Tell us how Relics were born…
Individually: probably the same way as you, though it’s possible that one of us might have been delivered via caesarean. I’m not sure. Collectively: Alex and I used to hang out looking moody at clubs in east London when we were 17. Then we formed Relics when we were 18. Then we played around, went on hiatus, went to university, got back together, recruited Theo and Barney and started playing shows.
Relics has post-punk and shoegaze influences from the early 90s. Did you grow up listening these genres?
No, we didn’t. I didn’t like music until I was 15, which is when I started listening to loads of old progressive rock. Alex and Theo used to listen to Metallica and still crack out some pretty gnarly riffs when they’re bored in rehearsal. We all started listening to the kind of stuff that actually influences us now in our mid-teens, I think.
Are you working on an EP or LP?
An EP. Gradually. Probably a single first, though.
What about your summer ‘holidays’? Are you going to play somewhere special?
We’re mostly in London for the summer, actually. We have quite a few gigs booked. None of them are anywhere particularly special, but they should all be pretty fun.
How does it feel to live in London? Has this city influenced your music?
It feels different at different times. I might as well ask you how it feels to live in Milan. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. I quite like the weather but I’m not such a big fan of the enormous disparity in wealth and standards of living. But that’s what cities have always been about, right? However, I think it has probably influenced our music that we all grew up in London. It makes you quite aggressive, quite spiky, quite impatient, which can be both a good and a bad thing and I think is reflected in our music. We’re actually trying to tone down that maximalist, everything-all-the-time feel slightly on some of our newer songs.
What is the coolest place you’ve played at?
Offset Festival was pretty good. We played there in 2010 and it was great to be in a field with loads of great bands and people we knew. That was with the original Relics line-up. Since we started playing shows again, the coolest place we’ve played is The Lock Tavern in north London – it’s so much fun every time we do a gig there. The load-out is a nightmare, though.
How did Straight To The Heart come about? I know that you’ve been to the Total Refreshment Centre…
The song or the video? The song was born in a shitty little basement off Kingsland Road, from the unholy union of a guitar riff by Theo and a chorus by me. (That’s how I remember it, anyway.) The video was born in a warehouse attic a bit further up Kingsland Road called (as you correctly say) the Total Refreshment Centre. There was a lot of coloured ink involved, some of which escaped into the shop underneath the warehouse. The owner was a bit mad about it, understandably, but I think he appreciated it was all in the name of art.
