By Cristina Carrazza-- Regional Head, Midwest
Meet Twin Atlantic, a hybrid of your favorite punk rock and indie bands hailing straight from Scotland. After releasing their first record “Vivarium,” Twin Atlantic has gained quite a following in the UK. They have shared the stage with the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, The Mathes and Say Anything on their respective European tours. Joining them on their first North American tour are Envy on The Coast and The Fall of Troy. We sat down with bassist Ross and guitarist Barry to learn more about this promising foreign talent.
Cristina: How would you guys describe Twin Altantic?
Ross: Well, we have a stock answer that we came up with. We just made up. If you have two different axes,
Barry: A Square…
RM: Yes, a square. It’s like a grid scatter plot thing. You have pop music on one side and rock, and loud and quiet on the other axis. We kind of just draw points from all over and that’s what happens.
CC: I love that.
BM: It’s like a scatter graph of music. We don’t really fit into a particular part. We’re influenced by music in general. We’re very eclectic, we draw our influences from all over the place. Even within a single song, you can tell we’re pretty schizophrenic.
RM: We get bored easily.
CC: You were mentioning you have a variety of influences. What are some of the different artists or genres that are very prominent for you?
BM: It’s literally anyone.
RM: Radiohead, that’s a common one.
BM: Muse. Anything from Queen to Sigar Ros, At the Drive In. Honestly, whatever. Even classical music, jazz, blues, whatever.
CC: This is your first tour in North America. Being from the UK and having quite a following there, how has it been coming here?
RM: I think the reaction to our band so far has been pretty healthy. For us anyway. I mean now we’re a brand new band to the people here in America. The reactions we’ve been getting here are superior to the reactions we got back in the UK when we were starting off. So for us, this is a better start than we could have hoped for or imagined.
BM: I think that has a lot to do with the point at where we are now in our careers to. Now we’re better at what we’re doing.
CC: Have people heard of you before? Or are you at that point of still getting your music out throughout the shows?
RM: Anyone who has heard of us before, who is a really small amount of people, have heard us through the internet. It’s cool how that gets around. It’s cool to come here and se some people who know who we are.
CC: How has it been coming from being well known in Europe to playing shows where you have to introduce Twin Atlantic to a brand new public?
RM: I think if we were doing it on any other tour, except for this tour, it would have been harder. We’re friends with both Envy on the Coast and The Fall of Troy. They were the ones who wanted us to come over. It’s kind of like a big family so it’s easier going on tour with them than with people you don’t know.
BM: We really enjoy the challenge to playing to people who have never heard of us. You have 30 minutes to try and convince people to check you out. If at the end of the set, someone tells me they liked our music and they want to buy our record that is very exciting to us. It’s a different type of challenge
RM: Converting people to your way of thinking
BM: Brainwashing them.
CC: Your first album, “Vivarium” was released in the UK last year and in the US a couple of weeks ago. Can you tell us more about it?
BM: We’re really proud of it.
RM: Yeah. It was the culmination of our first two years of being a band. It’s all the songs we had, we went through them and picked. It was just a way to get everything down that we worked on. But we’re really proud of it.
BM: In a sense, what we tried to do was to give people a little taste of what we’re about. It’s not quite a full length, so it’s a hybrid EP/LP kind of thing. But because it’s our first official release, we wanted to give people a rough idea of what we’re about and what we do as a band. So far, it’s been good.
RM: We never really dreamed of the fact that just by recording this record we would have made the friends that we made and we wouldn’t be here right now. So just because of that it’s worth it. If that’s the only thing that comes from it, I’m happy.
CC: I read that some of the songs “Vivarium,” like “Lightspeed,” you have been working on them from the time Twin Atlantic was formed. Now that you’re restarting the album cycle in the US with these songs, is it exhausting to get back into it or are you still improvising on them?
RM: We had a good month break before Christmas and we wrote some songs for our next record. So because we’ve done that, to get back on the road and play the songs we know well it’s fresh in a sort of way. It’s always fresh no matter where you play them because every night is a different challenge. But I think it definitely helped to have some time away from those songs and write some new ones.
CC: You mentioned this already, but are there any plans for a follow up any time soon?
BM: We just wrote about 20 songs and are working on around five more at the moment. We’re still in the first draft of it.
RM: With the stuff we have already, we’re very excited for the next record. I’m looking forward to going home and working on songs between festival season. We’re very excited to write.
BM: I think we’ll be recording at the end of this year.
RM: We’re trying the whole touring and writing. It’s something we’ve never tried to. We’re learning how to write at sound check and things like that. It’s a good challenge for us.
CC: Any future tour plans apart from playing festivals in Europe?
BM: Right after this tour we’re touring in the UK with The Gaslight Anthem in June. Then, we’ll be playing lots of festivals in the UK. Hopefully after that we’ll come back here.
RM: We’re just waiting to see what happens. |
|
