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Push to Fire Interview: Imperial Leisure
According to the lads, the band members met at school and soon developed into a 10 person strong band before trimming it down to ‘just’ 6 members. Their music combines a variety of styles including rock, ska, and hip hop which Kerrang! Described as “a shot of Serotonin.” Dennis explained, “that was around our first album, and the second album isn't really the same sort of sound so it's a hard thing to describe to be honest. We're just a mix of a lot of different ideas brought together. Initially it was based on a sort of hip hop theme and then we moved on to more of a ska theme, but the thing is that we're just always an energetic band that gives you something to dance to and get you moving. That’s always been our goal really, just to project energy.” “Ask us again when we've recorded our next album, and maybe we'll know by then” Scott joked.
The heaviness of their sound combined with the ska elements draws quick comparisons to bands like Capdown and King Prawn, but the band assured that this link is purely incidental. “Our bass player was more into the original ska like the Specials and Madness so that's where the ska influences come in,” Scott affirmed, “but it's getting less ska now, which is kind of weird because people are still calling us ska. As soon as you include brass people think 'ska' so it's quite a hard thing to shake of, but that influence is certainly there. The new material though has a more kind of electro and grunge element to it.”
For some strange reason the word ‘ska’ is perceived to the music industry at large as some sort of dirty word and the band seem to have experienced the difficulties that come with it. “We’ve sort of shot ourselves in the foot with every sort of genre we've included really,” Dennis offered. “When we first started we were very much like a hip hop band, and hip hop in England in early 2000 was like saying you wanted to shag someone's mum or something so we found it really difficult getting recognition from that and getting people to come down and see us. With the ska thing as well, your NMEs and such immediately cringe, but what are we gonna do? That's what we like.” Scott said he remains optimistic however as he believes “people are eventually now beginning to open their ideas to more diverse bands, and you can see that with the bands you can now see starting to make it.”
When asked for their thoughts on the current state of the UK music scene and how it may unfold over the next couple of years, Dennis said that he imagines “you'll see labels disappearing more and you'll see independent bands coming up. I run a studio and I see bands come and go, and all the kids that are coming along at the moment want control over their own sound and that goes right through to how they want to be perceived by the public as well.” Scott added, “I think people are getting tired of the whole guitar-band cliche thing. I mean it's been going for about 7 years or something with the skinny jeans and stuff.”
Imperial Leisure have enjoyed some great success so far touring with high profile acts such as Less Than Jake, Roots Manuva, and Gym Class Heroes but the stand-out tour for them so far was last year with the Youngblood Bass Band. “With no disrespect to all the other bands we've played with,” Scott clarified, “but every single person in that band is a top class musician and watching them every night was amazing.” Dennis commented, “saying that though, the Less Than Jake tour was really hard work. We were first on of a four band bill and it was quite a big tour and you could get a lot out of it even with a half hour set, but you did have to work really hard for it.”
The gig they were due to play that night was their last gig of a headline UK tour which they said had gone really well. “Last night we played Brighton and for me that was the best gig of the whole tour,” said Dennis. “It was a small venue, packed to the rafters, and people were just going for it. As a band you can't ask for more than that really. One of the most fun gigs we've ever played was at the bottom of the Eiffel Tour in Paris actually. It was good fun playing the music to people who'd never heard it before and immediately sort of jumped on it.”
The band has managed to gain much of their reputation and fan base through so-called “guerilla gigs” in which they roll up on a random location unannounced, set up their equipement, and play to whoever happens to be there. “We’re trying to think of another way of doing it because we've sort of done it to death a bit,” Dennis replied when asked if this would be a continuing venture for the band. According to Scott, “it started from needing to just get out there and do it. You know, if we had gigs coming up and we weren't doing anything that weekend we'd just go and play somewhere. So yeah, we wanna carry on doing it but we wanna change it slightly and do it somehow differently.”
The priorities of the band as a whole are laid out quite simply by Scott as he said, “we just wanna continue to have fun and the kids coming to see us need to continue to have fun and enjoy the gig. That's the most important thing to us.” Dennis added that “Imperial Leisure has been about blowing people's minds every time we play live, and now we're trying to make sure we do that on our records as well, and you'll see that on our next recording I think a lot more.” The band will shortly be going into the studio to record the next record before playing various festivals over the summer in the UK and Europe, followed by more touring in Autumn after the new record is released.
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