Decibels have been going from strength to strength with their latest single Ruza, including numerous radio plays, reviews and remixes. Bedge caught up with all five of the band ahead of their hometown gig at The Labour Club. This is what they had to say.
Hi. You guys have got a new single out: is it Ruza? Ruzza? (struggles on pronunciation)
Tony Luk: We tried to be a bit clever with the title... but it backfired. It's because it's Russian, Ruza is a place in Russia, but when we looked it up to see the pronunciation on YouTube we found it's called "Ruska." There was not one person who's got that yet. I can't believe we didn't think of that.
Well presumably when you do your tour of Russia...
All: Yeah, of course!
So how did that song come about?
Dave Crawford: The chorus was from another song but Stuart couldn't sing the melody because he's rubbish! So we had to knock that on the head and then re-write it. The song was made in two days, but it must have been over a year ago that we did it, and it all just came together.
It's been getting a fair bit of radio play. I've heard it a few times myself.
Adam Branaghan: It's been played on Radio 1 quite a few times by Phil Taggart and Alice Levine. The Munk remix - a German DJ - that was on Pete Tong, and he's coming over from Berlin to play with us at the single launch in London. Munk that is, not Pete Tong.
Martin Luk: This time round we've had a lot of really good remixes: Holmes Price, Skeleton Army, Tronik Youth, Shit Hot Soundsystem ...
Being the uber-cool guys that they are, at this point the band start to talk about their pre-show naps and sash windows. For anyone wanting a bit of exclusive Decibels gossip apparently Dave couldn't clean his sash windows due to the fact that it was tipping it down, even though, as Stuart pointed out, the options of a canopy or an awning were both readily available. Keep on reading for more Decibels gossip later in the interview.
Have you got any more releases planned after that?
Tony: Probably be looking at our next single. Around about July we're going to release Regulator-Moderator which is another song that we own. We'll be getting some remixes again for that but we've heard a couple already and they're really good: Tronik Youth again and Ben from Hot Wax. But we've got a video done already - that's all of us skating in the video - so we're just going to knock that out.
The conversation then gets onto the fact that Martin is hoping to get a girlfriend in the next few months. After absolutely no pressure put on him at all by the rest of the band and myself (okay, maybe a tiny bit), he ends up doing a Lonely Hearts style advert for himself. Listen up ladies.
Martin: I'm 6' 2"
Stuart: Bollocks!
Martin: I like watching Rom-Coms. We have Rom-Com Sundays at our house - we all watched The Proposal together...
Adam: He won't let us watch The Notebook because he's scared he might cry.
Martin: But I am dead manly and that as well. I go to the gym and... no I don't go to the gym.
Stuart: You go to expressionist dance class don't you?
Martin: I do like expressionist dance, you're right, I also like poetry as well. And I go to boxercise.
Tony: You sound like such a catch, I really don't know why you're still single.
After that we stray off track a little chatting about Rick Astley and YouTube videos.
You guys are from all over Northamptonshire. How do you find the music scenes in all these different place?
Tony: We're actually from further afield than that, Dave comes from Essex originally, and then the rest of us are from Kettering and Corby. But the scenes are actually very different from Kettering to Corby. Corby's just quite heavy.
Adam: Kettering's used to be really good but it's not been doing as well recently. Mind you, Temples are doing alright for themselves.
Tony: But the thing is because we're always in the studio we don't get the chance to go out and see live music. So there probably are a load of great bands but we just haven't seen them. Northampton I think we know more about than our own scenes: Jubilee Courts are great, Josh Ryan we really like, Maps he's awesome, Strangers, New Cassettes - but they're an American band now. Have you noticed how they've all got accents?
Stuart: I suppose you should put An Army Of Lights in, and 72% Morrissey. You've got The New Hellfire Club. Ohboy were really good. There are quite a few actually, I think there must have been a bit of a resurgence.
I've got something written here about you doing a remix of Jubilee Courts' latest single.
Martin: What have you been promising? Tony goes around promising people remixes and then he goes to Dave and says, "Sort that out." But probably we will. We've done one for Breton, we're trying to get a remix for Temples, I think we're going to do one when Hellfire release something, and we're meant to be doing one for Cassettes but we haven't done it yet.
Both of your most recent videos were done by the group Ace Cream.
Tony: That's our brother Joseph, he's a wizard. He and Megan do all of our videos; Megan did the latest video, he did the skateboard one. Basically he's a skateboarder as well so he filmed it whilst skateboarding which was really cool.
Then we start to talk about the new Northampton Skatepark, LCD Soundsystem and getting Bono to remix one of the tracks.
And finally, so that we can laugh at your misfortune, have you ever had any embarrassing stage mishaps?
Adam: Well there was one gig when all the power cut out, but Dave didn't realise. A good thirty seconds went on of Dave dancing and everyone was staring at him. We didn't even have to shout, we were just going "Dave. Dave. The music's stopped"
Stuart: We set a monitor on fire once in London. It was properly massive.
Martin: I missed it because it was a massive stage and I was on the other side, but the sound engineer recorded the set and when I listened back all you heard was someone go "Aww man. What's happening there?"
Tony: Then these two men ran over with fire extinguishers. One of the guys was in front of the other but when the second guy came running he knocked the first one over. It wasn't half funny.
And if you want hear the band so good that they have security staff falling to the ground (quite literally) follow the links below
Website
Facebook
SoundCloud
Twitter
Tony Luk: We tried to be a bit clever with the title... but it backfired. It's because it's Russian, Ruza is a place in Russia, but when we looked it up to see the pronunciation on YouTube we found it's called "Ruska." There was not one person who's got that yet. I can't believe we didn't think of that.
Well presumably when you do your tour of Russia...
All: Yeah, of course!
So how did that song come about?
Dave Crawford: The chorus was from another song but Stuart couldn't sing the melody because he's rubbish! So we had to knock that on the head and then re-write it. The song was made in two days, but it must have been over a year ago that we did it, and it all just came together.
It's been getting a fair bit of radio play. I've heard it a few times myself.
Adam Branaghan: It's been played on Radio 1 quite a few times by Phil Taggart and Alice Levine. The Munk remix - a German DJ - that was on Pete Tong, and he's coming over from Berlin to play with us at the single launch in London. Munk that is, not Pete Tong.
Martin Luk: This time round we've had a lot of really good remixes: Holmes Price, Skeleton Army, Tronik Youth, Shit Hot Soundsystem ...
Being the uber-cool guys that they are, at this point the band start to talk about their pre-show naps and sash windows. For anyone wanting a bit of exclusive Decibels gossip apparently Dave couldn't clean his sash windows due to the fact that it was tipping it down, even though, as Stuart pointed out, the options of a canopy or an awning were both readily available. Keep on reading for more Decibels gossip later in the interview.
Have you got any more releases planned after that?
Tony: Probably be looking at our next single. Around about July we're going to release Regulator-Moderator which is another song that we own. We'll be getting some remixes again for that but we've heard a couple already and they're really good: Tronik Youth again and Ben from Hot Wax. But we've got a video done already - that's all of us skating in the video - so we're just going to knock that out.
The conversation then gets onto the fact that Martin is hoping to get a girlfriend in the next few months. After absolutely no pressure put on him at all by the rest of the band and myself (okay, maybe a tiny bit), he ends up doing a Lonely Hearts style advert for himself. Listen up ladies.
Martin: I'm 6' 2"
Stuart: Bollocks!
Martin: I like watching Rom-Coms. We have Rom-Com Sundays at our house - we all watched The Proposal together...
Adam: He won't let us watch The Notebook because he's scared he might cry.
Martin: But I am dead manly and that as well. I go to the gym and... no I don't go to the gym.
Stuart: You go to expressionist dance class don't you?
Martin: I do like expressionist dance, you're right, I also like poetry as well. And I go to boxercise.
Tony: You sound like such a catch, I really don't know why you're still single.
After that we stray off track a little chatting about Rick Astley and YouTube videos.
You guys are from all over Northamptonshire. How do you find the music scenes in all these different place?
Tony: We're actually from further afield than that, Dave comes from Essex originally, and then the rest of us are from Kettering and Corby. But the scenes are actually very different from Kettering to Corby. Corby's just quite heavy.
Adam: Kettering's used to be really good but it's not been doing as well recently. Mind you, Temples are doing alright for themselves.
Tony: But the thing is because we're always in the studio we don't get the chance to go out and see live music. So there probably are a load of great bands but we just haven't seen them. Northampton I think we know more about than our own scenes: Jubilee Courts are great, Josh Ryan we really like, Maps he's awesome, Strangers, New Cassettes - but they're an American band now. Have you noticed how they've all got accents?
Stuart: I suppose you should put An Army Of Lights in, and 72% Morrissey. You've got The New Hellfire Club. Ohboy were really good. There are quite a few actually, I think there must have been a bit of a resurgence.
I've got something written here about you doing a remix of Jubilee Courts' latest single.
Martin: What have you been promising? Tony goes around promising people remixes and then he goes to Dave and says, "Sort that out." But probably we will. We've done one for Breton, we're trying to get a remix for Temples, I think we're going to do one when Hellfire release something, and we're meant to be doing one for Cassettes but we haven't done it yet.
Both of your most recent videos were done by the group Ace Cream.
Tony: That's our brother Joseph, he's a wizard. He and Megan do all of our videos; Megan did the latest video, he did the skateboard one. Basically he's a skateboarder as well so he filmed it whilst skateboarding which was really cool.
Then we start to talk about the new Northampton Skatepark, LCD Soundsystem and getting Bono to remix one of the tracks.
And finally, so that we can laugh at your misfortune, have you ever had any embarrassing stage mishaps?
Adam: Well there was one gig when all the power cut out, but Dave didn't realise. A good thirty seconds went on of Dave dancing and everyone was staring at him. We didn't even have to shout, we were just going "Dave. Dave. The music's stopped"
Stuart: We set a monitor on fire once in London. It was properly massive.
Martin: I missed it because it was a massive stage and I was on the other side, but the sound engineer recorded the set and when I listened back all you heard was someone go "Aww man. What's happening there?"
Tony: Then these two men ran over with fire extinguishers. One of the guys was in front of the other but when the second guy came running he knocked the first one over. It wasn't half funny.
And if you want hear the band so good that they have security staff falling to the ground (quite literally) follow the links below
Website
SoundCloud
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