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The Akira Guide to Forming a Band By Ellen E. Jones Friday 16th January 2004 In the first of an occasional series on student and local bands, Ellen E. Jones interviews Akira, the King's-based post-rock three piece. Practise Self-Mythologising Gbenga: It wasn't the first time I met Joel, but in my mental rewriting of history, the first time I met Joel he was walking around the bar asking people if they liked 'Godspeed You Black Emperor' and I was the last person he was going to ask before he started just like talking to himself. Varsity: Would you like to explain the origin of the name Akira again, please? [Gbenga starts to explain] Joel: No, that's a boring story. Make up and interesting story. Sarah: So, Joel was losing his virginity and he'd just seen Akira [influential manga film] and he screamed out Akira!! Joel: The girl kept asking me 'Who is this Akira, who is this Akira?' And, funnily enough, a similar sort of thing happened to Sarah. Varsity: Wow, that's a real coincidence. Joel: Yeah. Sarah's cousin sent her a package from Japan and inside was a little baby, with a note attached saying 'my name is Akira.' Keep your press simple Varsity: Can you describe the Akira sound in'er'eight words. Sarah: Loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, feedback. Can we have nine? Varsity: Yeah, go on then. Sarah: Loud. Broaden Your Appeal Sarah: We've got all the races covered. Joel: We're looking for a Japanese guitarist. Gbenga: A female Japanese guitarist. Joel: At one point we were thinking about getting a small Mexican. Was it a Mexican? With a moustache and a bango. (Conversation deteriorates into a discussion of the political correctness of Star Trek) Be Your Own Publicity Machine Akira have a very impressively designed website (akiraband.com), are responsible for a militant poster and sticker campaign of skull and insect related images around Cambridge. Varsity: Is your guerilla tactics, Do It Yourself attitude to publicity part of the akira ethos or just due to force of circumstances? Sarah: It's just because we haven't been signed yet. As soon as someone gives us money, we'll get someone else to do it. Joel: No, no, no! I'd like to keep a hand in Pick a Genre And Stick To It Sarah: Well it started off as 'yeah maaan, we're post rock' , but now it's turned out that we all secretly want to be pop stars. A lot our songs are quite poppy. Gbenga: Its because there's only three of us. Originally we'd have liked to hook up with a big collective, like ten people who shared our musical vision. We tried. We had lots of abortive rehearsals. Joel: But then they went away and now there's just us three. Joel: we're actually getting more 'poppy' sounding. Sarah: I think we're just getting better at writing structured songs. Songs that actually go somewhere. When we first started writing, our songs were just barren landscapes of post-rock with the odd twinkle here and there. Gbenga. That's kind of a harsh assessment of our early songs. We did have a lot of songs where we were trying to marry punk and post rock. Joel: It wasn't a marriage. It was more like sexual harassment. Gbenga: We were trying to bully-ram post rock. And The Scene? Sarah: Cambridge is a good place to make music in that we save a lot of money on free rehearsal space and it's easy to organise because we all live like two minutes away from each other. Gbenga: We hadn't really seen any Cambridge bands before we started playing gigs. Sarah: Cambridge hasn't really got a definable scene. Partly because its split so massively between town and gown. Joel: But there is a town scene. There's lots of hardcore bands, post rock and post hardcore bands. There's Right Turn Clyde and CRS. Gbenga: But there aren't that many of them. There's basically about five bands available to do support at The Boat Race, including us. Unless they're hiding in Hitchin, there just aren't that many bands. A Final Word Gbenga: Basically we're of the opinion that when people hear about us and hear our music, they'll think we're good. Akira's first EP (Yay!) Selections in Modern Music might be available via their website or in Fopp. [clicky]
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