Interview : Brigade

As you may know I write review articles of Singles, Albums, Demos, and Gigs for the excellent Sonic Dice website. Due to my involvement with that project I often get opportunities to interview bands and artists that I write about. I usually pass on these opportunities due to other commitments getting in the way.

However when the chance to interview young UK rockers Brigade came up I decided to take the plunge. Below are some of the questions, for the rest of the interview then click HERE. The answers were given by Brigade frontman Will Simpson.

- Where did the band’s name come from?

"While I was at university I recorded some music under the name Homespun and called it the ‘Brigade EP’. A friend suggested that Brigade would be a much better band name so from then on it stuck."

- Did you just all naturally click together straight away or did you take some time to develop your sound?

"It’s definitely taken some time to develop the sound. When we started out it was a three piece playing simple pop rock and we have evolved massively in certain respects since then. Listening to bands like Oceansize and Tool pushed us to sound as big as we possibly could and with the addition of James we started to try to create soundscapes through big walls of guitar. Also my voice has developed from sounding a little too close to Brian Molko to something stronger and more unique. We clicked straight away but it’s taken a while to nail that Brigade sound."

- Your debut LP, ‘Lights’, was well received by critics and fans alike. Did you expect that sort of high praise?

"It definitely exceeded our expectations. ‘Lights’ was a collection of songs written between 2001 and 2005 so we weren’t sure what people would make of it but the response was overwhelming. We’ve always felt we have the potential to be something special and so in many respects it was a dream start."

- What was the thinking behind re-releasing your debut?

"Being on a small label you are constantly battling to get racking in music shops and to be heard above all the big hitters and so putting it out a second time was the only way we could get re-stocked and that was really important following the press, touring and TV play we received after the album was first released. We needed to keep momentum up and it was a fresh chance to be noticed by people who had never heard of us."

- This new album sounds like your really expressing yourselves and experimenting, both musically and lyrically. Was that a conscious direction you decided to take?

"Definitely, every band needs to evolve with each album or things quickly go stale. We knew we needed to push ourselves and write a better, more mature second album and so we concentrated on being more ambitious musically and more concise lyrically."

To read the rest of the interview then please check it out HERE on the Sonic Dice website.