Gladboy Interview

Having burst quickly onto the scene, Gladboy have become a household name for anyone keeping at least one eye on local arts in Norwich. Supporting the likes of Starcrawler and Brix & The Extricated last year they have continued in their merry way and bagged themselves a headline slot at Norwich Arts Centre. The band's creative ingenuity, willingness to experiment, and assured knowledge of their musical lineage truly sets them as rightful frontrunners in the ever-growing Norwich music scene. We had an extended sit down with George and Janani of Gladboy over some quiet drinks in one of my favourite establishments – The Garden House.

In recalling the first time I caught Gladboy live, I remember vividly thinking, while sat in the university pub: “Jesus, they’re playing pretty hard”. Looking back, there were very few people there, and half of them were probably eating pizza, gearing up for their ‘sports night’ out. I asked George whether this was disheartening, and what he thought of the current state of alternative music?

“I mean at the end of the day, people have been having debates about whether guitar music is dead since the 60’s and when the Beatles came along they were seen as the antidote to the fact that guitar music was already dead. It hasn’t really died, it's in a pretty weakened state and perhaps there’s not much of an outlet for anything as independent as there used to be, I mean you talk to a lot of people in the scene and, Norwich particularly there is a bit of an absence of guitar based music that isn’t just, either an indie band, or a singer songwriter and there is nothing wrong with either but perhaps, we’re doing stuff that at the end of the day it’s the same ingredients that people have been using for a long time we’ve just put it in a different recipe"

It’s not all doom and gloom for alternative music, Gladboy, having had a couple of support slots at the Norwich Arts Centre over the last year, earned their stripes and got the opportunity to play a headline show to a lively crowd in the prestigious venue.

George: “I mean a couple of days before we had only sold around 30 tickets so I thought it was going to be a bit embarrassing but actually turned out to be one of the best nights of my life”. In terms of performance, we all made the odd mistake and stuff but we were having so much fun that it didn’t matter for a second. It felt like a bit of a win for everything because our band is just like a group of mates that extends beyond the people that play”.

It’s true, Gladboy have seized the hearts of many as you can quite clearly see from the small army of psychedelic freaks wearing their bright yellow Gladboy t-shirts around Norwich. The makeup of the band consists of George Orton as lead singer/guitarist, Sonny Mitchell on drums/guitar, Alex Calder the synthesist, Adam Bentham on bass, while Janani Arudselvanathan handles percussion/vocals, and finally James Fawdon on trombone. Quite the extensive line up. “How did you get started”?

George, replying with a chuckle “It started out with me and Sonny the drummer, I’d seen him around university in really ridiculous outfits; like suits and stuff. Sounds so pretentious but a copy of metamorphous in his pocket was the deal breaker. I just approached him and was like we should start making music. I knew he played guitar but he just said he’d jump on drums because no one else would, I’d never seen him play drums… for his first gig most of his friends had never seen him player drums either. We got to practice and we started to play a cover of 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson and he just learnt it on the spot with the most insane drums fills. Adam and Alex on the bass and synth were both friends from Essex. Janani has been a really good friend. We spent so long making music and just doing little ambient or experimental jams in the house that she just became part of the band. We effectively met through university but it’s a group of people that life brought together… I’m getting a bit sentimental".

Having seen Gladboy live, it's clear from their sound and general relationships within the band that they like getting down and dirty into a jam. George talks me through their budget recording process when jamming “We voice record it and it ends up being like 2 hours of recording of what we’ve been playing just talking and just random coughs here and there”. "You can’t really recreate stuff like that in the studio”. Well, if you, like myself, enjoy to indulge in some bedroom pop in it's purest form - You should head to Sonny's bandcamp which contains lord knows how many albums or alternatively to the notorious time-capulse-king: Janani's bandcamp here. 

As I briefly noted in the introduction, the band have a taste for some of the finer tunes in life. George puts it down to his dad, or 'DJ pappy' as he goes by when spinning vinyl from time to time. “As soon as I was out the womb I had a pair of headphones playing The Clash, The Beach Boys, and the Beastie Boys. I’ve always been in that kind of environment so its probably most to him that I’m into the stuff I am… always having records and instruments around a lot. We are currently trying to do an EP together covering songs on toy instruments. We are hopefully going to do a ska version of the Wallace & Gromit theme tune using a toy drum kit and children’s keyboard. Janani speaks of her past favorites lovingly “Kurt Vile” and “Beach House”, but it becomes clear that what really makes the band tick is German music. “We all love Kraftwerk” Janani says with animation. George chimes in “Yeah German music is the one that brings everyone together but everyone kind of just has their own different thing. It would be so boring and homogenous if we all just listened to the same guitar music... and to be honest what we all listen to a lot of the time isn’t totally close to what we play its just what we play comes more naturally and that’s what matters”.

I once heard Sonny describe Gladboy as ‘broadly psychedelic’. Psychedelia in general has the potential to alienate certain listeners when a song doesn’t tend to fit the parameters of what a ‘normal’ song is. George seems keen to nail down what is actually meant by the term psychedelic anyway? “Its such a broad term because it can mean anything. What makes something psychedelic could be something that emulates a drug experience or something that’s a bit experimental”. I ask what records could be good preparation for a listeners looking to dip their feet into the genre. Mildly surprised that they didn’t plug their own band, George ponders the question nervously as he’s very conscious that he'd be first to scrutinize a band for giving poor answers. “It’s an obvious one but The Piper at The Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd is just the perfect starting point. It’s just an album that makes you feel like a kid”.

Janani: “Sgt Peppers is a good place to start”.

George: “Yeah you have to that base. In terms of branching out a bit, I really like the Brazilian band Os Mutantes. The band Clinic I also think are really good prep. They’re kind of really motoric with lots of distortion.

And big one for me was the Boo Radleys Giant Steps. It’s album that’s a mixture of free jazz, reggae, and shoegaze. I think that for me was a blueprint for mixing genres together which I am more interested in than just turning on a phaser pedal and singing about the sun”.

“So yeah… Os Mutantes, Booradleys, oh… and Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms. It’s a psychedelic folk record from the 60’s. It’s just so peaceful. But then so terrifying at points. The title track has this passage in it which is meant to simulate a bad acid trip. I think anyone who hears that wants to listen to more music in that vein”.

Gladboy not only go hard, they also enjoy the occasional breather on stage “It’s bloody exhausting, George says, sounding exhausted just thinking about performing. Their song Tyler’s Tune dictates audience participation to give your back a break and take a seat on the floor, as do the band. I went on to question the ethics of this move when considering (or lack of) that some venues have pretty grim floors (The Nick Raynes LCR), and it would be unfair for punters to have to ruin a pair of their nice jeans. George assures me in a cheeky tone which is becoming ever more present with every pint drained, that he just doesn’t care… “you sit down”. He does seem passionate about it though. Gladboy are on a mission to avoid the experience of recreating your run-of-the-mill show. “You’ve got 40 minutes to do whatever you want so it's so boring to just stand up there and play. I want to find other things to do… like, ways to involve the audience… not in an annoying way and get them to sing along – it's not Take That. Just something that makes it more than another local band rock show”.

Everyone is progressively feeling the beer on this warm summers evening, and it’s time to address that why as a humble Apple Music listener the song Sauer Kraut on their e.p is censored.

George “Yeah I guess some people class it as a slur… I guess an algorithm on a computer wouldn’t recognise it”.

Janani: “You guys initially called it The Kraut Rock One. Then we recorded the EP and were trying to think of a name… It was just a collective thing we came up with”.

George: “It was just a play of words of the food mixed with the music genre. Because The Kraut Rock One sounds like a really bad sitcom. And the lyrics have a lot of references to food. I wrote it right at the start of university, and its about a man who’s visited in a dream by this singer called Hasil Adkins. He was a one-man-band in the 50’s. He used to sing about eating his wife. So this guys is visited by him in a dream and is inspired to become a cannibal. We wanted to keep it foodie but with a clear German reference".

Being the fool I am, I thought a censored ‘Sauer K****’ was a subtle play on words for ‘Sour Cunt’, leading to my question being “Who is you favourite sour cunt of the music industry”? The pair both burst laugh out laughing, perhaps at the surprise of such grotesque language. George sighs like he’s contemplated this a few times before “I mean… it’s a bit of clichéd answer, but mine would have been Mark E Smith from the Fall. I know that if we met him he’d be awful. He would probably be so horrible to us. I do think though; music is kind of lacking these demigods… Your Kanye’s for example… particularly in our genre… just this total megalomaniac, who is completely in control. I mean, if the Fall came around in 2019, they probably wouldn’t exist… and some cases quite rightly. In terms of sour cunts… yeah Mark E Smith’s an important one”.

“Anything new coming up?”

George: “We really wanna record. I can’t say we’ve got any straight up plans to… hopefully this summer we’ll record our new track Wedding Band and our other track Baby Momma Thinks I’m a Silly Sausage. Both of which I wrote when I was just coming to university and I was a completely different person. It’s really interesting trying to work out how to filter out what we’re all interested in into something new. I think it would be nice to have some music out that captures us better than we already have recorded. We have our first London show on the 5th of June at the Fiddlers Elbow with our pals Bubble-gum Hypnosis. And then we’re playing in Leicester on the 13th at the Cookie. Which is good because it’s just really fun to get us out of Norwich and see some new sights and have room of fresh eyes on us. Hopefully a tour and a single will come in the new few months”.

My final remark was to hand the now jolly front-man a folded piece of paper which disclosed the picture below. His uproar was more than worth the 5p spent printing it off in the library.

George: “For god sakes... yeah I had something in my nose... and on camera I tried to pick it out. That's the thing though... It's all performance art. I'm trying to show the body in it's rawest form, right down to the snot I spew. Yeah... you can have that back. I'm not used to playing with cameras me... I don't care if I've got something in my nose? I'm a rockstar”.

Final quotes came much later that night “Slider and the Goose has ruined me”.

Slider & The Goose