forthcoming film adaptation of Philip Pullman's 'The Butterfly Tattoo' is that right?
I've just heard it got its premier in America somewhere and it got four out of five stars for its first review, so everything is looking really, really good for the film itself. We were approached by some independent film makers who had got the rights to the script and Philip Pullman was on board. They wanted to make the film, and the story is about two people living in Oxford and the Oxford music scene. So, obviously they came to Oxford, shooting here, and they wanted to include all local bands and there's one scene in it where the two main characters go to a gig, to see the girl's favourite band and they chose us, we're in the film and it's awesome. It's really good we're really happy with the way it's been portrayed.
I heard you also used a lot of projections in your live shows.
Yup, we went through a phase at some point, which I really hope to rekindle, where had a book, a big old bound book that I'd put artwork in for each song and that would sit on a flight case next to me, with a camera over it, and then the camera would be projected onto a screen above the band. For each song we'd turn over the page, and there would be a new load of artwork that would become the backdrop to that song, it looked great it was really exciting, but we just found the time to set it up with some of the gigs we had was just not possible. I didn't want to keep it going so that any time we didn't do it people felt cheated.
The new album is called 'The City that Sleeps' why the title?
Well a lot of the songs that I write are always story based, and they've got characters and I wanted a way of getting these characters into their own little world within the album, so I was thinking of islands and planets and stuff, and then I came to the idea of a city. I really liked the idea of Lost In Translation, a really exciting city, I think it's Tokyo and the two main characters are just really lethargic within their own little worlds within that city. The city might be busy outside, but you've just drawn the curtains and are in your own little world.
What's your favourite track on the album?
Favourite track for me would have to be 'One Wrong Door' the fourth track with all the violins on it, and it's a really exciting lyric too.
You recorded the album live?
Yes in two studios, we basically recorded the piano and vocals live in one studio, and then instead of having the drums and stuff playing to a click track, we brought that to another studio, and had the drums, bass, and guitar all playing live together to the piano parts that I'd previously recorded. That way we captured each song in a completely live environment without having to regiment it to a click track. It's a challenging way to work and much more exciting because you're flying by the seat of your pants, one person makes a mistake you've all got to be there to do another take and do it as well as possible.
Your cover of Underworld's 'Born Slippy', has been well-received live do you still cover it?
We haven't played it for a couple of weeks now. It's always going to be there for fun because it just seems to work, I'm so pleased with how people have responded to it. It's really nice to have a cover like that which brings what we do to somewhere completely separate. The original song is so far removed from what we do, it's great I think everyone responds to how we've changed it and it sounds like one of our songs it's great.
What's been the best gig of you career so far?
We played Glastonbury, two years ago as a completely lucky break, and that was really amazing experience for us. We played the BBC Introducing Stage next to the Park Stage. It was so muddy it was an incredible experience.
Had you been before?
I hadn't because when I was at school it was still during term time, so we could never go to Glastonbury. We always had to go to Reading or Leeds. I figured it would be different but I didn't realise how different, it is like its own little city. It's incredible, Glastonbury.
What's you next single?
'Thirteen Times The Strength' and the single after that we're just going to leave it open and decide in a bit.
Let's hope you get some festival bookings, because I think you'd sound pretty good on an open air stage.
Cheers fingers crossed, fingers crossed.
The album 'The City That Sleeps' is out on Monday 6th October, and the single 'Thirteen Times The Strength' is available now as a digital download.
article by: Scott Williams
published: 25/09/2008 11:24
FUTURE GIGS
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