CHILDCARE
From drinking a can of Red Stripe on the M6 to the acceptance of transience and imperfection...and everything in between...Childcare take us on a journey through their roots, past tours, and the creation of their lovely debut album.
Photos by Flore Diamant
You know those artists/bands that you rarely come across that you immediately have a soft spot for? You add all of their singles to each of your playlists while making sure that they're all private so that no one can steal them..because they belong to you. The band you listen to in every solitary moment but wouldn't dream of playing in front of your friends because you want them all to yourself? That same band then go on to be played on Radio 1, chatting away to Huw Stephens and it's later announced at some point that they're going to be playing the BBC Introducing Stage at Reading & Leeds. And you're left with that heart-breaking realisation that they don't just belong to you anymore - that they're far more popular than you ever imagined and are only going to get bigger? {Exhale} Yep? Self-acclaimed softcore-psych group CHILDCARE were that band for me. So I thought that it was about time that I sing... or scream... their praises before they take over the world. I sat down with Ed, Emma, Rich and their lovely new drummer David.
Name: Ed
Nickname: Master/ Eddy Nugz
Role in band: Singer
Choice of meal deal: Bento box, salt & vinegar crisps, sparkling water.
Name: Emma
Nickname: Prince Albert
Role in band: Bassist
Choice of meal deal: Tuna mayo, quavers, coke.
Name: Rich ‘Tinkerbell’ Le Gate
Role in band: Guitars
Choice of meal deal: Tuna sweetcorn, carrot batons, diet coke
{David, the brand spanking new Childcare drummer, was not present for this part of the interview, so therefore does not deserve a meal deal. Sorry David, that's just the way it goes. We don't make the rules.}
LB: Starting with the basics, how did you all come together?
Ed: I started the band and then I met Emma at a party… we arranged to meet up for some table tennis, and then I asked her if she wanted to learn the bass & join the band. With Rich… we just knew Rich from the South-East London scene.
Rich: Hi...Rich here. Yeah, I was just on ‘the scene’ and got head-hunted.
How would you describe Childcare in a sentence?
Rich: (with almost no hesitation) Like surfing next to sea lions in tuxedos, across a sea of sparkling wine.
Who are your influences as a band and do you differ on personal music tastes?
Ed: Yeah, we do differ. Obviously there’s a lot of crossover but for example, recently Rich has been leaning more towards techno.
Emma: Yeah Rich is much more into techno music than I am, I would say.
Rich: I don’t listen to guitar music. Apart from Pixies.
Emma: I lean towards a more electronic/ hip hop/ R’n’B zone more than others.
Ed: And I like… Tchaikovsky.
From that, how would you describe your sound as a band?
Emma: Like the Pixies meets Tchaikovsky?
Ed: Well we’ve got the phrase ‘soft-core psych’ that Rich came up with, which we’re enjoying.
Photos by Flore Diamant
Rich: It’s gently surreal soft-core psych music. We are basically trying to make original guitar music in a world of unoriginal guitar music.
Let’s dive into the new album, ‘Wabi-Sabi’, to start with tell us about the name… what/where/who?
Emma: So the album name is a Japanese school of thought for growing old gracefully and beautifully with imperfections and we wanted to celebrate that.
Rich: Also at the start of Childcare when we used to record we’d just do one straight take with everyone at the same time and even include mistakes, so it ties in quite nicely to what we do musically.
Emma: Oh nice, I’ve never heard that answer before
Rich: I thought that was part of it?
Emma: Clearly good to have these brainstorming sessions!
What was the most enjoyable part of writing and recording the album?
Rich: I think because it happened over quite a long period of time, the process was quite varied depending on the session but we always did have a right good laugh staying up in the studio-
Emma: 4am pad-thai was one of my highlights.
Rich: What I loved was when it was my turn to record the guitars I would just get the whole room I was recording in very tidily organised and line up the guitars and plectrums and although it doesn’t really line-up with the Wabi Sabi philosophy, sometimes you just gotta go against the grain.
Ed: One moment that was fun to record was when we picked up your amp and threw it to the ground and recorded it.
Emma: Very fun.
Rich: Even more fun when I had to pick up the bill the next day.
Can you delve into the wellness retreats and tell us a bit about them? Where did the idea come from & are we all just blindly signing up to join your musical cult?
Ed: No of course not! You’re just doing your own thing and listening to our lyrics and maybe some of it is seeping into your brain and maybe influencing the way you think and who you are and the way you act and making sure that you are forever tied to us…so we realised that a lot of the album was about change and betterment and self-work and so we decided to launch a wellness campaign that accompanied the release of the album. We’ve got all sorts of things going on with that… we are running these personal glory events where we invite fans into a yoga studio and we give them our own take on mindfulness and meditation. We did some mindful eating at one, a laughter class at another, so it’s about giving a wellness package to all of our fans and the album is just one part of that.
Emma: Very well said.
SCALA! So exciting. Is this your biggest show yet? What can we expect from it?
Emma: Yes it is our biggest show yet. Expect… a nice smelling room.
David: Oh wow, I’m excited.
Emma: David says ‘Oh wow, I’m excited.’
Rich: Footnote for the interview, this is David Dyson’s first ever press interview as the new drummer of Childcare.
Ed: And he’s only been in the band for 2 days, so the writing process he’s not so sure on.
Emma: But he IS excited about Scala.
Rich: Scala is the acculmination of this whole year with the album and will be the final thing we probably do for a way, so in a way will be a bit of a farewell to everything which could be really euphoric I think.
Ed: It’s going to be good, we are going to incorporate bits of our personal glory retreats so won’t be just a normal music show. There's going to be all sort of mass meditation and cultish activities.
Emma: An immersive theatre performance almost, much like punch drama I would say.
Post-album, what’s next? Any summer festival plans?
Emma: David, do you wanna take the reins on this one?
Rich and Ed: COME ON DAVID!
David: So, we are doing the Isle of Wight Festival in a few weeks, so that’ll be my first festival with the band which I’m excited about, then we actually have loads of small town festivals I think most weekends over the summer and finally open the Radio 1 stage at Reading & Leeds.
Emma: Very excited. Also Latitude, which is a nice respectable festival with lots of comedy and wellness things.
Rich: A la carte restaurants.
Emma: Lots of a la carte restaurants
3 Quickfire Questions:
Any funny tour stories that you are allowed to tell us?
All: Cor… that we are allowed to tell?! I mean NDA is all over the place…
Rich: Alright, NSFW - we spent a lot of time with different animals on the last tour. We met some chickens, some ladybirds, a tortoise…
Ed: We got VERY close to an electric eel.
Rich: I had two cans of Red Stripe looking at the M6, and then ate some crisps.
Emma: There was a pretty good time in Birmingham where about a minute before stage, Rich had been trying to fix a camera onto a high vantage point to film the gig and he came running into the dressing room, as we were just about to go on, and he had torn off his whole bottom lip with gaffa tape and was profusely gushing blood out of his mouth.
Rich: That was pretty bad-I had forgotten about that… We did have one pretty wild night in Leeds. It was so wild that we got the acoustic guitar out and started singing along to Coldplay and some old folk music from the Wicker Man soundtrack, which we had projected on the wall.
Emma: That was pretty fucking wild-we stayed up until about 5 am!
Rich: So you see, we do know how to party.
If you weren’t musicians, what would you all be doing?
Rich: I would like to be an appeals lawyer for wrongly convicted people.
Ed: I’d like to be an airline pilot, flying all over the world.
Rich: You would actually like that as well.
Emma: I’d be an estate agent. Or maybe work in recruitment. One or the other.
Rich: Pretty cool jobs.
Ed: Yeah, very important.
If you were organising your own CHILDCARE festival, what bands/artists would you want to headline? Dead or alive…
Rich: I’m going to pick a great new band called Sports Team, because they have a guy who wears a bucket hat and only plays the shaker.
Ed: Aphex twin.
Rich: That’s for the dance tent, is it?
Emma: Ah, so Ed’s got dance tent, Rich has got the sort of BBC introducing stage…
Ed: You’ve got to pick a headliner.
Emma: Shall we go with Celine Dion?
Rich: Yeah, that would get the tickets selling well.
Emma: “Childcare presents: Celine Dion.”
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