HOW DID YOUR NAME ORIGINATE?
A few years ago, I was living at home with nothing to spend my money on but vinyl. I started collecting 10" records by The Desert Sessions, which were originally released on a label called Man's Ruin Records, and I remember really liking that name. It had me thinking about mankind - that we're an incredible species with such unbelievable capabilities when compared with other animals. The stuff we've invented, the structures we've built and the art we've created - I find all that amazing. But we've got an astonishing knack of going a bit too far, whether that's out of ignorance or stupidity, and leaving stuff in a bit of a mess. I guess, for me, the name's a bit of a play on that. What happens when you let mankind loose? The fact that it rolled off the tongue nicely when I said it out loud helped, too.
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WHERE WAS YOUR FIRST GIG AND HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE THERE
It turned out well. We're lucky to have The Sesh, which is a weekly night in Hull that has almost single-handedly transformed the city's music scene over the last ten years or so. Every Tuesday - three great emerging artists. The thing that sets it apart is that the quality of acts is always top drawer, so the bar is set pretty high. We'd wrapped up our previous project there with a last show a year and a half before, before burying ourselves away to develop and come back with something fresh and exciting. We'd worked really hard on that first set of songs - and it'd been so long - we just wanted to come out all guns blazing. We invited everybody, and I guess fans of our previous work wanted to see what we'd been up to as well. It went down really well and it's really been about building the momentum from that strong start.
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WHEN WAS YOUR LAST DAY OFF AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?
I spent a few days in Paris for my birthday. It's a joy to just to walk and get lost in the streets, then sit outside a café on a corner for a beer and a smoke. We went to a rock bar in Pigalle. There was nobody else in so I asked the bartender to stick some Kyuss on.
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WHAT IS SOMETHING – APART FROM YOUR PHONE OR WALLET – THAT HAS TO BE IN YOUR VICINITY AT ALL TIMES?
Cigarettes. Trying to stop.
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WHICH SONG BY ANOTHER ARTIST DO YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN?
Instagratification by Cherry Glazerr. Her melodies are always next level - the verses are feisty but when the chorus chimes in it’s just pure pop goodness. I also loved its social commentary on the Instagram generation - ‘We don’t see through our eyes, we see through a lens’ - I suppose it inspired Two Way Glass somewhat.
Make It Wit Chu by QOTSA. Always wanted to write a sexy song that isn’t corny and this just oozes, lyrically and musically.
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WHAT’S BEEN THE MOST SURREAL FAN MOMENT?
Jamie and me are both proper pedal geeks and we love a bucketload of fuzz. Over the course of the last few years we’ve honed our sound through poring over Siamese Dream [The Smashing Pumpkins] and everything Josh Homme’s ever laid a finger on. We really spend a lot of time on getting the guitars right when we record, and love to get our amps roaring when we play live. At our second ever gig, in Liverpool, someone in the front row screamed ‘How’d you get that tone?!’ and that felt great. It was good to have our efforts noticed.
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