It was a lovely balmy night up at the U:Music base last night with excellent live sessions from Battant and Duchess Says to keep eager ears entertained. It was sweaty, it was full of people and the bands delivered their radio sets consummately well.
Battant are a tight, tuneful and euro-friendly punk/new wave three-piece outfit from down here in Lahndan. I caught up for a brief chat with guitarist Tim Fairplay just after the gig.
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Who did you play with tonight, then?
I feel really bad. I don’t actually the know the name of their band even though I really enjoyed them. So you can fill in that gap – I did genuinely really enjoy them, whoever they were. (They were Duchess Says, of course.)
How was the show?
Good. It was really hot. Like, we’ve done a number of these kind of things. Not really in this country, but in Europe. And this actually was one of the better ones that we’ve done.
Better ones of what, band showcases?
Yeah, showcase things and radio things where there’s been an invited audience. And it wasn’t quite as sterile as the other ones we’ve done. It was, kind of, just more like a gig. It didn’t seem to be just totally industry people. There seemed to be some people here who like music just for the sake of liking music.
Did you get slightly nervous knowing that you were going out across the airwaves?
No. We’re kind of a little bit unknown in this country. But we’ve got more of a following in France. We’ve done a lot of these things in France, you know, on national radio stations. So I wasn’t particularly phased, no. I was a little bit more phased by doing the talking bit than doing the playing bit.
How do you feel about this whole internet radio malarkey?
Well, when it comes down to it I’m kind of a bit of a luddite. I still buy records. I do use computers but I don’t listen to a lot of music online. And maybe it’s a mistake, and I’m a bit of a snob – once I got here, I did seem really cool. Maybe I should check out these things more than I do, rather than going, “Uh, what the fuck. Internet music on the internet… uh!”
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Find Battant on MySpace HERE
Find Diesel:U:Music online HERE
