As you may or may not know, the legendary Mount Vesuvius and it’s eruption hit international headlines back in the day, hot off the press via carrier pigeons… oh wait, I’m thinking of the wrong ‘Volcanoes’. Did you know that in recent times there has been an even greater historical event that has been buzzing along our broadband cables and radio airwaves? No?! Well without further hesitation, let me introduce to you, Volcanoes…
I managed to sit down with the guys over a nice cold beer… somewhat ironic I feel… and discuss their latest single and plans for world domination (no natural disasters are in the pipeline).
Hey guys, as we know there’s a pretty big buzz surrounding you guys at the moment. (At which point we all decide to check our iPhones, other brands are available.) Seeing as we’ve managed to pin you down for a minute or two tell us, how did the Volcanoes come into being initially?
Well we started off as an acoustic duo really and when we went to record our second EP we decided to get some other musicians in on the act. It very quickly turned into Shirles, Bedders and the Volcanoes, then we decided to drop the first bit altogether! It happened in a twenty second conversation really!
Wow as quickly as that? That’s nearly as impulsive as my sister when faced with the choice of next months rent or a new pair of shoes! We always love it when musicians mix things up by having a jam with an artist you would never expect, In terms of collaborations, are there any other musicians / bands that you would love the opportunity to work with?
Id love to work with artists that would really push us, you know, from different genres to what we normally do. Whether it’s Hip-Hop or African music, Chinese or Indian music, we’d love to try something that’s a bit different, we wouldn’t get as much out of it if we chose to work with just another indie band. I reckon some really interesting sounds would come out of it, pretty exciting…
Sounds great, we look forward to hearing it in the future! As a band that have played live a fair few times, have there been any really embarrassing incidents or things that have gone wrong and haunted you ever since?
No… Nothing at all…
(All of the guys look innocently up to the ceiling, I smell a cover up.)
… OK well, nothing MAJOR. I mean, certain things like judging the crowds at gigs I guess. You know when you have little ‘in’ jokes and once we dressed up ridiculously and played at this really pretentious venue and then we felt like dicks and played really badly. We’ve done a few covers, things I insisted we play like ‘Last Night’ by The Strokes and Kings of Leon and things, we just murdered them and wanted to run off stage half way through the song. It just felt terrible, like we were the worst musicians ever.
Well something must have changed, from the sound of your single I can assure you you are definitely not the worst musicians ever, Jedward hold that trophy. So in terms of the writing and recording process, how do you guys work together?
Me and Sam both write songs, generally whoever rights it tends to sing it. We then try and get the others singing too with more voices going on, you know sometimes one comes up with lyrics and gets stuck then the others get involved and the whole song kinda evolves naturally.
Sounds like you know what works for you! Looking back on when you first started out as a band, Is there any advice you guys would give to any new and emerging bands out there who are trying to make it in the music industry today?
Well the primary focus should be enjoyment because success is, for the majority of bands, very elusive and can get very disappointing if you don’t get it. I know it’s cheesy but there’s nothing at the top, it’s all about the climb and doing it which is the fun bit…
… Yeah you have to do music that you love, it’s the fun bit. Enjoy that you know, and try to stick to your guns. As you go along people will try and change you, say they don’t like this and that about you but ultimately you have to do something that you’re proud of. You need to have faith in your abilities. We enjoy it and our friends that we play mostly to enjoy it! That’s the important thing. That’s when we are happiest, and if it gets bigger then great but fundamentally that’s the most important thing. And if you do start to get big then get the cash to hire a PR company! It’s done wonders for us!!
Well you’ve got to have faith, George Michael obviously did and it seems to have got him out of an awful lot of sticky situations! I also reckon that PR companies are secretly So how did the first single come about?
Well we got to the point where we were sitting down and having the old chat about bringing things to an end, making the one albums and it being our heyday kinda thing. As we were making it we really enjoyed it and began to think it’s a shame stopping here, is it really the end? The single ‘When We Melodise’ is really an ode to the band, a bittersweet goodbye and a thank you. That’s when things seemed to turn around a bit…
It’s a great track, we love the single cover too. How did the artwork come about then?
We always like using people we know, and I’m fortunate to have a very talented cousin who’s a tattooist. We ended up bouncing some ideas off each other and the minute I saw that drawing, I knew. Also in the video, he did all the graphic related work. We filmed the video with him over 3 days, it was literally 3 lots of 15 hour days, it was so much harder than i thought it was going to be but so rewarding! We should have done it years ago really!
We know from experience how long video shoots can be! We were once found taking a power nap in a props cupboard with daft punks helmet on, but enough of that story for one day… Here is a cut throat question, if you had to pick one single that sums up everything you love about music, what would it be?
I’d have to say something like ‘Good Vibrations’ by The Beach Boys, it’s a spur of the moment thing! That’s today’s song anyway. Ah wait I don’t know!
Come on, off the top of your head!
I’ve just got ‘When We Melodise’ stuck in it! I don’t want to sound arrogant!
Nice Advertising!
WAIT! A song by a band called 100 Reasons, their breakthrough song was called ‘I’ll Find You’. The video is just them in an empty club, but there’s so much energy. When we are at our best I would just love to emulate that! I’d say that over ‘Good Vibrations’… or maybe something by Cloud Control…
Maybe we should leave it there as I get the feeling we could be here all day with a list as long as your arm… and you guys are pretty tall so we reckon that would mean you having really long arms and… well you get the idea!
If you fancy giving Volcanoes a listen you can check them out on:
Youtube
Facebook
