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Featuring intelligent pop hooks with enlightening electronic nuances, Nottingham based synth-pop duo April Towers (Alex Noble, Charlie Burley) have emerged with sonic goodness that is perking up our ears. Their latest track “A Little Bit Of Fear” is the perfect summer jam and with more fresh tunes on the way GroundSounds caught up with the guys for an exclusive interview, check it out below.
April Towers will be performing at Y Not Festival (BBC Introducing Stage) on August 2, 2015.
For those just discovering April Towers, how did you guys meet and start this musical connection?
We both met at school around the age of 13/14 but to be honest we never really got along, and that’s putting it lightly. Various struggles over women, territory and contact sports led to some pretty nasty rumours, some hurtful and some blindly untrue. Fortunately though for the future of April Towers, we soon found we had common ground – the Arctic Monkeys had just broken and it seemed everyone was picking up guitars. We were then paired together in a Biology lesson at school and we just ended up together ever since. Romantic eh?
What made you guys decide on the band name April Towers?
The band name came from me (Alex) – I was working with someone a few years back who tried to say the phrase ‘April Showers bring May Flowers’ but got it totally wrong and said Towers instead – for some reason that always stuck with me and Charlie liked it too so it was a fairly simple decision. People still call us April Showers from time to time, and sometimes even Alton Towers, which if you have been reading the news from the UK at the moment, isn’t the best PR.
What do you guys enjoy most about Nottingham? What is one thing every visitor should see or do?
Nottingham is a relatively small city, but there is plenty going on! Alex & I are professional ale consumers, and Nottingham isn’t short of quirky pubs and bars. We are also home to the only Hooters in the UK, as well as the only Rough Trade in the country outside of London. If we had to give you a personal recommendation, it would most certainly be a trip down to the Wimpy in Broadmarsh Centre. It is something to behold in this day and age, and a nostalgic reminder of what fast food restaurants were like in 1996.
Can you tell us about the writing and creative process involved with your track “A Little Bit Of Fear?”
‘A Little Bit Of Fear’ started off as an instrumental template that I sent to Alex a few months back – essentially it was a very upbeat dance track with a funky bassline and the lead marimba part in the chorus. Alex immediately came back to me and said he had a great idea for vocal line, and the first time I heard it I knew it was something pretty special. Alex & I don’t write together – we fire ideas to and fro via email. This particular track took a while to get right from a production end, but we felt it was the perfect single to take us into summer!
What goes through your minds as you guys perform on stage?
After the initial blind panic of walking on and hoping that everything works, it becomes the most satisfying feeling there is – to be able to perform and (hopefully) entertain is such a privileged thing to do – it’s not often you get to work in a profession that makes not only yourself but others happy – so really the main feelings we have are excitement and gratitude – and also Alex pulls off some pretty spectacular dance moves.
What is it about intelligent pop hooks and synth that attracts you guys to this sonic landscape?
Having previously spent a few years in a guitar band together, starting fresh with April Towers was a good excuse to start experimenting with some different sounds and ideas. I (Charlie) was doing a course in production and was already immersing myself in the world of electronic music and synthesis, while Alex was listening to bands like LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip. As soon as we started the project it became clear that our ability as songwriters was much better suited to this soundscape, and Alex’s knack for writing catchy vocal melodies worked well with the dance-driven backbones of our early demos. From then it has just been a case of finessing our sound so that people can listen to one of our tracks and instantly identify it as being April Towers.
You guys recently remixed “Desire” by Champs and “The Mountain” by Gunship. What do you guys ultimately set out to accomplish when remixing tracks?
Remixing allows me (Charlie) to do things that I wouldn’t necessarily do in an April Towers track. It also gives you the opportunity to play around with parts that you haven’t written yourself, which can often provide inspiration for further ideas and avenues that you wouldn’t have previously have explored. My personal target with remixes is to rework the song into something entirely different and slightly unpredictable. It’s all about finding melodies that work around the vocal and don’t distract the listener from the essence of the original track. Remixing is something that we will be doing a lot more in the coming months so keep your eyes peeled for sure!
What musicians/bands are you guys currently listening to?
It’s a cliche, but there is so much good music around at the moment. We try and make playlists as regularly as possible to keep our fans up to date with what we are listening to, but acts that we are particularly loving at the moment include abstract electronic artists like East India Youth, Ghost Culture & Jon Hopkins, some great up and coming bands like White, Field Studies and Formation, and then some bigger acts like Chvrches, Wolf Alice and Foals. We try and keep an open mind to as much stuff as possible, as it can be easy to restrict yourself to just one or two genres!
What was the inspiration behind your track “No Corruption?”
I (Alex) wrote the basic structure and melody for No Corruption in my final months of university – it was kind of a combination of the sadness of leaving the bubble of friends and nights out and just generally being justifiably unemployed and also the realisation that the majority of us would be starting work, be it on grad or training schemes. The song is about how our society seems to corrupt these young people into thinking that this is their only path to success in life, whereas if you broaden your horizons it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s really cool how people our age have related to that in the lyrics, especially at our live shows when it is often the best received track.
What’s next for April Towers, what can fans look forward to?
Well ALBOF is released on the 28th August so we are currently gearing up for that – we have a couple more festival dates to play – Castlepalooza in Ireland also Y Not Festival in Derbyshire for BBC Introducing. In the autumn we hope for there to be another single as well as a series of dates round the UK and maybe further afield! You can keep up to date on all our social media sites – and hey, even buy a T Shirt on our webstore! (Shameless plug).
