3 minute read
SPEED FOR LOVERS
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Speed For Lovers are no strangers to the Fringe at Tramlines, having brought their highly danceable “disco-not-disco” electronica to a variety of stages for past instalments. This year, you'll find them on Devonshire Green Stage where they’ll get the crowd into weekend boogie mode, as lead singer Kitty told Adele Parr earlier this month.
How long have you been performing as band now? The three of us have been together since 2010 – Moony on bass and vocals, Liam on drums and myself on vocals and a synthesiser known as a Korg Kaossilator. We all knew each other through playing music, and prior to forming this band we all played on each other’s musical endeavours.
How would you describe the band’s sound? It’s certainly an interesting one to try and categorise. That’s a tricky question, but someone once described us as ‘a dark pulsing new wave with elements of disco punk’ – and I think that pretty much summed us up. The band’s sound has really moved on from our first album Hot Yoga Emoji and we’re heading for a new sound, one which is more dancefloor-orientated and about getting the crowd involved.
And this isn’t your first Fringe at Tramlines rodeo, isn’t it? We’ve played a few stages over the years including
Shakespeares and Dorothy Pax at Canal Lines, which was absolutely brilliant. We also opened the main stage at Tramlines in 2019 on the Sunday, after winning a competition for local bands called ‘Promotion of the Arts’. On the Saturday night, we’re also playing an evening gig at The Harley – and we haven’t played there in a few years, so I’m really looking forward to it.
What tunes should we be looking out for? We’ve got some festival bangers which are perfect for people to sing along with. One of them is called ‘Get Up, Get Out’ and really gets the crowd dancing. Then we always like to end our sets with ‘Righteous Blisters’, as it’s got a great singalong chorus. We’ve got a few new ones lined up, so we can see how the crowd react to them; this keeps it new and fresh for us, so it doesn’t get boring or repetitive.
As an artist, how do you think Covid has affected the live music industry? I would say it’s changed for better and worst in some ways. A big thing for a lot of people nowadays is the cost of living – and art, music and culture tend to be the first thing to go when cutting down the budget. The pandemic cut us really short: after a few weeks of performing various events like Y Not festival and some shows in Manchester, it all stopped. We had a lot of momentum and it all got cut off completely. But now we’re moving forward again.
Any more albums in the pipeline? We are probably heading towards more live recordings, as they seem to be the best fit for us. It's likely to include remixes that some of us in the band have done, as well as other people’s take on these. We’re very much a live band, so we want to capture that properly.
Speed For Lovers play the Devonshire Green Stage on Saturday 24th July at 1pm. @speedforlovers
