Forgotten Sons

Emerging from Shetland Isles, Punk rockers Forgotten Sons are preparing to unleash their self-titled EP in November 2022. Talking with Drummer John Gair and Bassist Steve Ferguson, we discussed the making of their new EP, their new video for their single Flip Side and what 2023 has lined up!

The trio are a combination of school friends and skaters who formed from a jammin’ session back in 2015. With the addition of Steve in 2019 the band now focus on their new music and getting on the road for 2023. The first single from their new release Flip Side was a group choice as the lead single, John explained “we think it’s got quite a positive message. So we thought that was a good way to lead off as a statement of intent for the rest of the EP. Sandy’s very much he’s always wanted to put that phrase in a song – catch you on the flip side.”

The idea of skateboarding commonly linked with this genre holds an influence too, with the main environment for their accompanying video to Flip Side being a skate park. John described that he “grew up skateboarding as Steven did and Sandy was a big major skater, so it’s kind of nostalgic way of the nineties / two thousands of how we grew up with music and just kind of made it feel really good. The video ties in as a harp back to that kind of early garage and skate punk videos and that was a big influence, and the aesthetic of the video and also the artwork for it as well. So we felt it definitely tied the whole thing together. The EP we’ve written kind of in a way that we’ve never written before and everything has all been very much shared between the whole band. So, there’s been anybody holding anybody back for coming up with ideas, anything can go on the table, and we all took a stab at writing absolutely everything between all the instruments. I would say it’s very much been a massive, shared process with each other, and I think it’s made it the best work that we’ve done yet just through everybody being honest with each other. There are certain songs where obviously one person had come with the bulk of an idea, but every single song has been all adapted by the whole band. It’s been a proper collaborative process and it was actually really good fun making it that way. We never felt held back. It feels that every single track is genuinely where we all wanted it to be. It was really good fun to make.

We do all our own recording production and our videos; absolutely everything is all done by ourselves, so everything that you see in here is all a hundred percent produced by ourselves. John has pretty much built his own studio in effect and all the production, all the artistic direction, everything we’ve done with the videos has all been done in house. I think we like it that way.”

A key component to the creation of this EP was the artistry freedom, John and Steve explained “a lot of time when you go into the studio you have to be very sure of what you’re going to do because you’ve obviously paid for studio time. But for us it’s very much we meet up and we get some ideas, and we build on it, so we’ve not got any time constraints and we just make it and stop when we’re finished or when we’re happy with what we’ve got.

There’s not that pressure to having a label or having deadlines. We can just let the songs breathe and we stop when we are happy with it. It’s quite nice to be your own boss in that sense. We’ve gone down the label route before and I think the approach we have just now where we’re doing everything in house and we’re actually doing it for ourselves as a group is much more productive. I think it’s a better way of working; no pressures and everybody’s happy.”

As vinyl record consumption has increased over the last few years, Forgotten Sons have taken the idea of physical artifacts to the next level by creating cassette tapes which will be available as part of their upcoming EP release. “We chose to release the way we have because I think that there is a lot of value and still having physical copies of music. So, we wanted to make sure that yes, we’re aware that the majority of our music will be consumed digitally because that’s just how the market works just now that’s how people choose.”

Forgotten Sons brand new self-titled EP is out Friday 18th November on vinyl, cassette, CD and streaming formats. They’re certainly a band to keep a lookout for during 2023!