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We chatted to London based 4 piece THE RECOUPES ahead of their appearance at SHINDIGNATION on August 5th....

 

musicmuso.com will be covering a great one day festival in East London called SHINDIGNATION which takes place on Saturday August 5th, we wanted to find out more about some of the bands that are playing, where better to start than with Essex/London based alt-indie 4 piece, The Recoupes....

 

The band are;

Louie Cameron - Bass

Alan Li - Vocals/Guitar

Micky Niner - Drums

Oli Zanetti - Lead guitar

 

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You’re called The Recoupes, you’re from Essex/London and you’re an indie/alt rock 4 piece, tell us some stuff about the band that NOT many people will know….

Yeah, we’re quite an open band and off the top of our heads we can’t think of too many interesting things that people won’t know about us as a band. I’d imagine if you spent the day with us you’d see that we’re just normal mates who get along most of the time and have a laugh.


You cite influences such as Catfish & The Bottlemen, Circa Waves & Arctic Monkeys, what is it about these bands that made you guys want to get The Recoupes together in the first place? When, where and how did you form?

We formed in the music rooms at school, playing covers, I think the first songs were 7 Nation Army and Smells Like Teen Spirit at school, mainly because the school didn’t have any right handed basses so that’s all Louie could play upside down at that age. Then we started to do Arctic Monkeys covers when we got together and at our first gigs before incorporating our own songs into the set, which shortly turned into a full set of originals. So we were originally influenced by classic bands like The Jam and The Who when we first started out, but when Catfish and Circa waves came onto the scene we were drawn to the buzz around them without losing touch with our original influences.


I’m looking for some dirt on you guys, tell me some of your guilty pleasures…..

We may or may not like doing the Sweet Child O Mine scene from Step Brothers when on car journeys.

 

London is a melting pot of bands, styles and genres, what do you do in order to try and stand out from the millions of other bands doing the same thing in the nations capital?

We’ve been with each other since secondary school, so over the years we’ve developed our sound into something relatively unique that we’re liking. We’re tight live which we get complimented on a lot, and we’re always adding new features to our live sound, the most recent being a Roland pad blasting Spongebob at the start of our last live set. We’re proud of our songs and just want to play them to as many people as we can.

Staying with London, how would you describe the ‘scene’ there right now?

It’s very interesting. There’s loads of good bands doing their own thing and we get to play in the same line-up as a lot of them, so I think it’s a good scene. London’s also great when it comes to diversity and creativity. There’s so many different styles and genres of music being voiced nowadays. It’d be great to also experience different music scenes around the country too, see what they’re like.

 

You’re unsigned at the moment, are you actively trying to get a label sorted out or are you happy doing things on your own for the time being?

I think for the minute we’re quite happy doing it ourselves, obviously if the right opportunity came along we most likely wouldn’t turn it down. We think if we keep going and building like we have been towards the end of last year and this year so far we’ll hopefully start to see some opportunities come our way.



I was checking out your material on Soundcloud recently and I love ‘Drunk Messages’, the guitar melodies are off the scale. Do you have a tried and tested method for writing songs? What comes first, the words or the melody? Is there a principal songwriter in the band?

Ah thanks, we’ve been writing our own material for quite a while now so methods have changed but we haven’t trapped ourselves into settling for just one way. I think following the same procedure over and over again would get boring quite quickly and would show through the songs. Alan tends to write the core of the songs and we add our input and parts to the song and bring it into ‘The Recoupes Communal Mind’ (we’ve never called it that before). We all have our own songs and ideas, some we don’t feel are quite ready to be brought into the band but we think it’s vital that each song captures the Recoupes sound. Some riffs and things come from just messing about in band practices.

 

If I were to put the 4 of you in a room and ask you to fight to the death (obviously I wouldn’t as that wouldn’t be very nice) which of you would be the last man standing?

LC: Me… I’m the biggest in the band (not difficult) plus none of them have seen me get angry before so I’ll use the shock factor.

AL: Me...gym lad.

MN: Me… I would play dead till the end, then sit on the last alive.

OZ: Me... cause I’m the smallest so I got good balance and a low centre of gravity.

 

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You’re playing at Shindignation in East London on August 5th, for someone who has yet to see you live, please describe a typical live show?

We’ve started to put on more of a show sound-wise using a Roland pad now for our own intros and between songs so there’s rarely a silent moment during the performance. We’ve been told we’re well tight live (without bigging ourselves up) which we’re really proud of. We just want people to have a good night at our gigs really and hopefully like our songs enough to listen to them again.

 

Shindignation is shaping up to be a great one-day festival featuring over 40 acts, which of these are you most looking forward to seeing?

We’ve listened to a few of the acts and we’re really liking Jords and Dronningen. Jords has a great tone to his voice and we like Dronningen’s energy. But we’re looking forward to see who else is announced.

 

Which other festivals do you have planned for 2017?

We’re currently in the semi-finals of getting to play Isle Of Wight this year which would be wicked to do. But just Shingdignation at the moment.

 

Staying with festivals, what are your top tips to surviving one? (let’s assume it’s a 3 day UK festival with camping!)

That’s simple, the 3  W’s: 1) Wellies 2) Wet wipes 3) wots & wots of fun

 

If you could create your very own supergroup, using ANYONE (dead, alive, fictional), who’d be in the group and why?

We’ll each pick who we’d want for our position in the band;

LC: John Entwistle on bass, for me he’s the best there’s been so far. But there’s a few close seconds that I can’t put in any order.

AL: I’d choose Kelly Jones. His voice is mad - both live and on the records.

MN: Eddy Thrower, he’s the reason I practice rudiments.

OZ: Jimi Hendrix… because he’s just Hendrix.

 

Lastly, when can the fans expect to see an EP or even an album?

We’ve got a single out on the 27th April called ‘Lovinit’ that we’re excited for and a few more singles ready, but as for an EP we’re not too sure yet. We haven’t looked as far as an album yet, I think as we continue to grow, the more we’ll start thinking about that, but for now we’ve got our singles and want to play as many shows as we can.

 

We'd like to thank the guys for sparing the time to chat to us and wish them every success for the future, we hope to be at SHINDIGNATION on August 5th and will certainly be checking out their set.

 

 

Social Media

Twitter - https://twitter.com/therecoupes

Instagram - https://instagram.com/therecoupes

Facebook - https://facebook.com/therecoupes

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz8eJQcLTlQIX36LvZ2PAZw

Website - https://www.musicglue.com/therecoupes

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/1gMnXkzziyiRqLvTac0lqn

Songkick - http://www.songkick.com/artists/8917864-recoupes

BandsInTown - http://bandsintown.com/TheRecoupes?came_from=234

 

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