The Beat Surrender

We don’t know what the old ones are like, but we love The New Delamores here at Beat Surrender Towers, Sascha reviewed one of their tracks recently on the Murderous Traffic Compilation and following on from that I took the opportunity to catch up with the trio from Leeds / Castleford to find out what their future plans are.

There seems to be a buzz growing around you at the moment is that something you are aware of yourself or does it pass you by somewhat?

That’s very kind, we’d love to think that was the case but to be honest we’re still just doing what we’ve always done and recently people have started to take an interest. We really put our hearts into doing this right, writing the best songs we can and not settling for anything, you can’t expect anyone to dig what your doing if you don’t 100% believe in it yourselves.

I don’t think there’s been much of a change with the day-to-day stuff but I think we’re reaching a wider audience these days. We’ve always had a good following around here but now we’re playing in places we’ve never been to before and there’s people there who already know the songs, which is a little disconcerting. I still find it touching when people we’ve never met pay in to see us, I end up wanting to buy them a drink or something to say thanks! Maybe we’re doing it the old fashioned way, playing live as much as possible to people who are willing to listen and hoping to build up a fan base one gig at a time.

You’ve just released a song on the Murderous Traffic compilation, how did that come about?

We like to be on-board with anything like that. We are generally considered to be a Leeds band but two of us are from Castleford and the Murderous Traffic night at the Loft is kind of our local. We are involved in running a couple of indie nights in the same area and the community here, like in most smaller towns, is quite incestuous and much less clique than in the city’s.

Murderous traffic is probably one of the best indie nights in Yorkshire. they work their arses off putting on gigs and promoting local bands and the album was a natural progression from this. Last year they decided to start a label and asked us to be their maiden release we were flattered. After that they approached Zavvi with the idea to release a compilation of the best local bands as well as some bands who’ve become regulars at the venue.

They asked if we wanted to donate a track and again we are proud to be part of it. Thankfully people are starting to take an interest in their good work. many of the local magazines are starting to include stories on their rapid growth, ITV have been involved in making a small documentary, and the compilation got a few good reviews, of note one from yourselves and an 8/10 in NME.

Have you had much interest from record labels so far or are you happier doing as much of it as you can yourselves?

I think we would be more than happy for bigger labels to show an interest. There has been some contact since the compilation release but nothing worth a mention at this stage as we know too many bands that have gotten excited about how well things seem to be going for them for it to just fizzle out. We love the whole idea of the DIY thing but I think it can only get you so far. Whether you like it or not, it takes money to break any new band and most smaller labels can not afford the PR and distribution needed to do this.

We are keeping our end of the bargain by writing, recording and playing music as good as anyone else signed or unsigned, we truly think that what we do is good in the classic tradition and it’ll take someone that sees that too. We are enjoying being Murderous Traf-folk and we don’t think it’ll be long before MT becomes a legitimate indie label in it’s own right, their releases are starting to fall on the right ears and they’re making a name for themselves with national press coverage and radio play.

Has the success of bands like The Cribs, The Kaiser Chiefs and The Pigeon Detectives recently, opened any doors for you, the local area seems ripe with great bands at the moment?

Its a double edged sword really, on the plus side there is definitely increased interest in Yorkshire bands, in the past it was taken for granted that you had almost no chance of getting signed unless you moved to London, this is no longer true, well less true. If you look back to the Britpop-era there was next to no-one fighting the corner for this part of the world, whereas now it’s probably the most vibrant scene in the whole country.

Its also inspired people to put on shows and start labels and a lot of people are supporting this. Never forget that in Leeds you’re never more than six feet away from a Kaiser Chief…However on the down side there are now hundreds of bands that sound exactly the same, second third and fourth rate Pigeon Detectives rip-offs. So to recap yes it’s brilliant!

Looking at your gig schedule it seems that you are constantly on tour, does it get tiring fitting all these gigs in amongst everything else?

It’s not too bad playing around Yorkshire and near by and when we play further afield we tend to do it in bursts, we’ll head off in the van for a week or two and fit in as much as we can.

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