15th March 2010  The Edge

An interview with The Automatic

27th October 2006

You’ve got a pretty demanding touring schedule, what do you do on your days off?
"Just usual stuff really, go to the cinema or whatever. We go to a lot of gigs. We tend to look up who’s playing in which city when we’re there and try and make it to a gig. We’re seeing the lemonheads on our day off in Bristol.

Have you seen much of Southampton?
"To be honest, no not really. It’s hard somewhere like this because all you really see is the campus. We did go to ASDA in town though. We needed suits and stuff for our new video, so we went and bought some stuff from george.

Has it been scary going from playing small supports at venues such as the Joiners, to your own sold out shows?
"Yeah, it’s really impressive. We’re just trying to make the most of it really. We’ve written a few new songs now so we can put on a really good live show. It’s cool playing new songs to a live audience".

What was life like in your hometown of Cowbridge, did it have much of a music scene?
"No not at all, it’s a tiny little town so there’s really nothing there. There weren’t really many other bands there other than us when we were growing up, there’s a few more now though. As far as a local scene goes though we’d have to go either to Bridgend or Cardiff. We’d just get our parents to chuck all our gear in the back of cars and drive us up there."

I saw your performance on GMTV where you ran riot. Was that planned?
"No not really. We didn’t want to do it at all because we hate early mornings. We figured we’d just stay up all night so that we wouldn’t have to wake up early. We got about two hours sleep and were all really drunk. We said that maybe towards the end of the song we’d do something stupid like drop our trousers to show that we were miming. After a couple of minutes it all just went crazy. It was really embarrassing actually, i think they were a little bit p*ssed off!"

What’s your take on the hype that surrounds bands these days?
"I don’t really like hype, but at the same time it helps promote music and get people into bands. There’s generally a reason for the hype anyway, it’s because the music is good. It’s just a shame when bands get blown out of proportion when they’re not that good, or when a magazine hypes up a band and then slates them. We never take the press too seriously though."

What do you think of the Welsh music scene?
"I think it’s really good, really diverse. You’ve got bands like the super furry animals and the manics, then you’ve got folk music as well in the north. It’s a good mix. People have described us as mixing together all of those bands together, which i’m not keen on but i can see what they mean. I don’t think we really fit into a typically ‘Welsh’ sound though.

Interview by Jack Marshall and James Dawson



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