Interview with Some Skeletons

Updated on May 17th 2012

Adam Barnes, Aidan Blenkinsopp, James Housley and Simon J Curd make up Some Skeletons, a rock band from Nottingham. Since speaking to me, they've finished working on their new EP and have just been signed to Mountains of Records. With a really fresh and nice on the ears musical style, this four piece band are sure to have a bright future ahead of them. I spoke to Aidan and Simon about how the band formed, what inspires them, and their Italian fan base.

Can you tell me about the bands past?

Aidan:

We all know each other from Nottingham Uni and from the uni band scene. Me and Adam have been in the band for a long, long time and Simon and James kinda joined our old band when a couple of people left and we kinda just thought it was making everything sound different.

Simon:

Officially it was last January really, we started again as Some Skeletons, basically.

Where did the band’s name come from?

Aidan:

It doesn’t mean anything really, we were just trying for a long time to come up with a name.

Simon:

I like how many different ways you can think about the name if you like. We had loads of rubbish ideas and this was one that we thought was good and that we could all live with.

I think we’ve all been in bands in the past where we’ve regretted our band names and you feel a little bit embarrassed to tell people what your band name is.

With some skeletons it's better, just because it’s simple basically. Keeping it simple is definitely the key and I like it. It’s a simple description of what out band is if you want to think of it in that way. We are some skeletons! (laughs)

Aidan:

I really like vague things, so I like the some in there cause it’s really vague and unhelpful (laughs) I really like that! But yeah, it’s probably the first band name for a band I’ve been in that I’ve not hated within five minutes.

How would you describe your musical style for people that have never listened to you?

Aidan:

Melodic, loud, quiet and busy rock I suppose. I guess we’re basically alt rock, aren’t we really. The broad spectrum of old. So we’re all pretty into things like the smashing pumpkins, trail of dead, that kind of thing. Stuff that’s noisy, melodic, has lots of dynamic to it and is a bit dramatic. We like stuff that’s trying to sound epic. We try to be clever as well musically. None of us are experts, but we enjoy playing songs that take a long time to learn.

                                                                                                                   

Which band or singer would you dream of collaborating with?

Simon:

Probably someone quite different, I reckon. With collaborations, I think it’s always good when it’s a juxtaposition.

Aidan:

I’d love to work with some electronic type people, that’d be wicked. I don’t really have a name, but something quite different and quite stripped back would be cool cause it would sort of contrast with what we do. I’d love to work with people like Trent Reznor or Radio Head and just people who have an interesting spin on writing rock songs really.

Do you write your own lyrics?

Aidan :

Yeah. I suppose I’ve written the bulk of the lyrics but Adam wrote one of the songs on the last EP. Sometimes it’s quite collaborative as well, but the songs on the last EP weren’t that personal. We sort of picked a situation and wrote about it and there was quite a lot of collaboration on those.

The song [Author] was actually for a split EP that we did with another three bands from Nottingham which was designed to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin being the first man to go into space. The lyrics to that song had to be about something spacey.

But then, on the new EP,  I suppose I wrote most of it, Simon’s written one song, and one song, we nicked some lines from a couple of Wilfred Owen poems and just kind of bashed them into shape so they went with what we’d written music wise.

We do often find ourselves in studios or wherever we’re recording without lyrics so…

It’s always worked for us so far.

Are you working on any new music at the moment?

Aidan:

Yeah, we’re lucky because we’ve got a couple of friends who really enjoy recording and record us for free. But it’s very homemade so it relies on when they’re free and when we’re free. We’ve actually being recording, sporadically, a new EP since November. We’ve nearly finished, so today we’ve just being doing some backing vocals in my flat. We’ve got a couple more backing vocals to do and then it’s gotta be mixed. We’ve recorded six songs, five of which will probably end up on the EP.

Where would you like to be as a band in five years from now?

Aidan:

Still a band, I suppose (laughs) If we’re still together we must have done something right. We just wanna enjoy it really, to be honest.

Simon:

I think we’ve all been in bands long enough to not have the same idea of success as you do when you first start out. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t like to play big gigs and tour and things like that but I think we’ve all gone through the process enough to be quite realistic and know that what we really want to be doing with this is making music that we enjoy listening back to and enjoy letting out friends listen to. It’s a lot less about thinking that having a record contract is the biggest thing in the world. We’re a lot more clued up in that respect now.

Aidan:

With the last band that we were all in together, we got signed and it just turned everything into a massive chore. When you first get into new music and new bands, you do it because you enjoy it and it’s not like we’re employed to do this so we do it in our free time.  We want some skeletons to be fun. There’s a point where you spend more time in a band organising the band than actually doing things and we just don’t want it to get to that point again. We want it to be fun, that’s all I want. Obviously it’d be nice to be recognised, but as long as it’s fun that’s cool with me.

Has your music ever been played on the radio?

Aidan:

There’s a couple of local podcasts and radio stations that we’ve been on. With the last EP we just kind of put it out and people got in touch with us. So as far as I know, we haven’t been played on the radio.

Simon:

Not radio, but we do hear from our Italian fan base, which has come from nowhere. We’re on an Italian compilation that’s come out recently that’s loads of Italian bands and then us which is quite weird…

Have you got any gigs planned in the future?

Aidan

We will be, but we haven’t planned any yet. We wanna finish recording out EP. We’re based in Nottingham and we’ve all got jobs so we’ll certainly be hoping to play around Nottingham and the midlands and anywhere that’s reachable. 

Below is the official music video of their track, Pests.

For more info on the band, give them a like on Facebook. You can also view their official website, and watch their videos on their Youtube. They're a great and really talented band, and they're bound to do well, so give them a listen and tell me what you think!