This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist Interviews
Q&A: Revere
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 27 August 2010
Starting out in Newcastle as a duo with Stephen Ellis and Andrew Hawke, Revere have steadily expanded into an eight-piece band. Touching on a range of musical reference points, the band combine elements of gypsy marches, post-rock, film scores and gospel, and incorporate violin, cello, keys, trumpet and harp into their guitar-led sound. Collaborating with boutique festival Standon Calling, Revere are set to release album, ‘Hey! Slim’, on 6 Sep. We spoke to Revere’s Stephen Ellis to find out more.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I started out wanting to learn the piano and decided that the only piece worth playing was ‘Great Balls Of Fire’. I used to sit with the sustain pedal firmly down and slamming the keys as hard as I could. My parents moved the piano into the garage where my ‘vamping’ would be least heard, and I continued until one of the keys gave out. This inspired me to start taking the insides of the piano out and work out how it all fit together. A few years later I heard Nirvana, along with several million other teenagers, and decided a guitar might work a little better.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Lyrically, I draw from my experiences from the last ten years. I’m not that into writing about love or relationships unless I have something unique to say about it, and I don’t want to write about being in a band! I’ve spent the last eight years working with children with emotional and behavioural disorders which has impacted massively on what I write and the language I use. The songs all seem to be loosely connected around a theme of ‘human absence’, the aftermath of something, as though the listener has come across a location where an event has happened but no one is there anymore or there’s a sense of something lacking. The various artists and photographers we continue to work with over the years are also very inspiring in how we approach this.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Well there’s eight people with three main songwriters, so there’s not really a standard way of doing it and it can often be a long process, but generally one or a couple of us will present a new idea and will try to encourage people to approach it in a certain way. We’ll get it formed into some sort of structure and then decide it’s all wrong, exchange some strong words and possibly a few blows, not speak to each other for a few weeks and then come back to it and decide it was fine the first way or start again…
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Musically we’re coming from any number of reference points, whether it’s film music like Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, or klezmer/avant garde stuff like John Zorn and Mike Patton, or the layered up post rock of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Ros, mixed with a healthy pop sensibility. I mean, I love the Beach Boys!
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
There’s a lot going on so give it a few listens as there’s a lot to come out of each song. Also, if you can, come and experience it live first, because music is all about the performance.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
It’s our first album, so I’m hoping it lifts us out of the crowd and plants us firmly into people’s heads for a while. Our fans have been waiting patiently for it for quite some time so just to get it out to them will be such a good feeling. For the future? Well, I’d really like to write a film score with the band and get cracking on a second album.
MORE>> www.revereonline.co.uk
