Search The Line of Best Fit
Search The Line of Best Fit

Introducing: Gallops

15 October 2010, 12:00 | Written by Jen Long
(Tracks)

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It was nearly two years ago that I last interviewed Gallops. Stood by the river Taf in Cardiff on a freezing January night, the band had just played in a venue below a youth hostel, and they had blown me away. Tight, heavy, syncopated riffs met with crisply ordered electronic glitches and a carnal drummer who looked like he was about to lacerate any member of the crowd with flying shards of drumstick.

I work for BBC Introducing in Wales. We were the first people to play Gallops and we sort of had them pinned for one of our big Welsh hopes for 2009. We put them forward to play the BBC Introducing Stage at One Big Weekend. They said they would be recording an EP… and then nothing. Well over a year later and we finally have a physical release from the Wrexham four piece. It’s here in my left hand as I type with my right and it was well worth the wait. But what happened?

Can you start by telling me a bit about how you guys all got together and what you’ve been up to in the past few years?

Right. Well, basically we started making music around Winter 2007 and that was just intended as messing about really, in between mates. We got picked up by BBC Introducing on Radio 1 and we got a track played on there so after that we sort of thought we’d take it a bit more seriously. Since then we’ve just been writing more and more music.

We’ve done a lot of gigs pretty much all over really, a lot in the UK, a few in Europe and stuff. Played BBC Introducing Stages at the Big Weekend and also at Reading and Leeds this year as well. Everything’s just been working towards us releasing an EP, which took us a while to get out because we had to get someone to believe in our music to actually put it out, but we’re just working off the back of that at the moment.

You put it out through Holy Roar and Blood and Biscuits. So how did it come about that those two labels got together to support your release?

Yeh, it’s a bit weird. We did a gig in London and Simon from Blood and Biscuits came down and basically them two had been looking, coz they’re good mates Alex from Holy Roar and Simon from Blood and Biscuits, they’d been looking to do a release, like a split release, between the two labels and they hadn’t really found a band that suited both labels, if you see what I mean.

So they found us and thought we were a good crossover. It is a bit of a weird arrangement but we’re pretty happy with it coz it gets us two lots of fans, if you know what I mean.

Both labels have got quite distinctive sounds and you seem to fit into both those brackets quite well.

Yeah! Which is quite odd really as well. You’ve got obviously Holy Roar, which tend to do more sort of hardcore music, which is stuff that we’re into quite a lot ourselves and some of our music does tend to be a bit heavier, now and again. But then you’ve got the electronic side as well which is more the Blood and Biscuits sort of thing coz they’ve got stuff like Three Trapped Tigers and Teej and stuff like that. It’s a bit strange how we’ve managed to bridge the gap.

The thing about the EP as well is that you say you’ve been together since 2007 and it’s 2010 now. What we usually find with BBC Introducing is that we’ll find a new band and within a month or two they’re like ‘Hey! This is our new EP!’ But you guys have really built things up over time. Was that a conscious decision?

Erm… To be honest, no it wasn’t really a conscious decision. Basically, it was just no one wanted to release any of our stuff! No, it took a while to get songs that we were happy with to release, but the actual songs that are on the EP, they’ve been sort of, like to us now, even though they’ve just been released, to us, we’re sick to death of them now. Just coz we’ve been playing those for so many years. If someone had have said at that time, ‘we want to release an EP’, then we would have probably said yes as well back then. It’s just the way it’s sort of happened, but it’s definitely not a conscious decision.

One of the things that people always mention when they talk about Gallops is the fact that you’re from Wrexham. Is that a big factor, or just where you are? What is the music scene like there?

It’s a bit of a weird one, yeah, coz it’s always as if the way people mention that we’re from Wrexham, it’s almost as if it’s some sort of stigma, if you know what I mean. It’s like, ‘Oh, nothing’s ever come from Wrexham that’s good’ blah, blah, blah. Which you know, is possibly true.

But it’s actually pretty good to be honest, the music scene in Wrexham. It’s really small, obviously, it’s a really small town, but I think, sometimes, the smaller a music scene is the better it feels to be in it, I think. You go to bigger cities and there’s like, too many bands and too many nights. Too many clubs, and there’s no sense of community there, but in Wrexham there definitely is. Everyone’s out to help each other, we’re all there to do gigs with each other. I’m pleased that we’ve been able to grow up in this scene as opposed to a bigger scene.

The thing about the scene though is that you’ve got bands like Mother of Six and Polly Mackey and they all have a similar sound, whereas you guys do sound completely different.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that we’re directly influenced by the music of the Wrexham music scene, if you see what I mean. It’s more the sort of ethic of it all and just the way everyone helps each other out. We just ended up sounding like this because, I don’t know… I really haven’t got a clue how to answer that really, it’s just the way it’s all come together. It’s basically, the combination of the people in the band because we’re all into different stuff so it’s a bit of a melting pot, really.

The last time I saw you was at Reading Festival. I was stood watching you from the crowd and it started out there was about fifty odd people watching and by the end it seemed like there was three hundred. I was quite proud to be honest. Can you tell me what it was like to headline the Introducing stage at Reading?

It was amazing, definitely. Like you said, at first there was a few people wandering past and we were just happy to be there to be honest, it wasn’t a problem. But then you’re sort of more concentrating on what you’re playing on stage and some of our stuff’s quite complicated to play so you haven’t got much time to look at the audience and then halfway through the set you sort of look up and there’s hundreds and hundreds of people, so that was a really mad feeling.

I hadn’t been to Reading Festival before but I’d been to Leeds a few times and just to be playing a festival that I grew up going to and stuff, and playing on a stage as the sun’s going down and there’s so many people watching you was an amazing feeling, definitely.

And what are your plans? Are you going to start writing new material? Recording new songs?

Basically, until the end of the year we’re going to be doing shows to promote the EP and also, we’ve got a lot of material that we sort of, need to adjust the finer points of and then we’re gonna get everything together and pick what tracks we want for an album and then we’re gonna start pushing that in the new year. Possibly, maybe record it in the new year as well. But yeah, that’s definitely our next step, to do an album.

How long are we gonna have to wait for the new album, now?

Well, hopefully not however long you had to wait for the EP! I’m not sure. The songs are there, pretty much. We’re quite anal about our tracks so, I don’t know, definitely by the summer, I’d say.

That’s for the summer, in time for festival season, yeah?

Well, that is the plan, like.

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