North East synth-pop outfit AXLS have just released their new album ‘First Contact’ so Charlie Richardson caught up with Nathan, bass player and the electronic wizard with AXLS, to find out more.
How did you guys get together?
We met online on a website called Join My Band about a year ago, so we haven’t known each other for very long. We mapped out an idea about what we wanted to do for a concept for the whole album and then the songs just kind of happened, some of them in the rehearsal room, or sometimes someone would have an idea on their own and bring it to the other guys. It came together really quickly and it’s been good fun doing it. Victoria is the singer and she writes the lyrics and the melody and Chris is the synth player, he does all the flourishes and the boombastic solos and that sort of thing as well as writing songs too. We all contribute to the writing.
Tell me about ‘First Contact’…
It’s a concept album. What we wanted to do was put something together that told a story. We all like albums that have a common thread and the idea of ‘First Contact’ is like all good Sci-Fi: it tells a real human story if you take away the space ships and the laser beams. It’s about an alien race coming to earth and meeting humans and taking over. They kind of seduce humans with their virtual reality and humans get really into it. It’s an allegory about people’s reliance on computers and phones and living in the virtual world – it’s much more fun to live in the real world!
What are your influences?
Musically, we are all into electro bands like Kraftwerk, Human League and modern bands like London Grammar and LCD Sound System and we mix that with the big screen Sci-Fi music that we like, things like Blade Runner and John Carpenter. We have kind of invented our own genre, taking the 1970’s progressive bands – even though we don’t sound like them – and updating it with electronic music.
What’s next?
We are playing in Manchester on Friday 6th March at Factory 25 where we are supporting Australian electro band, Parralox. The next gig we’ve got coming up in Newcastle is Friday 13th March at The Globe with Sapien Trace. This year we are going to create multimedia stuff for gigs and later in the year, we plan to do an album gig where we play all the songs in the album from beginning to end with their visual accompaniment. We are also planning some dark, poppy singles that aren’t from the album to show a different side to us too. And we also have plans for gigs in London, Leeds and Glasgow.
AXLS’ debut album ‘First Contact’ is out now and is available on iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, Soundcloud and YouTube.
