INTERVIEW: MODEL AEROPLANES

Over the weekend I was given the pleasure of interviewing Dundee band Model Aeroplanes at CloseUp Festival - this is what happened.

[G] = Grant Irvine

[K] = Kieran Smith

[B] = Ben Buist

[R] = Rory Flemming-Stewart

(  )  = My comments during editing


Let's get straight into it, how did you guys get started? How did you guys meet?


[B] Never been good at anything else.

[G] We met in high school, the boys were the year above me and in first year we started jamming.

[R] I think Kieran bullied Grant in the corridor once!

[K] 'Cause he was a first year and I was a second year, it's just what you have to do.

[G] Yeah, he'd step on my heel so my shoe would come off - he's a coward though. We're mates now though so it's fine. But yeah so we met at school and started writing songs, bunking off classes...

[R] Bunking off! (weird hand movement)

[G] Like to write - we're pretty bad ass just to let you know - so we'd go to the music rooms and just sit and write songs when we were meant to be in classes.


That's cool, so it happened naturally.


[All] Yeah, yeah

[G] Yeah it happened really naturally, didn't help our grades though!

[R] I don't even know what I got. I can't even remember what highers I got...I've lost the certificates as well, don't know how to find it online.

[G] I left school with less qualifications than I started with - somehow.

INTERVIEW WITH PETE GARDINER

Introducing Pete Gardiner, a talented singer-songwriter from Ireland. We asked Pete a few questions about his music and life in general so you could get to know the man behind the music ahead of his album release next month.

Let's start with a bit about you, what is your first musical memory?

There's a few that blend together. I remember Meat Loaf's ''Bat Out Of Hell'' album on cassette tape one Christmas and listening to it with my dad Saturday morning when I got up. I was only about six or seven but even then I had a strong sense that this was a great album to start the weekend to.

My older cousin let me hear the Guns N Roses album ''Use Your Illusions' when I was around the same age. I was captivated by that one for a lot of years after.

I can remember my parents playing Bob Dylan's ''Mr Tambourine Man'' and I was fascinated by the contrast between his version and the version by The Byrds. I would come back to Dylan many years later when I was ready to understand him...I never came back to The Byrds though. 

How did you get into music as a career?

Well I never really thought of it as a career, and I still don't. Songwriting was just something I got a high from and when I was in school it gave the class-clown smart-ass inside me an outlet that didn't get me into trouble - now it's just second nature, part of my identity. If I showed up to a party with a guitar people might think I was ill. Even if it did start to really pay off financially, I think I would always be too close to it to think of it as a career. 

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it - in three words?

Worth a listen.

Where has been your favourite place to play and why?

The best nights don;t always transpire where you'd expect them to. I've played to five thousand people before and there's a certain trill attached to that, but then some of my most memorable evenings have been entertaining non more than eight or nine people in somebody's kitchen. A good night just depends on so many things that are out of your hands that you don't really know when it's going to come together. 

What is your writing process like?

It usually begins with a rhyming couplet racing through my head at a very inappropriate time, like when I'm busy or just about to fall asleep. Just one or two lines that are worth pursuing. When that happens, they'll be noted, and I'll look at them again the next time I bet a chance to sit down with the guitar. If I'm lucky it'll spark off a song. There's a balance and a compromise that happens because you have to sit and work at part of the song but another part has to be given to you from somewhere. There's a key component to a song that you can't find just from showing up and trying, it just presents itself when it wants to and sometimes it just keeps you waiting around.

New Music Monday: Leo Napier

Funky Guitar, Catchy Choruses, Perfectly Raspy Vocal...

...Introducing Leo Napier. 

Hailing from New York but now London based, Leo Napier puts a modern twist on traditional soul to create his own unique blend. 

We asked Leo a few questions so you can get to know the man behind the music:

New Music Monday: Jack Carty

Today we have something a little different. 

Introducing Jack Carty, an indie folk artist from Australia.

We asked Jack a few questions so you could get to know him:

INTERVIEW: ASYLUMS

Luke and Jazz

Last Saturday I was fortunate enough to be sat on a picnic blanket with half of Asylums at Village Green Festival, here's what happened.


Luke, Jazz, Henry and Mike are four explosive DIY rockers hailing from Southend-On-Sea.

Together they make up Asylums - a band you need to hear and experience live.

For the purpose of this post 

[L] = Luke 

[J] = Jazz

( words ) = My comments.

1. How did you guys meet?

[L] : Me and Jazz were kind of music fanatics, going to see gigs in the Southend area and I used to be in a different band with Henry for a while before Asylums, we knew each other through that and I grew up with Mike, playing in different bands - he was in rival bands to me. 

2. How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard it before in three words?

[J] : Bipolar. Manic. Distortion. 

3. Any good tour stories? (Keep them clean!)

[L] : All of us in the band, but particularly me and Jazz, are a bundle of nerves really. Sometimes that manifests itself in kind of like...someone hands you a can of beer and you drink it really quickly because basically you're nervous and you don't know what to say. Then sometimes at certain gigs that gets really out of hand...

Last year at Camden Rocks was one of those times.

We'd been under a lot of pressure for about six months trying to keep it all going, keep it all moving, getting in the studio, writing, touring, doing all the things that a band does and we decided to have a bit of a blow out.

Ended up in this Cuban bar drinking Strawberry Dalquiries, very masculine. Jazz disappeared for a while and I was talking to some suicidal Jo Brand look-a-like. She was telling me about how unhappy she was. I was like 'where are my friends, I don't know where I am now'.

Anyway we left, can't remember leaving the bar that much really, and we were sharing a bit of pizza and it was all going up our face and stuff and then we went and got a Subway. 

We went and ate that by a bin and some people were saying that they really enjoyed our set...we couldn't even remember we had done a gig really!

Got back to Southend and I didn't have my guitar with me, think I left it at a cab rank. Lost a £900 Jag - think that's probably the most bleak I've ever felt after a gig.

[J] : You called me at like 5 in the morning saying (insert voice of true sadness and despair) 'do you have my guitar, because I don't'.

[L] : I know intimately everyone that works at every train station now from between Fenchurch Street and Shoeburyness - they're like 'no we still don't have your guitar'. (Laughter).

BUT, here's the cruelty of it all (drama), it had Asylums vinyls in it so they could have easily just hit us up online and said 'I've got your guitar' but they sold it! (more laughter).

Evil.

But that's what you get for being irresponsible. 

4. Who's been your favourite band to tour with?

[J] : We toured with Ash last year and they were really fun. We ended up becoming really good friends with them, having some really good nights out with them. They're really lovely guys, they're really cool.

[L] : I really enjoyed that tour too. One of the ones that means the most to me is the first tour we did with the Vaselines. Obviously growing up I was a huge Nirvana fan, discovered the Vaselines and lots of other cool music through the band.

They asked me to play 'Molly's Lips' with them on stage and I was playing the bicycle horn. I think that was one of the best moments of my life. 

(Demonstration of what that entailed, with horn actions and sound effects that could be confused with a seal).

So I felt pretty cool. But then the footage went missing so I'll never see it again.

[J] : Might not have happened. 

(laughter)

[L] : Yeah it happened in my head, maybe it didn't happen! (One too many Strawberry Dalquiries maybe?) No it definitely did. Our photographer at Cool Thing swears to this day that he's got that footage but I haven't seen it.

5. Who would you like to tour with?

[J] : The Spice Girls. (That was unexpected). I've heard the talk of their reformation so...

[L] : I've heard there's two positions in the band going mate!

[J] : Well yeah maybe I'll just leave!

[L] : (Pointing to Jazz) Gangly Spice! Hairy Spice!

[J] : Drunk Spice! 

(Alternative Spice Girls forming right here).

[J] : I could fit into a Union Jack dress.

(That image though)

6. So this kind of leads on...What do you like to do in your spare time? (If you have any!)

[J] : Put on a Union Jack dress!

(Fair enough)

[L] : Spare time...Most of it gets consumed with earning money to pay for strange and ever more bizarre art projects and obviously rent. 

[J] : And a lot of sock puppet theatre in our spare time.

(Prepare for irrelevant, yet entertaining, tangent).

[L] : Mike told me about a guy, who's an inspiration. He was working here yesterday and he was working with a music enthusiast that had their father down. 

This is completely unrelated but I'm going to tell the story anyway.

Wherever this guy goes, I think he's Russian, he makes puppets out of whatever is around in the area. He's been out to Iraq and stuff during wars and made puppets out of debris to entertain people. 

Yesterday he was here and he found two eggs and a cup and he said (in the funniest attempt at a Russian accent I think I have ever heard)    'LOOK, A CHICKEN!'

I wanna meet this guy. I've never met him before but that's what I wanna do with my spare time. Puppets out of rubbish.

7. Who's your biggest inspiration? (In life or in music)

[L] : I would have to go and say my grandad because he was born with no money, left home at 13 and over the course of 40 years of manic activity and learning how to be a bronze restorer, managed to support my entire family - never ever take any s**t off anyone and he's the only person I know who's got any money and is not academic. But he's got more ingenuity and mental lateral thinking skills than anyone else I've ever met and he's an inspiration to me...and obviously Nelson Mandela. 

[J] : It sounds really corny but I'm actually inspired by everyone in our group, so everyone at our label and everyone in this band continues to inspire me further I find, rather than outside influences, because we're all so creative. They push me to go further than I probably would have.

[L] : You kind of have an idea and everyone soundboards it like 'yeah that's good or bad' or they have an idea and they soundboard it with you and then onward we go.

[J] : It snowballs.

[L] : Yeah and I think it's the first time for any of us with the label that we've kinda built this little family thing and it's the first time all the odd...like mixed socks, all the odd socks that don't match, they all come together and make loads of socks.

[J] : One huge SUPER-SOCK.

[L] : Yeah

(I thought that was a really good analogy for finding people you belong with)

8. Speaking of the label, how did that get started? Why did you decide to go down the DIY route?

[J] : Well, we're both like proper music lovers so have spent our whole lives as record collectors and stuff so we sort of got quite an inside out knowledge of a lot of labels and we got to a point where we were just like, well what's really stopping us from doing our own? 

You know, because then we can have creative control and we can do it with the people we want and we can choose the acts we want. 

So we thought why not and we just kept going. 

We've worked with bands like Petty Phase, they're amazing, and A.C.I.D who are pretty cool.

(Both were playing at the festival). 

9. What do you think of streaming/digital channels? 

[L] : I think it's absolutely fine. Just, for our label, it's probably not the emphasis because it's so nice to work to a physical artefact, you know, real artwork, colourful vinyl. It just feels more substantial and, obviously being record collectors ourselves, we're not really big streamers.

We like discovering music through streaming but then, ultimately because we love the art form and the creation of product design and just the blood, sweat and tears that goes into every record that every band ever makes, it's just so nice to support them by buying that. (I'd have to agree)

The profit margin on Spotify is like 0.01 pence and, you know, the profit margin on a vinyl album could be as much as £10 out of a £20 album. So that can sometimes go back to either a small label or a small band and help perpetuate more music. 

10. Advice for aspiring musicians/record label owners?

[J] : Just have fun.

Don't take it ridiculously seriously and worry about it. Just have fun with your friends, just like you would everything else.

11. Finally, what can we expect from the new album?

[L] : Bipolar manic distortion.

[J] : Spice Girl covers. 

Asylums' album 'Killer Brain Waves' can be pre-ordered now (www.asylumsband.com)
and is set to be released on 29th July.

Until next time...

@wewantgoodmusic