Sourface, the indie funk band hailing from London and France make wonderfully catchy tunes inspired by their eclectic influences that give them a wholly fun and unique sound. Their first single ‘Sweet Dreams Suburbia’ was met with rave reviews and their second single ’21st Century Man’ followed suit, drawing comparisons to that of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and the Steve Miller Band to name a few.
A relatively new band to the scene we don’t know a whole heap about them, but with a fresh new EP ‘Daytimes Past’ coming out in November we decided to get to know the band a little better.
Jeanie: Can you introduce the members of the band for me? I would love to know a little bit about all of you?
Sourface: Well, there’s four of us: Ludo, Alex, Matt and Tom. Ludo’s half-English, half-French – he moved to England when he was nine – and he plays the guitar and sings our English songs. Alex is French and grew up in Paris – he plays the bass and sings our songs in French. Matt’s English, he grew up in the countryside in the South-West where we’ve done most of our recording so far, he plays the various pianos and synths. Tom’s English but he grew up in Paris, and he plays the drums.
Jeanie: What inspired the new single and the upcoming EP, any particular music, films, people, quotes that inspired anything?
Sourface: Hard to say – each song from the EP is kind of its own world, inspired by something in our experience or an amalgamation of different musical influences. You can definitely pick out some key influences though: Vampire Weekend, bossa nova styles like Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, and more classic stuff like Lennon and McCartney. 21st Century Man is more on the Beatles-y pole of that, combined I guess with a more cinematic feel influenced by artists such as Scott Walker.
Check the animated video for new single ’21st Century Man’ here:
Jeanie: How has covid affected the way this EP came together for you?
Sourface: Actually pretty nicely, before COVID we were all separated around Europe on our Erasmus year abroad. But when lockdown came around we found ourselves with a bunch of songs and a lot of spare time, so we got to making demos remotely with the band spread out over England and France by sending GarageBand files. When lockdown finally ended we all packed our bags and adventured over to Matt’s place deep in the English countryside with our producer Scott Ellis where we recorded 9 songs, four of which will be in our first EP, ‘Daytime’s Past’, which we are looking forward to releasing towards the end of November.
Jeanie: Back to the days of gigs, where was your favourite place to perform/most memorable gig?
Sourface: Being relatively new-born we’d only played 2 gigs before lockdown, but we were lucky to play a great show at the Notting Hill Arts Club a couple of weeks before lockdown came around. More recently though we played a gig at the Truskel in Paris which was raucous, great atmosphere.
Jeanie: If you could make a band up of any musicians who would be in it?
Sourface: Tom chooses Alan Wren from the Stone Roses. Matt says Sun Ra on the keys. Ludo would stick Gil Scott Heron on the vocals. And, Alex goes for Thundercat on bass. Make of that sound what you will.
Jeanie: If you could only listen to one song for the rest of the year what would it be?
Matt: I’d say Sunblind by Fleet Foxes from their new album because it’s already started to set the tone of my Autumn/Winter. It’s nicely positive and melancholy for this weird year.
Jeanie: Any new music discoveries you’d like to share with the world? (New to you not necessarily anyone else? My current favourite is “The beat goes on” by Sonny and Cher!
Ludo: I recently discovered Kris Kristofferson. His album ‘The Silver Tongued Devil and I’ has been playing on repeat over the last few days.
Alex: ‘Hanen’ by the 70s Tunisian Funk band Carthago is an absolute banger, the world needs to know.
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