ONE ON ONE: AN INTERVIEW WITH DO NOTHING!

HELLO, EVERYONE, FOR HIVE MAGAZINE. MY NAME IS ALFIE CLARK AND TODAY I AM JOINED BY CHRIS AND KASPER FROM DO NOTHING. HOW ARE WE DOING, LADS?

Kasper: Very well, thank you. How are you?

I'M DOING WONDERFUL, MATE. THANK YOU FOR ASKING. YOU JUST COME OFF STAGE THERE, HOW WAS THE SET FOR YOU? HOW WAS THE SET FOR YOU?

Kasper: A surprising amount of people, considering we were clashing with everybody in the world. But it was really fun.

(CLASHING WITH) NATASHA BEDINGFIELD AS WELL, CROWD FOR HER WAS MASSIVE.

Kasper: But people came and we liked it. Played lots of new stuff. People seemed okay with that.

Chris: It was my 30th birthday last night, so, you know. I could have done better today, but I really enjoyed it. I had a good time, I just didn't sound very good.

BRILLIANT, MAN. I HEARD YOU ALL MET IN SCHOOL, IF I'M RIGHT IN SAYING, HOW DID THAT GROUP COME TO BE? BECAUSE I HEARD YOU WERE JUST IN DIFFERENT GROUPS IN MUSIC IN SCHOOL. DID THE STARS JUST ALIGN OR WE ALL TOGETHER INITIALLY?

Chris: It was mostly just we were friends at school and we were all into music. It wasn't like, it's finally clicked, I've met the right guys. It's just like you're growing up and you meet people and then your life turns out the way it turns out, so I'm stuck with these guys.

2023 IS WHEN YOUR DEBUT ALBUM COME OUT NOW. IT'S BEEN A LITTLE WHILE SINCE THAT, BUT I MEAN, YOU WORKED WITH ANDY SAVOURS, OBVIOUSLY MASSIVE PRODUCER IN THE SCENE. WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH HIM ALONGSIDE?

Chris: It was great. We Went up to London to do it because we were from Nottingham originally. We went up, stayed in an Airbnb for a month or whatever and watched Who Wants To Be a Millionaire every night after the recording. But basically, he was good in that he could trust him to make certain creative decisions, which is what you want. There are different kinds of producers. There are some that put their massive stamp on everything and you listen to that album. There is some other people who are more just workman-like vibes that are just behind the scenes making small decisions, not changing the overall sound in a way that you would notice, but doing really important stuff behind the scenes in terms of structure, song writing, things like that. He was such a lovely guy to hang around with and we got comfortable with him quite quickly and then immediately trusted him, which is weird because you've been just deciding things yourself for so long.

Kasper: It was the first day of recording the album, it was like, we don't know this man at all, but yeah, he's lovely, great guy, fantastic producer.

WHAT MIGHT BE COMING NEXT THEN? BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, IT'S BEEN A COUPLE OF YEARS SINCE THAT LAST ALBUM, SO HAVE THE FANS GOT ANYTHING TO BE EXCITED ABOUT COMING UP?

Kasper: Well, we just played quite a lot of new songs, we've been recording. So yeah, there is new stuff coming. We're just working out the kinks of the distribution side of it. There's lots of new stuff coming.

ALFIE: JUST SINCE YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DROPPING STUFF, IT'S NOT STOPPING YOU FROM GETTING ON THE ROAD. YOU’VE BEEN ON A LITTLE UK TOUR RECENTLY. WHAT'S IT BEEN LIKE HITTING THE ROAD AGAIN AND GETTING OUT THERE.

Kasper: That was fun as hell. That was great.

Chris: That was Independent Venue Week. So it was playing all independent venues, like small independent venues around the UK. It was just that, weirdly, when we started, we missed that size of venue in a weird way. We started during lockdown and then started playing venues slightly bigger than very, very small quite quickly, so we never got the best bit, which is playing all the small, busy venues. It was really nice to have a chance to go around and play those shows and figure it out. You're figuring it out from being a band that plays a slightly bigger stage and then scaling down and just immediately finding that it's so much better. You should always play those small venues and never move away from it.

WHAT THE GRASSROOTS VENUES MEAN TO YOU IS BECAUSE THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY SO IMPORTANT TO THE OVERALL LANDSCAPE OF MUSIC IN THE UK. THERE'S SO MANY AMAZING SMALL VENUES. ANY CITY THAT YOU GO TO, YOU'RE GOING TO FIND AN AMAZING ONE. WHAT DO THEY MEAN TO YOU GUYS, ESPECIALLY?

Chris: I just said that we missed those venues, but we didn't entirely in Nottingham, especially, we played a bunch of them. The music that I tend to like comes through those venues. There are a bunch of DIY ones in like JT Soar and The Chameleon, which has sadly closed down. They're all closing down, sadly. But they're the places that I've had the best musical experiences overall and they mean something culturally. It's obviously a sad thing that venues are closing down, but it's like, once those spaces go away, where does that stuff really live? For the slightly weirder side of things, obviously, you can't immediately be playing a big venue because it's a small, very fringe thing. If you delete the fringe, then all you've got is fucking Coldplay, forever. Not that they're bad, we love Coldplay

BACK ON THE TOUR THAT YOU DID, I SAW ON YOUR INSTAGRAM, YOU DID A COUPLE OF LITTLE VLOGS, BEHIND THE SCENES BITS. WHAT ARE THE STANDARD ANTICS LIKE ON A DO NOTHING TOUR? WHAT DO YOU GUYS GET UP TO NORMALLY?

Kasper: Pretty boring, to be honest. We've been friends for so long, so many years. We're so comfortable with each other. So it's just like we're pretty chill. It's pretty minimal, the antics but it's nice when you get time in a new city, especially abroad, to go and explore a bit. We've been better at doing that the longer we've gone on, it's like you realize you're in a lovely town for one day and it's easy to get in, soundcheck, play the gig and go, but you can also spend actual time there and find great places, sit down and have a good meal. You can appreciate the place.

Chris: In terms of antics, I don't know if we drink any more than the average band I think we drink and do our fair share of drinking, but we ain't doing rails of cocaine.

IT'S NOT CURT COBAIN TYPE STUFF, NO, WE'RE STAYING AWAY FROM THAT. IS THERE ANY PRE-SHOW RITUALS THAT YOU DO? ANYTHING LIKE THAT?

Chris: There's a song called by Gilbert O’Sullivan called 'Alone Again (Naturally)' and we sing that, well, not every time because we didn't do it today, but we do it almost every time. Yeah, it's a very, very sad song, dramatically sad, we don't get in a huddle and go, 'Go, go, go, go, go, it’s more of a mark of the show is about to happen, it just clicks you into the right head space.

OBVIOUSLY, YOU MENTIONING YOU GUYS ARE FROM NOTTINGHAM. ARE THERE ANY NOTTINGHAM-BASED BANDS COMING UP AT THE MOMENT THAT PEOPLE NEED TO KEEP AN EYE ON? WHO DO PEOPLE NEED TO KEEP WATCHING?

Kasper: Well, they're all our friends, pretty much. We've known them for a long time. They're Cucamaras, they're killing it right now, they just released an EP. Bloodworm, Blood Wizard. They're all from Nottingham. There is Daudie Matsiko, amazing. He's a crazy solo artist.

Chris: And he played with us on tour. He played keys for us for a tour. Yeah, he's great, he released an album last year, it's incredible, check it out.

ALRIGHT, SO I'VE GOT A COUPLE MORE QUESTIONS FOR YOU. JUST A COUPLE MORE FUN ONE. OBVIOUSLY, GROWING UP IN SCHOOL, IT WAS A TIGHT KNIT GROUP, A GOOD BUNCH OF LADS. SO I NEED TO KNOW, IF YOU WERE TO JOIN FORCES ALTOGETHER AS ONE AND GO ON A GAME SHOW, WHICH ONE WOULD JUST GO ON AND WIN?

Kasper: The Cube, I think we'd have been pretty good on Raven back in the day. You remember Raven?

ALFIE: OF COURSE, I REMEMBER RAVEN, MAN, CLASSIC.

Chris: It was like impossibly hard and like no one ever won it, I saw one person win it. I watched it a lot.

Kasper: It was so good. But I think we'd be all right.

Chris: I think we could do that. Raven would do, yeah. I mean, general knowledge-wise, Andy, our drummer, he's pretty on it and we could stand behind him.

ALRIGHT. MY FINAL QUESTION FOR YOU IS, IT'S MORE OF A GAME, MORE SO, THAT I'VE GOT FOR YOU. I'VE MADE UP A LITTLE GAME THAT I LIKE TO CALL ‘FIRE OR DIRE’ AND ESSENTIALLY, I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU A FEW FESTIVAL THINGS OR SCENARIOS THAT YOU'RE JUST GOING TO TELL ME OF A FIRE, GOOD, OR DIRE, SHITE, ESSENTIALLY. THE FIRST ONE I'VE GOT FOR YOU IS CROWD SURFING. IS IT FIRE OR DIRE?

Kasper: Fire? Fire, yeah. I've actually never done it.

Chris: I've done it one time. It was our own gig and I Jumped into the crowd. Yeah, I jumped in. It was fire. There are certain shows where crowd surfing is a massive part of the show. We were literally watching those Turnstile videos of their hometown show, that's almost the whole show. It's just everyone doing that, ldo Fugazi videos and stuff. It's a big fire.

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, CROWD ROWING. SO WHEN PEOPLE SIT DOWN, GIVE IT THE OLD ROWBOAT.

Kasper: I've never seen that, I've never seen it in real life, but it's that dire.

I'M GUESSING WE'LL SAY DIRE THEN FOR THAT ONE

Chris: I don't think I've seen it. Is it during a show?

DURING A SHOW, PEOPLE WILL SPLIT THE PIT OPEN, LIKE A MOSH PIT THING. THEY'LL SIT DOWN AND IT'S LIKE ROWING AN OLYMPIC BOAT THING.

Chris: That's the modern conga.

IN A WAY, IF YOU WANT TO PUT IT LIKE THAT, BUT WE'LL SAY DIRE THAT FOR THAT ONE. NEXT ONE, GOING TO A WEEKEND FESTIVAL AND HAVING A NAP DURING THE DAY.

Chris: Forest fire. It depends what you're doing. If you're there for a weekend, the nights can go on so long and there are patches in the day where maybe you're not going to go see anything. If you have a good nap, a proper nap, then you can make yourself to have a really good night.

NICE ONE. BRINGING A GUITAR TO THE CAMPFIRE OR SOMEONE PLAYING A GUITAR AT THE CAMPFIRE.

Chris: Dire, that's not the one.

Kasper: I’ve done it. Listen, it's nice. I did it when I was like 16. It's birthday or whatever. Everyone would sit around me while I'm playing the guitar, being like “It's in my house and I wanna play!”

NEXT UP, FESTIVAL FOOD IN GENERAL.

Kasper: It's better now than it was.

IT'S GOTTEN BETTER, HASN'T IT? YEAH. IT'S GOT A LOT BETTER.

Chris: I mean, I don't actually go as a punter to a festival that often, but price-wise, it's obviously insane. It's like £14 for a shit pizza, so I feel like it would be entitled and privileged being like, Oh, it's great. The free bits that you get, the catering is different. So maybe because of the price, dire and it's just like any situation where they're like, these people can't go anywhere else.

Kasper: But also, I think most of them are usually independent.

YEAH, THERE'S SOME REALLY GOOD INDEPENDENT VENDORS HERE TODAY, DEFINITELY.

Kasper: They got to make their money somehow, Chris.

Chris: I know people who do it as well. I know people who do food vans and stuff. I guess it's not necessarily their decision what the prices are, that's the culture of a festival, that's how high the prices are, so everyone ends up doing it.

Kasper: You got to pay to be on site, as well.

Chris: They might charge a certain amount so that you have to charge so much.

AND THE LAST ONE THAT I'VE GOT FOR YOU IS, THIS MIGHT BE A CONTENTIOUS ONE. NOT WATCHING THE HEADLINER, SO GOING TO SEE ANOTHER BAND ON ANOTHER STAGE THAT ISN'T THE MAIN HEADLINER OF THE NIGHT.

Chris: I mean, it's in the middle, isn't it? It depends who's the headliner. I'm not anti-headliner at all. It depends who's playing.

Kasper: There's a reason why there are other bands playing at the same time as the Headliner.

Chris: A lot of time it'll be a clash thing on purpose. They’re trying to split the crowd enough. It's not just massive or one thing and you're in for a different show. Festival headliner, it's like a production, like a complete production. It could be like a big pop act, and then you're in for a whole organized treat. I would usually be not watching the headliner, but sometimes you can't say no.

EXACTLY, MAN. THAT IS ALL THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU BOYS. THANK YOU SO MUCH, LADS. THIS HAS BEEN HIVE MAGAZINE WITH DO NOTHING.

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