The Duke Spirit Interview

The Duke Spirit has collected fans all over the world with their effervescent live performances and unique blend of squealing guitars, churning riffs, and powerful drumming. Having spent the past eight months nurturing their third album, the Duke Spirit are now ready to unleash it onto the world. We catch up with lead singer Liela Moss ahead of a free acoustic show at HMV Leeds to celebrate the release of ‘Bruiser’.

What can people expect from your new album Bruiser?

I think its pretty obvious sound wise that this is much more focused and profoundly more atmospheric, as a band we are much more galvanised. Things have been bought into a shaper focus on this record, certainly there are moments were there is more space whereas previously we had lots of smashing guitars, its still got a lot of force but perhaps more melody. The record is nursing, it’s sort of traumatic but medicinal at the same time.

We knew we wanted to strip away and make it feel learner and meaner on this trip so that’s what we have done. Rather than having lots of layers of things, which you can get carried away with making music, you want to keep adding. You want to keep playing but we resisted that and we joke that we put these songs on a diet, chopped out anything that wasn’t truly satisfying.

Free Acoustic show at Leeds HMV what was the motivation behind that?

As a fan of music it’s the sort of thing I would have done when I was first getting into music and seeing al lot of gigs before I was in a band. I would have loved that diversity of seeing a band you are going to see that night but see them playing a few shows acoustically. Seeing them in a slightly skewed perspective makes the gig more powerful and weirder. I think its weird seeing bands play in stores but a good weird.

Bombay Bicycle Club Interview

Bombay Bicycle Club burst onto the music scene in 2006 after winning Virgin Mobile’s “Road to V” competition and opening V festival that year as the prize. In the years that have passed the band have gathered critical acclaim, a legion of fans and a host of award nominations and the band are still only in their early 20’s. When we chat to lead singer Jack Steadman he is understandably tired after having just played at a host of festivals but still he manages to talk enthusiastically about the best moments so far and the latest album ‘A different kind of fix’.

How was opening V festival all those years ago?

We didn’t really take it seriously at the time; we were just 16 years old. We entered the competition as a joke; we never thought we would win. When we got there we were just excited to have backstage access, meeting all these people and getting free drinks. It’s difficult to think about, you kind of pretend it’s just any other gig.

Do you think that maybe you were a bit too young for that kind of exposure?

Probably for us, it’s just weird because most people look back to their teenage years they would probably be quite embarrassed. It’s strange to have those years with lots of people interviewing you and filming you. If I listen to the songs we were writing then it’s quite embarrassing.

Even after road to V we weren’t going to quit school and pursue our dream, we were very sensible about it. We were in no rush to do anything quicker than we wanted to. We very much took our time and it was a slow and gradual process for us.

How is the new album different from your first?

Its electric, I guess the biggest difference is we are a lot more confident with the production side of things. Before all we were doing was just writing songs on the guitar and someone else would record them because we didn’t know how to. We have different styles involved and we are doing a lot more on the production side as well.

It’s always good to have another set of ears. I would never like to work without a producer because I think it’s an incredibly important part of writing an album. Having that person there, for us we need someone, we need an authoritative figure. We are unsure of ourselves and not very confident at it so we need someone who can say which parts are good and which parts are bad.