The Bohicas interview: There's no tricks about us

Image: The Bohicas 

It's quite hard to believe that The Bohicas are merely over the hill from releasing their debut album The Making Of. After re-emerging in 2014 from their original Swanton Bomb guise, it seems like the rock and roll outfit have been around for seemingly longer than when their self titled EP dropped last year. But that's what happens when your introduction to the world spreads like a raging wildfire.     

By no means was that introduction tame, each and every buzzsaw hit from the EP helped carve open the landscape of modern day roll and roll and place The Bohicas in the ascendency of it; their album naturally followed suit. 

With a headline tour awaiting the four-piece and their inaugural LP full of incisive, razor sharp riffs ripping through the music-sphere at will, The Bohicas have amassed optimum leverage to dominate the 2016 festival season. A recent nomination for 'Best New Act' at the Q Awards reaffirms that claim massively.

Keen to get word from the band ahead of their tour that maps out around the UK before heading to Europe, we caught up with vocalist and guitarist Dominic Guinness while the band cool off from a manic few months and gear up for the road.  

Hey Dom, how are things with the band at the moment? 

We've got a couple of days and weeks off at the moment, we kick off our tour in October and we've just finished the festival part of the year. 

How was Bestival? 

It was really good. Bit of a tough lot because we played at the same time as The Chemical Brothers. We were at a festival before, which I can't remember where, and we weren't playing at the same time but we were playing at the festival and we were walking around and we tried to see Chemical Brothers and it was just chaos you couldn't get anywhere near it! 

Are you looking forward to touring and playing to a more exclusive crowd then? 

Absolutely, I'm really forward to getting back into the venues and indoors. 

Do you prefer that in comparison to the festival stages? 

I prefer it, they both have their pros and cons but I mean if I had to choose it'd be venues. Before the summer we had a taste of it and it'll be dead exciting because if anyone knew any of our stuff, they only knew a couple of our singles.

We were playing 45 minute sets so you can kind of see they don't recognise much of it and there's a bit of intrigue in the audience. Now that the album is out it'll be more connected so we'll see what happens. They might even hate the album. 

I'm sure they don't! Has it been good to get the album out there? 

We couldn't be happier with the product of it. We know exactly what we wanted and yes it's so hard to gauge , you don't know if and how it's connected with anybody. On social media you get people going, "oh this is great" and that's cool but it doesn't feel as tangible unless you go to a gig and meet these people. 

Would you agree that you fill a modern day void in being a pure rock and roll band? 

There's no tricks about us, were a rock band and we like listening and creating rock music. And the way we sing and play live is crucial to all of that, so if you deny yourself any of that when you're creating the album or playing live then it means that something is getting sacrificed, and you're short changing yourself and the audience. All we're setting out to do is make honest rock music and hopefully we have. 

I've heard you set out more experimental until you found your way with your current brand of indie rock and roll? 

It was actually the other way round. It's similar, when we were writing in the beginning that was the experimental bit in its infancy; when we didn't quite know musically who we were. It was all rock music of some sort, some might be heavier some might be bluesier, punkier more melodic or whatever, it was all a bit schizophrenic.

When we came across 'xxx' (below) and 'Swarm' it felt we were being ourselves and that was just the obvious thing that we wanted to channel because it was easy and its fun and that's all you can expect from a band. What we're on about is a far more instinctive sort of thing. 

Is it true that recorded it in a place called the Fish Factory?

The studio is called Fish Factory. We hadn't heard of it, and one of the producers involved was like, "I've been to this place, this is the place to record and it wasn't near any of us." It was a pain in the arse to get to because it was near Wembley in north west London and we're all in like north east London so it took two hours door to door and we were travelling for four hours a day for three weeks.

We were going to record an album so you can't whinge, but the place didn't look like a recording studio from the outside it was just like an entrance were they sold fish. It wasn't standard stuff it was weird shit like squid and swordfish. 

So it wasn't just a name, it was actually a fish factory?

Yeah, so we went in and they had fizzy drinks you couldn't get in supermarkets. All the imported stuff from all over the world, so we had a lot of fun with that trying all these mad fizzy drinks and shit. 

Is it true that you worked with Boxed In (Oli Bayston) on the album?  

He was the first producer we ever worked with, he's an old friend of ours. Yeah, he produced it and actually I wrote the song 'XXX' with him and that's how we started hanging out.

We were introduced by a mutual lad at the record label, we liked the same sort of stuff and he understood what we we're kind of after and then when we came across 'xxx' it was an exciting thing for both of us. It fired us up. He's Ibiza at the minute.

So when are The Bohicas going to take over Ibiza then?  

One of our first gigs was at Ibiza Rocks supporting Franz Ferdinand. We're touring until the end of October then we go to Holland France, Spain, Germany; we might be in Belgium; we might even be going further a field but I can't say anything.

Big plans! 

Big plans mate!   

Cheers Dom.

Grab your tickets for the Liverpool leg of the tour at the Arts Club on Thursday 8th October below. 

Head here to check out all of The Bohicas upcoming tour dates.

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