NOISE - Interview

  by John Clarkson

published: 25 / 10 / 2023

NOISE Is a new indie four-piece new band from Glasgow, which consists of Luke Doleman (vocals and guitar). Robbie Duncan (bass), Ghassan Junior Khawli (guitar) and Evan Doleman (drums). It has just released its six-song debut EP, 'Not Until Tomorrow Night', which features the two-part 'One Day at a Time' and combines an indie rock sound with hypnotic guitarwork from the Lebanese-born virtuoso Khawli and a dazzling. across-the-board sense of experimentalism. NOISE in one of its first interviews elected to speak to Pennyblackmusic collectively by email. PB: All four members of NOISE have known each other for a decade and two of you are brothers, but you only formed NOISE relatively recently. Do you think that having been friends for so long has been of prime benefit to you as a band? NOISE: Yeah, we would definitely agree with that. Whilst we weren’t that close, with the exception of Luke and Evan, we knew enough about each other to know that there wasn’t going to be any surprises playing in a band together but, if anything, I don’t think we would’ve anticipated becoming so close when we initially formed. There were no psychotic episodes from any of the band members that we needed to worry about, although we hope to have a long career in music so there’s potential for that in the future. PB: Had you all been in other bands before? NOISE: The only one out of us who had played in a band before was Robbie, who believe it or not was in a punk-rock emo band when he was 14. Junior played the tenor horn when he was younger and played in West Dunbartonshire orchestra, but in terms of playing in a 4-piece it was new for the three of us. PB: It seems that there are two sides to NOISE, often within the same song: a more conventional side and then something more wildly experimental. 'Victor', for example, starts out as a thrashy, chorus-driven indie rock number and then its last minute-and-a-half turns into something much more angular. Is that because different members of the band bring different influences to the band? NOISE: The beauty of having four different personalities in a band is that the different points of view, interests and ideas are always going to take your music to somewhere that, as an individual, you didn’t expect or envisage them going and it’s about using that to elevate the songs which is what we try to do when it comes to making music. When it comes to our influences, we all listened to bands like The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, The Walkmen, Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins but all have our own personal styles of music that shaped us, such as Brand New and Taking Back Sunday (Robbie), Chet Atkins (Junior), Radiohead, Interpol (Luke) and Rage Against The Machine, Pearl Jam (Evan) . There’s a healthy mix of genres in there which contributes to what NOISE creates. PB: The video for 'One Year' is comprised of literally hundreds of photographs and pieces of phone video footage of NOISE in the last year. What was the thinking behind that? Did you just want to provide a history of the band’s progress up to this debut EP? NOISE: Credit goes to Luke here. It just became a habit where he wanted to remember some of the moments we had together as a band, and he used a slightly older model of camera to capture them so they were more distinctive. We then started printing them off to give to people who came to the gigs, friends or members of our families and then it became a bit of ritual for NOISE to do a post on social media using some of the photos after gigs and, before we knew it, we had well over a thousand of these photos. The intention wasn’t to use them for a music video initially but once 'One Year' was ready and we had a year’s worth of photos, this just felt like the best thing to do and meant we could include our fans in the release of the video and let them see themselves where they were at gigs over the past year. PB: Why did you split ODAAT (One Day At A Time) into two parts? NOISE: The decision to split 'One Day At A Time' into two parts was a creative choice to try emphasising the message and emotions within the song where the two parts have the same underlying meaning, to take each day at a time, but by dividing them allowed us to explore different emotions of the same theme. The intention of splitting the song was to provide perspective on the 'One Day At A Time' concept, allowing listeners to connect with different aspects of the journey separately for each part. From a band point of view, 'Pt 2' is our favourite track with both parts really showcasing Luke’s incredible songwriting ability. PB: 'Take Me (Back to), Waltz' and particularly 'ODAAT (Part 2') all use dialogues from what sounds like old films. The last line, “not until tomorrow night” also gives the EP its title. Where do they come from and why did you decide to use those? NOISE: All of the samples come from various points throughout 'Rear Window'(1954). We’re big fans of the film and after we had the rough mix back from 'ODAAT (Pt 2)' we felt that the ending could do with a little something else to round the EP off. Evan had the idea of including a sample from a film and immediately thought of that scene as it had always stuck with him. We tried the dialogue from that scene over the solo at that part and, astoundingly, it was the perfect length, with the last strum of the guitar coinciding with the closing of the door. From this point it was meant to be and we chose another couple of lines from the film to scatter throughout. PB: Unusually, you made your recent launch gig for the EP an intimate, invite and competition only gig? Why did you decide to do this? Were you concerned about possibly alienating fans who might have been with you all along but didn’t win the competition or get an invite? NOISE: We could’ve gone either way. This year we’ve done some incredible live shows in Glasgow and Edinburgh that our fans have supported us at and while it would’ve been special to do the launch at a large venue, we thought that doing a smaller, intimate gig and giving fans the chance to see NOISE up-close and stripped back would’ve been more special. That decision was completely justified. The night went perfectly, seeing the reactions of our fans up-close was something special, you could really feel the emotion in the room. Given the chance I think we would do it again. We will be doing more acoustic sessions similar to the EP launch, so those who didn’t get the chance to come along will definitely have that option in the future. PB: What other plans do you have for the immediate future? Are you working on an album? NOISE: In terms of material, we have enough for an album as it stands, and we’ve got studio time booked in for the remainder of 2023, although we will decide whether we opt with another EP or go with an album. The feedback from our debut EP from fans and critics has been great so far so we want to make sure that our next release is even better, and that’s the main priority. PB: Thank you.

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