Interview with Set Aside

The song ‘Not Acceptable In Suburbia’ by Set Aside has been a favourite on my ipod for weeks and I thought it was time to share! Set Aside formed in late 2011 and describe themselves as pop punk with an edge, and I’d say that is spot on. Just check out the aforementioned ‘Not Acceptable In Suburbia’ and the other demo track they have available ‘A Friend Of Eve’ for great songwriting, gang-style vocals, catchy guitar riffs and a keen ear for melody. The band, consisting of Matt Green – Vocals, Andy Kelly – Guitar/Vocals, Tom Soloman – Guitar/Vocals, Henry Simms – Bass, Si Martin – Drums/Vocals, are looking to take on the world in 2012 so keep your eyes and ears peeled for their debut EP ‘Divide & Conquer’ set for release soon. With this in mind we caught up with the band to find out all about them.

Who are you and what do you do?  We’re Set Aside, we’re like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but there’s 5 of us. And we’re not Turtles. And we play music

Where did the bands name come from?  The name actually came from a cookery book.. We just opened it to a random page, and chose the first two words we saw. We were very nearly called “til golden brown”.

How did you get started?  We were first introduced to each other through mutual friends, realised we all love the same kind of music & started writing together.

What have you got going on at the moment?  We’ve just recorded a couple of tracks with Todd Campbell of Straight Lines, and we’re working on our debut EP. We’ve got a few gigs coming up in July and August plus we’re shooting our first music video for our track a ‘Friend of Eve’, which is going to intense to say the least.

Favourite music and why?  We’re into a mixture of pop/punk and metal really. Bands like Blink 182, Four Year Strong, The Wonder Years, Architects and Underoath.  We can usually be found drinking whiskey & bouncing around to them in one of the clubs in town.

“I think a couple of us in the band have man crushes on the guys from Everytime I Die !”

Favourite book and why?  We are all massive geeks at heart so tend to read a lot of graphic novels. The Walking Dead series of comics is a firm favourite among the band. Everyone needs to have a zombie escape plan for when Z-day comes…

Favourite film and why?  “Zombie Strippers”. The name says it all. It is literally the best worst-film ever. It’s up there with “Giant Shark Vs Mega Octopus”. Either that or the Dark Knight. We actually built our own cave to watch it in the other day….

Best experience in the business?  Recording our demo with Todd was great fun. The man’s a musical wizard and all round good guy. We’ve got a few awesome gigs lined up for July and August with some other wicked local bands so can’t wait for them and to play our new tracks.
 

Why should soundscape readers care?  Because we’re different from the normal stuff you hear at the minute. Bit of a mixture of everything. So if they want to hear something that is guaranteed to tickle their musical taste buds they should check us out. Plus we love to party, so come party with us at a gig.

Tell our readers an interesting fact about the band?  Our lead singer actually has an identical twin brother and was born in Hong Kong. Oh, and our bassist has been in a murderers house.

What’s the best and worst things about touring?  Our sense of direction is definitely the worst thing. The best thing is getting to hang out with friends and play our music to new people.

Most embarrassing thing to happen to you while in the band?  So far we’ve been pretty lucky. Nothing too embarrassing.  Although we’re not expecting that to last. I think we’ve had more than our fair share of ‘foot-in-mouth syndrome’ moments.

What’s your writing and recording process?  We split the writing pretty equally. Usually one of us comes up with the basic idea of a song and then we all work on it together. Whenever we are writing any lyrics we tend to run them past our singers ‘angst-o-meter’ (patent pending) to make sure we are not being whining 14 year olds again, so that helps. Matt (our vocalist) also has a weird habit of writing inception style lyrics. So, lyrics within lyrics.

What inspires you?  Pretty much everything, friends, nights out and life in general. Plus playing music that people actually want to hear.

What’s the best thing about coming from Wales?  Most of the other bands around here are really friendly and always up for putting on shows together. I think its such a small scene in Wales pretty much everyone seems to know one another.

Who are your role models/idols?  I think a couple of us in the band have man crushes on the guys from Everytime I Die and Architects. You can’t really beat Andy Williams (guitarist from ETID) beard. We’ve been lucky enough to meet him a couple of times and he’s always been so down to earth and friendly at shows.

In your opinion what’s the hardest thing about the current business?  I think the whole music scene in general is in a bit of state of change at the minute. Record sales are down, everyone is streaming/downloading music and its harder to get noticed. Plus nobody seems to be able to afford to pay anyone anything. Which is fine when you are starting out I guess but its not really a sustainable way to keep the music scene going.

Finally a question we ask everyone, who is your favourite Batman actor?
I don’t think anyone can top Adam West surely. The man’s a legend.

You can check out Set Aside on facebook here www.facebook.com/setasideofficial and you can download the bands demo tracks for free on Soundcloud here www.facebook.com/setasideofficial