We caught up with Bruno Balanta and Olly Simmons of The Qemists at this year’s Butserfest, to chat about about touring the world, their new album and Brighton’s music scene.
How do you think your set went today?
Olly: We loved it! It was absolutely great. This has been a great festival: lovely little location, brilliant weather, can’t really go wrong!
Bruno: I think the show went terrible! Horrible location. We’re yin and yang; we’re at opposite ends… No, it was absolutely amazing! We were in Italy last night for a show until silly o’clock in the morning so everyone was a bit tired today, but as soon as we got on stage the crowd gave us loads of energy straight away and it just hyped us up. We had a great time.
Everyone seemed a lot more energetic during your set; you really got the crowd going!
Olly: It’s essentially what we do!
Bruno: It’s alright! That is definitely what we try and do when we play a live show. We try and get everyone involved and drum some energy and excitement into the people.
What can you tell us about your new album?
Olly: We could tell you absolutely everything about it, but then we’d have to kill you, and we don’t want to do that! It’s very nearly finished, we have a couple of little tweaks to make to it but we are in the process of building up to the release with a new single that is coming out very soon. In fact, at the moment you can check out a live performance that we have done of our first single off the album with the BMA Music Awards. We have been nominated this year for ‘Best Live Act’ and they have gone around the country filming all of the nominations doing performances. That is online and ready to go now so it is a little teaser as to what you can expect.
Bruno: There should be a music video following, maybe or maybe not, at some point in the near future after that.
Olly: It is a case of keeping your eyes peeled essentially, because it is all about to kick off!
Bruno: It is all about to go off, yes!
What are your thoughts on the music scene in Brighton?
Olly: Brighton’s music scene is a funny old animal!
Bruno: It’s a funny old animal and it depends which way you slice and whether you are looking at the rock scene, the dance scene, the indie scene. It’s like a multi-dimensional faucet.
Olly: The thing is that in Brighton every man and his dog is in a band and there’s some great music coming out of there, there really is. I’m not aware of another town that is churning out quite as many different musical acts as Brighton. I may well be wrong, but that’s my perception anyway.
Bruno: I think one of the things that is great in Brighton is obviously you have got a lot of student influence there so you have always got young and creative artistic people pushing boundaries and constantly trying to do something a little bit different.
Olly: I think that’s it as well because there’s so much going on it’s more of an impetus for people to try and do something different.
Bruno: Absolutely and then there’s a lot of the more established bands that I suppose inspire the youngsters and there’s a little circle of life thing going on there.
Olly: Metal, to sum it up in one word.
Bruno: Hakuna Matata!
What are your main inspirations? Obviously you use a lot of different musical genres, but what really inspires you?
Bruno: I think that it’s quite an eclectic range and if you really wanted to dig into what inspires us you would need all five of us in here. You’ve got The Prodigy and Rage Against The Machine thrown into it. I’m a hip-hop junkie: Public Enemy, NWA and 2Pac.
Olly: I’m all about the metal! All about the metal!
Bruno: It’s so eclectic, which I think is wicked because it works really well when we all get into the studio. Everyone has got a different kind of creative input to add which just blends into a nice little melting pot of magic!
Festivals like this are mainly full of rock and metal acts, do you feel a bit apprehensive going onto the stage or do you think that people can relate to your sound no matter what type of music they like?
Olly: Not so much nowadays where I think the whole kind of fusion element… You’ve got so many bands at the moment that are trying that kind of thing and so many people that have capitalised on it. Enter Shikari have a lot to answer for in terms of that kind of cross of genres. I personally love how acceptable that is becoming, especially from my metal sensibilities. That kind of thing was very much frowned upon for quite a long time. Nowadays you’ve got to turn around and say ‘how is your album recorded’? You’re using a computer and most of it is triggered. The lines are completely blurred, which opens the floodgates for bands like us who are trying to push all of that together.
Bruno: It’s a display of people’s musical tastes. No one is just pigeon-holed into one sort of genre of music, so when you end up producing music all of your influences can bubble out in your own product. We think it’s cool!
Do you get fed up of comparisons to bands such as Chase And Status and Enter Shikari or do you kind of embrace it?
Bruno: Not really, because in order to identify one thing you are always going to use some sort of comparison in order to gage this one thing that you are trying to identify. It helps people identify with what you are doing and when we are getting compared to Enter Shikari, massive fans and good friends of ours, it’s not a bad thing. Chase And Status, again, good friends of ours. It’s cool! We love those guys and we love their music. It’s all love!
Have you had time to check out any of the other bands playing today?
Bruno: We were a little bit late getting here!
Olly: Yeah, we were cutting it pretty fine. We nearly missed our flight from Italy. We got to the airport with eight minutes left to check in all of our bags and get through the gates. We have got thirteen pieces of oversized luggage, it was pretty metal! But we got to catch Hacktivist after us.
Bruno: Hacktivist, who we have collaborated with. The second track we dropped, ‘Jungle’, was a track that we did with them. We got to watch them and they were absolutely dope! The One Hundred earlier on, again, another great band that we have played with once or twice.
Olly: With little intermissions of The Lounge Kittens as well!
Bruno: The Lounge Kittens, they were pretty interesting. I enjoyed them! They kind of split everything up quite nicely and gave you visual entertainment as they were doing quite quirky stuff.
Are you jetting off anywhere after Butserfest or are you staying in the UK?
Olly: Our next show after this is Breakout Festival at Brighton Racecourse.
Bruno: That’s definitely one to come and see us at!
Olly: We have a Halloween show in Cardiff with Skindred and The Dirty Youth as well, which we are so looking forward to! Everyone is going to get made up, like ridiculous, going the whole nine yards. It’s all kicking off in Cardiff for Halloween!
Bruno: We have been working on the album for quite a few months so we have just been accepting exceptional shows, which is why we came and played at Butserfest. We have just been doing shows dotted here and there while we have been in the studio so much working. Videos and singles are going to be coming. As soon as music starts getting released then we are going to hit the road full-fledged again. We’ll be doing a UK tour again, off round Europe, Japan, Russia and the world.
Olly: We are so looking forward to it!
Bruno: We cannot wait to get back out on the road again!
You seem to have travelled to lots of different places, is there anywhere that you still really want to play that you haven’t had the chance to yet?
Bruno: Massively! South America, anywhere in South America for me. I’m from Portugal and I have been working in music for over a decade. Almost every one of my musical friends have played in Portugal and I am yet to get a show in my home town. My family out there are pestering me and asking why we aren’t playing there, so Portugal is top of my list! South America for me, a lot of friends have ended up going out to Bolivia and doing mini tours around South America. Brazil is obviously somewhere that I would love to hit as well. Other than that we have been very fortunate in hitting a lot of places around Europe, Russia and Japan multiple times. America is another one I think is possibly going to be on the cards for this third album. We just love travelling and experiencing different cultures.
Olly: I think that’s the thing: once the album is released hopefully the possibilities will be endless for us.
Bruno: Everyone is waiting for music, basically!
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Interview: Julia Conopo
Photo: Oli Duncanson
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