At Left of the Dial festival in Rotterdam I grabbed the opportunity to learn a little more about some of the bands I saw for the first time.
Manchester’s Aerial Salad were the first band onstage at V11, the Red Boat, for this year’s festival. The trio have a punk aesthetic but also bring melody and to be honest an exuberant vibe. It’s so obvious they are having the best time onstage. The following day I caught up with the trio to learn more about them, and the unexpected team building exercise at their accommodation after the gig!
So you stayed on a boat last night!
It was really fun because it was quite a chaotic set last night. Loads of issues were happening, and when we got back to the boat, they were unloading, and when I say loads of sacks of grain, I mean they were unloading about 150 x 25 kilogram sacks of grain. You know, you’re staying in this guy’s house, and it’s like, “do you want us to help out with the grain!”. So we just did some manual labour after the gig. It was like a drug smuggle. It was a real team building exercise, you know. Because one person was passing up and one person carrying it out. It was like a chain, and we’re together again. These techno geniuses in Silicon Valley with these little boxes in your hands that make you depressed when really all you need is a bit of farm work
And you had this problem that needed to be solved, you had to work it out how to get the grain from A to B.
And that’s why playing in a band’s good because it is just a series of problems you have to fix. It’s the greatest computer game ever made.
But what a night last night, you were one of the first bands on. I know Mike you had a problem with your guitar strap and you had to sit down, but you got frustrated and tried to stand up but you quickly realised that wasn’t going to work and sat down again!
It’s because the festival is known after a Replacements song. And we absolutely love The Replacements. And they weren’t exactly known for being consistent performers. And you get what you get every time, it was pure chaos. It happens.
You’re playing again today, and then what’s next?
We’re playing a couple gigs with Meryl Streek on his tour in London and Sheffield. We’ve been on the same bills before and we got on so to do his gigs is pretty cool. And then we’re doing a big Christmas Party on 13 December at Gorilla in Manchester. So that’ll be pretty stupid. We actually wrote a Christmas song years ago but it needs trombones and stuff for it. It’s like a proper Christmas song. We don’t know if we’ll perform that or not because they’re expensive orchestras. Not sure if Manchester Philharmonic are free that night…..
And is Gorilla big enough to handle……
Oh yeah, they’ll be ample space I imagine! There’ll be plenty of room. Bring the family. Anybody that’s got any pets that you want to bring to their first gig, we’ll do you a discount on pets.
And what about music? What’s next?
We’ll probably bring some more music out next year, I imagine. We’ve done two albums. We released one of them ourselves during lockdown, so that was interesting. And then we did one with Venn Records this year, and that’s been fun. It took a very long time from Dirt Mall to R.O.I. but we’ve just been writing loads. We do want to get more stuff out. Because, as well, we like coming to play in Europe and it’s pretty handy if you’ve got a CD or record. It’s a good reason to come over and play.
And this festival is really good for things like being seen by European booking agents.
Oh yeah I’m sure they will be absolutely fucking fighting over us after last night. Jesus Christ we’ll be batting them off!
You say that but it’s the first time I’ve seen you play and the only problem I saw was the guitar strap breaking. It’s a learning process isn’t it? When things go wrong, you can’t just stop because everyone’s standing there looking at you. It didn’t feel like the momentum stopped. The only time I thought there was a problem was the broken guitar strap.
That was the least of our problems! If his strap coming off was the only thing I’d have been like, funny that. I thought it was funny when I was playing and I saw him sat down and I was like what a dick! But I mean it snaps, well, what the fuck did you do? You just carry on. We’ve had our fair share of gig mishaps. If it was the football and you did a post match interview, it’d be like, head down “yeah there was a few problems but we’ve got tomorrow to make up for it.” I grew up watching punk bands play in venues with all the chaos going on, and I just love doing it. I think the best way I can describe it is that sometimes when you play a gig, right, it’s like someone else is playing the songs, and you’re experiencing it first person. You’re just kind of doing it, and you’re like, fucking hell. Your mind’s so racing. You play the songs in the practice rooms and it’s good. When you’ve written your tunes you know you’ve got times where you’ve played them and it’s been mint. You’ve got times when you played where it’s been bad. Sometimes you’re literally just playing them, just experiencing the fact that you’re playing your songs, and you’re like, it’s fucking alright this. What was it, a Thursday? You know it’s better than sending emails innit?
What’s your inspiration behind your music? Where do the songs come from?
It’s quite a boring answer, really, but it’s just all the music that we’ve grown up liking, it’s just an amalgamation, and sort of sung from our perspective on life. There’s a lot of influence from Gary Numan, the Happy Mondays, all the punk bands that have ever existed. But, you know, I’m not Shaun Ryder or Gary Numan, so I don’t write like that. So, I would say, it’s just like a regurgitation of life, Aerial Salad.
Well, we all need that, don’t we? We all need a bit of regurgitation!
So can I ask a question, if there was one thing you could fix about music industry?
Our producer said once, you should have to take a test to play in a band and if you fail, you can’t reapply. If there’s one thing I’d fix about it. I don’t really know to be honest. I think the music industry is a reflection of most other industries, which is, if you look at film, if you look at technology, whatever it is, the aim of businesses is to make as much money as they possibly can, which involves, naturally, a lot of corner cutting, a lot of downsizing, a lot of automation coming into the world, a lot of new technology. I just feel art as a whole it needs to be protected from that but unfortunately that’s just not the reality we live in. I’m hoping that there’s going to be an indie revolution. I’m hoping that people are going to eventually get sick of the current format of things, and the rise of independence will come back, but at the same time, can’t really see that happening because it’s about money.
You’ve got in Manchester the Beyond The Music festival, with Andy Burnham as part of the team that set it up. He has his heart in the right place, but it seems humongous, to try and change the model.
It’s really difficult. It’s a difficult one to talk about, because I’m not qualified to explain how you can fix the music industry at all. I really don’t know. I think the main thing that I can say is that if you play enough and you just literally play everywhere while you can while you’re on the way up. If what you want to do is play as many gigs as possible, you can do that. They might not all be good, but you can literally just play as many gigs as you want. And I think that’s the only thing about the music industry. Obviously, I think the way of doing things that is the most useful to you means being quite strategic with things. I think there’s a lot of strategy involved in being in a band these days. And I think, nah, less strategy, more just going out and having it and seeing what happens.
Social media can be a help, I think. Connections with and between bands, and within the community of gig goers is really powerful
Absolutely, I completely agree with you. People are always complaining about Spotify but that’s the only reason why we’re able to play in Europe. It’s because people have heard us in countries where they absolutely would not have heard of us.
And you’re playing here later on today and then you’re shooting off to get the ferry.
We will have exactly four hours to get to the ferry. And its a four hour journey.
And is today’s set going to go smoother than yesterday?
Oh yes! We’ve got a new strap. We borrowed a strap off someone who very kindly brought us one after our set. A good Samaritan. So we’ll find out!
For more information on Aerial Salad please check out their facebook and instagram.