Pylo | Full Interview

Music isn’t always about entertainment, music is about connecting people together with a universal voice and that’s what is being overlooked.

Pylo create one magnificent sound, and since the last release they’ve gone somewhat feral. Having spent their time in the rolling rural hills that hug our corner of the UK, the result is something of great beauty - ‘The Woman EP’, out this month.

We shared some words with frontman Matt Aldus to find out more about the Bath five-piece.

Judging by your videos you’re fans of grand, natural beauty, how has spending time in the hills of Somerset fed into this new EP?

We are definitely fans of organic art and anything natural. We spent a lot of time sculpting the sound of this record at our studio which is set right in the heart of some beautiful countryside, for that to not have an impact on our music would be a crime. I wouldn’t say we seek grandeur in any way, however we do always welcome it with open arms. If we feel a song needs something more, we’re not ones to be afraid to create something as big as we possibly can. We’re always open to new ways to do this and I think at times it’s inevitable - but honestly we just let the music take us whichever way it’s already heading towards.

Was Bath also inspiring to you in this way, on the last release?

For the last release we did a lot of recording in Warminster and between Bath and Phillip St. Norton, so although rural and within fairly close proximity I don’t think it was exclusively Bath that inspired us in such a specific way. It played its role as did the other locations, however, that record was about a time and a place, we were learning to walk before we could run so to speak. I think we have now found our musical and metaphorical legs which we intend to use to our full advantage.

We’re just happy and lucky to have found people that care about our music as much as we do… whether they’re in LA or Salisbury, it really doesn’t matter to us.

And ‘The Woman EP’ is out on Naim Edge Records - d’you feel a local independent label is the right home for Pylo’s music?

We feel that at Naim there’s a lot of care for us and that they care about music in general a great deal. I don’t believe we’re on Naim because of the locality although we would all admit one thing we love is having a sense of family with the people you work with and that is certainly what we have in our management team and label. We’re just happy and lucky to have found people that care about our music as much as we do. I believe we all work hard to make this a possibility and we couldn’t ask for more right now. We just want to connect with people and work with those who in turn can connect to what we’re doing - and if somebody can do that whether they’re in LA or Salisbury it really doesn’t matter to us.

We hear you’re big advocates of physical formats, do you aim to keep those kinds of releases alive?

We do care a lot about having something to hold in your hands and we’d love for more people to believe in music like they used to. The sad thing is that there are people all over the world who really care about how music is made and released, but these people are outweighed by those part of the singles or iTunes culture, which is not strictly bad - it’s just become more based on consumerist values than the ones that really matter. Music isn’t always about entertainment, music is about connecting people together with a universal voice and that’s what is being overlooked. We would say that the business of making albums is a dying art but one we intend and hope to keep alive.

The EP has a flow that’s rare with rising acts, is it key to you that people hear it as a whole?

When you enter a studio as a band of musicians you usually go in blind, you honestly have no clue about where you will start and what you will walk away with by the end of the writing process. However, one constant that remains is that it has to be cohesive and it has to be one piece of work. You build from the ground up and you keep building until something starts to take shape, you can do this in hours, days or sometimes months or years. It depends on so many things and everything can topple or be torn down in a heartbeat and lead you back to square one, but you just have to follow. What you hear in four songs is that process and its resting place. When a piece of work doesn’t flow you can hear that it doesn’t, and to us it just feels lazy or that part of the journey has been taken away by its absence in the music itself. So flow is key to me and I think the guys would agree.

There’s a lot of atmosphere on the record, how do you go about getting that across live this month?

The great thing about playing live is that it’s not the record. Something that brings us a lot of joy and excitement is going back into the live space and working out how we are going to get the point across. Our live sound is a raw representation of the record, which is what we would pride ourselves on. There’s a lot to work out and we don’t know how we’ll recreate all of it yet but turning the songs inside out and getting them to a place where they can be portrayed in a live manner is the most fun we can have, next to actually taking the songs out on the road and showing people, which is a whole new exciting prospect. We’ve played the same songs for a while now and to get a bunch of new material will really bring a new lease of life to our live performance for certain.

‘The Woman EP’ is out on Naim Edge records on 31st March.

Find more Pylo here, and watch their video for ‘Young’ right here:

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