Ahead of their set as part of Independence Festival at Lennon’s, we got to hang out with half of duo EKKAH to get excited about new albums, Bestival, and disco dancing.
Straight off the road and into Lennon’s, Rebekah sat down in the downstairs room in her statement Dreams Are Free bomber jacket. After a sold out show at Moth Club in London earlier in the week, Rebekah said, “it was incredible, yeah. We sold it out and it was such a great venue and it was really nice to play for everyone again, it had been a while. So it was awesome.” Their set at Lennon’s – EKKAH’s second visit this year – marked the end of their tour, and it seemed fitting to ask about the disco dancing that the duo are known for. “We like definitely set out to have dance routines. It’s just like, you know, The Ronettes vibe, it’s just cool. We were like we wanna do something like that again.” After I admitted that I’ve tried out a few dance routines before, she said, “That’s perfect! That’s what we want, because then everyone has a good time and it’s quite simple, we’re not like doing backflips but it’s just nice because everyone’s having fun.”
EKKAH started out as part of The Arcadian Kicks back when they were 15, which, “naturally came to an end as things do.” Rebecca and Rebekah have performed as EKKAH for two years now. “We just wanted to do a girly thing, and that’s how it started. We always did music together and wanted to do music together, so it was just like a cool idea we had,” she said. Shining with influences from Michael Jackson, to Chk Chk Chk to an awesome german pop band, we spoke about EKKAH’s disco vibe: “we are really disco-y but I say we take a lot of influence from funk. It’s a balance between trying to make it our own, we don’t want to just replica something, we want to make it new.”
Anyone who has seen EKKAH before, or just follows the pair on Instagram, will see them looking glittery and glam at all of their shows. On this, Rebekah said, “We do love glitter, I’ve got slightly glittery nail varnish on…I mean it’s just like what we like to look like on stage, it looks fun and we make it as vibrant as we can.” Glitter and Bestival go hand in hand, and EKKAH played the Invaders of the Future stage on 2015’s Friday night. “It was fantastic, it was so good actually,” she commented.
As the tour comes to an end, I found out what EKKAH have in store for 2016. “There will be an album in 2016. I’m not sure when, I can’t say when, but there will bean album and there will be a single at the beginning of the year. I feel like it’s been a long time, it’s been over a year since we put ‘Last Chance To Dance’ out, so we’re really excited about the new music we’ve got to show everyone. I’m really excited about it.” It’s safe to say that we’re excited about it, too. EKKAH have been balancing touring with studio work to keep things fresh, so have “so so much” new material for us. When the two do manage to get some downtime between touring and studio work, though, Rebekah laughed as she said, “me and Becky live quite close together so if we’ve got a day off we usually get together and do dance practice, which is quite funny.” Aside from that, she’s just started watching Homeland on Netflix.
To round things off, Rebekah summed up EKKAH in a sentence for us: “glittery, funky, dance-y disco beats.” Perfect.
