Introducing the 4 piece alt rock band
PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF FOR US WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH YOU AND YOUR MUSIC AND TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
Hey! We’re Just Suppose, a 4 piece band straddling the line between alt-rock and indie-pop and currently based out of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM OR SINGLE?
It’s called “Icarus”. It’s a song about keeping a lid on your hopes and dreams and not wanting to take risks for fear of falling, losing it all, and having to start over. It’s something that everybody goes through at some point in life, but sometimes you just need to take that step and say to yourself “just suppose this could go right for me…”
WHAT INSPIRED THE ALBUM OR SINGLE?
It inspired itself in a way. The song actually started out as a simple piano piece by Ewan (lead singer) which ended up morphing into the main guitar riff. From there the song just unfolded and the lyrics just came naturally. It took a while for the song title to come but once we considered the legend of Icarus it just made sense considering the lyrical content!
CAN YOU SUM UP THE SINGLE IN A FEW WORDS?
Really amazing and you should give it a listen now.
WHAT RECORD CHANGED YOUR LIFE AND WHY?
There's a lot of records that have had a significant impact on my life for example; Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance and Placebo's Self titled album but I think the album that has had the greatest impact was Biffy Clyro's Puzzle. I think Puzzle was the album that made me realise what alternative rock could be, beforehand I was very focused on punk bordering onto metal but while tracks like that are still in Puzzle it is contrasted with beautifully melodic tracks such as 'As dust dances' and 'Folding stars' and I think it really influenced where I am as a musician and helped me to diversify the music I write plus it got me out of the so-called “it’s not just a phase mum” phase.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEO FILMED BY YOUR BAND OR ANOTHER ARTIST?
We ourselves don't have any music videos yet, that's definitely something for the future. There are lots of really good music videos out there, but some really stand out. I think Avril Lavigne's 'Sk8er Boi' is now a classic: it perfectly sums up early 00s skater culture and it’s at the point now where you look back on it and go “wow, was that real?!”. 'Duality' by slipknot is another one that has become iconic - it’s just a bunch of people causing absolute mayhem which is of course very fitting for the song. I do think though that the best shot music video is 'The Scientist' by Coldplay simply because of the fact that the full thing is filmed in reverse so Chris Martin had to learn to sign the whole song backwards - it’s very impressive.
WHAT WOULD WE FIND YOU DOING WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING MUSIC?
Three of us are still at university, so at the moment as boring as it sounds: busy doing uni work - and the other is more than likely just working. We are all music students though so we don't do too much outside of making music. I guess it's a lot of the usual we watch TV, play games and socialise (when we can).
DO YOU GET NERVOUS PERFORMING LIVE, IF SO HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT?
Fraser: I don't think we do anymore I think it's mostly excitement before we play live now. When we started playing live though I used to be extremely nervous, our first gig was my first gig outside of a school scenario so it was daunting. When I'm nervous I tend to shake when playing the guitar (a very bad trait to have for a guitarist) we got to the point of our track lungs where I have a somewhat solo where I tremolo pick throughout, to put it simply I dropped my pick and absolutely messed it up, I still get wound up to this day about that by the rest of them. Funnily enough it helped with the nerves because I think if I managed to keep going after that there's not much else that can go worse, plus we got a running joke for on stage as well now.
Ewan: I still get a bit nervous myself, but don’t tell the other guys ;)
HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND?
The band started as a casual invitation to “jam together” from Fraser to Ewan, which somehow ended up as a bit of a mess with 7 people in a room making random noise. The next one went a lot better and Lewis joined us on drums and we successfully managed to write our first song (“Until I Wake”). Olli didn’t join us on bass until later - we had another bass player for a while who ended up being not so reliable. We’re quite a diverse little group but it just works.
HOW DO YOU WRITE? - DO YOU HAVE A KEY SONGWRITER, OR DO YOU ALL WORK TOGETHER?
Generally the songwriting process begins with a guitar riff or interesting chord progression sent on messenger which, if we think it has potential, then gets worked on in the rehearsal space as a full band. Lyrics are almost always by Ewan and Fraser, but we all contribute in some way. One of the great things about working as a band is that you have people around you who have great ideas to take the song to the next level - and we try to take full opportunity of that!
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
We take inspiration from a lot of different places, when it comes to writing music we draw a lot from our personal experiences. If we are going through a tough time we write music, if there's something we want to get off of our chests we write music about it. We draw from other sources for example we find inspiration for lyrics in poetry or we will listen to classical pieces and music from other artists for creative inspiration, as I say we have a lot of different sources of inspiration.
WHAT IS NEXT?
After our single Icarus is released, there is definitely more music on the way. We’d like to start writing
an album, and equally we can’t wait to get back on the horse with live shows - it’s been far too long and we’re longing to get back out there stronger than ever!
PLEASE TELL US ANY SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS SO WE CAN SHARE.
https://www.facebook.com/justsupposeband
https://www.instagram.com/justsupposeband/
https://twitter.com/justsupposeband