Brides Interview

It’s been a few months since Brighton rockers Brides released their debut album ‘Ocular.Unveil’, an album that I personally fell in love with. Since that release, the band have been on a UK tour with Lower Than Atlantis and are now looking to tour more in 2009. Daily Dischord had a chat with the bands drummer Jon Barmby about that recent tour, the recent album release and many more! As usual, thanks to Austen from Visible Noise for setting this up and a big thanks to Jon for answering the questions.

DD: Hello! First of all, who am I talking to, what do you do in the band, and tell me something really interesting about you.

Jon: Hello! My name is Jon and I play drums in Brides. Something really interesting!? I don’t know – I have an irrational fear of snakes that the other guys like to joke about – will that do?

DD: So tell me a bit about how Brides came to be a band.

Jon: To be honest, it’s your average story about starting a band. Myself and Trist were at school together since we were kids and we started college and met Ant, our old singer who was also at school and college with us. We started rehearsing together in our home city of Brighton, it was primarily just a bit of fun that was more of a joke than anything. We started to play shows and became more involved with it all and began to start taking it all a bit more seriously. We changed our name from the more embarrassing ‘The Brides Wore Blood’ to just ‘Brides’ in hope that people would start to look at us like a real band rather than four stoned teenagers messing about. When the time came to replace our previous vocalist, Max was an old friend and he also played with another band with Trist so he seemed like the perfect choice.

DD: For those who are yet to check out the band, describe Brides in one sentence.

Jon: One sentence? Ok… Brides are a four piece band from Brighton, UK that blend a striking and highly dynamic blend of punk, metal, prog, post hardcore and straight up rock, Brides draw as much influence from Hot Water Music and A Wilhelm Scream as they do from Mew or Misery Signals, confidently overlaying styles usually kept separate to create an elaborate yet accessible concoction.

DD: So Brides released ‘Ocular.Unveil’ this year. Is there any meaning behind the title?

Jon: There are actually quite a few meanings behind it, when we first came to look for a title of the record we had a look through the lyrics of the songs on the record and the following stood out from ‘Eye Despise the Faceless’ which was “dawn that ocular veil”. We thought it would be quite a nice contrast to use the opposite of the lyric and add the ‘un’ to veil. The reason for this was that we felt it was quite fitting as the record is written primarily from a persons perspective and point of view, therefore the ‘unveil’ part of the record was almost an indication to open your eyes to what is around you. Also being our first proper release it is essentially the unveiling of the band itself – overall we are asking those around us to open their eyes and almost give us a chance.

DD: On my first listen of ‘Ocular.Unveil’, I was amazed at how a band so early in its existence could create an album that draws influence from so many genres. How was this album created? Was it a result of ambition to make something different or a result of different influences among band members?

Jon: The record is a combination of everyones ideas over the past year or so. We knew we wanted to be different, as to be honest you have to be in a scene like today but overall we never planned for the songs to come out in the way they did. As a band we all listen to a monumental amount of music, different music at that – everything from punk and hardcore right the way through to 80′s rock or RnB. The more music you are exposed to the wider your creativity will go. The beauty is for the next record which we have already started work on, no one has a clue how it will turn out, we have all found new music that we like and fused that with music that we already love and will no doubt create a new sound for the next record. No one wants the same record twice and we can guarentee that won’t be the case. Of course there are bits that really work so you tend to work on improving those, but overall we plan to look at the next record in the same way we looked at ‘Ocular.Unveil’ and just go in with a blank canvas and a library of inspiration.

DD: The album clocks in at only 24 minutes with 8 tracks. What do you say to those who claim they have been short changed with the length of the listen?

Jon: I would agree with them! Obviously we want to get as much music out to as many people as possible, but an album of 8 tracks, a mini album if you will, felt right for the stage we were at. To be honest this has been the only negative on the record and even though there has been that negative, most people claim that they where just left wanting more which for us is great to hear! The next record is being planned out in our spare time and the overall draft is to make it a 12 track album which is going to be multi themed in groups of songs. It sounds complicated but will be revealed closer to the time. So I guess my response is that our next record will more than make up for it in length.

DD: OK, I’m a potential fan who is looking to check out Brides stuff. I am only willing to spend 79p on a track for download. What track would you like listeners to download to sell the bands music and why?

Jon: That’s a tough one and a good question. For the first time we have a record which I am so proud of that I would recommend any track to listeners. However, if I had to I would probably choose ‘Endless Sea of Dirac’. I think that is a really well written song – it has a bit of everything, constant tempo changes, variation in chords, sing alongs, pounding vocals and it just flows really well. Funnily enough we toyed with the idea for this song for quite along time but just couldn’t get it to work. I think we decided to give it one last go before scrapping what we had and it just completely came together like clockwork. I think we wrote the majority of it in one afternoon, so yeah, I would probably recommend that with ‘Frank West’ and ‘Velvet Ground’ as a close second.

DD: The album is out via Visible Noise. How did you guys end up on the label and how is the relationship between the two of you?

Jon: It’s fantastic, we couldn’t have asked for any better really. The story goes we weere demoing the record with Max around July last year, so we were working on the demos one day and Julie from Visible Noise had seen that we were heading in to record in October and wanted to hear some demos. So we sent her over what we had got down and as we finished each song we sent it through. Fortunately for us she loved it. I might add at this point that the reason we were demoing was not only to sort out final parts on songs but also that at the end of the process we had a list of labels to send the record to in hope that they would like to help us out. It’s quite funny as Visible Noise weren’t even on that list as we didn’t even consider them a possibility. So we met with Julie down in Brighton and after four bottles of wine and countless Chicken wings later we knew that this was the label we wanted to work with. I think we were in that meeting for around five hours and only around three of them we spent discussing music – the rest of the time we talked. That was really nice as it gave us a chance to get to know the label, besides the great roster of bands they have they are great at what they do and we feel very lucky to be a part of that.

DD: You just completed a UK tour with Lower Than Atlantis. How did the tour go? Do you consider it a success?

Jon: That tour was alot of fun, alot of the venues and citys were new to us as we hadn’t played there before but we had some great turn outs and the shows were awesome. I only wish like every other tour that it could have gone on for longer. As for Lower than Atlantis, we couldn’t have really had a better band to go away with. Those guys get alot of shit from people because of their ‘reputation’ but these guys are the nicest guys we have met yet and on top of that an excellent band. We have some demos of their forthcoming album and it is going to be massive, you heard it here first!

DD: What town and venue gave you the best response?

Jon: I think it would have to be Glasgow, we have only ever been to Scotland once and that was ages ago so it was nice to be back up there. So this was our first time in Glasgow and we played a small club in the city centre (which was beautiful to be honest) on the second night of the tour and it was awesome, a load of kids came out and they weren’t afraid to have a good time and that was nice to see in this day and age. We are already looking forward to going back.

DD: Is there any funny tour stories that you are willing to share with us?

Jon: There were quite a few on this tour to be honest so I’ll give you two. Firstly we played Milton Keynes the day after sleeping in a house with no electricity or water so everyone was starving by the time we made it to the venue. We decided to head for the nearest Nando’s which was roughly a 10 minute drive away. Josh from LTA I would say was the hungriest out of all of us and he was desperate to make the trip to Nando’s, however this was the one show that Lower Than Atlantis where headlining so they had to stay and set up plus sound check, so Josh unfortunately couldn’t come. While we where at Nando’s we picked up some napkins with the Nando’s logo on to take back and give to Josh as a present. It turns out the night after, Josh had to drop trail on the side of the motorway and had to use the Nando’s napkins in the process! Apparently there is video footage but we haven’t seen it yet. That was pretty funny to be honest.

However, the funniest thing that happened on tour plus probably the funniest thing I have ever seen was down to our driver Rob Da Banks (yes that is his real name, he looks like a cross between Eugene Levy and Jason Biggs). It was towards the end of the tour in Yeovil, we were backstage at the Orange Box and Rob had just come out of the shower in the dressing room. The door to the shower was fucked and the lock you had to slide in in order to open the door. Max was desperate for the toilet and when Rob came out the shower he shut the bathroom door and the lock piece fell out into the bathroom therefore locking the door fully with no way to get in. Max was enraged by this so he turned around and hit Rob’s peak of his cap and it flew off into the air, only to reveal Rob wearing a Jewish Kippah skull cap that we found at Mike from LTA’s house a few days before. It really was a ‘had to be there’ moment but it was hilarious.

DD: You’re playing Download this year. How does it feel to be playing on a festival with such an impressive line up?

Jon: It’s absolutely unreal, I never thought in my life that I would be playing the same event with such monumental bands like Slipknot, Def Leppard and Journey – It’s going to be unbelievable!

DD: I love hearing bands opinions on the current illegal download situation. What is your opinion on the whole story? Does it upset you that people are downloading your music without paying for it?

Jon: I am sort of split on this to be honest, about a couple of weeks before the release of our record we found hundreds of blog sites leaking the record and while this is disappointing as it affects overall record sales, it’s comforting to know that people are eager to hear the record. I have no problem with people downloading the record in order to hear it early, as long as they support the band by purchasing a copy when it does come out.

DD: If you could tour with any band in the world, who would it be and why?

Jon: That’s a tough one! My favourite band of all time is A Wilhelm Scream and we have played with them twice now so that was an amazing moment for us but as for any band in the world I would say with Hot Water Music, purely because they are just an absolutely awesome band and the idea of watching them each night would be unbelievable. So either that or an arena tour with Fleetwood Mac, now that would be unreal! I wouldn’t mind doing the Blink 182 comeback tour as that sounds like its going to be pretty massive!

DD: What does the rest of 2009 hold for Brides?

Jon: 2009 is all about working hard and getting as much exposure as we can. We are looking to some tours in the pipeline for the rest of the year as well as some great one off shows – it’s really all about getting our name out in front of people and building a strong foundation for this band. We believe that touring is the best exposure for any band and we intend to keep to that. We have also started writing our new record which is likely to be recorded towards 2010, but we are really excited about the ideas we have rolling so far.

DD: That’s just about it from us. Thanks a lot for doing this interview. Any last words?

Jon: Thank you! I just want to say a big thank you to anyone who took the time to read this interview, all those that have bought our record or some merch aswell as anyone who comes out to see us! Your support is really appreciated.