Rockfreaks.net

Joe: We played Nottingham last night, so we’re just in a Travelodge last night was really good, I was a little apprehensive about the midweek shows going into the tour, but I had absolutely no reason to be.

Joe: I hope so, I’m definitely going into it with a false sense of security after the Leeds one being so successful, so I’m not anywhere as stressed or panicked as I was last time, which could be a good thing. Everybody is professional, and everybody is friends, luckily the train strikes don’t seem to have impacted many people, they only affected traits.

Joe: Yeah, it’s infuriating as people have been planning to come from long distances. For the most part, people have managed to sort something out. So far we’ve only seen a small amount of tickets on resale, when I first saw the train strikes I Imagined I’d see hundreds of tickets on Twickets. At this point, there’s only one normal ticket remaining, and that would have sold out weeks ago if the trains had been running all right.

Joe: I greatly underestimated the size of the venue we could have gotten away with, that was a massive surprise really. It was wild, it was literally hours. We sold the first wave of tickets before even announcing a band, then we put out the day tickets and they sold out within ten minutes.

Joe: There were a bunch of bands that were asked that we couldn’t get on

Sean: Menstrual cramps, I’d have loved to see them

Joe: I’ve not really seen them yet but you’ve seen them at Wonkfest and thought they were incredible

Sean: Yeah they were great

Joe: I asked a few bands like Snuff and Dubwar and a few other bands that would have been nice to get in the mix. It's a little bit more difficult I think, pretty much all the bands we booked we’re a lot closer to, then asking some of the bands we look up to and really like, but not quite mates with, it’s not so easy to get them on the bill for a celebratory type event. It's probably worked more in our favour to get in bands we’re a lot closer with. It would have been amazing to get someone like Capdown in the mix, but I know they’re just not doing shows like that, and who knows if we’ll get to see them again. We’re going to do another one next year, but there will only be one next year I think, and that will be in the summer.

Joe: Well this tour was always going to be the release tour, though initially, the release date was going to be the following weekend, but we moved it from the 6th to the 29th, it just made a bit more sense, plus I didn’t want to do a handful of shows with people not hearing the new songs.

Joe: Well last night and the show before are the only shows really that people have actually had some time with the singles, so we had people singing along which was really nice. The first time I heard people sing along to the quiet bits in “Lifejackets was really heartwarming.

There was a part where Robin does a segment by himself, then he cuts without doing the usual tail, but the audience did the tail bit that was in the chorus normally

Sean: A little bit like when he does the horn in “Play Some Ska”, and then just cuts and the audience just carries on doing it anyway singing the horn line.

Joe: It’s just been really good to see people talking about the new songs, getting behind them and enjoying them. The thing that I love is that there’s not a universal favourite. I think a lot of people really enjoy the fact that The Cycle is like a standard Random Hand track, it’s not repetitive, but exactly what you expect.

Sean: Some people were a little bit freaked out by Lifejackets weren’t they

Joe: That’s what we wanted to do though. We released "Lifejackets" first because we felt like it ticked all the boxes that people might expect from Random Hand but in no way delivered it in a way we have done before. I thought it was a safe way to project that we’re doing something new with this album, we are progressing, but you should like it. But there were a few people that were like “I hope the whole album isn’t like this”. Then when The Cycle came out they were all like “Oh thank god”.

We then released "Dead "Weight" and a lot of people were impressed with that. I put a post up a couple of days ago asking what everyone’s favourite is and there was no definitive answer, but in general, the response has been really positive. And for people who have heard the album over the last year, they’ve largely been saying it’s the best work we’ve done. To be 20 years in, that’s a nice place to be.

Sean: Well it's got to have a bit of ska in it usually, but it doesn’t always. I think it’s like ingredients in a meal, without a certain thing in it, it’s just not the same or near what it should be. But Robin has a really strong way of delivering his vocals that is really unique. So as soon as he’s in it, we can do what we want really and it still sounds like Random Hand. So It’s quite freeing in a way.

Joe: Anytime anyone has any doubts about when they are writing a song, I’ve always been like the moment Robin sings on it, nobody is going to think we’re ripping anyone off

Sean: You’ve had to tell me that numerous times

Joe: Every time we write a song, I’m like “It won’t sound like these guys when Robin sings on it”. It’s a bit like Marky Smith who said “I could just sing over bongos and it could be a The Fall song”

Sean: He probably did too.

Joe: When we first started Random Hand was a very different beast. Since we changed members, it just works better, It's more functional. It’s always been a compromise for the four people who are in it, which is why I think Random Hand works the way it does. You have four minds that bring an equal amount to the table. There’s definitely a bit more of Robin in a lot of ways, but with this album, it was pretty even on input

Sean: I do remember looking at the tracklist once it was finished I was like “I think I’ve weighed in quite a lot on this, wait a minute, I haven’t really”, I realised quite late on that I thought I’d contributed more. I think I contributed two riffs to this whole album

Joe: Because of how we write, I don’t think we can just input based on who plants the seed of a song. Lifejackets for one was my seed, but it now sounds nothing like what I wrote. That was a dub song with a heavy riff. All that stayed was the chord progression and the lyrics.

Sean: It was hell trying to get our heads around that

Joe: You saved that with that keyboard line, I was not happy until that keyboard line came in. That’s the thing that made that song for me. Then I ride in the glory of the bassline in XY, and you wrote that. I haven’t played anyone else's bassline on any other random hand song ever. I’ve always preferred my own. Then Sean goes and writes this bloody line on MIDI, and I was like “Ahh, you shit”

Sean: I’m like oh you can’t play that yet? (jokingly)

Joe: It’s a little bit difficult that, Sean

The compromise was more volatile in the original lineup, we didn’t all get on, and it was hard work, but the end result was great. There is still the compromise, but it’s a lot more conversational and respectful in a way we can still get a similar dynamic out of it. And it's not done cynically or forcefully like we have to write it like Random Hand

Sean: It’s just how it came out. If anything we were trying to veer off a little bit.

Sean: Limp Bizkit

Joe: When Sean first joined, we were like, “Do you like Limp Bizkit?” He went “You’re fucking joking”

Sean: I actually started laughing

Joe: the conversation was like “You are joking aren’t you?”, “Nah, you have listened to us haven’t you?” “Nah you can’t be serious”. He begrudgingly likes them

Sean: yeah I love them now, it’s like Stockholm syndrome.

Joe: It’s always been there, we’ve always been into heavy music. It’s kind of strange in a way, that ska has always been the thing that holds all the genres we are into together. I don’t really know how that happened. I went into it wanting to be in a band with the guys that I started the band with because we were all mates, and I had no interest in being in a ska band, but Matt and Robin did and that’s just how it stayed really. We didn’t want to upset anyone who was into it because of the ska, but we were always going to experiment with at least half of the album with a bunch of songs that didn’t feature ska.

Joe: Robin wrote that when we were doing Hit Reset, and he asked, I just said no, it’s not the time for an acoustic song on a Random Hand album. With Hit Reset we’d been established with this lineup for a good few years by that point, we’d been touring a lot with Dan in the mix and I felt like that was Random Hand. I didn’t want to do something that different on the first album with that lineup. So I shot it down. When it came to this album, me and Robin both talked about it and I felt like this was the right time. There was no pressure on us for this album, nobody expected it, and we can do what we want. We have such a varied mix already, I think it would be a really nice way to create something different.

Joe: Very much so. We go back a very long way with Becca and Marmozets. They are all from the same town as us. It’s been an honour and a privilege to watch them ascend to the juggernaut they are. I know they’ve not been around for a while, but they will be back soon and they’ll do good. It’s exciting to be around that. They were always at our gigs long before they were established.

Robin has always said we should get guests on, every album it’s been mentioned. We talked about approaching people when we wrote Inhale/Exhale. At one point we wanted to ask Kelly from No Comply, but we didn’t really know her well enough. It was always one of those things where you talk about it but it never happened. But when we sat down to talk about what we wanted with this album, and because we were spending a year making it we had time to do it.

So I asked Becca and she was well into the idea. I had this seed for an idea for a song. That line of “Here lies the music, it’s that thing that makes us or breaks us”. I basically took that intro and chorus to Robin, here’s the idea I’ve got. It was another one of those things where I wrote a lot of riffs, and then we completely destroyed them in the room and turned it into what it is now, which is a much better song than I initially wrote. The theme of the song was something that I knew Becca would relate to

Sean: The verse that she wrote was really cool

Joe: She came up with it really quick as well, she was amazing in the studio. Anyone who has been in a band for more than a decade will appreciate what that song is all about. It was written with her in mind, for her to be on board with us and she was great.

Joe: It’s undeniable to see that The Barstool Preachers are just going to keep on rocketing. They’ve got the time, they’ve got the drive, they are an unstoppable juggernaut. It’s admirable. It’s amazing to see what can be achieved if you’ve got that drive to just keep on going. There was a time when we were doing that, but we just got ground down too much, we had too many internal issues.

Sean: They definitely look out for each other.

Joe: If they ever have any issues, they just go this is toxic and they move on from it and change things up. If it’s not working, then cool it’s been great, but we’ll get someone else new in. I think to be able to do that, it’s great for the overall project. Where for us we had to have a good old break. And we’ve come back now, it’s better, but I don’t think we’ll ever be a band that decides to do a three-month tour somewhere to take a big chance in America again, it’s just not going to happen, but it’s really nice to live vicariously through our friends.

Riskee and the Ridicule are another bands who are righteously good and they just put out a great album, popes of Chillitown is another band that has really clicked for me. Popes are a band that just started to bubble up as we were going on hiatus so we never made any close bonds with them early on. We never got to do a stretch of shows with them like we did with a lot of other bands in the scene. It’s why I really wanted to get them involved with this tour, and we’ve started to get along with them pretty well.

Sean: I know they are big anyway, but I can see Wonk Unit getting bigger, and they are the best they have ever been in a long way. That lineup they have now just looks unstoppable.

Joe: I suppose those cunts in Faintest Idea are doing alright as well, I suppose they did a good album.

Sean: The Meffs are doing really well as well

Joe: Yeah I’m excited for them at Handfest.x There's loads of exciting bands.