The new bands just keep on rolling; for this week’s Echoes Of The Future we spoke to Nick Duke from Manchester Prog Nouveau Overlords Trojan Horse to try & find out what makes the band tick.
1. How long has the band been together and how did you all meet?
HELLO! Well the band has been together as a concept since the latter part of 2007. Me (Nick, Guitar/Vocals) and Lozz (Bass/Vocals) are brothers, and started the band with a couple of dudes from both our old bands (Justin – Who has gone on to form The Goddamn Electric, check ‘em out they’re dead good & Ste, gone on to lift weights and get a thick neck). The band as it is now, with the addition of our youngest brother Eden (Keyboards/Vocals) and Guy (Drums) has been going about 2 years now. Me, Eden, and Lozz are all brothers, and Guy we met through a mutual friend. We needed a drummer and he needed a band. It was a match made in musical heaven.
2. Where did you get your name from & what does it mean?
Trojan Horse I guess because it conjures up powerful, historically vivid imagery as well as the connotations it has in the world today with subversive technology and the corrupting influence of those types of viruses. We wanted to subvert people’s minds with music that made you think a bit more but was catchy enough to stick in your head and have you whistling it. It has multiple meanings and facets, which has bled through into the music, and vice versa. Pretentious much? Hahaha.
3. Describe your sound for us & who would you say were your biggest musical influences?
Our sound is loud, haha! Erm…I would say it is chaotic on the first listen. It can be quite dense, but once you give it a few listens and the layers become more evident, you realise we’ve always got a firm grip on melody and above all keeping it interesting for the audience, and ourselves. We’re musicians at the end of the day, as much as writing a song is about conveying a feeling, we want to show off what exactly we feel we can do. Not in a pretentious way, just, we work hard at playing what we do, so why shouldn’t there be an aspect of pride in what you can deliver.
Biggest influences? I can only speak for me as I’m the only one here at the mo, but its stuff like Field Music, Futureheads, Bowie, Converge, Foo Fighters, QOTSA/Kyuss, Radiohead, Dj Shadow, Black Flag, Alice in Chains, Yes, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Earth Wind and Fire, Jeff Buckley, The Beatles, the list is virtually endless. We all like lots of different music, and as Guy said the other week, it’s great that we don’t all like the same stuff or even agree on a lot of stuff. It keeps the influence on songs fresh as we reinterpret each other’s ideas.
4. And what about non-musical influences?
We’re all big into Family Guy, Monty Python, surreal humour stuff. Bill Hicks is hugely inspiring, I know it’s quite a cliché to reel him off as being important, but he WAS. Just said and got across a lot of important subversive information to people in an abrasive, but more importantly entertaining way. I’d like to think you can hear the offbeat, surreal stuff in the music we write, but whether you ACTUALLY can I don’t know, haha.
Me, Eden and Lozz are pretty big Sci Fi fans, I’m all Star Trek, while they’re Wars, and we all dig comic books a lot. Then obviously there’s a big left/socialist leaning lyrically and with the ethos. We’re inspired by the early 80s DC hardcore bands, Black Flag, as I’ve mentioned, and Minor Threat, outside of the music as much as the music itself. That idea of being self sufficient, self sustaining, just going out and playing and creating regardless of the lack of money or whatever.
‘Our Band Could be Your Life’ by Michael Azerrad documents it pretty well, and succinctly, I’ve read that book a bunch of times now, and it always reinvigorates me each time. Working outside the mainstream can be a struggle when you see others taking an easier, more clear cut path and reaping the rewards. However, it’s rarely those bands or artists that inspire others. That book does a good job of keeping those facts in perspective. And I reckon a bit of hardship keeps things in perspective anyway. (Mostly) Nobody with millions in the bank ever made any good art.
5. Music can be a fickle mistress, what is your biggest high & low as a band so far?
Biggest high was definitely getting kind words from a hero of mine, Bill from Mastodon. Also, the amazing response we’ve had to our debut album, all the reviews said such awesome things about it. It took us three years to make and get out, and just the general support of people all over the country, even in different countries. It amazes me still, that we have fans in Portugal, Mexico, the U.S. We even have a guy who is in the British army in Kenya. Just baffles me how people we’ve never even met, across the world care…and care enough to say so.
Lows; there have been bumps in the road, but I don’t think there’s been anything earth shattering so far. We know that by choosing this as our second life, so to speak, that it’s always going to put a strain on certain other aspects in your life. Whether that be something as small as lack of sleep and having to work after a gig the night before, having no money, or getting in trouble from partners (and rightfully so sometimes) for dedicating a large portion of our lives to this “other relationship” that is the band. It’s not exactly low, its just how it is, and sometimes it’s harder than it would be if we didn’t do it, however we love music, and creating so it’s a no brainer that we continue to do it to our fullest and deal with some bumps along the way as and when they appear, but most importantly to try and be fair to those other people that it might affect negatively, and not be dicks about it. Luckily we all have very VERY understanding partners/parents who put up with us!
6. What one fact about the band do you most want to share with the world?
We are a democratic dictatorship. I.e. I say something to everyone that I think we should do, and they’ll tell me to fuck off or agree. If it gets out voted its out, if they agree, it’s in. It’s a simple way of working that has done us right so far. They’ll probably disagree with that description, but then it’d perfectly illustrate my point, so either way I win.
7. The old model of record demo-do gigs-get signed-make millions is pretty broken these days, what’s your plan to deal with this?
It’s simultaneously, an interesting and hard place to be right now as a musician. I still haven’t made my mind up as to whether there is a specific fix-all for bands and artists.
I guess the way we look at it is, that we didn’t start this band to make money, we knew when we initially wrote some songs, by the sound of them, that they weren’t going to appeal to a massively mainstream audience. We wrote them for ourselves, with the intention of producing something we could be proud of and that we wanted to hear. It’s just a cool side effect that some people have started taking notice and have said great things about us. So to us, we were always prepared to weather the storm long term, as we always just wanted to make music regardless of trends. We’ve kept it “DIY” (our meaning of the word anyway, I won’t get into the whole thing of where DIY begins and ends…its hotly debated, but it’s a really boring argument haha, suffice to say, I consider what we do as being DIY to a degree) and pushed ourselves, recorded ourselves, released ourselves and promoted ourselves, that’s all we’ve ever known. We’re starting to reach a tipping point now where we do need help, as we DO want to get to a larger amount of people, we want to play in places we haven’t before, and as such, the music we play doesn’t have an established network of bands/promoters/venues that we could just call up and book with really easily, like say with the hardcore/punk community. So that’s where you have to start getting into the business side of it a little bit, getting people to help you, which requires money, which requires us to have an income to pay for it.
So, I dunno, we just want people to have our music, and to be able to afford to play in far flung places. We’re working effectively at the moment, so we must be doing something right, what exactly that is I really don’t know, we just play, and play and it makes us happy. If we can make a career out of it, then so be it.
However, it’s not the be all and end all, being signed, or having load of money. You look at someone like Matt Stevens, who we’ve got talking to in the past 12 months, and he has built up a fan base with nothing but his own hard work and self promotion, that’s his fulltime job now, playing music, releasing albums financing his own music through selling his own music. He engages his audience, talks to them, is on the same level as them. He’s really humble and will chat to anyone that messages him, you feel good for him, seeing him do so well. I think that’s key in the future, reengaging the audience, working with them. You don’t necessarily need thousands of pounds to reach thousands of people anymore. So, if we can follow that vague path, and keep making music, keep creating, then in our eyes we will be successful.
8. We journalists like to use easy labels to describe bands, what’s the worst thing you’ve seen yourselves described as?
Yeah we noticed Journos are lazy, haha. So accordingly, we kinda nipped it in the bud before it even started, by coming up with the ‘Prog Nouveau’ tag. I’d seen Nu-Prog bandied around on the internet, when describing bands that had a vaguely similar sound to us…but I despise the prefix “Nu” it’s bloody awful. So, it was a case of adhering to the fact we are a new interpretation of something classic, that influences us. I’m a fan of the art nouveau/deco thang, so I really wanted to try and tie it in with something iconic like that, really stamp our own distinct idea down so we were essentially making our own box and sitting in it.
It means we don’t have people thinking we were somehow linked to nu-metal or other stuff completely unrelated (not that we don’t indulge in a bit of it every now and again) If you’re going to write a bunch of music, choose nice artwork, and what format it goes out on, you may as well go the whole hog and choose exactly what it gets labelled as.
Although thinking back, a review of us once said we sounded like “a teenage boy making any promise he possibly can in order to get his hands on some candy” whatever the hell that means. I understand what they were trying to say, however I think the analogy machine must have been broken that day.
9. We’re loving what you do but who’s floating your boat right now?
Again, I can’t speak for the rest of the boys but me personally, I’m digging From the Kites of San Quentin, Plank and Cyril Snear. I always bang on about these bands and they’re brilliant enough without me having to blow a trumpet for them. It’s partly a kind of local pride that we get to inhabit a city with brilliant bands, and it’s like “HA! YES, SEE MANCHESTER IS SO MUCH MORE THAN [insert old guard Manchester type band here]” but also I just think they’re creating some amazing, incredibly original music. You can hear the influences sure, as you can with most bands, although I just think they’re morphing it in such a way that they’re genuinely pushing the boundaries of what genres they’ve taken to.
Also, anything on the Super Star Destroyer Records or Mind On Fire. The output of quality music on those labels has been gathering momentum steadily over the last year or so, and it’s all great stuff. The latest SSD release is from a band called Ninetails and its truly brilliant, really fresh sounding, poppy math orientated rock. Reminds me of XTC in a way, but mixed with so many other bits. It’s genuinely one I listen to and think I wish I’d written those songs.
People need to check out Paul Hallows, he’s doing a lot of work for bands in the area, gig posters, artwork and stuff, quickly becoming the visual artist of choice to a lot of the music in the Manchester ‘progressive scene’. It’s all hand drawn/painted artwork on acetates, comic book styling but its more than just a comic, concept comics I guess, he’s absolutely amazing. I’m really not doing his work justice with my shitty descriptions!
10. What’s up next for you guys?
Next for us, we’re currently recording an EP which should be out by the end of the year or early next year. Also we’re writing for album number 2 and as is the way with us, nothing is ever an easy road, so it’s all painstakingly coming together. It just means when it’s done we know we’ll be super happy with it. Beyond that, we’re about to embark on a series of awesome gigs, and trying to get on some bloody mint tours, but that’s still all in the planning stages at the moment. We just plan to do more of what we think up. We love what we’re doing, in this band, in the community of people we play and work alongside. It’s all really interesting creatively and we just want to continue building, with everyone else, on this, nurturing it collectively and pushing each other. I’ve heard rumours that the new Kites and Cyril Snear stuff, due out imminently, is phenomenal, so it’s going to be an interesting few months digesting and trying to top that. Not in a showy off way, we love those guys and want them to do well. We’re all just trying to write the best music we can, but Trojan Horse are definitely going to win that competition. (HA!)
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