“I decided to give myself six weeks to write an album like they used to do back in the day and that became really inspiring” Serge recalls. “It was going to be classic songs, no self-indulgence, nothing was going on there that shouldn’t. I’d heard Berry Gordy had said if you’ve not got them in the first four bars then you’re finished, so I went in with this old school attitude of song-writing.”

Following the more electronic direction on 2014’s ‘48:13’ Kasabian were keen to make a truly great guitar album. “There was an ambition to save guitar music from wherever the hell it’s going. We’re trying to save it from being written off as just old music. We wanted to make a very positive album full of hope with guitars to remind people that it’s still relevant.”

The band originally formed as Saracuse in 1997, but later changed their name – taking their new moniker from Linda Kasabian, a get-away driver for the notorious Charles Manson. Despite first beginning to record material in the late ‘90s, the band didn’t release their eponymous debut album until 2004.

Their second album, ‘Empire’ was a huge success, spawning a further run of hit singles while the album itself debuted at Number One oon the UK Albums Chart.

Its follow-up, ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’, was their bravest and boldest yet but still no less popular: in additions to scoring them a consecutive Number One, it was also nominated for the 2009 Mercury Music Prize.

2012 saw the band release ‘Velociraptor’ which saw another arena tour and headline slots at the Isle of Wight and Reading/Leeds. 2013 saw the band headline Hard Rock Calling in London’s Queen Elizabeth Park.

As the ten year anniversary since the release of their self titled debut approached in 2014, Kasabian went on to headline Glastonbury, play their biggest show to date in front of a sold out crowd of 50,000 Leicester fans and release the critically acclaimed album ‘48:13’.

In 2015, the band headlined V Festival, and 2016 saw the band play two sell out shows at the King Power Stadium in celebration of Leicester City’s unlikely Premier League title success.

Kasabian have four UK No.1 albums to their name and have sold over 5.5 million albums worldwide. They’ve won a Brit, seven NME awards, four Q Awards and have headlined Glastonbury Festival, as well as V Festival, T in the Park, and numerous festivals worldwide.

After six seminal releases, two Grammy Award wins, countless sold out shows, and eventually selling 35 million albums worldwide, Head left the group in 2004 to face down the demons of addiction on his own. Korn soldiered on, permanently adding drummer Ray Luzier to the fold in 2007and releasing four more epic full-length releases, most recently 2011's groundbreaking dubstep-metal hybrid The Path of Totality.

In 2012, a triumphant and tear-filled reunion happened on stage as the group headlined the Carolina Rebellion festival with Head reprising his legendary part on "Blind." The initial bond came back into focus, but it was time to change the game again. It was time for their eleventh studio album The Paradigm Shift. Recorded with producer Don Gilmore [Linkin Park], it melds the group's ever-present spirit of innovation with their signature metallic catharsis, paving the way for the future yet again.

Their 12th studio album, 'The Serenity Of Suffering' will be released on October 21st 2016.

The title is taken from a lyric in “Blankets of Sorrow,” the elegiac, wistful ballad that closes the album and perfectly encapsulates the theme that runs through So that you might hear me: the need to be heard, acknowledged, understood. That brief, simple sentiment that underpins all of the songs on the album expresses a universal desire that so often goes unspoken, but runs deep within us all -- the primal, fundamental need for meaningful human connection.

“To me, it’s about trying to communicate with someone and feeling like you can’t reach them anymore” says Andrew. “That deeply resonated with me. Unwittingly, it became a theme of the album.”

So that you might hear me is the follow-up to Bear’s Den’s, UK silver-selling debut, Islands, which earned them an Ivor Novello nomination in the UK and a devoted following worldwide, and 2016’s more expansive Red Earth & Pouring Rain, which went Top 10 across Europe. 2017 saw the band cap four, non-stop years on the road with the largest headline shows to date, from sold-out tours of the States to a 7000-capacity arena in Belgium, and sold-out hometown shows at London’s iconic Brixton Academy and the Hammersmith Apollo.

The speed and scale of their success meant that Bear’s Den hadn’t taken a break since forming in 2012 – Red Earth & Pouring Rain was written in just three weeks squeezed in between tours and main stage festival slots at the likes of Pukkelpop and Lollapalooza Paris. Last year, finally, they took a step back to focus on their future.

For the first time, Andrew and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Jones had their own studio, a cubby called Josiah Booth Studios next to The Church Studios in north London, where they could leave their instruments plugged in and come and go as they pleased. Musically, there were no self-imposed constraints. Nor was there a time frame.

Both had a hankering to incorporate piano and more electronic instruments into their sound. Kev began playing with ideas on piano and drum machines while Andrew alone went to a cottage in a remote part of the English countryside with a guitar and started scribbling lyrics.

“In the past, I’ve always tried to understand what I’m writing about,” says Andrew. “This time, lyrics came from a more subconscious place. Like they were things I needed to say and I worked back from there. I’m inspired by people who wrote as though they were trying to figure out their own feelings as much as explain them to anyone else. The aim was to be more honest and instinctive, like when you blurt something out and can’t take it back, so you have to deal with it.”

Glorious opener “Hiding Bottles” builds in to their rockiest song to date, but is also doused in electronics. The idea for the song began with a synth pad and the lyric “Hiding bottles in the cold blue light.” Like several of the songs, it turned out to be about Andrew’s relationship with a close family member with an alcohol addiction and his attempts to address it.

“It was a situation that I could file away while we were on tour,” says Andrew, “but back home, I had to confront. The lyrics recall real conversations, trying to reach and help someone. It’s also about recognising what you can and can’t change, however hard you try.”

The first single “Fuel On The Fire” blossoms from the throb of drum machine beats in to an orchestral beauty. “Laurel Wreath” is a majestic track built on piano with electric guitars and synths that shimmer like strings. Both the haunting “Fossils” and the deeply moving “Crow” fuse acoustic instruments and electronics so organically it seems daft to distinguish between them.

“I love how the boundaries between genres have gone in the age of streaming,” says Andrew. “No one listens to music in boxes anymore, so why make it like that? Our songs incorporate all sorts of sounds, but not in a pre-ordained way. We could start with a weird pocket synth sound or Kev playing a creaky old upright piano. We just tried to follow our collaborative intuition and go where each song suggested.”

The result is a record that is both bold and exposed, at once intimate and widescreen. While the music leads the listener down different paths, the lyrics unfold as though revealing secrets, each line littered with clues.

Lyrically, “Crow” was inspired by Max Porter’s award-winning, 2016 novel Grief Is The Thing With Feathers while “Not Every River,” the album’s short, self-produced shimmering centrepiece, is about acceptance – or as Andrew puts it, “being okay with what’s not okay”.

Bewitching album closer “Blankets Of Sorrow” turns to nature to explore familial love and ends with Andrew sighing that tweaked album title over acoustic guitar.

“We decided pretty early that the title should be: So that you might hear me” he explains. “We changed the ‘will’ in the title for ‘might’ to acknowledge a sense of hope. The implication being that situations can change, particularly if you talk about them.”

So that you might hear me was demoed at Josiah Booth Studios and recorded at several studios in Seattle over the course of seven weeks with the producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty).

“Kev and I are both huge fans of The Shins – their early records helped teach us how to write songs,” says Andrew. “We’d never met Phil, but it was our dream to work with him so we sent him our demos and, luckily, he loved them. Working with him in Seattle was a deeply rewarding and massively educational experience.”

Bear’s Den’s four-man touring band also appear on the album, joining them in Seattle throughout the recording to beef up the songs with brass, drums, electric guitar and more electronics.

“The album has grown and evolved from all of the processes we went through. Every step of the way, it has been instinctive, collaborative and pushed us both lyrically and musically. From writing the songs to Kev and I working on the songs together in the church, working through them as a band together with Phil in Seattle and even ultimately mixing with Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, The National) in London. Each separate process shaped and informed the album enormously.”

“The album started out as an attempt at trying to communicate with someone honestly. Our thoughts are not all rational, not all considered or tied up with ribbons and bows. This album is an attempt to reveal the honest and difficult challenge of communicating with anyone that you really care about.

“We’re immensely proud of it and hugely excited to share it with people.”

Meeting up to help finish off each other’s songs, sometimes they would become cavernous rhythms and more than often the pair would record just for the hell of it. (On one occasion the two were purported to have stayed up recording the sound of hair swishing across a microphone).

Fusing the elements of disparate musics, the vocal sweetness of Laurel Canyon, Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston and the modern electronic space of the past 40 years, in their first recording ‘Come Save Me’ they created a contemporary psychedelia, with the beauty and simplicity of classic sun-soaked beach pop.

Just weeks after putting it online, it had heavy airplay on Australian radio and a seven inch release on new label The Blue Rider, receiving a positive reaction to the mix of old & new, the uninhibited rhythm and a song rooted in celebrating sadness, its heavenly harmonies jilted by a lyric informing how leaving a loved one can really expose how lonely love really is.

“You can’t trick people in to liking a song” says Gab “We knew we liked it and that we had a really good time making it”.

Understanding that what they had was important and needed to be documented, they decamped to a friend’s studio in France in the summer of 2012 to record their debut album - just the two of them in an empty farm two hours south of Paris, with an 808, a Fender jaguar, a laptop & a pair of vintage Neve console channels.

Their time at La Briche echoes like a strange psychedelic film: cycling in fields of sunflowers, copious amounts of cheese, growing caveman beards and going crazy in the studio. While working they listened to twisted electronica from Liars, Aphex Twin and Autechre. “And when we sat down to dinner we’d listen to Sinatra and Nat King Cole" says Gab.

Meanwhile next door lived a convoy of tradesmen with a thing for hardcore dub…“They were from a scene which is based around homemade soundsystems” says Jono “they take them out in to the middle of nowhere and play literally the hardest most sinister kind of music I’ve ever experienced. It is the weirdest thing in the world”.

The long ways from home helped them to bond and cement their sound and at the same time absorb some of Europe’s cultural and artistic influences from the fierce beats of Berlin’s Berghain to London’s most interesting corners. A mission to re-create a two man wall of sound ensued and with help from friends, locals and a pre-historic desk once used by Conny Plank, the pair set about re-inventing the warmth, harmony and audio sunshine they’d hatched back in Australia.

Their collaborators along the way included long-time friend & Warpaint drummer, Stella Mozgawa and renowned producer/mixer, Ewan Pearson, a friend from Berlin, and they love that the songs have travelled (“they followed us around the world” says Jono) and their balance between old and new, the discovery of something vintage alongside future-looking experiments.

“Finding great music from the past is a way of being adventurous” says Jono " It’s that sense of finding something that you feel belongs to just you”

By the dying days of 2012 their time in France had not been ill-spent and a debut album Howlin was recorded and ready to be mixed.

Their first release from these sessions, The Throw, saw them occupying a space where Screamadelica and its wayward children used to live. A joyful seven minutes weaving melodies & beats with the sole purpose of making people move, of throwing caution to the wind & reaching a higher level with a greater purpose, or maybe without one at all, it touched a nerve & helped soundtrack the last few months.

Next single, ‘The Man I Need’ is more introspective, beats minimal and Gab crying “all you say to me, is all you want to see, you’re not the man I need, that’s what you said to me”. Its ten-minute version climaxes with a voodoo drum-breakdown and the instruction “exercise your chemistry”, and was picked up & played in full by Zane Lowe on BBC R1.

Across the album, Howlin's songs are full of classic hooks but often end in dirty clanking breakdowns. Pop songwriting is buried in layers of crunching synths and pedal effects. “How can you look gloomy? When you look so good to me” wonders Gab in 'Uncertainty', repeating “be my light” over Jono’s techno-inspired beat.

Having played a couple of festivals last summer, adding Jack Freeman on bass, they kicked 2013 off back in Australia on the Big Day Out before playing a packed breathless NME show in London, Gab ending up topless, the audience lost in sound & strobes.

Since then they've toured Europe with Foals, and Australia with the xx and will be back in Europe to play more headline dates and festivals across the summer.

The explosion of colour and sound will echo throughout the year, Jagwar Ma is written on the wind, painted on the stars (as someone else once wrote…)

He was entertaining his band mates performing handstands in the kitchen of his flat. He lost balance, he recalls with a cackle, toppled and crashed down into an open dishwasher, impaling his foot on a carving knife. Bassist Kieren Webster took a photo of the resulting injury. It is a close-up of Falconer’s left foot – the handle of the knife protruding from the ball, the blade buried three inches into it.

Here’s the deal. These days we bemoan the dearth of proper, death-or-glory, Devil-may-care rock’n’roll bands with tiresome regularity. Bands that exist for the thrill of living life to its fullest and that operate entirely on instinct. Well, The View is precisely that kind of band and they’ve been here all along. They don’t conform, don’t adhere to rules or make things easy on themselves. What they do is make music fired by passion and soul and joy.

The simple details of their story are these: school mates in Dundee, singer/guitarist Falconer, fellow songwriter Webster, guitarist Pete Reilly and drummer Steve Morrison formed the band in 2005. Within two years they’d torn up stages supporting the likes of Primal Scream and The Babyshambles and released a hugely successful debut album, Hats Off To The Buskers.

That debut fitted the post-Libertines music landscape of the time. The easy thing to do next would have been to stick to the formula. The View instead made a more challenging and diverse record called Which Bitch?, which ran a gamut from ramshackle folk-punk to sea shanties. After it, came the slick, sophisticated guitar pop of 2011’s Bread And Circuses. Great records both; but overlooked too – blame as much on the fact neither pandered to expectations, on a break down in relations between the band and their then record company, and perhaps too on the sheer wilfulness of The View themselves.

Now, a year older, and maybe a little wiser, The View are back with new label Cooking Vinyl and a new album, Cheeky For A Reason – recorded in Liverpool with producer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, Foals) and the best thing they’ve done.

Such are the basic facts. Better still ask Kyle Falconer why Which Bitch? was such a leap ahead and he’ll tell you: “Drink, man, copious amounts of drink. We were spending a fortune every day on every kind of alcohol and we thought we were geniuses. The greatest time ever.”

Or have him reflect on the intangible, transitory nature of success and he’ll say: “Chart positions? They genuinely don’t mean anything to me. We’ve never been in a band just to be in a band. It’s about creating something together, about keeping the dream alive.”

Or probe him on how and where it is that he writes his songs and he offers: “When I’m smashed and it’s whatever comes into my head. If I’m thinking about it – that’s when it goes to shite.”

Because Kyle Falconer is so much of what’s special about The View. Like the best pop stars he is a fascinating character – charming and complex and contrary. His eyes twinkle and yet still there seems something deep, dark and troubled just below his surface. One minute he will regale you with tales of misadventures in strip clubs and police cells. The next he’ll talk with disarming frankness about losing both his parents by the time he was 22 and how he’s suffered anxiety attacks ever since. Of which he concludes, with a what-can-you-do shrug: “I’ve been told it’s because I’m not taking care of what’s going on in my head.”

All this – the peaks and troughs, the highs and lows – is integral to the make up of Cheeky For A Reason. Its 12 tracks (nine by Falconer, three by Webster) represent a coming of age, a statement of intent. Be it Anfield Row – Webster’s hymn to the street in Dundee he grew up on – or The Clock, arguably Falconer’s best song yet, the whole is a record to sing along to, to take to heart and to cherish.

And at end, ask Kyle Falconer if whether, with all that has happened to him and his band en route to making it, he’s ever had pause to doubt in their freewheeling unpredictability or his own mercurial gift, and he doesn’t pause to answer. “Never,” he says firmly. “All I ever need is to see people dancing.”

In the case of PINS, swaths of the primary color wheel embedded in the group’s aesthetic, artwork, and presentation ring out almost as loudly as the pops of neon synths, loud guitars, and cheeky melodies in their music do. Not only does the palette distinguish the trio—Faith Vern, Lois MacDonald, and Kyoko Swan—from the rain-soaked soul of their native Manchester, UK, but it also unites them as a ​“girl gang​.”

Such vibrancy defines their third full-length album for their own Haus of Pins label, ​Hot Slick​.

“Since we’re girls who play music, our band has always had this ​‘girl gang’​ thing that follows us around,” exclaims Faith. “We do what we want though. It’s simple. We’ve learned how to present ourselves. Bold colors represent being strong. So, we’ve embraced those in the music, art, and aesthetic. Strength should be the main thing that comes to mind when you think of us.”

Since the release of ​Girls Like Us​ in 2013, PINS have exuded strength in their danceable alternative post-punk transmissions and earned the trust, endorsement, and creative blessings of rock royalty such as Iggy Pop and peers including Jamie Hince of The Kills. 2015’s ​Wild Nights​, which was recorded and produced at Rancho De La Luna with Dave Catching (Eagles of Death Metal), attracted acclaim from Harpers Bazaar​, ​Interview Magazine​, ​The Guardian​, and ​Stereogum​. They toured on both sides of the pond alongside everyone from Sleater-Kinney and Warpaint to Best Coast and The Subways. 2017 saw them unveil ​The Bad Thing​ EP preceded by the single “Aggrophobe” [feat. Iggy Pop]. ​i-D Magazine described it as ​“AMAZING​.​” ​Along the way, things slowly, but surely changed. PINS parted ways with the original rhythm section of bassist Anna Donigan and drummer Sophie Galpin. Paired down to a three-piece, Kyoko jumped from keys to bass. At the same time, they hunkered down and wrote and recorded ​Hot Slick​. Not to mention, Faith was pregnant throughout the entire process, even playing shows ​“up until eight months​.​”

“PINS has obviously changed, which is why there was a huge gap between releases,” the frontwoman goes on. “We got this room in Manchester where the three of us would rehearse, play, and hangout. We went back to square one and thought about how to portray everything going forward. It was an opportunity to refresh the image and sound. We built it up from scratch. As I was about to become a mom, I was also thinking about the world my daughter would live in. It was like a second chance.”

“After Anna and Sophia left, we looked at other sonic options,” Lois says. “We used more drum machines and synth production techniques to get the sound we wanted. As we were learning how to use these processes and equipment, our writing improved. It was different, because we were swapping out instruments, synths, and drum machines among the three of us. We weren’t assigned to the set roles of ​‘guitarist’ ​or ​‘keyboardist’​. If somebody had an idea, she just played it! That allowed us to be quite free. We got on the same page and really supported one another. It gave us energy and confidence in what we were doing as well as a fresh start.”

Kyoko remarks, “With less voices in the room, there was less pressure. The three of us were able to relax and be more natural.”

They expanded the soundscape, nodding to influences such as Soulwax, LCD Soundsystem, Suicide, and New Order. Additionally, they welcomed a rotating cast of collaborators. Rich Woodcraft oversaw the entire project as producer and engineer, while Jamie Hince and Dean Horner contributed additional

production and Nathan Saoudi of Fat White Family lent his talents on the keys. Faith personally handled all of the styling, photography, and creative direction for the artwork and rollout, emphasizing strident colors. The group also equally amplified every aspect of their signature sound, including the lyrics.

“Let’s be clear,” she grins. “A lot of the lyrics are a bit cocky and cheeky. It feels good to be unafraid though.”

Produced by Hince, the first single “Hot Slick” introduces the album with a glitchy drum march, wobbling synthesizers, and an ominous bass line. Cathartic howls crash into thick distortion as Faith repeats, ​“Get away, get away, I’ve got to get away”​ with robotic precision.

“It’s about escape,” she continues. “The whole thing is one big fantasy for us. It’s not real life. It’s about being a band, touring, and feeling alive.”

“The title ​‘Hot Slick’​ sounded sexy too,” laughs Kyoko. “It was something we came up with as a joke, but we all loved it.”

“Ghosting” sways back and forth between thudding bounce and heavenly harmonies punctuated by high register crooning. Primed to evoke fits on the dancefloor, it captures what Lois describes as ​“a big club vibe​.​” S​ peaking of dancing, the industrial bass groans and tambourine tingles of “Bad Habit” accompany a fan favorite dance move. “It always feels like I’m singing ​‘Bad Habit’​ right to the audience,” explains Faith. “It’s our most inclusive song.”

Meanwhile, a high-heeled skittering beat struts right through “Ponytail” towards a declaration, ​“Yes, I will be up all night, I whip my ponytail from side-to-side.” T​ he track centers around, ​“going out and having a good time with your friends without letting the party end.​ ​”

With its cheerleader-style chant and slippery synths, “Bad Girls Forever” doubles as a clarion call hung up on a sing-song-hook. “There are still some girls who are frightened at shows and don’t come out,” she adds. “They’re not confident enough to be on stage. It’s our job to make them feel like they should be. The song’s just for the girls.”

In the end, PINS fly their own flag higher than ever on ​Hot Slick​ and inspire in the process.

“It’s been over eight years, and so much has happened,” concludes Kyoko. “It’s about having a good

time as friends.”

“PINS is a projection of ourselves,” Faith leaves off. “There’s a little bit of fantasy. This is the world we built for ourselves. Maybe people will dance there with us.”

The quintet - Kerr Okan, John Gerard, Darren McCaughey, Jamie Keenan and Iain Findlay - grew up in the gritty reality of contemporary smalltown Scotland but they are about to shake up the music industry and the whole social structure of the UK with their quite astonishing debut album, ‘Class’.

A diverse array of musical influences is mixed and melded together to produce a sound that is characteristically, unmistakably theirs. Rock, Hip-Hop, Pop, Drum and Bass.. pretty much everything but country, swirling around the Fonts music machine and emerging as an entirely new beast with a bad attitude, a strong Scottish accent and a healthy dose of rage.

Rapper and Font-in-chief Kerr Okan is understandably thrilled to unleash the first Fonts long player on an unsuspecting world. He said: “Our debut album Class is a culmination of everything we have managed to achieve, everything we have worked on and worked for. A band like this, we are sort of first through the door, there’s never been anything to gauge it against, there’s never been anything like this before.”

It’s often been said that The LaFontaines shouldn’t work - no-one should be able to pull off the insane blend of styles that they do. Yet when you see them play, it’s seamless, it’s natural, and it’s mind-blowing.

“It works because we are five completely different guys so we fire it all into a big melting pot. We have played so much live and honed the live set so much, without ever trying to consciously think about it, that it just comes together, all the influences, all the ideas. It just works!

“We don’t feel the need to be confined to any set genre. We just go in the studio, and make whatever comes naturally. It comes through time, being a band together every single day, playing for so many years developing our sound. It’s why it’s unique.

His own harshest critic, it’s clear Kerr is delighted with the record his band have produced - and no wonder. “I couldn’t be happier with this project, I think the album is a fantastic record. There’s maturity in the songwriting, the instrumentation is at a very good example of where we are, lyrically I am happy with the level. Look at Class, the title. The album is called Class because it IS fucking class, but also is about social class. We’ve been dealing with that our whole lives and of course there’s that undertone through the writing, all the boys have that sort of background so it comes through. I am very proud of what we have managed to achieve, and of how we have managed to convey what we do and what we are about. There are different levels through it all, there are many connotations and things there to find if you look into the songs a little more deeply. I am delighted with what we have done.”

Stylistically, the album does well to cover all the elements of TheLaFontaines sound. While there’s an overarching thread uniting those elements, the album veers into different waters, exploring their different extremes. There’s the raw, aggressive but groove-driven rap of King and Slow Elvis, the breezy pop with an angry undercurrent of Class and Castles, the rockier edge of Window Seat and Junior Dragon and the blissed out pop wondrousness of All She Knows... yet even here, on their most sublimely gentle of moments, there’s a blade hidden beneath the velvet. As their anthem Shark In The Water says, with this band, there’s always something deadly lurking beneath seemingly calm waters.

Kerr said: “The album is a selection of what we think are our best songs but nothing is ever cut and dried. Look at King, it’s never gonna be a commercial pop song, the lyrical content is very serious but the groove is powerful. Same applies with Slow Elvis. Then there’s the song Class which really comes from the heart, addressing a lot of anger for all of us at times about the class system - but it’s a really upbeat poppy song.”

While the album is essential listening for the coming summer, to really understand what makes The LaFontaines such an exceptional proposition, you need to see them live. Long universally and justifiably hailed the best live band in their home country, their forthcoming UK headline tour will see that reputation spread like an especially addictive musical opiate. Once you see them, you’re hooked. And there’s no methadone to wean you off the Fonts.

Kerr said: “We have this reputation as a great live band because we love it, for us that is what it is all about so it’s what we have spent the last five years doing. People listen to music differently but that’s fine by me. As far as I am concerned music is just a form of promotion to get people to our shows to see us kill it live. That is why we are a band. You can do tricks in the studio but live there’s no hiding, if you are good you’re good, if you’re fucking shit then that’s what people will see. Come see us and judge us for yourself. No falseness, no hiding, we are there on the stage having a party and baring our souls. We have grown up and grown into it, we know what we are as a band. And we know we’re happy with that.

“This is our first headline tour ever through the UK. We have done bigger one off gigs and things but this is our first time going out through the whole UK on our own. It’s daunting, not in terms of us carrying the shows but just hoping people show up and we sell them out. We know that if we get the people to the shows it will be all good. We’re confident in our show. So come see it.”

And then, of course, there’s the small matter of the Fonts opening the Main Stage on Saturday at T in the Park this year, a slot any band, signed or otherwise, would kill for. Yet it is absolutely deserved and from all corners, there’s nothing but confidence that the band will absolutely kill it.

Kerr grinned: “T in the Park Main Stage, it’s funny to think how far we have come. It’s going to be incredible. In a strange way, it is phenomenal but I don’t feel like it isn’t what we deserve. We are ready and we’ll fucking smash it. We belong on that Main Stage and we are gonna show that.”

Shining through everything he says, just as it screams from every moment of the album, is the unerring, utterly deserved confidence in everything The LaFontaines do. A band who have no plan B, no half-arsed “giving it a go”. This is their life, their only option. And it shows.

“By the end of the year I want the album out and well-received and to have done a second bigger UK tour, do Europe, the States, but the key is I want our music to be listened to the way it should be. I want people to understand what we have spent the last few years doing, which is creating a body of work that properly represents our band.

“This band is going to be fucking huge. It WILL be huge. It has to be. All we care about is this band, it’s what I have worked towards since I was 15 and it is going to happen. Try and fucking stop us.”

Mickey McMonagle

Since then Baby In Vain has played at acknowledged festivals such as Roskilde, NorthSide and Spot Festival in Denmark, The Great Escape in the UK and SXSW and CMJ Festival in the States, being mentioned in NME as on “to the list of new bands who are hell-bent on making a proper racket” (The Great Escape 2014) and that “Baby In Vain are three girls from Copenhagen - none of whom look older than 16 - who play doom-laden stoner-rock that has me scooping my jaw off the floor within seconds of walking in.”(SXSW 2014).

Other than that Baby In Vain toured around most of Scandinavia, the UK and the States including support slots for Ty Segall and Thurston Moore and three times with The Kills (twice in the States and once in Europe) being handpicked by The Kills Alison Mosshart. Baby In Vain has recently released the debut EP in collaboration with Partisan Records who will release the next to albums as well. In the near future we will be recording our debut album with a release in early 2017, plus touring most of the fall in Denmark and Europe and again after the album release.

IDER are Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville, two friends based in North London whose blend of soaring pop and delicate electronics took 2016 by storm. Emerging first with their smoky R&B tinted debut ‘Sorry’, IDER quickly enticed fans such as stellar songwriter and producer Shura and Radio 1’s Phil Taggart and Huw Stephens. The duo followed up ‘Sorry’ with a vulnerable, perfectly poised second cut called ‘Pulse’, drawing comparisons to London Grammar and FKA twigs.

The summer months came and went with IDER performing a handful of acclaimed support slots with Tegan and Sara amongst others whilst writing and recording new material. IDER capped a thrilling first year as a fully functioning band with the Eastern influenced ‘King Ruby’ and the emotionally charged ‘Million’. Support rained in from Wonderland, DIY and The Line of Best Fit - and the pair bagged a “Track of the Week” from Huw Stephens in the process.

Now, with almost two million streams on the board, IDER are on the verge of breaking exciting new ground with the announcement of their debut EP on Aesop - a label renowned for launching a handful of the most forward-facing and celebrated electronic and pop artists of this decade, including SOHN and TALA.

The record Gut Me Like An Animal features four entirely new compositions; including today's polished-pop release 'Face On', future live favourite 'Nevermind', the soaring 'Does She Even Know' and the EP's beautifully fragile a'cappella title track. The record will be released digitally on 31 March.

Having stunned audiences to silence throughout the course of last year with their inseparable harmonies and exceptional multi-instrumentalism, IDER will play their debut headline show at Bermondsey Social Club on 6 April. Tickets sold out within four days of going on-sale.