The Ting Tings Interview

After their first album We Started Nothing was released in 2008 it seemed the whole music world went crazy for the Tings Tings unique sound. They were nominated for a host of awards and the album went on to sell over 2 million copies. There doesn’t seem to be a unified genre the band belong to though, are they pop? Are they Indie? Are they synth pop? To see what the band think and to find out about the new album we talked to Jules de Martino who provides drums, lead guitar and vocals for the band.

You and Katie were in the band Dear Eskiimo and the relationship with your record label broke down, were you tempted to leave the music industry?

That band was a band that we wanted to be in, me and Katie and another guy. We formed a band that we were serious about. We made a record and got signed and we were very conscious about what we wanted to be. We were into Portishead and we wanted to kind of be into that trippy, laid back style of music. Going through that process meant a hell of a lot to us and we were very precious about it. Then everything went wrong, not just in terms of losing the record deal, when the band spilt up we lost friends, me and Katie didn’t speak. It was the classic cliché band stories that went wrong and it put us off being in a band for life. Then me and Katie hooked up and started doing a bit of writing, like artists always do. We were living in a mill in Islington, with a load of other artists and without wanting to be in a band the Ting Tings were created. If you can image that feeling of going around the world, having a successful album, playing great shows and not having any of that corporate stuff. That was the feeling of euphoria we had with this band and it all makes sense again.

Lianne La Havas Interview

Lianne La Havas is tipped to be huge next year when her debut album is released. She has already captivated audiences with a recent appearance on Later with Jules Holland and been chosen to support Bon Iver on their US tour. We catch up with the 22 year old soul singer as she is running for a bus in raining London.

What the first song you wrote?

It was called Little Things, it was a made up love song that I wrote when I was 11. It was never recorded so I have never had to listen back to it, but I can remember it, I always thought it would be quite a funny Eurovision entry but that’s as far as it goes.

Guillemots Interview

The Guillemots first gained critical acclaim in 2006 with their debut album ‘Through the Windowpane’ which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.  The band started to collected fans all over the world with their unique sound and diverse live shows. Before setting off on a UK tour to bring their latest album ‘Walk the River’ to their dedicated fans, guitarist McLord Magrão took some time to talk to us.

Did you have a clear vision of where you wanted the latest album to go?

We don’t want to repeat ourselves with things we do, we always try to approach things in different ways and the main thing is we always try to challenge ourselves, give a new goal to where we go with music. Not that we have ever had discussions about it. We always talked about bringing out a live album, to reflect performing live as a band, trying to capture the band sounds. With ‘Walk the River’ we were like, let’s really try to capture playing together and see how that comes across.

As a band you have varied backgrounds, do you think that has helped you gain more varied influences?

Yeah I guess so, we all have different tastes of music and different ideas of music but, at the same time, we have a lot in common when it comes to music. We have always been interested in loads of things, there are always things that I didn’t know about and other members didn’t know about, being from different countries we have access to different music. We introduced music to each other and it’s always been good to learn about new things, new ways of doing things. I guess we kind of complement each other.

What’s the band’s approach to song writing?

In general it’s a mess; we don’t know where we are going with things. We each write things in different ways, one way that we do it quite often is that we improvise for a long time, then we go back and try to combine all these things together and start to give it a structure. In general, to start with, it’s just seventeen minutes of us playing the same thing over and over again. Then we think how we can change it into a song and then comes the arrangement for that. Sometimes Fyfe writes songs and then we try to develop his songs and turn it into something we are all happy with, that has that Guillemot sound through it. Other times we just start messing around with stuff, electronics or sound and some loops, and then we go “this can be a verse, this can be a chorus” and see what happens.