acompassinahedgemaze:

As this band are moving so fast and I am moving so slow this interview I did with Vales (although only around 2 months old) seems pretty dated. Also I don’t know copyright laws so maybe the fact I have written on the picture above means I can’t get in trouble?

Compass: How did you guys form?

Chlo: I used to play in a punk rock band with Ben our guitarist and we played in the for a year then our music just started to evolve and we felt that we wanted to express ourselves like this. Nate (bassist) was one of the most passionate dudes ar shows and we just asked him ‘do you wanna play bass?’ but he couldn’t play bass and was like ‘yeh, sure’

Compass: Why did you form? Just mutual love of music?

Nate: We just wanted to make music really. It wasn’t with the idea of touring like crazy we just wanted to play. Then the tours happened and it was amazing.

Chlo: We didn’t even know what music we wanted to write, we just started jamming

Compass: How have you lot dealt with the masses of success?

Chlo: it’s been cool; super humbling. We’re now friends with all these bands that we used to look up to, and now they’re like our best friends

Nate: it’s really surreal. It’s not something that I ever imagined myself doing. I though ‘yeh I’d love to be in a band but I’m never going to do anything’ and then it just happened. We’re so lucky. Bands try for years to get what has been just given to us.

Compass: How does the songwriting process go? It always feels like every instrument is given equal importance and presence in songs.

Chlo: when writing Clairty we set out to write an EP about five different emotions and every single section of the song was about portraying that certain feeling. Stallions, for instance, starts out with the drum beat and that’s like the stallions, adrenaline, heartbeat. And so I think we just used each instrument to its best to portray that so maybe that’s why; we’re not an ego band we’re just in it to make music.

Compass: Assuming you [Chlo] write the lyrics, [to Nate] how does the music writing start?

Nate: Ben sort of comes in with the guitar part written. He’ll just sit and write songs all the time and Chlo has always got lyrics, that then forms the shell of the song. Then Ollie puts drums to it and takes shape and I do whatever I’m told [Laughs] No I just write a bass line at the end. It is definitely Ben and Chlo that start it off.

Compass: Clarity flows so smoothly as a whole piece of music; how did you approach writing it?

Chlo: We wrote it so that the entire record would flow from start to finish (it’s all written in the same key) and that’s why we released it on 12” so it could play through the whole thing. The emotions in the song is like an evolution as well; each emotion is the aftermath of the other, so it had to build that certain way through the whole EP

Nate: It was really stupid because pressing on 12” costs loads of money and we can’t sell a 5 track EP for £12 [Laughs]

Compass: Yeh but it sold out crazy fast.

On the Radio 1 Lock Up you said that it might be a whole year before your next release; any news on that?

Nate: Well we’re beginning to write the full length; we’ve had plans and we’ve been talking to people who could release it. Nothing in stone as of yet – no dates or anything – just however long it takes for us to write and record it really. Not a lot has happened yet but that is our plan.

Compass: Splits?

Nate: Ummm…?

Chlo: We’re definitely open to it. It’s just that we’ve been touring a lot and haven’t had that period to write anything yet and we love touring so it’s really had go ‘OK, we’re not going to tour so much and write an album’. So that’s why it’s taken so long. But we’re just doing a few festivals over the summer and we’re really going to get our heads down and write

Compass: Your previous bands haven’t been anywhere near as big as Vales so how has it been moving from a small scene in Cornwall to, well, the rest of the country?           

Nate: Well when we started, the Cornish scene was at it’s best, pretty much

Compass: Was that because of you?

[Laughter]

Nate: No not at all

Chlo: We had like Crocus, Kasa

Nate: and even Goodtime Boys, I know they’re from Wales but they played a huge part in our scene. It was my favorite place in England to be at shows.

Compass: Really?

Nate: Yeh but people have gone to uni now and it happens less often.

Compass: Well you had Gnarwolves and As We Sink who are both sick…

Chlo: Yeh man! 

Nate: As We Sink are like our best friends 

Compass: No way?

Nate: Yeh, yeh. But it was a bit strange because we were used to Cornwall being so good; the shows were always amazing and then it was like we had to start again – out of Cornwall people didn’t know us and we didn’t know them. It was such a community in Cornwall, everyone would come to the shows because they all knew each other.

Compass: But that’s like both the positive and negative side of having a small but tight scene, it establishes a sense of progress within oneself that has to be done all over again once you leave that scene.

Chlo: It was good though because it made us work really, really hard. We knew we came from this little cut off area, we knew we didn’t have all the big bands like Defeater, blah blah blah, coming down so we knew we had to get out there and tour our arses off and work hard to get noticed, so that’s what we did and it’s paid off.

Compass: Fucking right it has.

Now the obligatory ‘anything else?’

Nate: Well obviously-

Chlo: Posimosh!

Nate: [Laughs] Yeh, Ed [Moshtach Records]

Chlo: Posimosh represent

Nate: I mean, we’ve mentioned Gnarwolves, Crocus

Chlo: As We Sink

Nate: Bands that if people listen to us they will probably listen to anyway

Compass: Thanks very much!

Go listen to Vales. Buy their merch and go to their shows. They are one of the best bands around at the moment and are moving at such an amazing speed. So much has changed between the time of this interview and now. Don’t miss out.

facebook.com/valesband

valesband.bigcartel.com

twitter.com/valesband

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