We brought you the news recently that Hungry Pigeon festival in Manchester were teaming up with Henri Lloyd Jeans Co for their forthcoming event, Kid British frontman James Mayer has been speaking with Liam Tootill about the comings together of music and fashion and also news regarding the group’s next album.

Hey how’s it going?

I’m good mate, cheers. You alright?

All good. So, what’s the band set-up then?

There are four singers; it’s a bit of a mash-up. I do a lot of the vocals, but like, obviously there are four of us who sing. When we’re on stage there are seven of us up there performing. The setup is myself who sings, then you’ve got Sean who plays guitar, keys and he sings, Adio is a vocalist, Simeon is a vocalist, and then we’ve got our drummer Mikey, Dom our guitarist, and our bass player Tom.

I’m going to talk to you a bit about your involvement with the Hungry Pigeon festival. It’s a local festival to Manchester, you’re a local band and you’ve got the Henri Lloyd Jeans co who have Manchester-based roots as well. This Hungry Pigeon festival is bringing together the two worlds of music and fashion, what do you think about the Henri Lloyd Jeans co brand involvement with the event?

Yeah, it’s good. Obviously music and fashion has always gone together and it’s good that a Manchester fashion brand like Henri Lloyd’s getting involved in Manchester music, so, it’s a good thing for people like us, to establish relationships with them as well, and continue going forward. Like, some of their clothes – they’ve got some nice gear, so, it’s nice that they’re getting involved with people like ourselves and little festivals like Hungry Pigeon which is cool. When we went in, we got to choose a few items of clothing, and some of their stuff really goes with our style, which is based on the whole ska and mod vibe, related to the music that we do. They’ve got the odd pieces that we like and so I assume other people who are into other things will like there own little certain aspects of that brand. So, I think they’ll hit across the board and I think it’s just gonna help bring different kinds of music together and everyone will be able to find stuff to relate to. It’s all good.

Are you looking forward to supporting Athlete?

I’ve never seen them live before, so I’m really looking forward to seeing them live, especially in our hometown as well. We did Hungry Pigeon last year, we were on the main stage. This year we’re just rounding it up with an acoustic set, a little chilled out vibe, so it’ll be good going round catching a few of the other bands as well.

How would you describe the musical style of Kid British?

We had a natural ska thing going on, that was showing through and people were comparing us to The Specials. We’ve kind of just taken all our different influences by the horns and just gone with it really, like all the different sounds that we love. We love indie music, so you’ll always here that, also, everything always has a skank for it, and you’ll always hear like the bottom end of hip hop and the reggae bass lines and stuff. It’s all a mash-up but it seems to work. It’s pretty cool.

Who writes the music? Is it a collaborative effort of the band?

Yeah, it’s across borders again. Like, someone might put an idea forward and everyone gets involved – there won’t be anyone who hasn’t had a say on a song. We wouldn’t finish a song and have someone say ‘I didn’t have something to do with that.’ Everyone gets a say. It works. We’re all mates as well, we’ve grown up together, we’re like brothers, so even when we argue, we just fall out and make up later on.

When is your next album being released and what’s it called?

We’re re-recording and re-mixing six tracks from our last album as we weren’t too happy with the way the songs were sounding, recording wise it didn’t represent what we were trying to come across with as a band so we went back to the drawing board and the studio. We’ve got six or seven new ones on there too. We’re doing a fresh album, fresh recordings, get it all mixed right so it sounds like what we think Kid British should be. The album’s gonna be called, To Get Nowhere, Follow The Crowd, and that should be dropping late September hopefully.

Finally RWD are going to be 100 issues old next month, do Kid British have a birthday message for us?

I remember RWD from back in the day, so congratulations, and keep going.

iamkidbritish.com

twitter.com/kidbritishmusic

hungrypigeon.com

hl-jeans.com

Tags: Fashion, Henri Lloyd, Hungry Pigeon, Indie, Kid British, Pop