SPLIT ENDS INTERVIEW
HOW DID YOU GUYS MEET?
Theo-
“We met in October, I think, at a house party- a uni party at Phoenix… Alison was wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt… so I went up to her and was like yo, love the t-shirt… and yeah from there we started talking about music and stuff… and got pretty drunk, and we were like let’s make a band
Alec-
“I met Alison through the course we were on… intrestingly enough I was meant to be on Taylor's band first, big up Atomic Carnage but that fell through and it turns out Alison lives like 20 minute walk from me so over christmas we were justt chilling and she brought up Split Ends and I was like yeah… yeah say less”
Alison-
“I think I said to you how was it going with Taylors band because I think by that point we had a drummer- Bradley from Sleepless Pleasures- Big up Sleepless- He done drumming with us for a couple of sessions but because he was sort of occupied with sleepless he couldnt really.. we were kinda inbetween drummers, auditioning a bunch of different people and i asked Alec how it is with Taylors band and he was like oh thats not happening anymore and so i just sort of as an offhand comment I was like ah yeah you should join my band and he was like yeah sure but I wasn't expecting him to say yes… and here we are”
Alison-
“The bands been going since mid-October, in the sense that me Theo and have been making music since then, but Alec officially became a member in like mid-February
BEFORE ALEC JOINED DID YOU CREATE ANY MUSIC YOU STILL PERFORM NOW?
Alison-
Yeah, Lazy was something that I worked on, kind of around like just before he joined… Crush swell, but it was all kind of in, like very early stages, and it all sounded really different to how it sounds now. Once Alec joined, that’s when we all kind of really started to sharpen our skills. I’d absolutely say the music has gotten better since he’s joined”
IN AN IDEAL WORLD, WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELVES PLAYING?
Everyone-
“ Greendoor”
Alec-
“Or the Dublin Castle in Camden”
WHY SPECIFICALLY GREENDOOR?
Alison-
It’s just a fucking sick venue… It's big… it looks like a dungeon.. “I think our music kinda lends ourselves to that”
Theo-
“It's the Brighton place to be… It's where all the best bands go, it’s just the place to be, it’s where things are happening”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE GREENDOR TIES IN WITH YOUR MUSIC?
Theo-
“I think people would rate us there “
Alison-
“Yeah, I think so, especially in gigs and stuff… I think our music kinda lends itself to that”
WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?
Alec-
“ I am going to be starting my record label, and the first band being Split Ends… It's going to be called Chums Records”
“It’s a pipeline dream at the moment… It's gonna be a way of getting our name out there… It's a nice way of starting my journey of owning my own record label and running it”
Alison-
“ Me and Theo are gonna in some way be involved in how it kinda operates…As well as releasing music from other bands, we're gonna put them on at different venues, so it is a great way for us to do our part for the scene”
Alec-
“I have my own personal beliefs about how the music industry is going…There's a complete lack of representation in mainstream music for small bands, especially for places like Brighton… you just don't get much exposure and starting a record label is one step towards changing what I think is wrong in the industry”
WHAT ARE THE HARDEST CHALLENGES YOU'VE FACED IN YOUR MUSIC JOURNEY SO FAR?
Alec-
“To be honest with you, finances have been a big bit of it… Being students and being relatively unemployed doesn’t help… everything costs something in the music industry, unfortunately—To rehearse— We managed to find a good place down near Portslade, big up Monster Studios— we love them…But also transport and for me, getting together a kit and buying the stuff is just a fucking nightmare… It’s very expensive”
Alison-
“At the same time, though, with stuff like that, in some respects we've been quite lucky- For example, we've recorded our debut album… It's because of Sleepless Pleasures… a bunch of their friends, they rent this little rehearsal space in Portslade, and they have a very sort of DIY mic set up… they've been really good to us, letting us use it for free. Without them, we wouldn't be anywhere close to the position we're in now”
“My biggest struggle with the band has been like stress management… we’ve been quite lucky in our 5 month existance as a fully operting band we've done something like 8 shows and have our debut single releasing soon… and that as fun as it is and as much of a rollercoaster its been, it takes a lot out of me…”
“I can’t speak for the others, but I’m sure they can agree it’s very stressful, a lot of the organisational stuff with getting gigs… figuring whose doing what, whose borrowing what, trying to get everything right… We’re looking into organising our gigs, which is a whole new world of stress”
Alec-
“Also, for me, with the fact that I don’t own my own drum kit… So the only time I get to practice or rehearse is at gigs or at rehearsals or recording, so you know it’s the whole having to memorise everything, make sure I play it consistently, cause realistically I only get to play drums at this point probably once every couple of weeks, once a week maybe”
Alison-
“Honestly… he is insane, especially for the circumstances he's in”
ARE THERE ANY CHALLENGES YOU'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO FACING?
Alec-
“The challenges that come with gaining popularity and stuff like that, that’s certainly something i’m not advered to because you know we’d just become a bigger band, but it does come with its set of stresses and challenges, and at the end of the day, the challenges that come with it are just part of the deal”
Alison-
“Recording is a challenge… it takes a lot out of us… the room we record in has like no air flow.. Its a challenge and so far its beenquite stressful because me and Alec are living in London and its quite expensive for us to go down to brighton so whenever we go down their were in the studio 6 to 8 hours at a time and we wanna make sure we can do as much as we can to the point where we overextend ourselvres a little bit-”
“ But I’m looking forward to by us moving back there, it sort of makes things a bit easier to where it’s still a challenge but not quite as consuming”
DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC IN 3 WORDS:
Alec-
“I don’t wanna say like really fucking angry but there’s a lot of contempt behind the way we play or like the lyrics…It’s common for people our age to feel disinfranchised and pissed off at everything, but I think more than ever now it's valid…”
“Personally, I think with playing drums I can just hit shit and it makes something nice, so yeah, so definitely some kind of anger”
Alison-
“The two main emotions that inform the lyrics especially are Boredom and anger… Boredom at the current state of things, the state of our music, the state of music and the state of our country… theirs a lot of anger at our country and just our world and its treatment towards eachother towards certain demograohics… for a while I had a idea of i didnt wanna take things too seriously with writing lyrics but after a certain point I realised I had a lot more to say than I thought I did ….The newer songs, especially, that’s sort of what it’s turned into. The newer stuff has more of a not explicitly political, i’m not making songs where I shout fuck the Tories, but it definitely has a fuck the Tories sentiment”
Theo-
“I get a lot of frustration from it “
DO YOU ATTEMPT TO EVOKE SPECIFIC EMOTIONS IN YOUR LISTENERS?
Alec-
“With a lot of the lyrics Alison has written, it comes with the idea of making people feel what you feel. Especially songs like Heartattack or Big Pharma Bitch … it's written about, I don’t know about experiences, but personal feelings”
Alison-
“Fundamentally, with the music, my goal has been to get people moving… The most gratifying feeling, and i’m sure this is something both of the boys can agree with, of being in this band and playing a show, is when we see people moshing or we see people dancing”
Theo- -
“I just wanna make people move… that’s all I care about”
Alec-
“We’ve been saying this loads recently when you look out into the crowd and people are going fucking nuts in moshes it’s like woah I actually have that effect on people… the music we make actually has an effect on people it’s like AhghH “
DO YOU GUYS HAVE ANY ANNOUNCEMENTS?
Alison-
“We're in the very early stages of our first headlining gig at the Cowdy Club, which will be in mid-September once everyone’s back from uni”
Theo-
“We are putting a gig together at the Bees Mouth”
Alec-
“Our first debut single Lazy has been fully mixed and mastered by yours truly and is coming later to be released around mid-August… Augusty 15th”
Alison-
“There is something i kinda wanna go back to when you were asking about what were trying to convey with our music i think yeah we always wanted to kinda get people moving but as the currently sole lyracist of the band, a lot of the lyrics in our most recent songs are kinda informed by my experiences of being transgender in this country- which is currently not a very good time to be transgender”
“I feel like that’s a struggle that’s not really represented outside of underground circles. I kinda feel theirs not really a lot of positive mainstream positive representation…I dont feel as though theres many celebrities or just people high up in pop culture who are in our corner and fighting, so I kinda wanna be a voice…not just for other trans people to share my anger but to try get other people to be as angry as I am”
“We just want people to come to our shows, give us money”
Alec-
“Support local artists, support small bands… buy their merch for Christ's sake… don’t buy merch from big bands ”
Alison-
“Especially our merch…”
Alec-
“When that will happen, we don’t know”
Alison-
When we get our next wave of gig money, we gotta make some band t-shirts…”
Alec-
“We gotta mention Zoe’s artwork as well, so our mate from uni, Zoe, does architecture, when she’s at home, incredibly, incredibly talented artist, basically volunteered to do our artwork for us, and she’s been amazing about it”
Alison-
“She’s been wonderful. Do you wanna see the cover?”
Designed by @zoegoresart
“We’re happy with it… fun fact the baby on the cover is Theo’s uncle and the woman is his grandmother”
Is there a story behind that?
Theo-
“It was my Grandad’s old business selling cots and stuff…so where it says Modern Mothers, above that is like nursery equipment for Modern Mothers… it was called Precious Baby, that was the business. That their uncle Jeff… Big up, uncle Jeff’
Alison-
“We just found it one day, and we were just like hell yeah, we gotta fucking use that”
Why that picture specifically?
Alec-
“I mean, it's cold”
Theo-
“How it looks really… I guess it kinda works with the title of the single”
Alison-
‘We wanted something for the artwork, we wanted something old, something a bit vintage and collagey… and instantly we saw that and it was kind of exactly the kind of thing we wanted’