Experimental rock and electronica act Gallops, have a reputation for banging tracks and banging live shows.  Damian Robinson caught up with one of the Gallops trio, Mark Huckridge, to talk about new material and their forthcoming Hartlepool show.

Hi, we’re excited by the propsect of new Gallops music.  It appears that you’ve been spending some time in the studio, how’s that been going and are you able to tell us about your future plans?

Great to hear it. ‘Studio’ is probably a bit strong though! I’m not sure my home setup can be called a studio but yes I’ve been in there a lot nonetheless. It’s all going well, we are finally at the stage where I am bringing the compositions to the rehearsal room where everyone adds their own touch to my drafts/tells me that they’re rubbish. Brad has been working on some material too, so we will start working on that sooner or later. The rough plan is to release a series of four shorter records that also work as a collection. How we will make this happen in real-terms is a different story, we may release them ourselves but we need to weigh up the options there. The music I’ve been writing is pretty dark though, that’s the only thing that is certain right now. 

You’ve been out touring considerably already this year.  How was your SXSW and how’s Gallop’s sounding live?

SXSW was cool yes. We had fun and played some ace shows. We have started playing some of our new material, so, predominantly evil.

With such a reputation for a relentless show, how challenging is it to maintain your dynamic each night?

To be truthful it’s not something we think about too much. We just do what we do and people seem to respond well to it, which is great. Obviously when you’re doing a long string of shows it can take it’s toll physically, we aren’t getting any younger. But we only have to exert ourselves for an hour or less. If we every struggle to do that then we should and will quit.

You’ll be across in Hartlepool playing later this month.  What can we expect?

We’ve only ever played in Hartlepool once before. I think it was about 8 years ago at The Studio. But I remember it being a great show that reminded us of the music scene at home in Wrexham. So we are pretty excited to be coming back. We will be playing a few new tracks. We also run an AV show now too.

How is the rest of the year looking and what can we expect? 

New music, an updated AV show and it’s pretty likely one, if not each of us, will marry a beautiful celebrity

Gallops play Hartlepool’s Town Hall Theatre on June 15.