Flawes have been making waves, after recently releasing their new EP, CTRL. The band will be playing Live at Leeds this year, alongside other great acts supporting the 10th anniversary of this iconic festival. Inner-city music events, like Live at Leeds, bring the city centre to life in a way that celebrates and embraces local talents and incredible musicians. There is a real sense of community amongst local venues, acts, and music lovers. It can simply be described as, electric.
We caught up with Flawes to discuss Live at Leeds, performing on stage, and who they recommend!
Stephen McMahon: Hello Josh, now talk us through a little bit about Flawes, and what sort of music you guys create?
Josh: So, Flawes are a three piece from Huddersfield and London, and it’s alternative pop that we like to preach. We see ourselves somewhere between London Grammar and Lapsley. We started at the end of last year releasing our first EP in November and released our second one, CTRL, a couple of weeks ago.
SM: Brilliant, how would you describe the reception from people when releasing the music?
J: Yeah, it’s been really great! We’re unsigned, so everything we’re working on is all ourselves, and we’ve had some really great recognition. We were picked up on BBC Introducing for our first EP, and they’ve been really supportive of the second. Spotify have been really great in terms of putting us on the playlists for indie music. Overall, we couldn’t have asked for it to go any better.
SM: When gigging and performing live shows at festivals such as Live at Leeds, do you feel the audience connects with the music, especially to those who have never heard it before?
J: Yeah the shows we’ve played so far have gone really well. As there are only 3 of us, I don’t think they really expect there to be such a big sound. But we’re all multitasking on stage, so it can come as a shock at first. But people tend to like the music, so it seems to have gone really great.
SM: Nowadays you see that there’s quite a lot of musicians that are becoming multi-talented in the way they perform on stage. How many instruments are you playing when you perform?
J: For the standard song, I’ll be playing a bass-synth and I’ll also be playing the piano. I’ll also trigger different samples and obviously doing vocals. I also have an effects pedal which runs with the vocals. The drummer is obviously playing a full kit, but he also is playing a bunch of samples which he is triggering. The guitarist is playing guitar along with a few peddles for effects and occasionally acoustic on some songs. We are incredibly busy. We really have to concentrate.
SM: Your set at Live at Leeds is at the wardrobe, 2 till 2:30. What can we expect from your set in particular?
J: Well, you can look forward to seeing our first ever Leeds show, which will be exciting in itself. We have new songs from the new EP, CTRL, some from the old one too. It is going to be great fun.
SM: With all the other bands on at 2 o’clock, what makes you stand out? Why should people go see Flawes instead of someone else?
J: Come see us because we try to create such a big sound that kind of like represents what were about as a band. Big vocals, massive bass synth. If you listen to our music online, especially Spotify you’ll see what I mean. Also, we don’t just play exactly what’s on Spotify, we do have live arrangements and lots of different extended sections. We try to make it all as exciting as we can.
SM: It’s the tenth anniversary for Live at Leeds this year, and we keep seeing more and more inner city festivals doing well for themselves. Are these something that you as a band are targeting?
J: Yeah massively, we love playing live, and we’ve obviously all been to these types of festivals before. I went to Live at Leeds, a couple of years ago. The atmosphere around the city centre is electric, so we want to be in and amongst it. There are such incredible acts that are on the same bill which we want to go see.
SM: Who would you recommend to also go see at Live at Leeds?
J: One of our friends, George Cosby, is playing Leeds College of Music, we are going to see him! We really want to go see Izzy Bizu, Dan Croll. Also, Sam Henshaw, he’s at the Hifi Club.
SM: What can we expect to see from Flawes over the rest of the summer?
J: Well we’re hopefully going to be announcing more festivals soon. Everything we announce is on our twitter. And on our website which is flawes.com. Hopefully, as many festivals as we can throughout the summer and more music to come from us as well.
Josh – Flawes – Live at Leeds – Sat 30th April – The Wardrobe – 2 o’clock
For all information on Live At Leeds go to the website – http://liveatleeds.com
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