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About a week ago, I had the opportunity to chat with Dan and Sophie from Alunah show at the Bannermans in Edinburgh. Despite things running a little late, they both happily answered my questions and we had a good laugh whilst doing it.
MT: You were last in Scotland just under 4 months ago. The obvious question is what have you been doing since?
Sophie: We played Ireland recently, and we did a few dates in England. We played a festival with October File and lots of writing for the 4th album. We also played Red Sun fest in Cardiff as well so we’re keeping busy.
MT: From what I recall, it’s your first time playing in Edinburgh. Have you had a chance to look round?
Sophie: Yes, this our second in Scotland and our first time playing Edinburgh. We spent a bit of time in Brewdog and it’s Dan’s first time here.
MT: Your most recent album came out just over 7 months ago. According to your Facebook, you’ve been working on the follow up. Is that correct?
Sophie: It is correct. We’re doing quite well with it and are quite excited with the songs.
Dan: Working on it is quite a loose term. I mean, we’re just trying out a few ideas and arguing on riffs and timings.
Sophie: It is going well actually, we’ve got maybe 2 or 3 tracks and we’re playing one tonight that is kind of a bonus track. We’ve just got to fill the gaps in, between the bonus track and the 3 we’ve written.
MT: Who normally writes the music in the band? Is it a collaborative effort or does one person come up with everything and then the others tweak it?
Sophie: I write the Lyrics and then it depends really. I’ve written a few riffs and sent them to others and we work on them at the practice. Dan wrote a really cool bass-line when he was trying to get a riff to a song and that made another song. It’s quite natural really, we don’t really sit down and write. We start off quite loosely and then structure it after.
MT: That’s probably a better way of doing than just sitting down and spending time just writing.
Sophie: For some bands that might work for. We always say you know, we’re going to do some writing this week but we don’t really force it. If we’ve got a gig coming up, we like to rehearse the set but if there’s nothing coming up then we tend to just write.
MT: Last time we spoke, you said that you were re-releasing your first two albums.
Sophie: The Debut is on Vinyl that’s coming out this week [Should be out now- James] and it’s already been re-released on cd. The second album is being re-released on CD which will be out in October and we are talking about having another vinyl re-release for it. All these albums have sold out so people getting into us now are wanting them. We had a lot of people asking for it to be re-released but we’d not really make any money from it as most of it goes to the labels. Our second album already got re-released on vinyl by Napalm but it’s sold out. Our first album was never released on vinyl so it will be nice to see it.
MT: Has your live setup changed much since we last spoke?
Sophie: Yes because we had major amp problems. Drums and bass haven’t changed but guitar amps have. I used to use Sound City but I use MatAmp now. And our Guitarist, Dave, uses MatAmp but his went down so we had to get some new ones. We bought Orange, Hayden, HH and then two of them blew up. So he’s back to using his original setup but we have some expensive spares now.
Dan: It’s become a running joke now. We call it, Amp Watch with Dave because every week there’s always a problem with some sort of amp related issue.
Sophie: But my guitar tone has changed massively, hopefully for the better.
MT: If you were to go on a headlining tour, who would you pick as your bands?
Dan: Black Sabbath. They should us, we’ve given them enough over the years.
Sophie: That’s a tough one. I’ve got loads of bands that I love. Mars red Sky, Ahab, Monolith Cult and there’s a new band called Conjurer from Birmingham. We get along well with these bands. If we are going to tour with a band, we need to know that we get on with them. We don’t want drama and Ego’s when on tour.
MT: Following on from this, do you have any tour plans?
Sophie: We’re doing a series of weekend gigs in October in England, we’re doing a tour of Europe in November and we have a festival appearance in August that we can’t announce yet. We’re always planning for new gigs.
MT: And My final question for tonight is what sort of set can we expect?
Sophie: It’s going to be long and varied.
Dan: There’s going to be a mixture of songs from the second album as well as the new one along with that new bonus track. So it’s quite mixed.
Huge thanks to the guys for taking the time to chat to me and thanks to Andy at Napalm for organising it.
