Glitches

East London – Whitechapel to be precise – trio Glitches, now pinned to the Kissability roster, having been blowing up left right and centre this year.

After a lauded set at Brighton’s Great Escape festival and some stellar singles, Glitches aren’t showing any signs of letting up the pace; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. They’re planning to tour Europe and (fingers crossed) the big ol’ US of A. There’s a full-length LP in the works, and some exclusive hush-hush projects. Hot commodities, Glitches are. It’s not hard to see why.

They ooze pop panache. It’s a not quite indie-not-quite-synth brand of dancing music, with both jangly summer funk-rock strumming and soaring ’80s cock-rock riffs. There are huge, buzzing synth basslines and beats so kinetic you’ll give yourself a hernia trying to stop your limbs flailing. ‘Only Time Will Tell’ is a prime example of their unique style of pop – it’s laden with gorgeous hooks and the kind of chorus that wouldn’t be a smidgen out of place slotted next to anyone on Radio 1 – that’s not to say that there’s a sort of plastic-pop emanating from the threesome, but rather that they encapsulate fragments of sonic glory so well that they’ve got a broad appeal.

Hey guys. Could you give us a brief rundown of your origin story?

James: I met Michael through a mutual friend, a certain Paolo Wyatt, who told me that his mate was looking for a drummer. I turned up, with two wooden spoons since I had no drumsticks, and auditioned. Little did I know at the time, but there was a toss up between myself and a very attractive young lady, but luckily for me she couldn’t actually play that well.

Robbie: Michael and I were always bumping into each other in lectures. We did physics together. I knew that he was the one who was into music I was into out of our the wider circle of people we knew. I think it took about a year of being kind of too cool/shy before we tried to have a go writing. That first experience is always kind of harrowing. I find that you wake up in the morning particularly enthusiastic about a session with new musicians. As you’re then walking into the rehearsal room, you get this intense feeling of dread. It’s such a relief when you find people who get what you’re trying to do with music! I found that with these guys.

Michael: I first noticed Robbie because he was the the only person who carried a briefcase into lectures. After that we got talking, and the rest, as they say, is history. I never did find out what was inside.

How would you describe your sound in three words?

Organic Imperial Grooves.

If Glitches could soundtrack a classic film, what would it be? What would it sound like?

Robbie: I’m not a huge film buff, but I would really like to have a go at something like The Wicker Man. The original film, not the terrible, terrible version with Nicolas Cage. The original’s really great because it frames the film through a kind of folky setting. However, I would be really interested to see what we could do to make it feel very different. I’d still want to create that really unsettling feeling of dread, but in a different way. Maybe we’d just bang bits of wood for the whole film.

James: Like Robbie, I’m not a massive film person. I suppose I’d want to make a soundtrack for a real epic, although the problem with choosing this is that the epics all tend have amazing soundtracks already, for example Maurice Jarre’s score for Lawrence Of Arabia is superb. With that in mind I’d plump for Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, it’s so full of iconic scenes that I feel it would deserve a powerful and emotive soundtrack.

Michael: I’d like to do one of Charlie Chaplin’s silent films like The Kid. I think we could put some dirty hip-hop grooves down, but then layer that with some frantic gypsy-jazz style instrumentation.

Who’s been the most inspirational figure for you all?

J: For me it would have to be my father, Trev. He’s always lived with a ‘stuff what anyone else thinks’ attitude and has always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted.

R: Oh dear, I’d have to say my mum, Lily. She’s Filipino and moved here when she was 27. I’m just amazed she found traction and managed to raise a family in this weird environment of central London. It sounds corny, but she came here to give a better life to her next generation. I suppose that is a big part of what drives me. It’s like the opposite of a teenage rebellion, to ask yourself: “Would my mum be proud”?

M: Radiohead – they display a level of musicianship and creativity that for me is unparalleled in modern music, and the way that they have managed to evolve without reinventing themselves completely is something that I think we aspire to as a band very much.

Do you have a mission statement?

“Are we doing enough to escape all of this?”

How’s do you find being a musician in East London?

J: As a country boy from Suffolk, I have always found it bit difficult living right in the city. But there’s nowhere else I’d rather live as a musician in London; it’s where everything happens and so having our studio there is bloody convenient for us!

R: I actually grew up in central London. I grew up in the part of London which people don’t think anyone lives. East London was this unknown quantity when I grew up. Now it’s sort of part of the lifeblood of culture in the city. I totally have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s great because of the creatives that surround you. You totally get a vibe off them. I think what really gets my goat is when you meet people who have totally the wrong idea about why East London should be somewhere you take notice of. They’ve got clothes and a haircut, but nothing else.

M: There is so much great art and music going on right on our doorstep that it’s easy to keep our creativity fully nourished. I think it’s vital as an artist to expose yourself to as much outside influence as possible, otherwise you run the risk of stagnating.

What are the pros and cons of living there?

Being in east London you are immersed in one of the main creative and cultural centres of the city. It’s so easy to get out and see what’s going on, whether it’s going to a gallery on Vyner St, listening to Jazz at the Vortex, or whiling away the long hours of the night in Efes.

We suppose that the drawback is that being right in the centre of the hustle and bustle means that it can be hard to get some peace and quiet! However, one of the benefits of being in Whitechapel means that we are slightly removed from the hoi polloi, so it’s not too intense all of the time.

Apparently you live near the African mafia?

The building which we are based in is pretty ragtag. Just after we moved in, some friendly, if a bit shady, Algerians occupied the first floor in our block. After a number of incidents, we finally realised that they were serious guys when two van loads of police in riot gear turned up and raided the place!

Ever had any run-ins?

After a Halcyon Nights one of our friends got a bit ‘disorientated’ and ended up in their social club, and then in trying to slip out managed to get themselves trapped between the two security doors. Never anything dangerous though, they’re all really nice, after a few months we became quite friendly.

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If you could live in any time period in history, when would that be and why?

J: For me, it would have to be the early Saxon period in England. Mainly because we know so little about it since the Saxons left little to no records of their way of life and the archaeological evidence of their settlements is so scant, it really is the ‘Dark Ages’. In addition to the mystery of the period, it was also a time of incredible change as the Romano-British struggled to carry on with their ‘Roman’ way of life whilst struggling to hold off the Saxon invasions and occupation.

R: If I really wanted a complete departure, I would go for around 100 A.D. in Rome. It was the period of greatest prudence by the Roman emperors, before they really lost their shit. They dominated all around them, without disrespecting too much. I think if I could be part of the equites class under Marcus Aurelius, then I’d probably be happy. They reclined and dined, and had a horse. I don’t agree with the slavery part, but you can’t have everything, can you?

M: I would have loved to be living in New York during the ’60s. Culturally, it was an exceptionally vibrant time, with guys like Miles Davis, Steve Reich and Andy Warhol all pushing the boundaries in their respective genres. Plus, it was a very interesting time socially and politically, with the climax of the Cold War and great leaps forward in civil and women’s rights.

Who’s the most influential figure in all of humanity, in your humble opinion?

R: What a brilliant question. In terms of who has really created the world we live in today, I’d probably say Michael Faraday. I mean, everything we use basically involves electricity, magnetism, or electromagnetism. I know he wasn’t the only one around, but what the hell would we do if we didn’t have power stations and turbines? We’d be sitting around gas lamps trying to read books without burning ourselves. It would really suck.

J: Lots of names obviously spring up with a question like this! I would go for Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. In terms of ‘humanity’ I think that his discovery must have been responsible for saving an almost uncountable amount of lives and I imagine that all of us either have had penicillin or know someone who has.

M: Would have to be Ashoka the Great, the Emperor of the Indian Subcontinent circa 230 B.C. He Initiated a tradition of leadership that embraced pluralism, religious tolerance and non-violence and influenced such figures as Gandhi, Nehru and the Dalai Lama. Sure, before converting to Buddhism he was a marauding imperialist masochist, but credit where credit’s due…

What’s it like working with Kissability?

It’s great! We just had a curry with Jen Long (the label boss) last night at Tayyabs. We had a great time. We set next to some real East End geezer types who asked us all if we were gay and then vomited on the floor. A great time. But seriously, she is lovely.

What’s a normal show like for the three of you?

J: They usually fly right by, it’s weird, because we play for about half an hour and it feels like 5 minutes. I still get quite nervous in the moments just before the show kicks off, but my the time we get to our second song I’ve usually calmed down. I also feel slightly removed from the audience, since although I know they’re looking at me and see me, I feel that sitting behind the kit that they can’t!

R: In the normal show of the moment (as it constantly changes), I find myself constantly wanting to groove so hard. Without trying to sound too self-aggrandising, I love the music we play, especially live. You’ll find me dancing all show, almost knocking over everything in the process.

M: There’s a lot of lugging around gear and arguing with taxi drivers involved, and there’s the regular panics at soundcheck when stuff doesn’t work, but the actual show itself is a lot of fun! The larger audiences we’ve been receiving recently are a massive bonus – I certainly don’t miss playing to an empty room.

What was your first show like?

R: Our first show was in the James’ college bar, up in Oxford. I was so nervous I threw up before the show. We didn’t have any songs. We just had instruments and sort of hit them. We thought we’d made it.

J: This takes me back! I guess it would have been loud, I used to really smash my drums, I probably thought I was the new Keith Moon, so in turn the guys used to have their amps pretty loud, and in a tiny underground room (my college’s bar) it would have set your ears ringing.

M: Boozed up lads with their tops off shouting lewd remarks at me in between songs… and that was just James and Robbie.

How did you write and record ‘Only Time Will Tell’?

R: I don’t really know how we wrote it. It was like one of those magical moments where we knew we had to write a song and we just did it. I can’t explain it, really. I listen to it and don’t know where any of it came from. We weren’t drunk or on any substances, but I almost have absolutely no memory of its genesis.

J: We realised that we needed another single to follow up from ‘Warm Seas’ and that there wasn’t an out-and-out contender in the Glitches stable at that time, so we knew right from the get-go that the song had to have certain immediacy about it. I’m fairly sure that we started working on it around 10am one Saturday morning and by around 7pm that evening Robbie was just finishing off the vocals, so we’d managed to demo it in the space of a day. The recording process itself was pretty snappy as well, everyone just seemed to know what finishing touches were needed in order to maximise its potential.

M: It was actually the first of our songs that we had recorded properly in a studio – the rest up to that point had been just rough demos made in our living room. It was the start of a magical relationship with our producer Joe.

What’s influenced the track?

It feels like the track is a reassurance to anyone in a situation in which they’re unsure about the future. It feels like it reflected the feeling of the band at the time, the relationships we’re in, platonic or not. The track really summed up a point in time for everyone involved.

What are your opinions on the remixes that come with it?

Oh we love them. The Exmoor Emperor guys are great. So are the people from We Have Band. Everyone is great. Our mate Mint Royale did a great one too, but we can’t tell you about that one yet…

What’s the next project? An EP perhaps?

The next thing in the Glitches pipeline is our first album. We are currently in the process of recording it and are all very excited about it. Recently, we just had our 15 piece Organised Chaos Ensemble getting their parts recorded and it’s really making the tracks come to life.

We’re also working with Moleskine books on this really interesting project. They’ve never worked on anything with a band so directly before so it’s really exciting.

Are you excited for playing Germany at Reeperbahn? What are you looking forward to most?

M: Absolutely. I love Germany and it will be my first time in Hamburg so that’s exciting. I’m most looking forward to experiencing some proper German Techno.

J: Hamburg is a cool place and having never been I’m looking forward to experiencing a new city and a new atmosphere. It will also be interesting to see if German music lovers are any different from British ones!’

R: I have actually just come back from Berlin. Me, Danny (our manager), Charles from Slow Club and our friend Swords went to our label over there’s birthday party. Humming Records are a GREAT bunch of people. You need to make sure that gets out.

Are you enjoying festival season? What else have you still got on the agenda?

Well we’re enjoying the fact that it’s such a scorching summer. We’re playing the Reeperbahn Festival in September, then if all goes well we’ll be off the US. All in all, a positive build. We’d really like to do the rounds next year though. You know, like that proper saturation you get when a band just plays every one. We need to get that out of our systems. Then maybe we’ll only play Womad.

Glitches will perform at The Old Queens Head in london on 29 August.