Artwork by @mystupidsketchbook
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
HOW can I get to know them better?
Listen & Watch: Soundcloud // Bandcamp //Youtube
Like & Follow: Facebook // Twitter
The Five Ws of 