We caught up with the London based vinyl loving, ferocious trio HUSKY LOOPS....
Following the release of their new EP, 'EP2', London based trio Husky Loops hit the road with Placebo, as well as playing shows with Superfood & Tigercub, which will then be followed by a full headline tour across the UK in November.
We caught up with them in Manchester to chat about the tour, their love of vinyl and hybrid singing dog-gorilla's that also do the housework.....
Firstly, well done on securing a support slot with the mighty PLACEBO, were you all fans of the band before you found out about it?
We were yeah. We all really like "Pure Morning", we know they have a few problems with that song, but we do think it’s great music and the lyrics are brilliant too…
You're playing some pretty iconic venues on the tour including Brixton Academy, which are you really excited about?
We’re excited about all of them. Dundee was incredible, we literally can’t wait for Brixton Academy also because that’s home to us. It’s just so good to play your guitar at soundcheck and hear the slap-back coming from the walls in these huge places. So much fun. I think our sound is meant to resonate in big rooms. Our music works really well in this contest (as in, big theaters and big halls) and of course we’re glad to bring our songs to a wide audience in many different places. It’s just awesome! We’ve just played at the Manchester Albert Hall and that was pretty exciting too!
Do you tend to find that the crowds react differently to your music depending on WHERE you are in the country?
Completely. And that is the other reasons why we like travelling and playing in front of big crowds, you get more reactions with more people and you can actually understand more about the city you’re in. When we played in Copenhagen with The Kills, people there reacted a lot to the guitar, I started "playing with them” and I was talking to them with my telecaster, it was awesome. Prague was responding more to bass and drums, Edinburgh was quite cold... London is generally cold, but that is also because the industry people always show up in London and they never dance, they just look at you with crossed arms.
Being from Italy, do you tend to find that an Italian audience reacts better to you than other countries?
No one reacts better, I don’t think you can compare, it's just different over time. Italian people tend to enjoy more the “classic” stuff, English people love more our weird bits. It’s just our experience though, and it works differently for every band.
You play a bunch of European dates in November/December, looking at the schedule, it looks like you're skipping about from one country to the next, what personal possessions can't you live without when on the road?
Pietro will die without his laptop, Tom will die without his phone, I would die without my coat. I need pockets.
You're from Italy but live in London now, what made you move to London? Do you think you'd have had the same chances if you had stayed in Italy?
Absolutely not. Italy is not ready for a change, and we’re really much about that right now. We want to deliver fresh, quality music that sounds new and exciting to us and others, and we feel the world of bands really need that right now. Live music needs a kick. We moved to London thinking we would have more chances to play better shows and find a bigger audience to communicate to. I am not saying that can’t happen in Italy by the way, I’m just saying I’m quite sure that it would have not happened to us quite the same way… we would probably be something different if we stayed there. Actually, we would probably be more similar to other English bands, moving to England made me stop copying my idols and the classic rock stuff I was used to.
The 'scene' in London is very varied and there really is something for everyone, do you find that you need to offer something special in order to stand out from the rest of the bands doing the rounds?
We feel we need to offer something special because we feel like doing that. We always want to give a lot of details to the crowd, it’s our personality, we will never feel like just playing our songs and leave. It’s a show, people are paying for a show and we want to give them something they will remember. Also, it’s great to plan what will shock or confuse or amuse people…it’s really good fun. And we think it’s fun for them.
Your live shows have been descibed as 'ferocious', are they always like this or does it depend on how the audience are behaving on the night?
We tend to interact with the crowd of course, it’s natural, but we also just do our thing…so I guess if the song is ferocious it will always be ferocious live. We get lost in what we do and we don’t necesserily listen to the audience all the time. It’s a bit like a religious experience sometimes, you end up in trance, and you stay there for a couple of minutes, the audience actually disappears. Actually, this happens mainly with the ferocious bits. All your energy comes out, you just go for it.
Tell me about something embarrassing that's happened to you whilst on stage at a show….
I fell off stage once. It was a big tall stage. I wanted to walk in the middle of the crowd, I was walking down the stage stairs because I wanted to use the audience’s sound as a sample but I stepped on a flight case and I literally flew away, fell on my back. I stood up straight away though and kept doing what I was doing, didn’t feel pain because of the adrenaline, and I walked to this girl and put the mic in front of her mouth and she literally said “are you ok”? We did sample that. I also said “Cheers” in Russian in front of 2 thousand people in Prague…
How do Husky Loops relax after a show?
We don’t.
EP2 was released recently, nice to see that you have included a vinyl option, do you think that this format will ever die?
No, we really believe in the vinyl format. We have the chance to give away something that (in our opinion) actually sounds better than the digital format, something that people can touch and experience fully, we put art in it and we designed it carefully, you buy a record that looks as beautiful as it sounds. Our vinyl is the full Husky Loops experience, we put all our hearts into it, it has different mixes and different cuts, all the tracks we want to push people to buy the record so we give more away with the vinyl because we love it so much. Right now it’s a much more complete product than a digital album, you can touch it, smell it, watch it spin, read what’s inside, look at the pictures. It’s the best format.
I read in another interview that both the debut and recently released EP's are linked, do you think that your debut album will have a theme or a link running through it? When can we expect an album from you guys?
We’re not really interested in the album format right now, we enjoy making EPs, it’s a chance to craft little concept albums and we can concentrate much more on each single songs, make videos for each song, etc. An album might come soon, but we’re not rushing it at all. We might drop it tomorrow though.
Lastly, would you rather live with a dog that can sing or a gorilla that can cook and do the housework?
I want to live with both, then I want the two to breed and create a go-dog who can sing and cook at the same time!
We'd like to thank the band for taking time out of their hectic tour schedule to chat to us and we look forward to seeing them in Plymouth where they support the mighty PLACEBO....
The band are currently on tour, dates can be found below;
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