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Feuilleton Musik 8. September 2015

11 Fragen an Best Friends

Schon mal einen neuen Track auf dem MP3-Player angeschmissen und sich dabei einfach nur „Wow!!!“ gedacht? So ging es uns kürzlich mit der englischen Garage Punk Band Best Friends. Ihr Debütalbum Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane fetzt und erinnerte mich spontan an die Anfänge einer weiteren Band aus Sheffield – The Arctic Monkeys. Davon überzeugt, dass die vier Jungspunde noch für ähnliches Aufsehen sorgen werden, baten wir sie spontan um ein Interview. „No problem“, lautete die Antwort und Sänger Lewis Sharman sowie Bassist Ed Crisp stellten sich unseren 11 Fragen. Wir erfuhren dabei einiges über ihren Sound, Style, die Heimatstadt Sheffield und Lewis Traum von 10.000 Followern auf Twitter. Aber lest selbst!

Muckibude oder Pub?

Ed: Pub, but everyone’s partial to a cafe now and again.
Lewis: It scares me how much people seem obsess about hitting the gym, but I’m one of those annoying guys that can eat an unlimited amount of shit and never get fat.

Albarn oder Gallagher?

Ed: Neither?
Lewis: They’re old men. Time for them to move over.

Mod oder Rocker?

Ed: No preference, but Sting was pretty badass in Quadrophenia.
Lewis: The mods had cooler clothes but the rockers had better bikes.

Einfach Best Friends: Tom Roper (guitar), Lewis Sharman (vocals/guitar), Ed Crisp (bass) und Jonny Gaymer (drums) © Best Friends
Einfach Best Friends: Tom Roper (guitar), Lewis Sharman (vocals/guitar), Ed Crisp (bass) und Jonny Gaymer (drums) © Best Friends

Wir haben gerade erst euer Debüt Best Friends – Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane entdeckt. Spitzen Musik, spitzen Band. Wer seid ihr und wie beschreibt ihr euren Sound?

Lewis: Wassup Germany, we’re Best Friends and we’re here to melt your brain with our NuK Garage symphonies.

Ihr seid aus Sheffield UK, die gleiche Stadt aus der auch die Arctic Monkeys stammen. Wie hat dieser Ort eure Musik beeinflusst?

Ed: Sheffield has been an amazing place for us, there’s a thriving community of wide ranging genres, full of people who are really actively contributing to the various scenes and sheffield as a whole. Everything we recorded up until the album was done by friends of ours in their practise spaces and DIY studios with zero budget, by people who just wanted to help us out.

This is something that happens a lot in Sheffield, with people and places such as The Audacious Art Experiment, Tye Die Tapes, LaDIY, Semi Detatched, Lughole and KOTL, that are so vital to Sheffield’s musical community, and that has resulted in us (alongside bands such as Avida Dollars, Radical Boy, Fruit Bomb etc) doing Delicious Clam.

Lewis: Maybe its because I didnt grow up in Sheff but although they’re great I’ve never felt inspired or nostalgia for the bands like The Arctic Monkeys. They’re from the time the people of Sheffield see as the ‚good old days‘, when A&R men filled pubs in Sheff and even shit bands got deals. That world has always been completely detatched to ours and our Sheffield contempararies. If anything its been a fucking nightmare getting people to forget about them and make them realise theres a load of new and exciting stuff happening under their noses, but I think we’re winning.

Ihr seid noch ziemlich jung. Wie lautet der Plan? Berühmte Rockstars mit allem drum und dran? Oder gibt es dazu noch eine Alternative? 

Lewis: Yeah from day one aim has always been to get over 10,000 twitter followers on my personal profile. It’s taken four years playing in the band to get 277 so there’s a long way to go. I guess we’ll have to just carry on writing music and playing shows until then. Theres not really a plan A or B really but whatever allows us to get those followers and do whatever we want when we want to do it.

Holy Mountain: Schon mal Höhenluft schnuppern für den Weg nach oben © Best Friends
Holy Mountain: Schon mal Höhenluft schnuppern für den Weg nach ganz oben
© Best Friends

Euer Sound ist kraftvoll, schnell, aber immer melodisch. Mich erinnert er oft an Strandurlaub. Woher nehmt ihr eure Inspirationen? Habt ihr musikalische Vorbilder? 

Lewis: We all listen to lots of different types of music, but mainly we’re into US garage rock. The first band that really grabbed me and turned me from a skater into a proper music fan was the Black Lips. I’ve been listening to a lot of forgotten foreign guitar music recently. Its really fun cause you have to dig through sites to find the good stuff, which is something that has kinda got lost through the convenience of the internet.

Euer Web-Profil ist „bestfriendspartyhard“. Wie sieht ein typischer Best Friends Gig aus? Was geht bei euch nach der Show ab?

Ed: We love playing house parties but it’s been ages! A typical show is a sweaty mess where we come off stage exhausted and marginally more deaf, the best we can hope for is that the crowd gets involved and as sweaty as we are.

Einer meiner Lieblingssong auf eurer aktuellen Platte ist „Fake Spit“. Wovon handelt er? Das Video dazu ist auch ziemlich cool. Wo habt ihr es gedreht?

Ed: You’d have to ask our old drummer Jack precisely what fake spit is about, but when it came to the video i just sort of ran with the opening line, and wanted to have a bit of fun with it, so we managed to get access to an old department store in Sheffield that had been empty for a while and borrowed a load of mannequins off friends. It was all planned pretty last minute and we only had a few hours to shoot, so it was pretty hectic but good fun.

Was habt ihr als nächstes vor? Sehen wir euch bald mal in Deutschland?

Ed: Hopefully we’ll be in Germany really soon!
Lewis: Yeah we have plans! I’ve visited Berlin before and liked it alot so I’m excited to see more.

Das Debüt-Album Hot Reckless. Totally Insane von Best Friends ist bei Fat Cat Records erschienen.

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