This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist Interviews
Q&A: The Boxer Rebellion
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 4 September 2009
After what might be called a bit of a false start due to the collapse of their former record label and a burst appendix, The Boxer Rebellion have come back with all guns blazing this year. In January, while still unsigned, their single, ‘Evacuate’ was made the first ever Global Single Of The Week on iTunes, and they saw the album it was taken from, ‘Union’, shoot to the top of the iTunes charts in the UK and US. On 14 Sep, ‘Union’ will be released in physical form for the first time, with the album’s production and promotional costs paid for by HMV in the first deal of its kind offered by the company. We spoke to drummer Piers Hewitt to ask our Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Personally, I started out making music with the folks when I was about three or four. They are musicians and obviously used to make music in the house, and I just liked the idea of a drum kit, so used to arrange pots and pans in the shape of a kit on the floor, and bash along. Apparently I was in time, though maybe they were being nice. As for the band itself, it was a case of one advert here and a phone call to a friend there, and the band formed. There was no drawn-out audition process.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
An answer to this question could get quite pretentious, but for me the main inspiration behind the album – or at least the act of making the album – was the struggle against the industry and succeeding in what we were doing. In that respect, at different stages, I suppose we have inspired each other, although obviously that would not come across lyrically. There are some lyrical references to our previous experiences in the industry though, and whatever doesn’t kill you off can always act as inspiration, which is what I think happened with this album for sure. I really wanted to just say ‘Blade Runner’ as an answer to this question and leave it at that, but I just couldn’t do it…
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
That depends which track! For the most part Nathan will bring in the bones of something – maybe just chords and a basic melody – and then more often than not we completely change the feel and style of it and it ends up being what it is (‘Soviets’ is probably a good example of this). Sometimes, if we’re feeling inspired we can end up writing a whole song based around a riff (‘Watermelon’), a drum loop (‘Move On’) or a bass line (‘Spitting Fire), but not that often.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Collectively a few things, though the things that we agree on musically are few and far between, which I think adds to the dynamic of what we do. Stuff that has influenced us includes The Walkmen, Sigur Rós, The National, Band Of Horses, Doves and BRMC. I think it’s clichéd to say Radiohead, but at the same time it’s rather rude not to say they are an influence too as they are always so groundbreaking, so I’ll have to say them. You know, it doesn’t get much better than ‘Bodysnatchers’…
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Take your shoes off, make yourself a nice cocktail, preferably a White Russian, whack our tunes on the speakers, sit down and turn your phone off. No eating crisps either, it kind of spoils the sound. Particularly McCoys.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Our tunes are too big to be bust out at 250 capacity venues really… my ambitions for this album are really to take it far enough that we can headline venues that suit our music a little more. No one needs to see any artist at an arena, but you know, headlining Brixton Academy or something like that would be nice, and give our sound guy more of a chance of making it sound exactly how it should sound. Which is big. As for a smaller scale, and for the future, if you get the chance to record albums, get the music out there, and to have people constantly coming to your shows and buying your records and loving it, whilst at the same it is your job, and you are not simply appreciative of that, then you are pretty ungrateful. Sometimes that’s all I want, which I think is an important place to constantly remain, while harbouring those Brixton ambitions.
MORE>> www.theboxerrebellion.com
