If you’ve listened to Shinies, you’ve listened to Spent Youth. The only track that the band had available, they recently went down to London to record some more, and headed back up north with their single in the can. Available for pre-order on Dirty Bingo records, you can reserve your copy through the following link:

http://dirtybingorecords.bigcartel.com/product/shinies-7-single

On top of that, they’ve even put out a new – erm – shinier version of Spent Youth to listen to0.

Shinies will be playing the Grey Lantern / Drowned in Manchester stage at The Black Lion

Of all the bands that have plodded around Manchester’s live scene in the past couple of years, none of them have had the same sense of wit and worthlessness that Monster Island seem to embody. Stephen from the band is going to be performing as… well, himself, doing some readings for Paradox, and then sticking around later to play some songs with the rest of his band. We’ve had a chat with him about some things and it’s really interesting, like.

Alright Stephen, how are you?

Good Enough.

They can expect some uncomfortable funk, some heavy chords, some vicious drum playing and some viscous hip swaying. This will likely be layered with snaky bass, beer battered guitar and some yokely northern vocals.

To a large extent.

Perhaps not decay persay, and I don’t agree with anyone who sees beauty in decay eg. a derelict warehouse or a dead pigeon. The American Beauty/Six Feet Under mindset. Shite is Shite.

Instead maybe just the awkward, bland, stressful, convoluted infrastructure and atmosphere of most northern towns and cities.

NCPs, stinky bins, “street furniture”, new build flats with little or no ground floor retail provision, bad cladding, knackered vistas. Specific examples would include the Arndale Food Court which, were I a sturdy giant, I would boot towards the Pennines. Salford Quays and its endless fences and dead brick walls. They don’t have to put up with this bullshit in Paris.

Some of the songs are a bit all over the place but the ones I hope will work as spoken word have a bit of a story or theme. They’ll always be a bit disperse though as they usually start life as a series of one liners typed into a phone in Next or scrawled into a work pad mid conference call which seek each other out over a period of months.

Anyone with colour, humour, a bit of menace and a good sense of rhythm.

Ballard, Philip K Dick, Joyce, Faulkner, Kafka, Beckett, Pinter. With lyricists Mark Smith in his prime was untouchable, and inspiring in that he just writes about whatever the fuck he wants. Loveable oddballs like Marnie Stern, Isaac Brock and Frank Black. Also more flowery stuff like Leonard Cohen, Bill Callahan, David Berman. It’s all about the assonance man.

I don’t read a lot of poetry. I built up a GCSE aversion to it. Science-y concepts like iambic pentameter sucking the fun out of it for everyone.

Recently I’ve been listening to a few of the bands I liked back when I was a young man, like this: 

Or, on the SFTOC theme,

I’m going to cheat here and recommend the words to a song, “San Francisco BC” by the Silver Jews. He makes it look easy.

Stephen will be reading at Paradox, then doing a set with Monster Island for Fat Out till You Pass Out.

The best way to think of a Regal Safari song is probably through that of darkness and light, shimmering hope through the atmospheric gloom that the rest of music seems to have shrouded itself in at the moment. We had a chat with the band to see what’s what.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/964842" height="200" iframe="true" /]

Hiya Regal Safari, how are you?
Hi Matthew, We’re good. Working on new material currently and preparing for shows so all is well.

For those who’ve not listened to you before, can you give us a few words about what you do?
S: We create sounds using synthesizers, drum machines and we take samples from field recordings I make on a dictaphone.
G: It is electronic music I suppose, although I’d consider it pop music.
S: I’m currently cutting film to project while we perform, but we will produce to images also – it changes what you want from a sound.

Growing up, what influenced you? Do you think that shows in your work?
G: I listened to mainly classical music during the first decade in my life so therefore I was reasonably isolated from a lot of the more contemporary music out there. Although, I was aware of and enjoyed a few popular bands such as Blur. But I wouldn’t say that any of that music really stands out in our music.
S: I realise now that growing up I wasn’t very interested in the objects that I was listening to, but rather looking for sounds that pleased me. Names and genres were pretty irrelevant, I just took whatever was around, which for my friends was guitar music circa 1970 and some pretty (but sometimes awful) american electronica.
G: I’d say the most formative element that drove me to, for want of a better word, create was the first time I played a synthesizer and learned that you could sculpt sound to your precise taste. That was incredible. Hearing a lot of the electronic/experimental German acts from the 60s, 70s and 80s helped me curate certain ideas in my mind.
S: Guy introduced me to a lot of that stuff, its had a profound impact on how I think about electronic music now.

A lot of your early hype came through the whole blog scene. What do you think about the ‘blogosphere’ and all the people who plough their time into it?
G: I find the blogosphere remarkable in a way – the fact that so many people put so much time and effort into it is fantastic. We didn’t have any PR for the releases of the EP, videos or remixes and still we got onto websites and blogs – even a couple that I read. So it was quite amazing.
S: People seemed to respond in quite an honest way, trying to bring something to the music. It was always very positive.

If I’m not mistaken, this will be your first trip up north as an outfit. Have you ever made the trip to Salford? How do you think you’ll find it?
S: Yeah it’s our first trip up north as Regal Safari.
G: I’ve been to Salford before and I spent a fair amount of time in Manchester when I was younger so I think it’ll be good to be back.

Lastly – what’s your favourite song at the moment?

Regal Safari will be playing for Drowned in Sound/Grey Lantern at The Black Lion for this year’s festival.