Now back from a string of shows in Italy, many thanks go to Freakout Club (Bologna), Circolo Mengaroni (Pesaro), Circolo Dong and all the staff and crew at the shows, along with everyone that came out and special thanks to Michele Caserta of Italy’s R7 Agency for making it all happen! During the time there a short interview was conducted with the radio show LupOnAir out of Recanati, Italy after they played the track “Just A Vapour” from the album No. on their show. You can access the interview in Italian in the link below, also transcribed in the original English below.
Starting tomorrow further UK dates commence with Rue Oberkampf from Munich on the following dates:
Thursday, 25th April — Glasgow UK @ Ivory Blacks
Friday, 26th April — Manchester UK @ Rebellion Manchester
Saturday, 27th April — London UK @ The Lexington
There’s still some discounted tickets left from which you can buy here through the Soft Riot online store (first 3 products).
See you soon!
1. Tell us something about “Just A Vapour”, the track we aired.
Most of the album “No.” was written during lockdown times, or at very least, the starting ideas for the tracks were composed in that time. For this track, I was just having some fun. My idea was to make a song that was all electronic instruments (synths, drum machine) that had the power of a rock or even “heavy metal” song as a challenge. One of my favourite bands of all time is Chrome, so there’s definitely some influence there, and perhaps even Motorhead. Ha! The lyrics were written to be of surreal, science fiction imagery. I like putting interesting words together that make for some colourful imagery and with all of these ingredients in place, this song came to be!
2. Do you go out with the umbrella?
Well, living in Glasgow, Scotland we get a lot of rain here so I go out with an umbrella A LOT. However, because it can be very windy here in Glasgow, sometimes an umbrella doesn’t work so well so you have to wear a rain jacket with a hood. Strangely as I write this it’s very sunny here. As I returned from touring Italy yesterday, it would seem Glasgow has stolen the sun from Italy!
3. Suggest us a record we surely don’t know.
Another favourite record of mine that many people don’t know about is the 1997 album “Nervous Circuits” by the American synth/post-hardcore band The VSS. They were around from a brief period between 1995-1997. They released a number of 7″ singles and one album, as mentioned above. This record always ends up in my “Top 10” lists and is unknown to a lot of people. It was a very influential record for me when I was a teenager. It was one of the key records that got me into synthesizer. The album was released on the now long-gone San Francisco label Honeybear but has been re-released twice: first on Hydrahead (US) in the late 2000s and then again on Sargeant House (US) in 2012 with extra material.