Rockers RCKLSS talk about their latest releases!
Hello, RCKLSS, thanks for taking time to answer a few questions for Distrolution! Could you please, as a start, list all your band members, as well as their roles in the band? Matty Halliwell – Vocals & Guitar Lewis Horsley - Guitar Laurence Burkitt – Bass Josh Woolnough - Drums How would you describe the music scene in Brighton? Brighton’s a really great place to learn your craft. There are a whole load of great venues, great bands and great promoters. And there are plenty of shows on every day! So there’s really something for everyone here, and plenty of great people to watch and learn from. I would say that over the last few years, particularly in Brighton’s DIY scene, there are maybe too many musicians involved and not enough music fans though. Because there are so many shows every day, the crowd numbers are often pretty low for unestablished bands. But we’ve been fortunate in playing plenty of shows in different places over the last few years, so we’ve generally avoided that problem! Your latest music video, “Every Time”, was released a few weeks ago. How was the shooting experience? I don’t think we’ve ever had as much fun as when we filmed the performance to be honest. We’d had the longest day, and we were all pretty tired and mentally out of it. And it got to about 2am when we started setting up for filming on the seafront. It was about -3 degrees, so we had to really move about as much as possible to stay warm, which if anything made the video look even better. We did get a little told off by the police, but we’re so happy with how it all came out! This song is from your debut EP “So Cynical”. Can you tell us more about this release? It’s a real mix of emotions and sounds. It’s got energy, happiness, anger, sadness, nostalgia, despair & hopefulness all crammed into 6 songs. And what I love about our band is that no two things that we do sound the same. “Every Time” and “Animals” (the track that follows on the EP) sound completely different to each other. But both fit really well within what we’re trying to achieve. We wanted it to be dark and to have a heavier edge than what we’ve worked on before. But we also wanted it to be catchy and memorable, and with the help of our producer, the absolute magician that is Federico Telesca, we were able to do exactly that. There seems to be this idea that bands should have one sound or ‘purpose’ for each release and stick to it. But life just isn’t like that and music shouldn’t be either. It’s exciting to be a part of a project where we don’t really know what’s coming next. Maybe we’ll do a dance/jazz fusion album or something. It probably took about 12 months from the start of the process before we had anything near a finished product. But we put everything that we’ve learned over the past few years and put it into the 6 tracks, and I think that shows. There’s a really strong narrative running through the whole thing that people seem to have been able to relate to strongly, and I’m so proud of that. If you had to pick one song off of this EP, which one would it be and why? Tell You is probably the one that we’ll carry with us for a long time. It was the first song we ever wrote, almost 3 years ago now. And it had about 5 or 6 different demo versions done before we reached this one. It’s got the deepest roots in our band, it’s real fun to play live, and you can’t beat those gang vocals in the choruses. What else can we expect from your band in 2019? This year is all about building on ‘So Cynical’. We’ll have more music to release before the year’s out, more music videos, and a few tours planned in both the UK and EU. The last words are for you. If you have a message for your fans, here’s your chance! We’re honestly so grateful for how this EP’s been received so far. We’ve had so much great feedback, support and love from everyone. And it’s made us really determined to see how far we can take this thing. Keep sharing, keep coming down to shows and keep listening because it really means the world to us!
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