Minor Conflict On Their New EP And Making The Most Of The Bristol Scene

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With their new EP ‘Parallels’ out on Friday, we chatted with Minor Conflict about the new project and the Bristol scene

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With two singles out now and their new EP ‘Parallels’ due out on Friday 24th via PRAH Recordings, 2025 is set to be a big year for Bristol experimental trio Minor Conflict.

At the end of last year, we caught up with Josh, bassist and vocalist for the band, to discuss the new EP, the band’s story and their place in the Bristol scene.

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For those not familiar with you guys, can you give us a quick rundown of how Minor Conflict began and how you got to this stage?

Josh: Robbie, Natalie, and I have been friends for a very long time. I think Robbie and Natalie have known each other since primary school or something like that. But we all found ourselves back in Bristol, where we’re from, at the end of 2019. A lot of our friends were doing music stuff, which was a big a motivator. We had all played instruments growing up.

Natalie had done a music degree and had lots of experience performing live. Robbie and I were chatting and decided that we wanted to start playing together. Initially, we didn’t have much of a plan or purpose for it. We were just meeting up to jam in my parents’ shed and just mucking about with trumpet and bass.

Then Natalie sniffed us out and was also keen to join our jam sessions, which Robbie and I had some reluctance to at first because Natalie is such an incredible harp player. Like, are we up to scratch to have her in? But we decided to give it a go.

Eventually, we started writing at the Cube Microplex, where we all volunteer, especially after COVID, when venues weren’t open to the public. Robbie was playing drums and that’s when we started to go for more rhythmically-driven sounds.

On the instrumental side of things, it’s quite unusual for bands in your scene not to be guitar driven. Having a harp at the forefront of the band obviously changed things up and, as a bassist, do you feel your role is quite different than it would have been in a more traditional kind of rock line up?

Josh: Yeah, I think so. I sometimes play bass parts that are slightly mimicking what a guitar might provide. I feel like it’s helpful to the overall sound if I sometimes play higher up the fretboard and incorporate more guitar-esque chords or lines. Before the three of us were playing together, I had only really played bass with guitarists. Playing with harp and trumpet was a refreshing change.

The harp has such a broad register which provides so many possibilities for us when layering a song. Also, I love how Natalie switches playing styles between songs or even between sections, sometimes thrashing, sometimes playing delicately.

Can you talk a bit about the recording of your new EP that’s coming out?

Josh: So we recorded this last December. Come to think of it, it’s probably exactly a year since we were in the studio. We recorded it with Jack Ogborne, who performs as Bingo Fury, but he’s also a fantastic producer and it was amazing working with him.

Also, Louis O’Hara, who was helping to engineer as well. We did the tracking in the basement of Louisiana, and then we moved on to The Cube, where we did strings and horns. And then through a slight mix up, one of the days we were going to be at The Cube, there was a film screening. So luckily Louis got us in very last minute at DBS studio where we did the choir. It was quite a lot of scrambling around town and getting the choir in and cooking them a big meal and such.

How was it working other musicians and bringing them in and opening up the collaboration?

Josh: It was really great to expand the sound a little bit more with this EP, whereas our first one was a bit more stripped back. Fortunately, there’s so many people we know who are such amazing, talented musicians that it really makes it that bit easier because all of the different players we got in were mostly friends of ours.

I think adding cello and violin and double bass and baritone and everything really allowed us to explore other layers to the songwriting that was very satisfying.

Underneath all the complex instrumentals, there are very distinct storylines and narrative. For example, in ‘Parallels 2’, it’s very much a love story about separation and reunion. In terms of writing, do you start with these narratives or do they arise after the instrumentals are in place?

Josh: I feel like it tends to be the instrumentation first and then the lyrics emerge from that. Quite early on, while we were playing and figuring out the instrumental of the song, we were sharing ideas about what kind of general feeling the lyrics and narrative could have.

Initially, Robbie was experimenting, in a beginning section, with folk-esque lyric writing based on his experiences in Bosnia working for an NGO supporting migrants attempting to travel into the EU.

I took over on the lyrics and experimented with a more generalised narrative in which two lovers are in correspondence from states of forced separation and are attempting to navigate the barriers of visas and embassies in order to reunite.

With these very emotionally charged ideas, you quite often deliver them in a very deadpan vocal delivery, very matter-of-fact in a way. Why is it that you choose to deliver these emotional ideas in a less emotional way?

Josh: With ‘Parallels’, I was enjoying the contrast between mine and Natalie’s vocal deliveries, and the sound of the two parts layered together. I felt that the lyrics I wrote benefited from my parts being delivered with a sense of someone not wanting to admit things are as bad as they are, a kind of unconvincing hopefulness. 

With the two different vocal styles, how does that dynamic work when you’re writing? Is it a deliberate thing to have them contrast all the time?

Josh: When writing, we are always conscious of what sort of vocals are best suited to each song. We often experiment with call-and-response vocals, for instance at the beginning of ‘Glue‘. Natalie’s such an amazing singer, so for certain songs, you just want her to let rip.

Your sound and your genre is pretty hard to pin down. Reading your press releases, it’s quite funny because there’s so many different words used: post-punk, folk, krautrock, drone. Do you ever consider these ideas of genres at all?

Josh: I really struggle to assign genres to new music. Not only our own music, but bands I see live. I find it difficult to pin down exactly what the sound is. Because of this, I always enjoy reading press releases when somebody who’s much better at it can start using helpful labels. I find these really helpful for whenever someone asks: “what kind of music does your band do?” Then I can just refer to the words of the latest press release.

Referring to genres is very helpful while we’re writing songs. We often discuss what sort of music is influencing certain songwriting decisions, which helps all of us understand possible directions a new song could take.

For example, with ‘Parallels’, we were referring to electronic music we listened to when we were growing up in Bristol. For those more rhythmically driven parts, we were thinking about how to bring out a kind of jungle feel.

When you were writing the EP, what kind of stuff were you listening to in general?

Josh: While writing the EP we made a collaborative playlist that we called ‘Recipe Book’, and all of us added songs that we felt were relevant to the songs we were writing.

We tend to do this whenever we’re writing new music together. There’s nearly always a tune by Portishead in there and there were a couple of folk songs in there too. I might have put a Johnny Greenwood tune in which was from the soundtrack of ‘Inherent Vice’ which has a kosmische sort of feel.

Has Bristol played a big part in who Minor Conflict are today? Do you think it’s built you a lot as a band?

Josh: I think it certainly has. Returning to Bristol was how the project started and we feel very grateful for being able to record and write in different venues. Specifically the Cube Microplex has been very important to the band’s development, for which we’re very grateful.

Other musicians and bands in Bristol at the moment have definitely been hugely influential, bands such as Quade, Bingo Fury, Foot Foot, Ex-Agent. Whenever you’re at a gig or anything you always have a really good catch up with someone who’s in a Bristol band and you can get a sort of news bulletin of what everyone’s up to.

Apart from the release of the EP, what have you got coming up in the next year?

Josh: We’ve been very busy writing new songs which we’re excited to hopefully record soon. I think this year we’re also keen to do a lot more live shows. We’ve been doing less of those while we’ve been writing but we’ve been missing it. In fact, we have a live shows coming up soon. We are playing at the Old England in Bristol on 20 March, and we are also playing at the Old Blue Last in London on April 4 for the Omen Festival. 

New EP ‘Parallels’ is out on 24th January via PRAH Recordings.

Listen to the singles here:

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Catch Minor Conflict at the following:

Old England, Bristol – 20th March

Old Blue Last, London (Omen Festival) – 4th April

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