 Audiotube recently sat down with Elephants to find out all about their debut single, their career highs and celebrity footie tournaments.
Owen Kimm, 21, Dean Bryant, 20, George White, 16, and Tom Burrows, 21, formed Elephants in September 2008 and in just over a year the band have released a eight track self-titled EP, performed at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Swindon and are now in the midst of their latest, albeit somewhat disjointed, UK tour. 1. Ok, so you guys have only been together for just over a year, how are things going? Has 2009 been what you expected it to be? Owen: I don’t think any of it has been expected to be honest. I think it’s all just been a lot of hard work and a lot of luck, I think, more than anything. I guess there’s been a bit of blagging along the way. We’ve got to play as much as we can and ultimately have fun with it at the end of the day. It’s worked out for us quite well so far. 2. You were signed pretty quickly, were you surprised by that? Owen: We got picked up by Vacuous Pop although we’re not officially signed to them; we go under the label Vacuous Pop umbrella. In January we agreed to let them print our stuff as we thought it would be a good for us to put some stuff out under a name. We thought that being where we are; the other side of London [Folkestone] that no-one comes to us, we’ve got to come to them. We sent out 12 track demos to about 15/20 labels and one got back to us and helped us out for the past six to ten months. It was really exciting when we got picked up and now we’re just hoping for bigger and better things. 3. You performed on the BBC Introducing stage at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Swindon in May, how was that? Were you nervous? Dean: Yeah it was really good. We started off with our local BBC Kent and then went on to get played on Radio One, on the Steve Lamacq show and then Maida Vale and within the space of four months everything just kicked in and to play at Radio 1’s Big Weekend was just the most awesome thing. We were playing at like 100 miles an hour. Tom: You play like 15 minutes down your road and then one minute you blink and you’re playing on the BBC Introducing stage, it was just surreal really. It just shows how quick it can happen I guess. I was nervous but I got to play football with some celebrities: Kano, Ne-Yo and that kid from N-Dubz. 4. What’s been your biggest career high to date? Owen: Releasing our single (Alexander was released on September 28th) is probably the biggest because I never thought we’d get to release a single. Tom: Doing the sessions at Maida Vale was a huge highlight. Dean: I think everything new that we do just gets better and better. We’ve been going on an uphill slope and we haven’t come back down yet.
5. So you recently released your debut single ‘Alexander’, are you nervous to see how people respond to it?
Owen: We’re quietly optimistic about it. I don’t think we know what to expect. Nothing we’ve done has been expected. 
Tom: Obviously we don’t expect it to be number one but we’ve always had a lot of faith in that song. I think that’s the song that’s got us to where we are, it became our main focus and that’s what made them [Vacuous Pop Recordings] listen to the rest of our music. It’s nice to have it on sale, as a single, for people to buy. It’s sort of the end point of this year for us, it’s a really nice way to mark a year’s work and now we can move on and do some new stuff, new releases. It’s really exciting but it’s the end of that year and it’s time to move on, let’s see what the next year brings.
6. You recently released your eight track EP, how have people responded to that?
Owen: Well, we sell it at shows and online, it’s not had an official release. We’re always writing, producing stuff all the time and hopefully with the single out it [the EP] will get a bit more attention. And then we’ll go from there.
7. You kicked off your UK tour on Friday, how’s that going so far? Owen: Well, this month has sort of fallen a bit flat. We toured in May and then we toured in July and we wanted to tour again but for a number of reasons we’ve called it off a bit. However, we’ll still play a few. We played in Southampton recently as part of their freshers’ week and that was really nice. 8. Are people already familiar with your material?
Tom: Yeah I think the more shows we play the more people tend to know the words. We had a show the other day and there were people singing along there which was really weird. We’ve played a couple of shows in Barnstable in Devon and every time we’ve played there it’s always been packed and all the kids seem to know the words each time we go there which is such an amazing feeling. Elephants debut single ‘Alexander’ was released on September 28th Elephants EP Track listing: 1. Alexander
2. For Laika
3. Take My Breath Away
4. Antlers
5. Lions
6. American Football
7. Berlin
8. Where have you been?  Elephants tour
8 Oct 2009 21:00
Club Indigo - Folkestone
15 Oct 2009 20:00
Queen of Hoxton W/ Kids Love Lies - London
25 Oct 2009 19:00
Brake Hall w/ Underground Heroes - Ashford
30 Oct 2009 20:00
The Kings Pub - Portsmouth, South
31 Oct 2009 20:00
Stripes w/ Stagecoach - Folkestone
6 Nov 2009 20:00
Woody’s Bar - University of Kent - Canterbury
13 Nov 2009 20:00
[Mini Tour] - All Sparkes Disco Party @ Firebug - Leicester, Midlands
20 Dec 2009 13:00
TINSELDAYER @ THE VIEW – Folkestone, London & South East
For more info on Elephants:
http://www.myspace.com/fullyelephants
Words: Carly Hand
Audiotube Newsdesk October 6th 2009 |
