Spilling The ‘SPANG’ Beans
Sparky, sassy and sanguine, Jules and Rachid are the zesty duo that form dream-pop band, ‘Spang Sisters’. Despite their resemblance and sibling-like bond, these multi-instrumentalists are in fact not sisters, nor brothers, but two disarmingly charming Brighton-boys.
Like a roast on a Sunday, Spang Sisters’ laid back sounds are served with warm vocals, caramelised in catchy harmonies and soaked in a pool of thick electronic gravy. They’ve cracked the recipe for writing songs that allow you to take a moment to look up at the sky and appreciate what you have. Ahead of their debut album release tomorrow, we venture into their adventures off and on-stage and I learn what ‘clean’ music is, and that song-writing is really just a load of shit.
Truly, it was a delight to speak with this pair of whimsical wizards.
You do look quite similar
JULES: We’ve been told we look like brothers but I don’t really see it – given that he’s an Arab man and I’m a white man.
It’s probably something to do with the eyebrows. What have you been up to today?
J: We’ve been practicing the set for our upcoming gig –
Rachid joins with a beer
J: Are you alright mate? There must be something wrong if you’ve got a Weston’s.
RACHID: It’s apple tea.
Do you like things pristine or a bit rough around the edges?
R: Rough around the edges for sure. We use a lot of tape emulation. That’s basically making your music sound less pristine. We do a sort of warm warble that a plug-in affords. Some things should be pristine, like the performance –
J: But the musical sentiment needn’t be.
R: We have old sensibilities in terms of production and sound. We’re luddites.
Do you have a good set up?
J: Lets downplay the set up as much as possible so that people know what we’ve done with so little…
R: We have a shitty drum kit.
J: Alby wouldn’t like his drum kit to be referred to as shitty!
R: Well, it’s the kickdrum that really sounds like farts. Jules managed to get it sounding good. We can show you. A drum, an amp, a little cymbal, a mixer over there.
J: What do you reckon?
I mean there it is, your rough sound… You guys are now two, once five. What did you do to them?
R: They still live downstairs, they found their own sound. We played a very schismatic show where most of our set would be the soft stuff (what we’re known for), then for the last few songs we would get Albert, (drummer) out to the front and we would turn into more of a punky, sweaty, conspiracy theorist band. Then Albert took to front-manning a band called Keg.
J: Five became two then two became one… (that’s a Spice Girls reference).
You have quite varying descriptions on the internet – one place called you ‘RnB-flecked bedroom folk duo’, another ‘dream pop’ and ‘swooning’. Do you care about labels?
J: We don’t care about anything-
R: Apart from ..
J: Apart from nothing! No, if we like it then someone else will like it. That’s a good starting point.
Do you write for yourselves?
J: I don’t think any artist would say they don’t write for themselves.
R: To avoid falling into a pit of despair you have to be continually writing and making music that you like because if you stop for a little bit then you start to question everything.
J: Having said all of that, we do want to write bangers and get our songs stuck in peoples’ heads.
You guys don’t have to answer to anyone because you have your own label. How do you go about doing that?
J: It’s really easy, you just have to get rejected by every other label.
R: Our label’s called Bathtime Sounds. It was originally a DJ night that me and friend, Reggae Rob, put on. I guess we wanted to bathe people in sound… and it’s also very bath-friendly.
J: The music is so dirty you have to wash yourself?
R: I see it as the opposite, it actually cleans off the muck that you hear in other places. A detergent.
‘Dettol music’. Your music reminds me of the American summer of 69 in California – you’re chilling, smoking, swimming.
J: We do smoke weed. I don’t know if that’s cool to say, but if there was any doubt, let us dispel it.
R: Funnily enough Bathtime was originally a celebration of Americana music and it still kind of is.
Do you wanna get into the scene in America?
R: Oh god yeah. Defo.
J: The scene is there, not here.
Both look out window.
J: Nope, nothing outside.
R: That’s a good thing. There’s a saturated market for what we do in America. Most of what you’d hear at The Windmill is not American music, it’s very much Joy Division and Northern grit. It’s hard to fall into a scene here. We have a collective of bands that we’re friends with, but it’s not like a stylistic scene, we don’t adhere to a unifying aesthetic.
Is breaking the rules important for you guys?
J: Oh no - I wouldn’t say we’re on the cutting edge of music, given that we’re atavists.
R: We’re not experimental. Our live shows were quite unique, like swapping instruments, but now they’re a bit more refined. I think the music itself is becoming more interesting and unique.
J: Yeah Rachid is switching to the piano, we’ve got a trombone now – it’s like real music. We’re real musicians. Guitars are dead.
Do you guys live with each other?
R: We actually live across the road from eachother. I live just over there.
That is perfect. I bet you’re round all the time. You guys can finish each other’s ..
J + R: Magnums!
R: We do though! Well… Cornetto’s. I like the very top and very bottom and Jules can have everything in between.
J: I like ice-cream.
A match made in…?
R: Flux! We met in 2013 at a horrible rave in the Southwark tunnels. Then we both ended up moving to Bristol and we hung out.
J: Rachid is very proactive in texting people so he took a chance on me and I thought ‘oh gosh who’s this who’s texting me?’
So how do you write the songs?
J: Umm… we start with a chord and find a second one that sounds good in relation to the first one, then it keeps on going.
R: That’s one way. Sometimes you get the melody in your head then you build the chords around it.
J: Sometimes you hear a wicked song and think ‘I’m gonna rip this off’.
R: Both of us and a lot of musicians have these chords in our head with no lyrics to fit, then you just get backlogged with chord progressions.
Is songwriting instinct or trial and error?
R: It never works for me to sit down and think, ‘I’m gonna write a song and pull it out of thin air’, it’s more of a gradual thing.
J: What works for me is being distracted. Like you’re chatting to someone and you’re endlessly strumming and not thinking, then you hit on something and that will be the seed. Coming up with the initial idea is the easy part, then begins the trial and error. That’s the hard part; turning it into a fucking song. That’s the bit I spend years agonizing over. Sometimes it falls out of your arsehole.
Who is Will Shortz?
R: He is the editor of the New York Times crossword. And that crossword has been an important thing for me. I lived abroad for some time and I would get homesick and I would do that crossword and it just felt nice.
R: I’m not even from New York. It’s a daily routine thing, and the song is about the solace that we find in them.
Will Shortz, for visual reference. Sorry Will, this was the only photo that wasn’t copyrighted.
What do you guys want?
J: Money.
R: To be respected in our field.
J: We just wanna be loved. We just wanna learn to love again.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
J: Zamrock from the 70s and a band called WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc) and they certainly do.
R: I’ve been listening to a lot of Jessica Pratt. She’s a beautiful songwriter. Also Kevin Ayers as of yesterday. New bands? Oh, Posse are good. And Black Country, New Road, that whole scene is good.
Last one, what do you listen to on the Last Bus home?
J: Bob Marley.
R: Velvet Underground.