Nobody who has been anywhere near a news channel in 2015 could fail to have noticed the humanitarian catastrophe creeping across Europe.
Propelled by war and economic ruin, countless thousand people – call them migrants, call them refugees, but remember they’re people – have embarked on dangerous, and often deadly, journeys.
A new charity concert aims to raise both awareness and funds to aid those in peril. Help Refugees is a fresh venture, taking place at London’s Forum venue on November 22nd (ticket LINK) and featuring contributions from Paloma Faith, Peace and more.
Tickets are on sale now, with Clash taking the opportunity to chat to Peace frontman Harry Koisser about what they have planned for this special event…
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So Harry, how did you get involved in Help Refugees?
We met the organiser a few times at parties and stuff, and then she started working on the show idea and asked if we wanted to do it. We were originally going to be in France and then we changed our plans to do it. It would have been too expensive otherwise, and we really wanted to do it. It seemed like a really good opportunity.
It must be a thrill to give something back.
Totally. It’s hard to work out how you’re going to help, apart from just donating money. Then when the opportunity came to use music… it’s kind of a strange feeling to be able to use something that you love to help people who are desperately in need. So it was a no-brainer for us to go out of our way to do it.
Are you going to have a few surprises in your set?
I really want to do something special. There are a lot on people on the bill who are going to be doing stuff at the show who I want to get involved with, and I think we’re definitely going to try and make it special. It’d feel weird to put on a normal Peace show there. You’ve got lots of time to rehearse, so we’re going to try and do something super special so it is worth coming and seeing it at this show, not just coming and seeing us at one of our headline shows. I think it’ll be totally different.
And you’re writing new material right now, aren’t you?
I’m not supposed to talk about it… but I don’t care! Basically, we’ve got a house in the countryside, this big old house and we’re just taking everything that we own there, all of our equipment that we’ve accumulated over the years, and ourselves, and we’ll sit in there and work on music everyday until we have the album ready. We’re not sure how long it’ll take – I guess it’ll take as long as it takes.
We’re going to lock ourselves away and dedicate ourselves to it… because we’ve never done anything like that. It’s always been on the road writing and then we’ll come off tour and go into the studio so we thought, fuck it! That’s what you used to do when you’re in a band and you’re 16 years old – you do it every day after school or every day after college or every day after work… we used to go to our parents’ garage and we used to play.
Have you been able to take part in something like Help Refugees before?
We’ve never really had the opportunity to do something like this before. It’s quite exciting to take part in something really relevant, happening right now. People making these journeys who are completely unsupported and have no other options. It’s kind of cool that we’re young enough and we can actually do something to help and it’s kind of exciting to really give something.
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Help Refugees takes place at Kentish Town Forum in London on November 22nd – ticket LINK.
