Turbowolf | Interview
We have the pleasure of chatting with Bristol’s favourite ear ruckus, Turbowolf, before they head out on their biggest UK tour to date!
1. Hard rock, psychedelia, stoner, punk… You’re famously hard to categorise. What are you?!
Yeah we get asked this a lot, but I think that’s a good thing. It means that people have to think about what they’re hearing. Generally speaking though, we make music that feels good to us. We don’t care about what’s cool or what’s expected, just what feels right. And yeah, you can’t help being influenced by other bands but we like to take these influences and bend them, mix them up with other things and add our own brand of weird sh*t to it. I guess for us, it is and has always been about being innovative with whatever we do. But yeah, we’re into some punk bands like Bad Brains and some old psychedelic stuff like 13th Floor Elevators, classics like ELO, and some more modern stuff like Death From Above 1979 and Queens Of The Stone Age. We’re just not into being a replica of any of them. We want to be Turbowolf. So leave your expectations at the door and come inside with an open mind.
2. After a summer of festivals, you’re straight back with a 13-date UK tour. The live show is a big part of getting people’s heads around Turbowolf, right?
Yeah absolutely. It’s a different ball game to the writing and recording process, and we really love getting out there and smashing a few heads together. In a nice way. Wherever we go, people can dig what we’re doing. This year we’ve played a lot of shows in Europe and they get it as much as when we play over here. It’s the universal language of the riff! I think that’s one of the best things about playing live, you know, seeing the effect of our music on people. They’re running about, jumping off stuff, screaming and throwing shapes. Real energy you know. And you can feel the energy, feel the excitement. Some real cosmic sh*t. Come down to the Fleece in Bristol on Oct 19th for some of that.
3. Obligatory tour story!
Go on… Nothing ever happens! It’s not the 70s or the 80s! Or even the 90s! It’s the year 2012 where bands like us sit in transit vans in the dark for hours and hours, waiting to get to the venue to set everything up, do the merch, play the show, pack up and drive to a hotel, sleep, get up and do it all again. Not that much happens when all you do is see the inside of a van, a venue and a hotel room. We don’t get paid enough to throw TV’s out of windows, and if we were we’d probably spend it on ice cream instead.
4. We’ve also caught wind of your covers EP out 8th October, how did it come about? How did you pick the four tracks?
Our label wanted to re-release the album to coincide with our UK tour and give some extra content for the fans, and as we didn’t want to put any new stuff out yet we thought we’d record some covers. We picked some songs that we thought we could make different enough and then added the Turbowolf ‘ball of horrendous noise’ to them. In the end we picked ‘See Through Head’ (The Hives), ‘Electric Feel’ (MGMT), ‘Captain Caveman’ (Lightning Bolt), and ‘Somebody To Love’ (Jefferson Airplane). The EP is available on very limited edition marbled-green 12″ vinyl, CD and digital download from Hassle Records direct. We’ll also be selling them on our upcoming UK headline tour starting October 2nd. Oh yeah… we also made some kind of f*cked up, homemade brain melter of a video for ‘Captain Caveman’ which you can see on our Facebook page or on Youtube.
5. We all own Turbowolf t-shirts like total fanboys. Who designs your stuff? How does the imagery relate to your music?
Oh right! Thanks to everyone out there who’s bought our merch, it keeps us going! Our guitarist Andy designs all our artwork. That goes for all Turbowolf art including album / EP art and also t-shirts etc. We have a new range of merch on the way, including two new t-shirt designs, one of which will be in three different colour variations, a hoodie, and some mystical tote bags. Some of which will be exclusive to our tour! You can find all things Turbowolf on our online shop. Thanks to everyone who supports our band, listens to us, buys our stuff and comes to the shows! Spread the word! See you all on the tour!
Make sure you don’t miss Turbowolf on tour, they’ll be at the Fleece in Bristol on the 19th of October. The new EP is available on very limited edition marbled-green 12″ vinyl, CD and digital available from hassle records: hasslerecords.com
Turbowolf online: facebook.com/turbowolf
Mystical merch: turbowolf.bigcartel.com
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