Turbowolf have been making waves in the British and European rock scenes for a while now, and this summer was no different with a seemingly endless festival itinerary and their recently released Covers EP. On the evening of their last (and hometown) gig of their first solo headline tour at Bristol’s The Fleece, mere moments before sound-check I was lucky enough to snatch a few minutes with vocalist and synth-master Chris Georgiadis to talk recent events and plans for the future.
First of all, how has the tour been going thus far?
Really good man, the tour’s been going great. Most of them have been totally rammed with everyone going crazy, it’s been really good.
How would you describe the sound of the band to someone who hasn’t experienced it before?
I guess kind of noisy and fast, and fun as well. It’s just one of those things where if people want to listen to it they can listen to it online, but if you come to a live show you’re going to get more of a real, aural experience.
You seem to have had a fairly intense festival season, starting way back in May and carrying on fairly continuously ever since, any stand-out highs and lows?
Highs yeah, there haven’t really been any lows I don’t think apart from the weather! Download this year was a big high point, quite a few festivals over in Europe, especially Germany, were really good. Southside and Hurricane were incredible. Most of the festivals that we’ve done have been really good actually, I don’t think we’ve done any that have been weird or anything. Everywhere that we’ve gone this year people have been really receptive and we’ve had a good time.
You’ve already said this is going to be the last thing we see of Turbowolf for quite some time, and you’ve been playing a new song on the tour already as well, does that mean you’ve already started the writing process for a new album?
It’s a lie. We’re not playing anything tonight.
[Laughs] An evening of mime then?
Nope, we’re not doing anything… No, we have started writing some new stuff but we need to have a bit of time out from playing live shows so we can actually write and record another album. You will be hearing a new song this evening, although it might sound completely different once it comes out. We just need a bit of time basically to get our brains in gear; we’re not the sort of band who can write an album in a month or whatever.
You also announced tonight’s gig is being filmed, is that going to be part of any next release?
I wouldn’t say it’ll be part of any next release because that might be a while, so I think this is just going to be something to put out soon maybe. It’d just be to get it out there as a little personal project, just as a nice end-of-tour thing.
How does the writing process generally happen for the band?
Generally Andy [Ghosh, guitar] and I will write a riff or a melody line or something and we’ll work out a rough arrangement for it, then we’ll take it to Blake [Davies, drums] and Joe [Baker, bass] and jam it out to try and make it feel like a real song. Small details will change but the basic structure is me and Andy writing. This album will be different because Joe only recorded one track on the last album and Blake wasn’t on it so I think we’re going to do a lot more stuff involving those two; more jamming and maybe a bit more of a live and looser feel.
Other than that, is there any plan to change the sound on the next album?
No not really, I think we just want to maybe try using some different sounds and stuff but we’re not going to be like, a folk band or anything…
No prog-jazz or anything like that?
Nah, we’re going to be the same sort of band because we haven’t changed as human beings that much in the last year. There will probably be some evolution somewhere, but people will probably pick that up. For us, we’re just going to do what we did on the last album, just write the sort of songs that we like and that’ll be it.
You’ve also just released your Covers EP, what inspired that and were there any songs that you wanted to do but didn’t make the cut?
We chose those songs because we wanted to do a bit of a varied bunch of tracks, and we had like, a Motown track but I can’t remember what one we were going for. We thought it would be really good but we weren’t able to capture all the horns and everything that really made the track. We didn’t really spend a lot of time on that, we just sort of chose a few songs that we liked and jammed them out just to see what would work.
Finally you’re developing quite a dedicated fan-base now, so Justin Bieber has his ‘Beliebers’, Lady Gaga has her ‘Little Monsters’, have you thought of a name for the Turbowolf fans?
Err… Twats? [Laughs] No, I wouldn’t say twats I’d say they’re lovely people. Our fans are awesome because they’re not people who would go along with trends and stuff like that, I think the people who listen to our music are generally people that just like it and like our shows. They come to see us and they want to support our band and they’re not going to jump on another bandwagon in a few months’ time or whatever so it’s really cool we’ve kind of created our own scene. I dunno what to call them though…
I’ve got some suggestions, maybe ‘Wolfpack’?
‘Wolfpack’, that’s the one.
Or ‘Turbocubs’? Although that might be a bit too cutesy…
Nope, ‘Wolfpack’ I love that, that’s great.
Excellent, there we go that’s that then. Thank you very much for your time, it’s been a pleasure.
