Stuart interviews...Butterfly Explosion

How has your close relationship with God Is An Astronaut influenced your music?
Do you feel you've taken influence from them or has it been strictly professional?

I don't think it was a case of influencing our music, but in terms of developing our own sound and fullfilling that on record as well as live they've been a big influence and help. We've learned a lot from them. For the music itself, we discussed a lot about how we wanted the record to sound, what direction we were taking with it. For Torsten, having already produced God Is An Astroaut's albums, he himself saw it as a new challenge and different project to work with.

Songs like Closer and Sophia are full of character yet have quite a radio-friendly vibe
- was it a conscious decision to include a few more 'accessible' songs on the record?

Yeah it definitely was, moreso for tracks like Insulate Dreams and Tracing Stars which I thought might have been too far removed from the vibe of many of the other album tracks but we put a lot of thought into the production of them to make them fit on the album while still retaining their original pop appeal. I think it was important to have them on the album, not necessarily for a radio target, but to bring diversity to the album.

How did your relationship with GIAA come in to frutation? Who approached who?

We were asked to do a couple of support slots for them before in Dublin and later London. It was about two years ago that I phoned Torsten about producing our album and I sent him on demos of tracks. Once they finished their own album at the end of 2008 he got in touch with me again and we got started on it.

Younger bands often find relentless touring the best way to gain exposure
- how much will you be touring this new record, and when?

That's true but it also depends on what touring opportunities are on offer. If it's not planned right and not promoted it can be a waste of time and money.
I think it's important to put a structure and plan in place before rushing into an album release or even an album recording. We could have rushed an album out
2 years ago but we wouldn't have had any plan in place with regards touring and I think it would have been a mistake in terms of getting exposure outside Ireland.

Even now with the US and European touring we lined up surrounding this album release it's tough getting any big exposure but the album seems to be stirring interest far afield and that's what we hoped to achieve in the first month of the release. The week we played SXSW our album broke into the CMJ 200 college radio charts and it's charting high on about 30 stations now, none of whom probably heard of us two months ago.

Any plans to come to Newcastle?

Would love to, it would really depend on one of two things, either finding another UK tour support to do later this year or a local promoter getting tips from good music fans like you and getting us over sooner!

Your songs appear to be more instrumentally predominant than vocally
- how does this translate in live shows? Is it difficult to not drown out the vocals?

Yeah I think that's generally how it works live, when it does reach those explosive moments
we try not compensate levels for the sake of the vocals. The guitar and keyboard melodies
are just as important as the vocal melodies, that's what the music is made up of, layers of melodies, it's not your standard arrangement of vocals sitting out nice and clear on top of the music.

What generic labelling would you use to tag Lost Trails,
and what bands do you feel you have a close sound to?

It may not sound like these but I guess you could draw connections to some of the alternative
rock bands of the 90s like Gish-era Pumpkins and we also get compared to Ride quite a bit
who, to be honest, I'd only be familiar with a few of their singles. I guess the common connection
might be that it's a wide and layered sound we go for and it's music with emotion. We never wanted
to make an album that tried to return to that era and replicate those sounds though.
We actually listened to and referenced several albums we love from that time and recent years, not to see how we could do what they did, but to see what new things we could do differently to develop our own sound and one that is of its own time.

How long did the songwriting & recording process of this debut take?

The recording was spread out over, just on a weekend basis.
As for the songwriting well you could mark the beginnings of that back to six years
ago when I wrote the track Chemistry. For me it was an old track but one I always wanted to re-record when I got the chance to do a full album. We knew most of the tracks we wanted to record two years ago, a couple more were written and added
along the way.

Would you agree that a debut release captures the sound of a band at their purest,
before the pressures of artistic evolution?

Possibly yeah, I think for our next record we have to approach it a bit different but I think it'll be a natural enough choice of direction rather than a forced one.
There's some strong tracks we left out of this album as they simply didn't fit the vibe the album was going in. One of them I even intended releasing as the first single but we decided it'd be best suited to leave it for the next record. It was more like synth pop 80s
than alt rock 90s.'Lost Trails' has plenty of ambient moments but I think it's the closest we will ever go
to making a "rock" album.

At this stage in your career, Butterfly Explosion is yet to be bound by stereotypes
- would you rather be a commercially successful act or a more cult band?

I wouldn't really care if this falls under cult status or not but if reaching more people means commercial success than I guess we'd more than welcome that. It's not something I'll be holding my breath for though.

We felt there was an audience out there for this album that it would connect with and that it might take some time to reach many. It was never intended and never realistic that we'd put out an album that would make an immediate or big impact. Really it just came down to making a record that was true to ourselves. The decision to include a couple of radio friendly pop tracks on the album was not a marketing strategy, that's just us showing our innate pop tendancies.

What inspired the vivid and raw album art?

My mate Dave Flynn in London had done some poster work for us before so I talked to him
about the style I had in mind. Without restricting him to specific details, none of which I had anyway,
I suggested the artwork of bands like Trail Of Dead as references, something with a lot of depth and mystery
with dark but warm colours. That's as good, or bad, as an artistic direction as I could give him
but he has brilliant visual ideas so didn't need much direction.

Stuart interviews...The Joy Formidable (again!)

“We were just laughing through the entire first song, the entire weekend was an incredible experience,” reminisces Rizty Bryan, front-woman (or is that ‘person’?) The Joy Formidable, on the last weekend of June 2010. The band played a support slot for Sir Paul McCartney at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, before opening the Other Stage at Glastonbury the next day. Impressive, considering at the time the band had released just one E.P. “It’s definitely something we’d love to do again, I mean, you’ve got to have a target,” adds bassist Rhydian Dafydd. Although just three hours later, the band would perform to a respectable 300-strong crowd at the O2 Academy 2, this Welsh trio are born for the big stage. The band released their debut LP, The Big Roar, in January to strong critical acclaim after a year of stop-start writing around extensive touring.

Unlike current hype-fuelled acts such as The Vaccines and James Blake, The Joy Formidable’s ascension to the public eye has been the result of four years of extensive touring and recording. “It’s important to build up, I mean we’ve never really been hyped by a major publication. We try and avoid all the reviews and things like that, even the good ones. At the end of the day, what does it matter what one person thinks? We go out there and just enjoy doing what we do. Hype’s ultimately going to lead to people being disappointed one way or another.”

Rhydian cites Arcade Fire as a model to aspire to; “Just look at how they’ve done things, they’ve just focused on making great records without letting all the pressures get to them; they’ve managed to do things on their terms and look at them now, selling out arenas. That’s ultimately where we want to take the band. We know what we want to do but it’ll always be how we want.”

Critics praised The Big Roar for the sheer intensity of its sound, including reworked songs from the debut EP A Balloon Called Moaning. Although the band has recently signed a major label contract, this intensity of sound originates from the most natural of writing environments. “We wrote the songs for the new album in the same sort of way that we wrote the EP, in our bedrooms at home. It’s difficult to be creative locked away in a studio; our way’s always worked for us and I can’t imagine that changing in the foreseeable future.”

The debut album may have only been released last month but the band have no intentions of resting on their laurels over the coming years when it comes to new music. Songs such as Greyhound in the Slips and Popinjay were released inbetween the EP and album – a trend that’s set to continue. “Writing and releasing ten songs every two years sounds boring to us, I [Ritzy] go fucking mad if I can’t write and get some ideas down when I want. I don’t want to be waiting two years to get another album out, we’ve got some rough ideas already. Sometimes it’s frustrating on tour when you’ve got this idea in your head and you just want to get it down properly in the studio. “

“As a band we’ve got a great chemistry and so it doesn’t feel difficult to be creative. With the box set of the album we put out a second disc. We could’ve put out a double album if it’d been appropriate for a debut.”

It’s a testament to their ambition that the band are able to see past their hectic short-term future. The current UK tour merges straight into a mainland European tour, before an extensive run in the US. “It’s the first time we’ll be doing east to west and then west to east. Touring in the UK feels easy afterwards, you’ll arrive in Scotland and think “oh, that’s it?” whereas in America you’re on the road for hours every day. I don’t think we’ll be home until festival season now, so we’ve got our big suitcases packed.”

“Festival season is great though, especially when you’ve only got the one that weekend so you can relax and see some bands yourself. Playing 11am like Glastonbury means you can enjoy the day and have a few drinks.” Drummer Matt Thomas extends the idea; “We should put that in our booking contracts – no gigs after half five in the morning!”

With an ever-growing fan base, critical backing and an exhaustive ambition to work upwards, it may only be a matter of time before The Joy Formidable are able to make such demands. It’s refreshing to hear a band with the sound to fill the stadiums they aspire to play once more.

Stuart interviews...The Bluetones

Although the release of The Bluetone’s sixth album, A New Athens will undoubtedly reaffirm their commercial twilight period, Mark Morriss and co. are currently embarking on a 22-date promotional tour. Fresh from their show at Academy 2, we caught up with Mark and had spoke to him about what this year has in store for one of the few living remnants of the Britpop era.

“It feels great to be back out touring properly again. We’ve done a few smaller tours over the last couple of years but now we’ve got some new songs to play. Being back in Newcastle is fantastic because the crowd are always so passionate and always have been. There’s a lot of good memories of shows here.”

Despite the band’s constant presence on the live circuit, A New Athens is the first LP of new material for over four years, marking the start of a busy year for The Bluetones.

“We’re doing this huge tour now which culminates in the album release. Hopefully that should get our name back out there some more, then we’re going to go a bit further afield, maybe Europe and Japan. After that we’ll be back on tour in the UK over the winter.”

“We’ve been playing four or five new songs at every gig so far but by then the fan base will be more familiar with the new songs, so they will want to come out and see us again. On this tour we’ve been typically playing about a 60/40 split on old and new songs.”

“The hits like Bluetonic and Slight Return though always have to be the first ones on the set list.”

A New Athens has been a long term project, with the band entering the studio over twelve months ago.

“Right at the beginning of recording, we demoed about eight or nine songs. From this number, we typically will use about four or five tracks on the final product. The title track, The Day That Never Was and a couple more are instances of that. We then used these songs as markers and the structure of the album was written around these songs, rather than them simply being another part of it.”

“To be honest when you enter a project, you have a better idea of what you don’t want the record to sound like, as opposed to what you want it to. Since the last record, some of us have become fathers and we didn’t want to force that into our songs. That’s not what we’re about.”

“I guess if you described the record, there’s an underlying theme about movement. It’s far from being a concept album though, you’d have to really read deep to pick something up there.”

Like many more seasoned bands, The Bluetones have chosen to release their next album in a traditional manner – there are no free downloads and Myspace streams, but simply eleven songs available to buy in the traditional way.

“Piracy is a bit of an issue at the moment, I can see the advantages of it for smaller artists but it’s a bit like a builder building a house and then somebody squatting in it. We’ve worked on producing these songs just like every other artist, for a long time. To have somebody take them away is just plain theft.”

The Bluetones release their sixth record, A New Athens, on May 3^rd.

“Spotify and similar services may be legal too but at the end of the day it’s still not right. I’d agree that it devalues music.”

Stuart interviews...Jon Allen

It was a cold, damp night in Newcastle and a budding music reporter had a spontaneous interview with the upcoming Jon Allen, playing at the Cluny that night. In between the getting lost in Ousebourne Park, the working on Jon’s merchandise stand and forgetting a Dictaphone, I sat down with Jon and discussed the highs, lows and plans for his careers thus far.

On your biography online you state your influences as Bob Dylan and the 70s; when writing is this something you’ve consciously aspired to or is more a stylistic trait?

It totally depends on how you feel when writing. Sometimes the ideas flow naturally, but others you need to give them a bit of inspiration; there’s no clear cut distinction

This is your second headlining show in Newcastle in quick succession, which is clearly a vital part of young artists becoming established. Do you think a headlining tour, or supporting another band creates more exposure? Which is most financially viable?

I usually find the supporting slots more economically viable and it’s a nice challenge to try and win over a new audience. I prefer playing to my own fans though, it’s a nice feeling knowing they are there to see you and not waiting for another act.

Leading on from this, who would be your dream act to open for?

Bob Dylan the obvious choice, and Neil Young would also be special. On a smaller scale though the Flynn Brothers as they’ve got a similar sound to us.

Recording with Mark Knopfler is a tremendously big claim to fame for an artist with only one L.P. Who approached who?

It was pretty coincidental, we were both at the same party and just got talking. He saw me playing later on and liked what I did so offered to work with me. ‘Sarah’ on the new E.P. is the track we recorded.

How do you feel the experience influenced/inspired you?

It was interesting to see how he worked, he is so professional in the studio. The sessions were intense too as everything had to be perfect. He’d record six layers of guitar and then mix them. It gave me an insight to that level though and gave me a lot of confidence; it made me realise that level isn’t out of reach.

For future recordings and tours, would you like to expand upon your backing band? If so, what types of musicians would you like to see come in?

For the moment the four piece is working really well both financially and artistically, we’ve got enough legs in this sound to experiment with. A brass section would be fun to work with one day though.

Is there a lyrical concept behind Dead Man’s Suit? Do you feel under pressure when writing new music to come up with themes equally wrapped in metaphor?

Definitely under pressure yes, most artists are when writing new material. I’m on the tricky second album now just experimenting and I don’t want to just repeat what I’ve already done. The fans can sometimes give some help when playing new songs but people don’t know how to react to new material. Stevie Wonder’s Superstition got a poor reception the first time that was played, and look what happened there.

What types of audience do you find mostly at shows? Do you feel there’s somewhat something of a resurgence in folk music, with the likes of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver finding success, whilst a new generation is discovering the likes of Cash, Dylan and Young?

Yeah I’d agree there’s a definite resurgence in the sound, there’s more exposure of the genre at the moment. If we’re played on Radio 2 then the older crowd tends to show but I’ve been played on Absolute Radio a decent amount which has introduced some younger listeners.

What’s next for you once the tour is over? Are you anticipating hitting the festival circuit over summer or are you more focused on writing new material before hitting the road again?

Hopefully getting a bit of both done, we’re definitely playing on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury which will be great. Europe is on the cards too for a bit. It’s quite hard to write properly when on the road and the label want a new release, but they’ve also been giving me lots of tour dates so it’s difficult managing it all!

Jon Allen – Dead Man’s Suit is out now