Maybeshewill: A new album coming early 2014
Dani with Maybeshewill Photo by Oscar Tornincasa http://photoblog.oskaro.it for rebelrebelmusic.com
Calling them a post rock band may be quite reductive, their music being defined by NME as “noisy brilliance that gets right inside the battered crevices of your skull and pounds on the sides”, proving that Maybeshewill are as a matter of fact quite rare in the world of DYI bands with their distinctive touch that makes them riding on the edge between post rock and something beautiful else that has to be defined yet. Their latest and so far more complete album, “I was here for a moment, then I was gone” (read our review here), released in 2011, was universally recognised as one of the best independent albums of the last years. Rebel Rebel’s crew members, Dani and Oscar, met Robin, James and Jamie before the band’s live show at the KOKO in London: yes rebels, they are working on a new album that will be released in early 2014. In the meanwhile, here’s what they told us.
Q: We know you don’t particularly like tags like “post-rock” or whatever, so how would you describe your music?
A: Wow tough question. Any band gets asked this all the time. You don’t really call yourself, it’s something we try to avoid really, but if we want a term for what we do, post rock band, that’s ok, it’s beneficial for you to be found with other bands.
Q: Why did you choose to only do instrumental? Was there ever a time when you considered having a lead singer?
A: Not really. When I started the band with John we just started writing music ‘cause that’s what was always available to us and as we’ve gone on we never really decided to have a leader so it’s ok to us, that’s a thing that’s working to our strengths.
Q: How do you compose your music? Who writes the songs?
A: It’s so various, I would come with an idea like parts for a song and we sort of arrange it as a band, we work hard. More recently some stuff were brought by Jamie and Jim, it does vary but at the end of the day it’s a band, a democracy, the final result of the song is a say of how we work together.
Q: What inspires your songs?
A: It changes every year, again when me and John started the band it was like 8 years ago so a different place from where we are now, our taste has changed, it’s always been quite a wide range of artists, we weren’t always listening to the same stuff, so it’s quite a diverse.
Q: Is there any particular artist you get your inspiration from?
A: Touring with bands is always good. See the workings on a personal level and a music level you get influenced by how the people who play together can feel about music. It’s the live bands more than compositions.
Q: Why the name “Maybeshewill”?
A: It’s a kind of an interesting story, we used to make up stuff, there’s no real sort of distinct meaning behind it, it’s more like when you construct things, like date girls and see what they will…
Q: What do you think of the state of mainstream music and the music industry today? How important is your DIY approach?
A: If we didn’t do it ourselves no one else would it for us so, in that sense we’re separated from the mainstream music so the state of it however it’s gonna be, it isn’t necessarily to affect us so much, it’s an outside point of view for now. You don’t get the support by a major label to be on the press and stuff like that, but outside of that, we have total creative control, we just do what we need to, we want to. It makes things sort of tough, in terms of logistics and touring, it can get really expensive, but still we’re happy to, because it kind of works for us.
Q: Any new art you find particularly interesting on the scene right now?
A: You mean in general? New electronic arts which I think are pushing boundaries pushing music forward. In this decade electronic music is the only that’s actually looking forward. There’s also a lot of progressive and rock and pop stuff but electronic music is really kind of like pushing forward and making really original music. That’s a big impression for me.
Q: What country do you enjoy most playing live?
A: Don’t want to pick a favourite, in general, maybe the furthest east we’ve gone, within Europe the furthest east we’ve gone, but we had amazing times in other cities too.
Q: What are your plans for the future, are you working on a new album?
A: Yeah, in december we’ll start recording a new record. We’re gonna start recording it around now but we got an email that it’s been postponed in 6 weeks so we had to sort of suspend the recordings. It should hopefully be finished in the near future and release it early next year, fingers crossed.
