Q: Hi, for those uninformed about your band can you please introduce yourself and give a brief description of your band?
I'm Andrew and I play in Crushing Blows. We're a band from Derby that make noisy off-kilter pop music.
Q: From what I remember the band started through recording your solo material in Foster’s bedroom, care to fill in the hefty gaps I’ve left?
That was basically it yes. For a few years I had helped Chris record or mix his solo material but there was never any suggestion of us collaborating. I'd been working on my own stuff for years but getting nowhere and Chris was the only person ever to hear any of it. Then pretty much out of the blue, and independently of each other, we both thought it might be an idea to write songs together and see what we could come up with.
Q: What were your main inspirations behind starting the band? You’ve both been involved in local bands for a while and none of them bear a resemblance to Crushing Blows, was it a case of wanting to start afresh?
Believe it or not one of the main inspirations was MGMT. I feel fine saying that since we sound nothing like them, but I think seeing 2 people making big pop songs kind of affirmed to both of us that that was what we really wanted to do. We definitely wanted to start afresh, Chris had been writing leftfield folk music for a few years, i'd previously played more post-hardcore type stuff and we both wanted to get down to writing some memorable songs.
Q: Do you find that being a two piece carries a stigma of people expecting different things from you? Typically people get the impression that two pieces tend to either be grind/math rock bands.
When we go looking for promoters we make it clear that we're not doing that kind of stuff, so I don't think anyone has booked us on the pretense that they're gonna get a budget Lightning Bolt! Also, if you'd just heard our recordings and not seen us live I think you'd assume that we were a 3 or 4 piece anyway so it hasn't been an issue yet.
Q: Is playing live much more of a challenge having to rely on effects pedals and their timing? Does it feel as though you’re accomplishing more?
It definitely keeps us on our toes, monitoring can be a real problem as probably 60% of the time we play in places without full PA/monitoring setup. We've had a couple of disasters with the looper pedal messing up- when it goes wrong for us it goes seriously wrong! It can be worrying relying on that stuff but it's a big part of our sound now, you couldn't replicate it with extra personnel. I don't know as we feel like we're accomplishing more- it's not a case of standing back and saying "look what we can do with only 2 people". Lots of drummers have said to me "I don't know how you can play drums and keyboard at the same time" which is flattering but i'd hate to think that the whole 2 piece thing overshadows the songs.
Q: How do you go about the recording process? Is it done live or in gradual stages?
It's all done as overdubs starting with the drums. Because of this, the records aren't as frantic as the gigs but one of the things we both thought at the outset was that we would treat the live shows and recordings as separate entities. I really enjoy being in the studio and bringing in things that we couldn't do live, and then conversely playing live and getting much more energy out of the song than we could do on record.
Q: How has gigging outside of Derby been? Have you mostly been met with a warm reception?
Generally we've done well when we've had a crowd to play to! Both me and Chris have previously been in bands that were used to getting seriously lukewarm responses outside of (and sometimes in!) Derby but there is definitely more of a good reaction to this band. Going back to what I said about being a 2 piece (and possibly contradicting myself slightly)...one of the good things is that it kind of gets the crowd on our side because they can see that we're really pushing ourselves to make it work.
Q: Any highlights of 2010?
Getting played by Steve Lamacq on 6 Music and then Huw Stephens on Radio 1. Lamacq was great because when I was 13/14 I used to tape songs off his Evening Session show, and then Huw Stephens was ace partly because he mentioned that we were from South Derbyshire. If I was a kid hearing a band from my town being introduced on Radio 1 it would've blown my mind!
Q: What’s planned for the year? More gigging or recording more material?
Definitely more of both. We need to hold back on playing Derby a bit because we don't want people to get sick of the sight of us! Hopefully around springtime we'll have another release out there, which will probably be another 4 track e.p. We had a good first year in terms of the response we got locally and we also got a bit of national radio exposure etc. so we really want to build on that. No rest for the wicked Danny.
Crushing Blows' four track ep is available to buy from http://crushingblows.bigcartel.com/ and can also be streamed on their bandcamp page at http://crushingblows.bandcamp.com/ or via the embedded player below.
