Kid British On Fresh Starts: "Getting out of our record deal was such a relief"

A couple of years ago, Manchester's Kid British were one of the city's most sought after exports. 

 After bonding through a love of hip hop music at school, they played a mere four live gigs before a label war broke out. Nine record labels turned up for a battle which Mercury won. 

Now, in 2011, the young band are starting a fresh; their terms, their ideas, and strictly no record label execs. 

As the band take full control, we chat to singer Simeon McLean as the band independently release new self-produced EP Northern Stories.  

Hello Simeon! How have you spent your Sunday afternoon so far?

I've been at a Kids' party with my little boy, so I've been surrounded by loads of kids, it's been manic!

You're DJing at the Manchester & Liverpool launch parties of RESET, a magazine which promotes the awareness of good mental health amongst young males. Since you became a dad seven months ago, have you found it at times hard to cope? 

Not really, though, having a baby could send anyone a bit mad! It's not really changed me that much, but now I am more aware of my own mortality, my own actions, how they could affect my son. Now I'm a dad, I wouldn't go out and get so drunk that I didn't know what I was doing, because if I did and something bad happened, my lad wouldn't have a dad the next day and it's as easy as that. 

You've always been a diverse band and outspoken within your music. Out of all the infinitely famous songs that have come from Manchester, what made 'Blue Monday' by New Order stand out as a track that you wanted to cover? Did you ever worry you'd get slated for re-creating it with a reggae vibe?

I don't buy into all that 'Manchester music is sacred' bullshit, so many famous bands cover good songs just because they like them, so why can't we? Madness, The Specials, everyone does a cover just because they love playing it. When musicians cover a song and don't change it from the original, I don't see the point, why would you make something exactly the same?

You must be influenced by a lot of older music because your sound is so varied, how do you feel about the current explosion of new music coming out of the UK? Are you bored or embracing the competition?

People can do whatever they want to do, but I get bored by so much modern music. I really like The King Blues and Little Comets though. I think once people understand how to use the formula to write a hit and get it on the radio, they make music for the wrong reasons. Instead of writing what they want, they write what works even if they don't love the songs. When you're a musician from Manchester, a lot of people think you've got big shoes to fill, and they'll automatically compare you to other Manchester bands, when you're nothing to do with the past. We do our own thing because we enjoy it.  

New release Northern Stories is out now as a free download. What stories have been the backbone of this EP?

Basically it's our stories. The first time around we didn't pay our dues to where we were from, and this is saying thank you to Manchester, that we are proud of being from here. There was no structure around us at the start, we got signed so quick and were getting played on Radio 1 so fast, that we didn't get to build up a local fan base. We are from Manchester and we love that. We don't rely on certain magazines talking about us, it's nice if they do, but it's not an issue if they don't; it's up to the fans to build us up. We just relate to normal people, we all have these same stories.

Does is annoy you more when bands are too afraid to broach a certain subject, or when they do sing about issues as a way to connect to fans without having lived through it personally?

I'd rather they say something, and good on them if they do, and they can get a message out. But it is stupid to write a song just to get in the charts unless you are blatantly saying all you want to do is make money. If you have no connection to a subject but your fans think you do, you become someone else in your own skin; it's fake. When we got out of our record deal, it was such a relief; it was as if we'd just been signed for the first time because we knew we could do whatever we wanted with our music, we were free. What we sound like live is very different to the record we put out but we still wrote about things we cared about. 

What did you learn about dealing with record labels?

We were too grateful to be where we were, and in all honesty, we shouldn't have been. They didn't make us massive or anything! You can be grateful if you get  signed and you're not very good, but when you are good, and people are fighting over you, you've got a record deal because you're good enough so why be almost overly grateful to the people who want to make money off that. We were badly advised, we went along with it because at the time we were amateurs so we thought the people at the label would know what they were doing with us, and they didn't. The way we were portrayed was all wrong, the order they put songs out was wrong. And the album was super polished, but in reality, we're a raw, grittier band. We didn't take enough control of our music but getting dropped by Mercury felt like getting signed; we were free to make our music how we wanted to and it was the first time in a long time that we were happy. 

Give us an example of how you felt misrepresented? 

We were making music like alternative hip hop, and we've always been a band who is concerned with social commentary, we're a band with substance; we talk about what's going on around us and we write about everything we see. We won't make music because we think other people will like it, we make it because it means something to us. 'Our House Is Dadless' is still a tune about growing up in a single parent family, seeing alcoholics fight outside your window and being around police, but the message was lost because it's the first thing anyone saw from us and it sampled Madness, so all they saw was a new band and a cover. People are sceptical in Britain, they wonder why you don't write your own songs where as in America, everyone use samples and still gets to number one, look at Kanye West! The songs we had shouldn't have been put out in that order. 

Now the band is in total creative control, what can we rely on your music to bring us?

We write in a way that even if there's a negative message, there's still positivity in the music as well. We wouldn't change where we're from and what we've experienced, because it's made us who we are so although people from Manchester will relate to Northern Stories, it's not for Mancunians. A guy sent a brilliant tweet the other day, he was listening to our song 'Bookies' which is the first track off our new EP, and he said it summed up every working class town with bookies in the UK, but that we did it in a non-depressing way. That's exactly how we want people to feel; that we understand what minimum wage means, we get what goes on in really working class areas, because that is our background but we're upbeat, you know? If we didn't write about the things that were real to us, we'd be writing about fairies and angel wings. We don't even write about love, but we will one day because it's an emotion we've all experienced, but right now there's other things that we have to write about first. 

What makes you keep wanting to write linear lyrics? 

The thing that inspires us to write about these everyday things is the fact that a lot of people don't or won't. 

What should people know about Kid British before downloading this EP?

We're not the 'voice of the people' by any means, but we want other people, other men like us, to know that we do get what they're we going through. It's like, mate, you're not alone in working for minimum wage and feeling like you give it all away to the tax man anyway. We've lived it. Those people aren't forgotten. Even when the news gives working class areas the most attention, it's when they're reporting on something bad, and the good people do get over-looked. Think about what you could be doing, how you can promote the positive no matter where you're from because we do it. 

Interview by: Kelly Murray

Kid British will be DJing a selection of house, hip hop, reggae and Motown songs at the RESET launch parties in Manchester and Liverpool on February 25th and 26th respectively. Joining them on the line-up will be Delphic, Everything Everything, Gareth Brooks, Funkademia DJs and a live performance from The Janice Graham Band. See full details of both gigs and get tickets here. 

You can download their new EP 'Northen Stories' as a free download from their website: www.kidbritish.com

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