NEWS
EVENTS
Sonic Boom Six Interview
RnB/Hip Hop | Monday 26th November 2012 | Osh
We met Laila k and Barney Boom from Manchester ‘s band Sonic Boom Six, just before their show to present their self-titled new album at the Borderline club, London.
How is the tour going so far?
Laila: It’s going amazingly, this is going to be our 16th show, and we’ve been on tour for about three weeks now. We were in Norwich last night and it was a mental show, everybody just went insane from the very first bit of music that we played. Tonight’s show is looking good, it was sold out a few weeks ago, and we´ve loads of friends coming down, so we´re very excited.
When did you find out that you want to dedicate yourself to music? Did you have a revelation moment?
Laila : Not really, I’ve always loved music and I love performing and I kind of fell in to being in a band. Barney and Neil were such good friends when we were younger, and they started a band and I didn’t want to be left out, so I sang in the band. As I got older, I realized this is what I meant to be doing on this planet.
Did you ever think about dedicating yourself to anything else?
L: No, just music. I´ve always loved singing… maybe that’s something for the future? A clothing line… perfumes …maybe? (Joking)
How was the process of growing with the band? Which things did you learned on the way?
L: We’ve known each other since we were 11 years old. The thing that you learn is to be patient and productive. If you expect people to put in 100% you have to do the same, you can´t get lazy. It’s like a family, but a family that’s on the road. You´re working together, living together, and you just have to click, and when it clicks, it’s the best thing ever. Sometimes it doesn’t click; you take the rough with the smooth. We are very passionate people, sometimes it does get a bit out of control, but the older we’re getting, the more patient we’re getting.
Why did you self-title your last album? Usually, bands would do that with their first album…
L: When a member of the band left and we got James, we restructured everything, rethought about how it would work. At one point, we said: ‘Should we finish?’ and we said: ‘No, let’s write an album, let’s get a label, let’s make music videos, and let’s do it properly. Let’s have one more chance and just do it’. And it just made sense to call it Sonic Boom Six. It’s a stamp on the sound and the people we are now.
How do you create your songs? Which are your rituals?
L: Since James joined us in 2009, the song writing completely changed. We used to get in the rehearsal room, Barney would play an idea on the guitar or on the bass, and we write around it, whereas now we do a lot on the computer. So James will come up with something, and I´ll put a melody on it, or Barney‘ll write something and record it on the computer, or Nick’ll bring something. In the past I felt I was on the outside of songwriting. Now we´re very much writing together. You can hear it. We bring our strengths to the music rather than trying to input too much or somebody’s not inputting enough.
B –It used to be that we stand in a garage, all four of us would stand around with instruments and write songs, 1,2,3,4 go! And you´d say I like that bit, I like that bit, whereas this time, for the new album, we recorded while we were writing it. We got those sounds that we had in our head, which was a mixture of the old ska scene that we came from with big rock and dance music. For us the album is a realization of the vision we had and the idea we had. The artwork reflects that as well, us looking to the stars. We see the music as being a bit futuristic, a bit space age, whereas the he old stuff was very down to earth, very UK cities, so the artwork was in cities and the new album is in the stars… and hopefully the music is too.
In the song ‘For the kids of the multiculture’ you talk about the multicultural reality that we are living nowadays, I’m actually an example of it. Do you think there is going to be a cultural revolution? How do you see the forthcoming years?
B: What inspired us to write some of the lyrics was David Cameron’s speech in Hamburg talking about multiculturalism isn’t working, and we need to be more muscular liberalists. We are from a multicultural city, Manchester, and our areas where we´re from – old Trafford – in my local pub, the mixture of colour and class is just everything. So, its saying, here’s a voice just generally from there, saying this is good, this works, rather than it being a political intellectual debate, it’s is just: we like it, we like the mixture of cultures, and it’s a bastion for what is good, and what is great about Britain. I hope that everybody is aware that we need to be striving for that. And each different community needs to put that first step, that’s the priority. I believe we will make it onto the starship enterprise. We will have Klingons and Vulcans and white people and black people with visors, and everybody just gets on with it. But it’s going to take people stopping being defensive. Because that’s were all racism and hatred comes from – it’s from fear. People need to stop being fearful and confront the people in their own backyard or move on. And get on the starship enterprise.
You have a song called Karma is a bitch, did you ever feel that Karma punished you?
L: It’s not really abut punishing us! We´ve been good! (laughter). Its more about if you been very very bad, what goes around, comes around.
B: That song is just about somebody treating someone close to me very, very badly, and then he’s just moved on and tried to start a new life. The whole idea of that is that you know it’s always going to be there – nothing good could ever come of it. You can move on physically, but you can´t mentally, and maybe that’s what karma really is.
L: Even having it in the back of your mind is preventative. If you think: ‘well, if I act like this it’s going to come back round’, its stops you from acting like that.
What’s your upcoming single ‘Keep on Believing’ about?
B: We were saying that when the band started, we were part of the punk UK scene. All these bands used to really excite us, king Prawn and Capdown, and then we came later, and there were a load of us, like Howards Alias and No Comply, there really was something happening in these underground in the UK. It was something that we loved and it totally changed our lives. But over the last 8 years or so, that scene has gradually changed, and we’ve grown away from it in our own way, but the scene has dissipated. But it’s still hugely important to us, because that’s where our roots are, and a lot of bands come from that scene. So that song is just a love letter to the scene.
L: And it really inspired us to really put our all into our band.
B: But it was a long time ago now, you´re never going to feel as idealistic as you did then, because then, you genuinely believed that this was going to change the world: you go vegan, you´re reading all these fanzines, you´re boycotting all these things…you’re really believe in it. Then gradually, you get a bit older, and you start being a bit more content. But it’s important to keep that fire in your belly, to remember when you felt like that.
On tonight’s gig at the Borderline, you will be supported by Imperial Leisure, Tyranasaurus Alan. Imperial Leisure, Tyranasaurus Alan. Imperial Leisure, Tyranasaurus AlanImperial Leisure and Tyranasaurus Alan. What are these bands, about?
L: Imperial Leisure have done the whole tour, and they’re the best support band we´ve ever toured with. They´re just professional, they’re party music which really warms the crowd up, which makes it so much easier for us to go on. The crowd is already sweaty, they’ve already been dancing, so nobody’s shy, they’ve broken through all of that.
B: And Tyrannosaurus Alan are brilliant. They´re from the UK ska scene, but they’ve got their own unique sound. It’s hip hop grime with ska punk. They´re taking a certain side of our sound, like big old punk rock on our first album, into this grime ska thing, they’re taking it further. it’s great to hear them play Bombard the BBC and all these killer tunes. It’s really rewarding and awesome when you can look at a band and say: they´re pushing things forward.
What are you going to do when you finish this tour?
L: When the tour finishes, we are going to Europe for two weeks: Switzerland, Austria, Germany… all over the place. And then we´re back Christmas’s time, and then it’s the next single! so we´ll do a video , and go on tour in January with a band called The Blackout. Then, we´re going to do a little headline tour of small towns in the UK, and then we´re off to Norway, and then we´re off to America!! So yeah, pretty busy! (laughs)
Which is the event you are looking forward to the most?
L: I´m looking forward to the Blackout tour because they are huge, they’re always on Radio 1, the venues are massive and they´re going to be sold out. I love the challenge of a fresh new crowd…!
B: And the Welsh are always nice people.
L: Yeah, they´re welsh. But the challenge of breaking in a new crowd, it’s my most favorite thing. That’s why I’m in a band. I love it. We´re going to be playing to thousands of people and it’s my job to make them laugh.
By Laura Vila
@LaursTime
