WHO are they? BILKare SOL ABRAHAMS(vocals and guitar), LUKE HARE (bass) and HARRY GRAY (drums).
“The band has been going for about three years now, playing with different members and writing the tunes. Just slugging it around Chelmsford, Essex playing dead venues and trying to get people to listen to the demos” says BILK‘s lead singer. “The final line up came about a year a go when LUKE joined, we met through Instagram and everything just clicked.”
WHAT is the inspiration behind their songs? “The songs are just about life in general and some of the experiences I’ve gone through and also the things that surround me growing up where I live. I’m not trying to make a statement with the lyrics, it’s simply just commenting on the, sometimes bleak, reality of things and being honest.”
“Musically, inspiration is drawn from THE JAM, ARCTIC MONKEYS, JAMIE T, THE STREETS and THE SEX PISTOLS.”
Debut single Give Up, produced by RICH TURVEY (BLOSSOMS, THE CORAL) at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, is about “the idea of not giving up your aim when you’ve got your surroundings and other things going on in life distracting you. Hence the ‘trying not to flop my college course and then get employed’ bit.”
WHERE are they from? “We grew up and spent our teenage years in Chelmsford, Essex. Chelmsford has influenced some of the lyrics that have been put into the songs as it’s a boring place and not much is ever really happening. The music scene in Essex is proper dead as there’s no (or not many) interesting bands. It’s more DJs and rappers.”
“This has shaped us a band as it’s taught us to keep grinding and working hard for it as it’s difficult getting gigs round where we live and it makes it hard for bands to gain a following.”
WHY are they called Bilk? The name BILK was inspired by SOL’s dad who is a London cabbie. “Getting ‘bilked’ is slang for when a cabbie has a customer that runs off without paying the fare…”.
WHEN can I see them live? “We have got a load of shows down south that are being booked at the moment including local shows in Essex and also London shows.” Find all dates here.
WHO are they? The band consists of Laetitia Bocquet (vocals), Sam O’Donovan (guitar, vocals), Finnegan Kidd (drums), Camilla Morelli (guitar), Jamie Graeme (bass).
Their single We’re Done is out now on Crocodile Records (download and cassette).
“We (Sam and Laetitia) met a year ago through mutual friends at a concert in East London, we jokingly talked about writing songs together but actually followed through with it. After writing a few demos we were asked by Crocodile Rcds to be on their summer compilation. This is when Jamie and Finn joined to record Ice Cream. After that, we played our first show in September. Camilla has recently joined us as second guitar.”
WHAT is the inspiration behind their songs? Laetitia: “I mostly write silly lyrics about the embarrassing aspects of being in love, especially about being obsessed with someone and getting rejected. I’m quite a fan of the way bands like Sleater-Kinney, Garbage or Lush write about that. Some of our songs are a bit more serious, like To My Dead Friend that is about a close friend of mine who passed away. But my lyrics aren’t always from personal experience, I don’t slash people’s tyres and I don’t set dogs on fire!”
Sam: “Musically, we’re influenced by lots of British and American alternative pop bands from the early 80s through to the mid 90s. Pavement, Orange Juice, The Pastels, The Smiths, Weezer to name a few. We make playlists on Spotify – follow us and find out more!”
WHERE are they from? Sam: “I grew up in London and it’s been great because there is a lot of talented musicians and creative people who live here. As London is so diverse it means that I’ve had the opportunity to meet like minded people from all over the world, Laetitia being from Paris and Camilla from Rome for example.”
Laetitia: “English isn’t my first language, I’m French, so it really shapes the way I write, I make a lot mistakes. My ex called it broken English. I can’t even pronounce some of the words properly when I sing… I’ve been in London for 8 years now so I don’t think I can improve much more at that stage! I love the music scene in London, a lot happens all the time and it gave us the opportunity to play a lot of nice shows in only 6 months. But I’m from Paris so we’re planning a show there before the summer.”
WHY are they called Average Sex? Sam: “A few years back, after a break up, I was having quite a lot of one night stands… After one in particular, I realised that I wasn’t having a good time and sex had become quite an average activity in my life and I thought Average Sex would make a good band name. When Laetitia and I needed a name for the band, I thought that name would really suit the vibe and themes of the songs we were writing so I suggested it.”
WHEN can I see them live? Catch the band play live in London at Shackelwell Arms on April 27th and at The Victoria on May 27th.
WHO is he? “Andy George Jackson; one of the left-leaning liberal intelligentsia bubble babblers, with a penchant for the absurd and a skull-full of lightning.”
WHAT is he singing about? “Now then, let’s not get too agitated about understanding the artist, it’s a slippery slope in modern times and one we can only slope slippery downwards on; let’s leave the therapist’s couch in the studio.”
WHY the name Et Cetera? “The above answers give way to alluding towards a partial explanation at least.”
WHERE can I download his music? “My two debut songs are available for pay-what-you-want download from here. 50% of all money is going to the Migraine Trust. I was struck down last year with vestibular migraines and labyrinthitis, which I still suffer from, so am very much aware that much more research is needed to be done to better understand the conditions.”
WHEN can I see him live? “No plans to perform as of yet.”
WHO are they? “Four of us – Tim Monaghan, Danny Thorpe, Simon John and Matt Welch – have been playing music together for ages. Racing Glaciers was the first time we started writing and releasing things, in 2012. Matt (Scheepers) joined us on drums about three years ago.”
Racing Glaciers’ debut album Caught In The Strange is out through Killing Moon on August 5th.
WHAT is the inspiration behind their debut album? “It ended up being quite a heady album, there’s a few darker tracks and we got more experimental with sounds and arrangements. Inspiration comes from our own experiences as a band or individuals really. In the end it’s down to whoever’s listening to take it in their own way.”
WHERE did they grow up? “We grew up in Macclesfield, it’s near the hills and you can easily get out in the forest, or Manchester if you want – it’s just a town like anywhere else. Matt (drums) grew up down South. I think touring and travelling has shaped us more than anything, especially gigging round Europe.”
WHY are they called Racing Glaciers? “No idea, it fits what we do so we’re happy.”
WHO are they? Brooklyn based Beverly are Drew Citron (vox/guitar) and Scott Rosenthal (bass/guitar). Their forthcoming second album The Blue Swell is out 6 May on Kanine Records. Drew explains how it all began.
“Scott and I started playing together in Frankie Rose’s touring band. Beverly was a side project and morphed into a full fledged vehicle for our best songs. Scott and I have many things in common, but the only really important ones are The Smiths and Elliott Smith. We discovered this early on in our friendship and it colors everything we do in Beverly.”
WHAT is the inspiration behind their songs? “A lot of the lyrics on The Blue Swell touch on themes of loss and change in New York. I wrote the first track Bulldozer sitting at the Williamsburg waterfront. It’s about how astonishingly fast and drastic the change in the buildings, the park, and the feel of the neighborhood happened; how it basically put on a garish halloween costume, forever. Many of the other songs also speak to changing friendships, and growing up.”
WHERE did they grow up? “I grew up in San Francisco and Scott is from New Jersey. We both moved to Brooklyn to play music. I love living here, it’s still the best place on earth to see shows, any night of the week. I really enjoy meeting new bands, working as a live sound engineer, and producing my friends’ records. I don’t care about anything besides music, so it works out well for me to be here.”
WHY the name Beverly? “It was either that or Angela.”
WHEN can I see them live? Beverly are currently on a US and European tour including showcases at SXSW, Austin and the following UK dates:
Mon 16 May: The Soup Kitchen, Manchester
Tues 17 May: The Louisiana, Bristol
Wed 18 May: The Victoria, London
WHO are they? Weddings are London-based five-piece consisting of Dafydd Vaid (drummer), Colin O’Connor (bassist), Joshua Ballantyne (guitarist), Justin Colley (guitarist) and Maria Sagun (singer).
Here they tell us how the band came to be. “Colin and Justin have known each other for about 10 years, and briefly played together in a circuit-bent electro speed gabber band that built up a small following in the South Coast. We both slowly migrated to London, Colin ended up playing in a metalcore band with Josh for a couple of years. Justin then spent a few years pursuing electronic hip hop and rap, before Colin, Justin and Josh started getting itchy to play some live music and got together about 12 months ago to start putting together material that would turn out to be Weddings.”
“The three of us had been playing and writing bits together for a few months, when we started a Gumtree search for a drummer. We hired a practice room to meet a drummer, who cancelled at late notice because of flight delays, but had the room booked so the three of us just went anyway. The practice room is on a fairly busy street, and part way through our session, Dafydd just walked into the room and asked what we were playing ‘cos he liked it! We dropped it that we didn’t have a drummer, which he took as an invite to just sit down and start playing the drums, and turned out he was pretty good and totally on board with what we were doing…so yeh, that’s how we met Dafydd!”
“The four of us played together for 4 or 5 months, developing a sound and writing music, which worked instrumentally, but felt a bit empty without vocals. Justin played a bunch of the recordings to his girlfriend – Maria, who hadn’t been in a band before, but could sing, shout and was completely into the same styles of music. She knew most of the band anyway, so came to a few practices, did a few recordings, and that was the set-up finalized, and it felt great! We recorded our DIY-produced demo over earlier this year, and put the tracks on line in March. We started getting inundated with gig offers pretty quickly and have been building up a following in London over the past three months.”
“The sound developed into the dancey, colourful punk through a combination of euphoric, jagged guitars and Dafydd’s high energy drums – sonically, that’s what we’re doing – we want our shows to be fun for us and for the audience – we want it to be an event and memorable for both parties. You need to get up there and sweat, put all your energy into whatever you’re doing, you need to do make it happen.”
WHAT are they singing about? “The themes range from relationship perspectives, to self-reflection, the concept of self and trying to find a purpose and identity in the world, taking a step back and realizing that really, this is quite a strange existence we subscribe to, but also, that things aren’t really so bad…or are they…either way, the lyrics tend to approach this in an abstract way, interspliced with more lucid phrases…in some way reflective of how we all live our lives.”
WHERE are they from? “We’ve all had different upbringings, and Maria is the only one who grew up in London – Colin grew up in Malaysia, Dafydd in Texas, and Justin and Josh in separate small towns in England.” Now based in London, what do they think of their local music scene? “It’s really great, there are a bunch of great promoters and venues, and we can kind of sit somewhere around the punk/indie spectrum without being fully one or the other.”
WHY are they called ‘Weddings’? “We want to be the first dance, the first kiss, the sex and the hangover.”
WHEN can I see them live? “We have a few out of town shows in Brighton and Worcester in early September, and are playing an All Tomorrow’s Parties gig on 1 September at Village Underground with Ought and Shopping.”
UPCOMING GIGS:
1 September – Village Underground// All Tomorrow’s Parties
6 September – The Hope and Ruin, Brighton
19 September – Worcester Music Festival
WHO are they? Kassio are a four-piece band consisting of Rhiane Hacker (vocals/rhythm guitar), Tom Wallis (lead guitar), Charlie Costelloe (drums) and Dom King (bassist).
Rhiane tells us how the band formed.“I wanted to start up a band and so last year I asked around if anyone else wanted to form one. Tom messaged me along with Dan (former bassist) and we then had to look for a drummer, and eventually found Charlie and officially formed in January this year. We recently changed bassists, who Charlie knew so we’re all friends together in this band.”
“We’re working on an EP very soon. Hoping to maybe release something by August. We have a few friends who help us out with producing our music. Laurence Nelson made a fantastic job producing and mixing our first single. We release everything ourselves. It’s a lot of work managing it all but it’s all part of the fun.”
WHAT are they singing about? “I write the lyrics which are generally personal experiences that inspire me to write something, from relationships to social comments and those sorts of things. Musically, it’s a collective thing within the band and what we’re feeling at the time, how we think the songs should sound” tells us Rhiane.
“Without Warning is the effects of intimate relationships with people, and in particular, how you can fall so fast for someone that you didn’t expect to happen, hence the title ‘Without Warning’, and you know this isn’t a good thing but somehow you just can’t shake it off. It’s one of those relationships you know after a while, it isn’t going to go anywhere even after those times you’ve spent with each other and effort you’ve made.”
WHERE are they from? “Myself and Tom have grown up in Somerset, England. He’s grown up in Bridgwater and I’ve grown up in and around places – because I’ve moved from Bristol to Weston to Nempnett Thrubwell to Brent Knoll – and Charlie grew up in Bristol along with Dom” explains Rhiane.
“I think Tom and I would say we haven’t really been influenced by our area particularly. There is a sort of local music scene but they’re more cover/tribute bands. There’s the heavier alternative scene in Bridgwater as well, but we don’t really fit into that, whereas Bristol has influence me more with the music availability there. Charlie’s definitely been shaped by the Bristol music scene along with Dom. He was lucky enough to be around when The Croft was still going, where he saw his fair share of some great shows. There’s such a buzz in Bristol when it comes to the music scene.”
WHY ‘Kassio’? “We wanted something fun, something that would stick and sounded really cool. It was a case of going through a load of ideas at first and seeing which sounded the best” recalls Rhiane. “I’ve got a CASIO keyboard and someone suggested it and it stuck. It sounded cool enough so we changed the spelling around to make it more of our own (and make it search friendly for people looking for our music than the brand) and here we are today.”
WHEN can I see them live? “We’re currently in the process of booking some gigs and a possible small UK tour in August.”
WHO are they? The Bronze Medal are a five-piece band consisting of Rory O’Gorman, Chris Hillier, Daniel Rogers, Mike Barnett and Robin Southwell.
“We all grew up in the same area, we’re all essentially either friends from school or from playing in bands together when we were teenagers. Then when we were older we all moved around and went to University so we ended up really spread out.” recalls Chris. (x)
“Robin and I went on a busking trip across Scandinavia a couple of years into university. And when we were travelling we wrote some songs. So when we got back we started a band and we would just play together whenever we were all home. Well, what kind of started the writing process was everybody being in the same place for the first time. So for the first few years we were all in different cities. Then at the end of 2012, beginning of 2013 we all ended up living in the same place. So we could actually start putting a lot more time into making music. The planets finally aligned. And we could actually rehearse and record regularly.” (x)
The band worked on their debut album ‘Darlings’ in Iceland with Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, Sigur Ros, Feist) and was released in 2014 via New Music Club.
WHAT is their songwriting process?
“I write song ideas on my own and so does Robin, then we share those ideas with each other, finish a draft between us and then bring what is usually a nearly completed song to the rehearsal room and knock the dents out of it. So there’s a lot of back and forth before it becomes a real song, because as a pair we work independently but then hijacking or finishing each other’s ideas along the way. Then, everyone else weighs in and we shout at each other until we think it’s working. That’s always been the way it works.” – Chris (x)
Credit: Dave Tree
WHERE are they from? They are all from Bath, England, and the surrounding area.
But has their travelling through Scandinavia been an inspiration for their songs? “We wrote some of the first songs out there but I don’t think the places we’ve been have actually affected our sound much. They’re generally songs about home. But sometimes when you’re out off somewhere else, that’s when you tend to write about home.” – Chris (x)
WHY ‘The Bronze Medal’? They are named after the Scottish indie rock band Idlewild’s song, The Bronze Medal.
WHEN can I see them live? This summer the bandwill be performing at Haldern Pop Festival and Burning Eagle Festival in Germany.
WHO is he?
“My name is David Logan; I get called Dc by most of my friends. I was born in Scotland in the 80’s, where my mother grew up and moved as a five-year-old to Northern Ireland where my father grew up. There’s such a rich musical culture and heritage in both places.
I’ve always had melodies and rhythms running around my head and as a young kid growing up was always banging on furniture, messing around on various instruments belonging to my Dad, aunts, and uncles. I grew up with a strong mix of Celtic Folk, British Pop and American Blues and Rock always blaring somewhere, as well as having a lot of exposure to spiritually focused music as I spent a lot of time knocking around the local estates, pubs and in various little faith communities.
I really got captivated by music in a more focused and obsessive way quite late on actually, when I was about 18 and started to play guitar and write songs at that stage. The first thing I did was write a song before ever learning to play songs by other people. It was a song about my parent’s tempestuous marriage and eventual divorce. I then started to learn covers and play in local pubs at open mics.
I moved to London after finishing school, got a job and started a band and then with many twists and turns ended up kicking off this solo project OFFICER a couple of years ago. On my upcoming debut album Myriads I played guitar, synth, and piano and sang, writing all of the songs and lyrics and co-producing the album.”
WHAT is he singing about?
“I write about a lot of different things that life has or is taking me through. I guess it’s all about relationship really… My relationships with others, my relationship with the idea of home, the city, the world, my relationship with my own self, my relationship with what we are taught in our culture, my relationship with great books and pieces of art, my relationship with the figure of God, my relationship with my family and friends. I have been working with homeless and vulnerable people in London for the last decade and some songs are about my experiences in that very challenging world and the need and hurt and hope I see every single day.”
WHERE is he from? “I grew up in both Scotland and Ireland. They both have music running through the rivers, rushing through the forests, washing up on the seashore, gliding through the hills, clanging out of the taverns and homes. It’s really incredible and has left a permanent indelible mark on my soul and my music. Those landscapes will forever be a part of whatever it is that drives my music in its first moments of creation.
Along with that I spent my first few years in the city and then have now been in London a long time and spent most of my recent life in various cities and so I have been hugely enriched in terms of my music, ideas, experiences and mind set by other cultures and the mad constant clashes of the engines of the creative urban environment and its amazing people. I think if you put those two environments together you end up with a pretty accurate representative or metaphoric landscape for my music.
Often as I physically walk through the cities I am spiritually or mentally walking through somewhere like Donegal or the highlands of Scotland and playing and listening to music helps me to marry the two very contrasting and separate homelands together and so I think I get much more out of life wherever I am.”
WHY ‘OFFICER’?
“OFFICER works on different levels and so never feels boring to me. Firstly, it’s as simple as I just like it…I personally think it’s a beautiful word to hear, speak and look at, and yet it has a cantankerous complexity and darkness to it in some of its connotations.
I think that growing up in Northern Ireland through the tail end of the troubles has definitely, to some subconscious degree shaped my choosing or more acceptance of that moniker. There were ‘officers’ everywhere… of the paramilitaries, police, religious groups, army and all the rest. I guess I like the idea of the word being used for something a little more positive and redemptive – something that brings people together rather than causes division, as music so often powerfully does. Although, I’ve got to say I don’t really think of it on that level at all from day to day – only when people ask me!
Originally it was suggested to me by my friend who thought it would really suit what I was doing with my music and it just stuck with me and kept trumping its rival ideas for aliases, so I took it on.”
WHEN can I see him live?
OFFICER is currently piecing together his band from the musicians who helped him record his upcoming debut album Myriads to tour the UK, Ireland & Germany in autumn 2015. In the meantime you can catch him June 11 at Citadel, St Helens (UK) for a live acoustic show.
WHO is he? Weinf is 20-year-old singer-songwriter Dani Ruiz who started playing guitar the moment he formed his first band, the Roulotte Roosters, back in 2012. “The band started the day I bought the guitar. I didn’t have a clue how to play, but we worked it out” he recalls.
“As the years passed, I began to have the need to do something else and in the summer of 2014 my solo project was born. I almost randomly selected 4 of my tracks and I recorded them in my room, with a borrowed computer and a borrowed microphone. I borrowed everything. I should change my name to The Borrower.”
He is currently working on new songs he hopes to release very soon, “again borrowing everything.”
WHAT is he singing about? “I sing about almost everything that crosses my mind. You And I Are Dead is about break-up, The Basement is about the place where a friend and I hang out (his basement, how imaginative). Riding My Bicycle is a weird story I made up and Whiskey is purely about whiskey. It depends very much on my mood and the things going on in my life.”WHERE is he from? Weinf is from a city near Barcelona, Spain. “I don’t really think that the place where I live reflects that much on my songs” he tells us. “The musical scene here is a bit messy, and it’s really difficult to get involved. A small number of bands play almost every gig around and almost nobody takes risks bringing new artists to the scene – neither the venues or the press. But I guess this happens everywhere, so I personally don’t blame anyone for this. It’s the artist that has to do something to catch the attention of the public in the first place, has to have something to offer.”
WHY ‘Weinf ‘? “I really don’t know. It’s a word that I randomly made up a long, long time ago and people called me Weinf since then. I like the name, although it means nothing. Even the pronunciation of it is so disparate from one person to another than I don’t know how to pronounce it anymore!”
WHEN can I see him live? Hopefully soon! There are no gigs booked at the moment as he is focused on the record right now.
WHAT are they singing about?
WHY ‘Kassio’?
WHERE is he from?
WHERE is he from?
The Five Ws of 