KATZ
KATZ are a low-fi surf rock-band, based in Manchester. Forming through college in 2017 and starting out as a joke, Ben and James soon realised they could make music based on having similar interests, or as they describe it “Love at first sight.” Ending up at University together in one of the most renowned musical cities was the push they needed to take themselves seriously. Meeting at uni and bonding over Blink-182 with Archie who eventually became their drummer, meeting their fast-paced rhythm needs. We chat about their new EP ‘The Last American Virgin.’
You recorded your EP on a 4- track Tascam, tell me about how that came about when creating your low-fi sound and the experiments that took place to hone into that retro style?
James: A Lot of our sound comes from Archies Bedroom [Laughs]
Ben: We did our first EP on a four-track. I was 18-years old when I did that. Me and James were really into Mac DeMarco at the time, he is famous for producing everything on old equipment from his bedroom. We thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So this time round we went back to the 4-track and it has now become the art of the band. We’re glued to the sound. We brought some of our older equipment online, we try to avoid using the computer for our sound, we want to sound a little bit different and by using retro equipment is the easiest way.
James: Due to the limitations of the machine means that everything we record, melts together. Also, Ben is a hoarder he ‘s bought a lot of stuff and over the years from car boot sales and one time we were in town and he came out of this second-hand music shop really proud of having got a tiny speaker, i’m still not sure why he got it , but he did and because he has made loads of random purchases there are many things like that, which we now have the chance to experiment with.
Ben: Lots of people hate our recordings because they can become very distorted by the tools we use, but it’s what I like.
Do you think that if you had the chance to record in a studio you would still try to achieve this sound or do you think you’d produce something with a slicker sound?
James: I like to think that if we were to go into a studio we would still treat it as if we were recording on a 4-track. You get the sound in the room to a point you like and not mess with the recording too much afterwards. For us it’s a case of if you’re happy with a recording...don’t mess with it!
Ben: Our ethics towards production would stay the same, but obviously if we had the ability for more than four tracks we would probably change that. James is right though, I wouldn’t look towards fixing the mix of the sound, but I'd focus on the sound being created in the room. We’re always trying to make our recordings sound better, so being in a studio would help in other ways.
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On the flip side of that, how do you think the lockdown has changed the concept of emerging artists releasing and promoting music?
Ben: Everything is digital, so we’re spending 24hours a day on Instagram. Sending emails and messages to people to promote ourselves. Taking the live element of music away makes it more difficult for sure, but it’s still doable. Also Tik Tok has been good for us, we gained 60k views on one video over night.
James: We’ve been recording us playing our songs and releasing it online. We’re treating it as being more interesting, finding new ways to connect. In a sense it’s been more productive, it’s our only focus as we can’t go outside.
How do you think this changes the demographic of your audience?
Ben: it’s easier to get people to listen to your new music online, because they’re bored.
In light of the announcement of the map for the lockdown lifting, how do you see gigs being run? (In both how you play safely, but also protecting your fans as well)
Ben: I think we’re a long way of being able to play the kind of gigs we perform at. Bigger bands can afford the safety precautions but the venues we play have a low capacity already, when you then put safety measures in place, I’m not sure how many people would even get into the event. We’re a very DIY band, so for us it’s near impossible.
James: For bigger artists, if they’re already playing bigger venues they can afford to sell tickets and run an event because even half of that venue capacity is worth the money for. Whereas for us, we would be at a loss.
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You have a retro aesthetic, where do you take inspiration from?
James: All older music. Myself and Ben both like doo-wop music, early rock and roll. The band started with just us too, so the song writing started out quite simple, you could say it happened naturally. There's loads of energy that particular style of song, because of the technology then the releases were often a recording with not much being tweaked afterwards. We really like that, which is how we came to incorporate that within our own music. The trick is to just keep it simple.
Ben: Before Katz, I was in other bands who were mostly writing indie or pop songs, but I wanted to do something different. The first bands I was really into were Blink-182 and Green day, they started out in these underground west-coast scenes. That led me to the American punk-rock aesthetic. James is a massive KISS fan and into his 80’s music, so for us it took a while to find common ground but when we did it was surrounding the era of the 50’s, mixed with surf-rock. The Beach Boys and Hank Marvin are definitely our inspirations. There's a band called Surf Curse who we base our stuff on, the surfer US styled music.
Archie: My biggest drumming influence was also Blink-182, Travis Barkers fast paced energy really inspired me. That’s how me and Ben met actually, he was recording my band The Mards. I then went to a gig with him and met James, we bonded over our love for The Beach Boys and Elvis. Shortly after we met, I demoed a song called,’ Dead Is Better’, which is how I ended up joining the band.
Where does the EP title, ‘The Last American Virgin’ come from?
Ben: It’s the title of an indie coming of age movie, the whole EP is inspired by films. We’re big film nerds so we started out writing songs based on different angles or characters from these older movies. We then realised we had written enough to turn it into a bigger body of work, which is the birth of our EP.
You’ve said about taking inspiration from films for some of the references on the EP, tell me why you lean towards the era of the 80’s?
James: My parents were teenagers in the 80’s, I was brought up being shown music from this time, it helps me connect with their past so I feel that’s why I now gravitate towards that. The same reason’s apply for films and tv of that time, it was an influence on my childhood so it’s seeped into my art.
Ben: It’s a cool different style.
Tell me about the time you recorded, ‘Take it like a man’ I believe you recorded this under some stairs?
Ben: That’s one of our first songs, so it links back to how the band started. Me and James were trying to record a cover of ‘Heartbeat’ by Buddy Holly. We recorded the drums ourselves but we decided to abandon it, our version sounded nothing like the song.
James: We recorded that on a 4-track, when I got home later that day I messed about with the drum recording and slowed the drums right down. I jammed some chords over it and put it on a tape, gave it to Ben at college, told him to have a look at it and he did, he added some new lyrics.
Ben: Yeah, that was weird being at college one day and James just passing me a cassette tape as his demo. I created some lyrics for it, previous to this the lyrics of any song had been the hardest part, but the lyrics just happened. We then recorded it properly all together.
Does this link to having cassettes as merch?
Ben: Yeah totally, we always planned to release the tape, as that’s what we were recording our music too. To us, releasing the cassette is better than being on Spotify, it was our initial goal.
James: It’s definitely more of a shock to hold our product than to be able to hear ourselves digitally.
Can you remember the last show you played before lockdown?
Ben: It was at Gulliver's in the Northern Quarter, we were meant to be supporting a couple of bands, but it was 3 days before the national lockdown. We considered cancelling it because of our health, but we needn’t have worried as we played our opening song to the sound engineer and my girlfriend. It was just like having band practise.
Archie: I’d forgotten all about that !
James: We actually turned up two hours early, in our minds we were just waiting for the other bands and the promoter to get there before we set up...but they never turned up.
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