You may remember Mancunian grunge rockers Nine Black Alps for their infectious distorted pop tunes such as ‘Unsatisfied’, ‘Just Friends’ and ‘Shot Down’.
Just about every track on their debut album ‘Everything Is’ was sheer audio bliss. You may remember being sadly disappointed with their second release ‘Love/Hate’ which ultimately led to them being dropped by major label Island Records and almost disappearing from the music radar altogether.
Perhaps you thought they decided to go their separate ways, like a lot of bands do after being dropped. But then, you’d be wrong. The band continued to write, record and tour relentlessly, self-releasing their third album ‘Locked Out From The Inside’ in 2009. Packed with face melting riffs and more distortion and chaos than normal human ears should be able to handle, it would prove Nine Black Alps to still be one of the country’s best rock bands, albeit perhaps only to their remaining loyal fanbase who continued to support them through thick and thin. Now, after taking a break to pursue their own personal projects, the band are recording their fourth album as a power trio. Nina Glencross caught up with frontman Sam Forrest to discuss the progress of the upcoming record and the pros and cons of being in a band that have gone from playing major festivals to outbuildings with no heating.
So you’re currently in the middle of recording you’re fourth album. What can we expect?
We started recording it in May last year but have only had chance to spend about five days in total on it but it’s all going well and we’re putting stuff down fast when we have chance.
As to what you can expect, I’m afraid it’s the same Nine Black Alps stuff as usual. Distorted guitars, singing, short songs etc… I think it’s pretty poppy and direct. The idea was to keep it as overdub and reverb free as possible but that could all change. I didn’t want it to be as effect heavy as ‘Locked Out From The Inside’ and I wanted it to be faster and more song-like. I think it will sound a lot less produced than the other records as it’s just us who’s recording it.
How does it feel to be recording Nine Black Alps tracks again and making a good old racket like old times?
Feels really good and fun. Having a break from being ‘a band’ gave me the hunger to want to make music together again and there’s something really natural and instinctive about how we make music together that doesn’t take hardly any explaining, it’s just like turning on a tap. I think because it’s been over two years since we made our last record ‘Locked Out From The Inside’, it doesn’t feel like a chore or a formula.
Whereabouts are you recording? Is this having any influence over the music or recording process?
We’ve recorded in three places. We recorded drums in a sort of rehearsal practice room rock school type thing just outside of Huddersfield in one day. We spent another day in David’s spare bedroom recording bass. And we’re doing all of the guitars and vocals in this outbuilding I have near my house in North Yorkshire. I wrote most of the songs in January in the outbuilding. It has no heating so it was just me, an electric guitar, an amplifier and a tape machine and I’d be wearing seven layers and a hat so I suppose the cold inspired me to keep a level of energy there just to keep warm.
I think because we’re not using any real studios it’s going to not sound like a studio record I suppose. We’re having to be fairly quick in getting stuff down so there’s nothing too complicated or overly thought about. Also because it’s just us recording ourselves I think we’re in no danger of ending up like we want to impress or sound like anything that we’re not.
What else inspired the new record?
I think there’s lots of stuff on there about being misunderstood or detached from the world maybe. Where I live is so far away from the metropolis, I probably have a fairly skewed idea of how the world functions but there’s lots on there about cities, old towns, homes, isolation. I’ll probably work out what it’s about in a year or two.
Your bassist Martin left to join new band Milkmaid. How did you feel about this? How have you dealt with being a man down?
I totally understood and it’s totally fine. He rang me at the end of 2010 asking if I was thinking about doing another Nine Black Alps album anytime soon and I said probably not so he focused on Milkmaid. And then I decided actually yeah I’d like to do another Nine Black Alps album, in the meantime Milkmaid got signed and are now doing really well, so I have no problem at all with it!
At the moment it’s weirdly normal but we haven’t played any live shows yet. We’ll think about that when we come to it. We’ll probably have to draft somebody in to help us out as 95% of our songs need two guitarists.
When we put down the drum tracks it was with James on drums, David on bass and me on guitar and it only took us about one hour to learn and record each song so yeah it must’ve worked.
You have a lot of different side projects going on too. What other things have you been up to? Will you still be continuing side projects alongside the release of the fourth record?
We all seem to be insanely busy with other stuff at the moment. David’s been touring with the Cribs as a guitarist and he’s just finished a solo album.
I’ve just finished recording an album called ‘Hawks To The Wind’ by Hayley Hutchinson, as well as an album called ‘Stories, Rags and Stomps’ by Mark Wynn and am also mixing an album by Chris Helme, as well as tour managing a friend of mine called Benjamin Francis Leftwich.
And James is slowly and surely taking over the world, in his own way. Yeah the side projects and all the other things we do will continue as I think it helps keep us sane and sometimes put cash in our pockets.
After the second album, you departed from Island Records – was this more scary or liberating?
It was a really weird time. The whole process of recording our second album was a bit of a nightmare and then I don’t think our singles did as well as the label hoped, so that by the time the album came out we did a show in London and nobody from the label turned up and we got dropped a week later.
I was kind of relieved when we got dropped, as the whole situation was fairly embarrassing and I didn’t want everyone at the label to look at us like a failure. So in the short term it was liberating but in the long term it’s really hard to keep momentum going without somebody there to pay for tour costs, recording costs, marketing crap and so on.
You’ve had a very DIY approach since then, with ‘Locked Out From The Inside’ and now the forthcoming record. Are you still learning from this method as you go? What’s the best thing about the DIY approach and what is the downside?
Yeah we’ve definitely learned lots from the DIY approach in terms of recording. The whole promoting side of being in a band isn’t something that any of us are that interested in unfortunately.
The best thing about the DIY approach is that you spend less money and you learn to make records that at least come closer to how you want them to sound like. And you don’t end up being portrayed in ways that you find embarrassing or weird.
The downside is that it’s 1000% times harder to get your music heard. Without a team of radio pluggers, press people, a record company and an active management you’re pretty much going to be just another MySpace page. So therefore you’re going to have to find other ways of getting money in order to fund your band, which usually means getting other work that means you spend less time on your own music than you’d like.
Do you think Nine Black Alps prove that nowadays record labels are overrated? What would you say to younger bands looking to get themselves heard?
I think we kind of prove that unfortunately you do still need a record label or at least an active management in order to still stay somewhere on the radar. The music business in the UK seems to be built on a fairly small network of people in each of the major cities who, if you’re not speaking to them on a constant basis, will quickly move onto something that’s more visible.
If any younger band wants to get themselves heard I’d probably say don’t try to get signed, play as many shows as possible, listen to your own recordings and definitely spend more time writing songs than updating your various websites.
Your fans always show great support on Facebook and Twitter, how vital is the support of a loyal fanbase to a band with no label support?
It’s good to know that there’s people out there who still care about our music. It’s really surprising actually as I would’ve thought that most people would’ve forgotten about us but people still seem to want us to keep releasing records and playing live shows. It’s nice to feel important to someone, somewhere and it encourages us to get things done.
In the past you’ve received great support from bands like Kaiser Chiefs, Biffy and BRMC, you’ve played massive festivals, you’ve toured across Europe, America and even Japan and you’ve recorded in LA. How does it feel to have come back to where you are? Do you prefer things being more intimate?
It’s just completely different. Five years ago we had lots of people in offices in London making sure that adverts were circulated, tours booked, recording sessions planned, accounts sorted, interviews arranged, radio producers messaged which was like a massive military operation just to mobilise some three minute fuzzy pop songs.
Whereas now it’s just me, David and James trying to organise when we can get a day free each so that we can record some guitar parts in an unheated room.
It feels more in control this way but the area that we control is tiny, so we’re kind of like being a little dictatorship of a tiny island in Polynesia, rather than a random outspoken MP of some gigantic superpower.
I know you have no set plans at the moment and are just playing things by ear but, in an ideal world, what would you hope for for Nine Black Alps this year?
I would love for somebody to give us thousands of pounds for our record and give us the freedom to make another album immediately after.
I think ideally I would like us to be either massively, insanely successful or completely off the radar. At least if we’re off the radar we can make more music.
More at www.nineblackalps.com