1. First off, tell me a little something about yourselves. Who are you? Where are you from etc.?
We’re from South Wales. Pretty universally South Welsh, I suppose. Pontypridd, Bridgend, Cardiff. We met online after I posted a few dozen long-winded adverts on joinmyband.com. I found Bain, Aled found me. I was pretty open about it at the time – I’m putting together the biggest and best band in the UK. Scared away a few fair-weather posers. Not these two. As a group, we’re tight, and loyal, and serious.
2. What kind of music do you play?
Rock? Pop? Pop-Rock? Punk? Britpop? Blues? Blues-Rock? Alt Rock? Indie? All of the above? We don’t compromise, not even to a genre. We are what we are, whatever that is. We might play electric guitars and drums and sound like a rock band, and much of our more conventional material would fit fairly in that paddock, but there’s so much more to us than that. Try and tell me what The Beatles are, and I’ll give you a medal if you can find a word for it. Same for Bowie, same for us. We compare ourselves against our heroes, not our peers, and as such don’t see borders as helpful when we just want to make what we create the best it can be.
3. Do you have a coherent message or any recurring themes that you try to convey through your music?
Always. But it’s not always recurring, or even consistent. We have sad songs about alienated individuals, we have triumphant songs about the same thing… We have angry songs about the modern junk-market culture, and we have songs celebrating precisely that. One of our songs, called Devil In A Party Dress, is about a Spanish lesbian I met at a Westminster wedding. Another, Crocodile Smile, is about our national village, Wales, and all its standstill romance and melancholia.
Some songs are about nothing, because ‘nothing’ still has a place and deserves to be sung about. The human condition and its populist nature is a fascinating subject to write on, because it’s always changing, no matter what anybody would tell you. It makes for a vast canvas.
4. Why should people listen to your music?
I don’t know if that’s for us to say, I’m not gonna lie. We know how good we are, and how relevant we can be – how important to people this band and its music can be. They know. They know why they should listen to us, just like I knew why I should listen to Lennon. I heard it, and I felt it. Sometimes when you’re reading a book, or listening to a song or watching a play or a film, and you come across something, some thought you had believed special to you… manifested right there on the page, or the record, or screen… written down who knows how long ago, and who knows how far away, by some stranger you never knew, and yet here it is. This thought, this feeling. It was yours, and then it was theirs, but now it is a shared understanding. It is like a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down and taking yours. I travel everywhere with those moments, those people with whom I now share something so powerful. I can’t tell anybody why they should listen to our music. People need to search for their friends. Why can’t it be through art that we share our experiences and cares and ideals?
5. Do you gig often? If so, what kind of reception do you tend to receive?
We gig as often as we can. Not as often as we’d like. We’re pretty distant from our local ‘scene’, not least because it’s pretty fucking terrible. It seems Wales has submitted to playing the misunderstood teen stereotype in British pop culture, and only traffics in shallow ‘scenes’ and cliques that we pretty actively despise. We’re pretty liberal with our contempt!
We’ve played small clubs in our capital city (Cardiff) a fair few times, and a couple of festivals and ‘battles’. Every time we’ve played we’ve been completely unknown to the audience, and have always started with next to no-one paying any attention to us. But our songs and our stage energy and our musicianship has always earned us people’s interest as the set goes on. I think people have a hard time knowing what to think about us when they first see us, to be honest. They probably think we’ve got ideas above our station. “Who are these wankers in their boots and hats? Who do they think they are?” But whether it’s begrudgingly given or not, we’ve always come off stage to a very positive reception. Context changes everything. If somebody sees a band having heard their songs prior, they meet the band halfway, and everything goes smoothly. At the moment we’re doing all the work, and it is, slowly but surely, working.
6. Do you have any upcoming projects that fans can look out for?
We are planning to record another three songs in September, to add to our current EP. The next batch will pick up where we left off in April, and take us into more dangerous ground, at least on one or two. Hopefully we’ll get to record our set closer, and maybe a long live session of a blues-rock number that can really show how the band cooks in a jam situation. It’s my Rory Gallagher song.
In addition, we are booking more gigs that will be taking place in South Wales and hopefully further afield in the coming months. We’re always updating our gigs on the website, so anybody who wants to see us live should check there and connect with us on Facebook, where we regularly interact with our small but growing audience.
7. Who are your major influences, both within music and without?
I suppose one third of each of us wants this band to be a Punk band – Bain voting The Ramones and The Misfits, myself the (early) Manics and The Sex Pistols, and Aled the more modern American punk-pop groups like Green Day. We really connect to a tenacious voracious defiant attitude in a band like that. Everything else doesn’t quite know its place, and ends up drifting wayward. Rock & Roll is about honesty, and sincerity. Not hedonistic twattery.
If you saw Aled play you’d recognise the ‘touched’ touch of Keith moon… He likes to litter the stage with sticks and bits of stick whenever he can. As a band I think The Who is a very good match, as a hybrid group with big songs, and a reverence for great writing, and irreverence for anything else. The influences of the Manic Street Preachers, Bowie, Pearl Jam, Foxy Shazam, Stereophonics and Guns N Roses cannot be hard to identify in our music. It’s all there.
As a lyricist I draw from the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Richey Edwards and David Bowie.I reference a lot of historical and fictional characters, because it gives me such potent ammunition, pre-loaded to such a menacing extent. One of our songs, Just An Animal, is made up almost entirely of references to Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Kubrick, Plato, George Berkeley, etc. Sometimes people have already put what you’re thinking far better than you ever could, even without meaning to. All it takes is a little artistic craftsmanship.
8. Are you gamers? If so, what do you play?
Aled, our drummer, would have nothing to say here! He’s far happier playing with trains. Bain’s got Mario Kart on the Wii, which I’m hoping to get a stint on at some point. I play all sorts, but the open world games that allow me to be the biggest bastard in the world are probably my favourites. I loved Dishonored earlier this year, and Skyrim is incredibly liberating in pretty much every regard. Incidentally, does that make me a victim of ethically liberal games, or a target market poster boy? I do hate that argument. The ‘violence in media’ argument. It’s so smug and ignorant.
9. Do you have any other hobbies?
Rugby’s a huge interest for me and Bain. Aled and I run a lot. Bain smokes. I cook. Aled is interested in railways and things like that. Films are another one for me. Films and literature. High brow, low brow – we try to cover all the bases. I suppose we needn’t mention music?
10. Have you ever had anything particularly embarrassing happen to you, either as a band or as individuals?
I suppose some of things that happen to us on stage another band might be embarrassed by. Aled throws his sticks everywhere. Occasionally a guitar lead gets pulled out if we’re enjoying ourselves a little too drastically. Strings go out of tune in hot weather. Nothing that can’t be capitalised upon with a little showmanship.
Perhaps the most embarrassing moment so far for me was at The Factory in Porth, where I forgot the words to one of our songs, and ended up just singing the words to the Manics’ Motorcycle Emptiness in the verse. Apparently only I noticed! The show must go on, as Axl Rose never said.
11. If money was no object, what would be the one thing you would choose to do?
This! I’d chuck in working behind a bar, buy myself all the equipment and support I needed, and continue doing what I am doing without limits. I won’t speak for the other two, but I believe in what I am doing. We have the best songs and best band to come out of South Wales since the Manic Street Preachers, and what we can do with a little support and a little recognition is boundless. The impact that a single band can have on popular culture is huge, and their influence timeless. Everything is propaganda. People do what they are told, and all you have to do is tell them in a loud enough voice and from a high enough perch to think for themselves, and to accept some responsibility, instead of pitying themselves and paying to be taunted over and over again by the vain, vacuous, filthy beautiful creatures they wish they could be like. If money was no object, I’d pay me to do what I’m doing.
12. If you could change one thing about Britain as a country, what would it be?
Eradicate the concept. Make Wales, Scotland, England and Ireland all foreign to each other. Revitalise the tribalist template, and allow what has always been here to be protected by its own people. The way Andy Murray fetishism and the Olympics have been marketed to try and resolve some identity as a British people, and not a collective of what we really are, is nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract with this mawkish sycophancy something very rotten about Britain indeed.
Speaking as a Welshman, I would have Welsh history taught in Welsh schools. But that’s just one thing that we aren’t allowed to do. The Welsh language, our industry, our identity, even our water. It should all belong to Wales and its people. Instead its allowed to rot and rust and be forgotten, as the people are kept tame and placid as they fade with it. Put the fate of Wales in the hands of a Welshman, and nothing more. ‘Britain’ is a long since gelid corpse of a menacing empire, and I would have it done away with as a concept altogether.
We’re from South Wales. Pretty universally South Welsh, I suppose. Pontypridd, Bridgend, Cardiff. We met online after I posted a few dozen long-winded adverts on joinmyband.com. I found Bain, Aled found me. I was pretty open about it at the time – I’m putting together the biggest and best band in the UK. Scared away a few fair-weather posers. Not these two. As a group, we’re tight, and loyal, and serious.
2. What kind of music do you play?
Rock? Pop? Pop-Rock? Punk? Britpop? Blues? Blues-Rock? Alt Rock? Indie? All of the above? We don’t compromise, not even to a genre. We are what we are, whatever that is. We might play electric guitars and drums and sound like a rock band, and much of our more conventional material would fit fairly in that paddock, but there’s so much more to us than that. Try and tell me what The Beatles are, and I’ll give you a medal if you can find a word for it. Same for Bowie, same for us. We compare ourselves against our heroes, not our peers, and as such don’t see borders as helpful when we just want to make what we create the best it can be.
3. Do you have a coherent message or any recurring themes that you try to convey through your music?
Always. But it’s not always recurring, or even consistent. We have sad songs about alienated individuals, we have triumphant songs about the same thing… We have angry songs about the modern junk-market culture, and we have songs celebrating precisely that. One of our songs, called Devil In A Party Dress, is about a Spanish lesbian I met at a Westminster wedding. Another, Crocodile Smile, is about our national village, Wales, and all its standstill romance and melancholia.
Some songs are about nothing, because ‘nothing’ still has a place and deserves to be sung about. The human condition and its populist nature is a fascinating subject to write on, because it’s always changing, no matter what anybody would tell you. It makes for a vast canvas.
4. Why should people listen to your music?
I don’t know if that’s for us to say, I’m not gonna lie. We know how good we are, and how relevant we can be – how important to people this band and its music can be. They know. They know why they should listen to us, just like I knew why I should listen to Lennon. I heard it, and I felt it. Sometimes when you’re reading a book, or listening to a song or watching a play or a film, and you come across something, some thought you had believed special to you… manifested right there on the page, or the record, or screen… written down who knows how long ago, and who knows how far away, by some stranger you never knew, and yet here it is. This thought, this feeling. It was yours, and then it was theirs, but now it is a shared understanding. It is like a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down and taking yours. I travel everywhere with those moments, those people with whom I now share something so powerful. I can’t tell anybody why they should listen to our music. People need to search for their friends. Why can’t it be through art that we share our experiences and cares and ideals?
5. Do you gig often? If so, what kind of reception do you tend to receive?
We gig as often as we can. Not as often as we’d like. We’re pretty distant from our local ‘scene’, not least because it’s pretty fucking terrible. It seems Wales has submitted to playing the misunderstood teen stereotype in British pop culture, and only traffics in shallow ‘scenes’ and cliques that we pretty actively despise. We’re pretty liberal with our contempt!
We’ve played small clubs in our capital city (Cardiff) a fair few times, and a couple of festivals and ‘battles’. Every time we’ve played we’ve been completely unknown to the audience, and have always started with next to no-one paying any attention to us. But our songs and our stage energy and our musicianship has always earned us people’s interest as the set goes on. I think people have a hard time knowing what to think about us when they first see us, to be honest. They probably think we’ve got ideas above our station. “Who are these wankers in their boots and hats? Who do they think they are?” But whether it’s begrudgingly given or not, we’ve always come off stage to a very positive reception. Context changes everything. If somebody sees a band having heard their songs prior, they meet the band halfway, and everything goes smoothly. At the moment we’re doing all the work, and it is, slowly but surely, working.
6. Do you have any upcoming projects that fans can look out for?
We are planning to record another three songs in September, to add to our current EP. The next batch will pick up where we left off in April, and take us into more dangerous ground, at least on one or two. Hopefully we’ll get to record our set closer, and maybe a long live session of a blues-rock number that can really show how the band cooks in a jam situation. It’s my Rory Gallagher song.
In addition, we are booking more gigs that will be taking place in South Wales and hopefully further afield in the coming months. We’re always updating our gigs on the website, so anybody who wants to see us live should check there and connect with us on Facebook, where we regularly interact with our small but growing audience.
7. Who are your major influences, both within music and without?
I suppose one third of each of us wants this band to be a Punk band – Bain voting The Ramones and The Misfits, myself the (early) Manics and The Sex Pistols, and Aled the more modern American punk-pop groups like Green Day. We really connect to a tenacious voracious defiant attitude in a band like that. Everything else doesn’t quite know its place, and ends up drifting wayward. Rock & Roll is about honesty, and sincerity. Not hedonistic twattery.
If you saw Aled play you’d recognise the ‘touched’ touch of Keith moon… He likes to litter the stage with sticks and bits of stick whenever he can. As a band I think The Who is a very good match, as a hybrid group with big songs, and a reverence for great writing, and irreverence for anything else. The influences of the Manic Street Preachers, Bowie, Pearl Jam, Foxy Shazam, Stereophonics and Guns N Roses cannot be hard to identify in our music. It’s all there.
As a lyricist I draw from the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Richey Edwards and David Bowie.I reference a lot of historical and fictional characters, because it gives me such potent ammunition, pre-loaded to such a menacing extent. One of our songs, Just An Animal, is made up almost entirely of references to Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Kubrick, Plato, George Berkeley, etc. Sometimes people have already put what you’re thinking far better than you ever could, even without meaning to. All it takes is a little artistic craftsmanship.
8. Are you gamers? If so, what do you play?
Aled, our drummer, would have nothing to say here! He’s far happier playing with trains. Bain’s got Mario Kart on the Wii, which I’m hoping to get a stint on at some point. I play all sorts, but the open world games that allow me to be the biggest bastard in the world are probably my favourites. I loved Dishonored earlier this year, and Skyrim is incredibly liberating in pretty much every regard. Incidentally, does that make me a victim of ethically liberal games, or a target market poster boy? I do hate that argument. The ‘violence in media’ argument. It’s so smug and ignorant.
9. Do you have any other hobbies?
Rugby’s a huge interest for me and Bain. Aled and I run a lot. Bain smokes. I cook. Aled is interested in railways and things like that. Films are another one for me. Films and literature. High brow, low brow – we try to cover all the bases. I suppose we needn’t mention music?
10. Have you ever had anything particularly embarrassing happen to you, either as a band or as individuals?
I suppose some of things that happen to us on stage another band might be embarrassed by. Aled throws his sticks everywhere. Occasionally a guitar lead gets pulled out if we’re enjoying ourselves a little too drastically. Strings go out of tune in hot weather. Nothing that can’t be capitalised upon with a little showmanship.
Perhaps the most embarrassing moment so far for me was at The Factory in Porth, where I forgot the words to one of our songs, and ended up just singing the words to the Manics’ Motorcycle Emptiness in the verse. Apparently only I noticed! The show must go on, as Axl Rose never said.
11. If money was no object, what would be the one thing you would choose to do?
This! I’d chuck in working behind a bar, buy myself all the equipment and support I needed, and continue doing what I am doing without limits. I won’t speak for the other two, but I believe in what I am doing. We have the best songs and best band to come out of South Wales since the Manic Street Preachers, and what we can do with a little support and a little recognition is boundless. The impact that a single band can have on popular culture is huge, and their influence timeless. Everything is propaganda. People do what they are told, and all you have to do is tell them in a loud enough voice and from a high enough perch to think for themselves, and to accept some responsibility, instead of pitying themselves and paying to be taunted over and over again by the vain, vacuous, filthy beautiful creatures they wish they could be like. If money was no object, I’d pay me to do what I’m doing.
12. If you could change one thing about Britain as a country, what would it be?
Eradicate the concept. Make Wales, Scotland, England and Ireland all foreign to each other. Revitalise the tribalist template, and allow what has always been here to be protected by its own people. The way Andy Murray fetishism and the Olympics have been marketed to try and resolve some identity as a British people, and not a collective of what we really are, is nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract with this mawkish sycophancy something very rotten about Britain indeed.
Speaking as a Welshman, I would have Welsh history taught in Welsh schools. But that’s just one thing that we aren’t allowed to do. The Welsh language, our industry, our identity, even our water. It should all belong to Wales and its people. Instead its allowed to rot and rust and be forgotten, as the people are kept tame and placid as they fade with it. Put the fate of Wales in the hands of a Welshman, and nothing more. ‘Britain’ is a long since gelid corpse of a menacing empire, and I would have it done away with as a concept altogether.