Little Comets Chat To StudentPunch

Arriving at Cabaret Voltaire, I spotted Rob and Matt from up and coming North East band Little Comets having a kick-about in one of the rooms. Jovially greeting me, they joked they were trashing the place before we settled down for a chat, interrupted at times by Mark clowning around on the mike. 

Tags: Little Comets, In Search of Elusive Little Comets, Cabaret Voltaire, Joanna, iTunes Single of the week, Glastonbury
So, how does it feel to be playing in Edinburgh again? How highly do you rate the crowds here?

We’ve played at the Artisan Roast before, a cafe we dropped in to just today to refresh after a long night in Norwich before the journey up here. We also played at a few house parties about a year and a half ago, one time we managed to break a bed at one of them and we think Mickey and Mark slept in it afterwards... The crowds here are pretty vibrant and most of them know our songs, which is always good. (Verified later at the gig, all their lyrics were echoed back to them!)

“In Search of Elusive Little Comets” was released just a couple of weeks ago. Would you say this is your favourite album?

It’s our first album! Other releases have never been collated, great to get it released after so long and get reactions to songs we haven’t played live before. Were you friends first or have you met through music? “Well, we were friends...” Rob joked, continuing “Mickey and I are brothers and we met Matt in the practice room. He was always really friendly and once let us record over night, unofficially. When we needed an extra bass we thought we’d ask him.” - “I was a bit drunk from a meal with friends and pretty surprised, I agreed without really thinking about it.” – “We thought he’d just kind of mime at first, as we needed him for a gig in just a week but he went right ahead and learnt the whole set, even though he’d never played the bass before!

What’s the best part about being on tour?

We like being in different places and get pretty comfortable everywhere. We’ve got our routines in every city. We like the architecture and proximity to the countryside you get in Edinburgh and the vibrancy of cities like Manchester and London. We’d prefer Manchester if it was full of Liverpuddlians, that would be ideal.

There’s a great video of you on YouTube playing Lost in Time on a tram: is that the kind of thing you do often?

Yeah, about a year ago we were really into that kind of thing. We played at lecture theatres too, bursting in halfway through which was quite a laugh. It was tricky in Paris, they have pretty strict security. We had a run in with a porter in Edinburgh: when he found out we were lying about surprising a friend for his birthday, he said he wasn’t angry, just disappointed. It gave us that guilty child feeling.

When did you start getting interested in making music?

Matt – I was always interested in performing, music, acting everything. Now I’m much more into the music side of things. I did a degree in music production but as I’d already been involved in it quite a lot, I felt like all the authority they were giving to certain techniques was a bit false, I mean there’s lots of different ways of doing things. Rob – Mickey and I have written songs since we were about 13 and I started to get a bit disillusioned with my degree, just wanted to be creating instead. It really hit me at an interview for an internship once, when I asked for a bit of feedback, the guy just said it didn’t seem like I really wanted it. He was right, we all think there’s no point in being stressed out about something you don’t care about, even stress can be a pleasant experience if it’s because you really care about what you’re doing.

“I wish there were more bands like you,” said Tiffany on your MySpace. How do you feel support of your originality?

It’s great to hear our music is as authentic as we intend it to be. We think originality comes from the passion you put into music: if it’s straight from you it’s probably going to be quite original. It’s like when we do live sets, for instance, an acoustic one in a converted church for Mencap, it gives you ideas that you can feed back into recording. It’s all part of the process. We’re always trying different things, like playing ‘Ailses’ using a viola and playing ‘One Night in October’ all on one guitar. The difficulty of making a harmony in that kind of situation really adds to the creativity.

Which gig are you most looking forward to playing this year?

Nothing’s certain yet, but we’re pretty psyched about the possibility of playing at Glastonbury. Pretty much every band’s dream.

Roald Dahl and Paul Simon are said to be a couple of your inspirations. Which parts of their work have really affected your style?

Paul Simon’s a real inspiration. We used a sample from Graceland in ‘One night in October’ and he had to listen to it to agree that we could. He said he liked it but what really gets me is he had to listen to it! Roald Dahl - just the root of our generation’s imagination. He really sets it alive, with the dark stories he gives kids to read. It’s a shame that nowadays kids don’t get into that kind of stuff.

What’s your utopia?

Everybody chilling out and just being nice to each other; mutual respect and treating other people how you want to be treated. It really got to us recently when Mark’s wife, who’s from Uganda, got on a bus and was told that it wasn’t going to the stop she wanted, not for her anyway. It’s hard to believe that kind of thing still happens. It just makes us embarrassed that other people act that way. Rob, interjecting to lighten the mood – “A world made out of chocolate would be ideal as well. I’ve been off it for fourteen months, crisps too, I can’t just have one, you see. Double Deckers especially.” (sighs looking dreamily into the distance)

What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

In Bath we got let loose on some Jack Daniels and ended up shaving patterns into Mark’s head; that was pretty embarrassing for him. Also, after telling an interviewer that we weren’t really one of those bands that gets drunk a lot he happened to bump into us getting thrown out of a bar because Matt was trying to climb a pillar. Matt – And whose fault was that? Rob was telling me to touch the ceiling

In Search of Elusive Little Comets is available from Amazon here. Help yourself to Joanna for free as Itunes Single of the week!

Little Comets were talking to Rosie Harrison.