18 Nov INTERVIEW — Getdown Services, the band that accidentally got into music
When the Bristol band came to Paris for MaMA festival, we met with Getdown Services, right across the street from the venue they were playing at, to know more about those two.
SOB : Can you start by introducing yourselves ?
Ben : We met at school a long time ago. I’m Ben. This is Josh. We met in year eight, so we were about what, 10, 11? Maybe 12 years old. We sat next to each other in maths class and Josh was really horrible to me. <Laugh>. No, he wasn’t. And we just sort of played in bands together. And then yeah, we’ve just been really close, best mates sort of ever since. We met at school, became friends, and we’ve done basically everything together since we were about 15.
SOB : In Bristol then?
Josh : No, we went to school in a place in the countryside near Bristol. It’s called Minehead, that’s where we went to school. And then Ben moved to Leeds. And I lived in Leeds for a bit with Ben. And then I moved back home. Ben stayed in Leeds, and then moved to Manchester. Lived there for about five years. Whilst I, I’ve lived in Bristol for about eight or nine years now. Now Ben has just moved to Bristol and now we live together again. There was a long period when we weren’t, we’ve always been like very close friends, so it’s a long period where we weren’t doing music. But like, I think early days we discovered we had like music taste in common. And found each other quite funny, messy and that’s why we became friends, really.
So we, yeah, we started the band. We started the band during Covid. Initially it was just a recording project. There wasn’t a band. It was more just a, you know, Ben lived in Manchester. I lived in Bristol. It was just recording at home and sending it to each other. Just for fun. And then we thought, I think we could release this as a band, you know, and then we never thought we’d do gigs or anything, but we got offered a gig and we thought, okay, we’ll try and do it. And then we just started doing it more and more and more. It was a, it was an accident, really. So we’ve been doing the band about three years. And then before that we didn’t do any music for about 10 years, so.
SOB: You didn’t play in any other bands before?
Ben : I played drums in a, a couple of bands, but not really. It was more just like a social thing, really. But yeah, there was a long period where we didn’t do any music together at all. I don’t think we really wanted to. We just, we were just doing other things. Like we were always really into music, you know, we’d listen to music together, talk about music a lot, and go to gigs, but we never thought about doing a band together. It was a, yeah, it was a kind of strange accident. Really.
SOB : Were you like working in totally different areas?
Josh : Yeah, I was working as a gardener.
Ben : And at the time I lived in Manchester, I was working as a waiter. We just sent each other things remotely really on the internet.
Josh : My main thing was gardening. That was like what I was doing with all my time, and I was really into it. And then, yeah. When the band started it quickly, I just lost interest in gardening. I just wanted to do this all the time. And now we are lucky enough where we can do it all the time, so that’s great.
SOB : You released the first record last year, then a first EP and now a second. Most bands start with one or two EPs and then an LP, why did you decide to go the other way?
Josh : It’s a good, that’s a really nice question. Originally, it was going to be an EP. We put out like a couple of singles before doing the album. And then the label that we’re on, Breakfast Records, approached us and said they wanted to do our next release. And originally, I think we, in our heads, said we were just gonna do an EP, but because we were constantly writing and making more songs, the label said, « well, why don’t you just do an album instead? » ,And it just sort of turned out that way, really. I think that a lot of the reasons bands try and work up to doing an album are completely understandable, but we just don’t really care. Like, we wanted to do an album.
Ben : It might not have been the best move, maybe, but I think it did. You know, at the time, a lot of people probably thought, no one’s paying attention. Why not wait until you do an album? We’ve got the music. So that was put out was an album, you know. We both really like albums as well. Like EP they’re good, but we’ve been working on all these songs for like a year or so, and we had enough for an album, so it’s like, I want it as a full thing.
Josh : And I think we’re very much in the sort of mindset of, if we have something we may as well just put it out there. If we sit on stuff, I think we’ll get bored of it. Get bored between each other, it’s better just to get rid really. I think maybe for better or worse, we were never interested in strategy or business. We just kind of did what we wanted. And that’s why we did the album really as well, ’cause we were like, it’s an amazing thing making an album. It’s like, you know, we’ve got an album ! That’s mental. Two years previous we weren’t gonna be doing music at all. And now, we went from like being a waiter and like mowing lawns to releasing an album. <Laugh>. It was mental. So it was great. On a label that we really like. So it doesn’t get better than that one. Basically it was like, why not? To answer your question.
SOB: And so you were working remotely on the first songs? Were you sharing a rehearsal space while writing ?
Josh : The entire album was written remotely, apart from one song that we did together in the same place. But the entire album was written while Ben was in Manchester and I was in Bristol.
Ben : So the recording of the vocals and stuff we did together. But we would write it and like do demos at home and then we would come together to finish it. But no, there was never no rehearsal space. It’s all just been in our bedroom. We still don’t have a rehearsal space or like a studio that we go to. It’s all like, Josh does it all on his laptop or we record it at home ourselves. It keeps costs low, I’ll tell you that. <Laugh>.
SOB : Because you were working remotely on the album and maybe together on the EP and especially on the new EP, is this why the sound is less post-punk and more dancing now ?
Ben : I think so, yeah. When we were making a lot of the album, there was no sort of sense of like energy in the same way. It was like just in our bedrooms late at night. We hadn’t really played live very much, but now we’ve toured a lot and we’re doing it together. And I think naturally when you’re with someone else and there’s a bit more like energy and subconsciously when we’re making music, now we’re thinking about playing it live. The album was sort of written and created at a time where we were both working full time. The EP has been written and created alongside playing. So it’s two very different sort of mindsets.
Josh : Maybe, for the album, we were a lot more angry or like, I don’t know, like emotional with our situations. Whereas now we’re doing this amazing thing that we’ve always sort of wanted to do maybe. We feel like it’s having fun more. I think when we were doing the album, it was a bit, we were having fun, but we didn’t know what we were doing as much and we were both just a bit more sad. You’re not full of energy when you’re depressed, you know? Maybe now we’re getting what we want. So who knows?
SOB : One of your song is actually about depression
Josh : It’s an ironic thing. I think, I didn’t really realize this, but now we’re happier, we are writing more songs about depression. And I think, ’cause when you’re in it and we didn’t have any idea of anything else, you can’t really even look at it. You can’t think about it too much. You’re just a bit, you’re a bit blinded. But now we’ve had a bit of time to reflect. You know, for me, one of the things that used to always really get me down was having to work all the time and having no money. Just having no freedom at all for years, you know, and now I don’t have that. I still have no money, but I’m doing something that I like doing. So now you kind of step outside that and you can talk more easily about those kind of feelings, I think. It’s hard to say really, because I don’t know, it just kind of happens.
SOB : Back to your EP, why release two EPs and not wait for another LP ?
Josh : A few reasons really. I think because we had enough songs for an EP. We don’t have enough songs for an album, but some other songs are kind of like, when we do another album, we wanna try and do something quite different. These songs are a bit different, but they’re not different enough basically. I think we’re trying to paint a picture of where we’re at at a certain time. And this is a picture of where we’re at now. And we haven’t made enough songs to be an album, basically.
Ben : It’s like we’re gonna focus on what we’re gonna do next for an album like next year. But it doesn’t feel like we’ve got to that yet. We’re still kind of in between, we’re still creating songs, but I think when we do an album, we really want to focus on it, as Josh says, being completely different. Yeah. We wanna try something new. I don’t know what that is necessarily. These songs are good enough to put out, but we don’t wanna sit on them. Yeah. So we made like six songs that we wanna put on the ep. If we waited to do an album, some of those songs were made like in February, March this year. I don’t wanna wait until the end of next year to release them. And that’s the good thing about streaming and stuff like that. You can just release stuff it’s great, it doesn’t have to be this big thing. You can just sort of put things on the internet.
SOB : What would you say are your musical influences ?
Josh : Got a lot of different stuff. A lot of disco. A lot of eighties, a lot of rock. We always say AC/DC. And then there’s a bit of pop in there. Like we both like classic Pop, Madonna and Kylie Minogue, Michael Jackson, all that kind of stuff. We also really like, sort of like heavy rock, kind of stoner metal. There’s a lot of stuff we like that we don’t necessarily like together, but there’s a lot, the big, the crossovers are like AC/DC, Daft Punk, Madonna, that’s where we meet. And like a lot of French stuff as well, it’s like a big influence. When I start getting into making music, like recording music, it was like Breakbot and SebastiAn and all that kind of stuff. Justice. They’re a big influence. Mr Oizo is a big one. Daft Punk I’ve loved since I was like five. They’re just the best at what they do.
SOB : Is there any British band, any discovery, anything you would like us to know?
Ben & Josh : Yeah. We’ve got in Bristol a great music team. We’ve got a lot of friends now in the music team. There’s a band called Knives who are doing like hardcore. The Family Battenberg, that’s another one. The family Battenberg. They’re from Wales. Panic Shack, they’re another band that we’re kind of involved with these days. Okay, yeah, there’s loads. I’m trying to be, you can never think British Band. Cruush too, they’re like shoe gaze. Big Special, people in France might not know them ?
Dinner was Served by Last Dinner Party at the Olympia in Paris
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