Features / Music

“Well, we’ve talked a lot about doing one [No Use For A Name song] with Lagwagon and I think we will. We’re having a bit of a tough time coming to agreement on which song to do – it’s difficult because we all like the band a lot and everybody has different songs they’d like to play.”

“All our heroes were drum’n’bass DJs; but we weren’t DJs, we were musicians.”

Adam Hole, one half of six-string performance duo Monster Guitars, makes his obsession clear – “Without my guitar, I am nobody.”

Novocastrian roots ensemble Benjalu are in the midst of their biggest headline run of dates, and as Ben Gumbleton says, it’s all in the name of good times.

"I get an extra sense of freedom and even a boost in confidence or self-esteem when I land on American land – it’s really weird."

“The band make-up is only two members, but the sound is massive. It’s physical, it’s confrontational, and we’ve had so many people just love it."

“I’m not very good at sounding like what I set out to do.”

"I kind of composed the album on this little Casio PT-30 and when I went back to Paris to record it, I really wanted to keep this first feeling of when I composed it with these really basic chords. It sounds really cheap when you play it in your living room, but when you plug it into a system on stage they just sound so fantastic."

"I’m sick to fucking death of recording, that’s for sure.”

“It’s my debut album, but I’ve been at this for so long that I wanted to get a lot of my friends involved, so it definitely has some cool collabs.”

"The reception for the EP has been really great – we’ve gotten some nice reviews and people have been very kind to us. It’s all going a bit better than I expected, really.”

“It had to happen I guess. I’d love to give a certain producer who I love a call but our budget didn’t permit any of that kind of behaviour. I’ll make it clear, I didn’t get paid.”