Former NE Volume anniversary party house-band, Catalyse, have had an interesting year with a new line up, some kick ass singles and high critical praise. With promise of new music, and new shows, on the horizon Damian Robinson caught up with them to find out more.
It’s been almost twelve months since we spoke last. At the time you were gearing up to play at our 2nd anniversary party. How’s the past twelve months been?
The last 12 months have been interesting! We now have a new drummer, giving the band a new direction, with new influences and some new ideas! We’ve also worked more on the recording and mixing side of things recently, and hopefully that will pay off with our upcoming releases. We’ve been lucky enough to play some really great shows over the last year alongside that, and all round it’s been a really positive year for us.
Recent single ‘Don’t bait the hangman’ seemed to go down really well with the critics. You must have been pleased?
Yeah, we were pleased with the response to Hangman because the recording process took a lot longer than we would have liked due to the change in personnel – although after a small delay we were happy with the single and it’s release!
There was a subtle difference in Hangmans sound compared with previous releases, is this an indication of a slightly new direction for Catalsye?
Hangman had a different sound as a result of us experimenting with recording and mixing techniques. As a band we have a very clear idea of the sort of music we want to make but we’re still trying to perfect it in recordings. We don’t consciously aim for a certain ‘sound aesthetic’ when recording but find having a more open and creative approach to things, and simply going with what feels right to us, seems to work.
We’ve seen recent social media posts that new music is coming, can you tell us a bit more about what to expect?
We are very excited about what we’ve got planned. Since Hugh we’re taking more care and time on every aspect to make sure we are totally satisfied with it. It’s also given us a greater ability to bring all of our ideas to life in a cohesive and professional way, we really hope it’s gonna be good! We can’t wait to release it, hopefully sooner rather than later!
You seem to be out playing live as regularly as possible, but you’ve got an important show coming up at Sticky Fingers soon. Are you looking forward to the show and what can we expect?
We always enjoy playing Sticky Fingers, it’s a really cool little venue and it’s one of the few places in Middlesbrough still flying the flag for live music. We’re excited for Sticky Fingers and we have some great gigs lined up for the remainder of June and July. It’s an exciting run of gigs, we just love playing!
Finally what do you hope to achieve for the rest of 2018?
We tend not to set ourselves many ‘goals’, we’ll be happy to just play as much as possible to as many people as possible! Although, at the same time we definitely wouldn’t turn down a slot at Leeds fest. We plan on continuing to work on releasing lots more music and overall, just enjoying playing and working hard to improve everything we do.
Catalyse play Middlesboroughs’ Sticky Fingers on July 21st. More information about ickets is available from https://en-gb.facebook.com/pg/CatalyseBand/events/?ref=page_internal