Turin Grease The Brakes in Latest Raft Interview
Olly Solo Interview
Jasper : So, ‘5 Mile’, what’s it all about?
Olly: It’s a song that we started recording with ether song...but we ran out of time. We liked it but we didn’t love it to be honest; we thought it was potentially very good but we thought we would leave it and make it better for the next album. The record company thought we should make more of it because we didn’t really have an obvious next single from Ether song. It’s a weird situation to be in, because we basically ran out of singles before we were meant to, and ‘5 Mile’ was something we thought would make a great single. We went to LA to do some shows, and Tony Hoffer (Beck, The Thrills) was there and so were all the musicians, so it just worked out perfectly; and we recorded it in three days. We finished writing it as we recorded it, and on the fourth day we shot the video for it! It was just nuts, the craziest week of our lives I would say! I think we got about two hours sleep a night, and we couldn’t believe we were doing it.
J: What do you mean you couldn’t believe it?
Olly: Well...I don’t want to seem cynical; but it was a real symptom of how it is for bands these days. We’d heard of bands being in strangely similar positions. If you’re not making really safe, 100% really commercial, radio friendly music, it’s difficult to kinda...get exposure. We had to do something, because the album was only six months old and we felt that there was so much more life in it. Radio stations make it kinda hard for bands, because they will only play really commercial stuff. If radio won’t play your stuff, that’s it for the album. It was horrible because we felt like it was too early for that to happen. 5 Mile was a way for us to inject some life back into the album. We hope now that people will hear ‘5 Mile’ on the radio and then go check out the album, and find something quite deep and beautiful. It’s also a way of continuing the growth of this band. It’s not ideal for us to be doing this, but if we want to continue to tour and play...
J: Do you feel you’ve compromised your integrity by re-releasing the album and fitting into that commerciality?
Olly: Umm, yeah...I definitely think we’ve partly compromised our integrity. I mean, I discovered the minute we signed a record deal that, that’s what being in a band is all about. It’s just levels you know.... it’s like how much of a compromise are you willing to make. We’ve definitely hit the limit for us...I don’t think we’d do this again, but we’ve tried to make it as kind of...soulful as we can, and we (the label and us) arranged it so anyone who’s already got the album can download the new tracks for free, and that makes it a little more tolerable. The label were really cool about doing that...they were just as into doing that as we were, and they didn’t want it to be a horrible thing...it’s just that we’re in a bit of a funny situation at the minute. Hopefully we won’t be in this situation again. No one wants to re-release an album and it’s kind of a weird thing to do.
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