Saturday, March 1, 2014

Underground Gay Music Series Exclusive: A Short Q&A w/ T.W.i.N.S.


When it comes to witty, quirky, charming dance pop, you will find no bigger fan than me. Comprised of two dashingly handsome gents, Laurence and Hugo, T.W.i.N.S. is perhaps one of the smartest, most lyrically clever bands to come around in a good long while. They take frustrating everyday situations and turn them into genius songs that will have you uncontrollably dancing in no time flat. There is no pretension. The goal of the music is to have fun. When asked about the formation of T.W.i.N.S. Laurence recalls, "We just wanted to get back to why we wanted to make music in the first place, to do something outrageous."

When not playing in T.W.i.N.S, Laurence moonlights as a club DJ, and something of this spirit feeds into the band: a mission to entertain whatever the cost. "If you're a band and you come onstage at a club at 1am, you don't want to interrupt everyone from having a good time. So we want to do something visual, raucous and unpredictable". The pair have been selective about gigs so far, but a show supporting the Scissor Sisters at London club institution The Cock's 10th birthday celebration at XOYO was a highlight.

T.W.i.N.S. has a brand new 5 track E.P. due out March 3rd. Despite being busy with all the craziness surrounding a new release, we were thankfully able to corner Laurence in a bathroom stall and force him to answer a handful of highly dubious questions!



Q: Rumor has it you gents started your musical collaboration composing music for a gay porn series called "Indie Boys." How much research did you have to put in to make sure you were properly capturing the essence of the subject matter? 
Laurence: We are both aggressive tops so it was actually a challenge to write slow jams for the Indie boy. Indie boys like to be whimsical, and they are in the bed too. One of us may know better than the other about this.

Q: I have watched the "What's the Time?" video like a dozen times now. Did you guys argue over who got to be the one to receive all the abuse? And, how long does it take to get red paint out of chest hair? 
Laurence: Watch it a dozen more times please. It seems to have been overshadowed in the hits stakes by our 'Republic of Banana' video. There was no way Hugo was going to take the abuse. I'm more versatile than him so I suffered for our art. Some of that slapping hurt. I was pissed off that I was going to have my chest waxed as I'm proud of my fur, the paint I wasn't worried about. How long did it take to wash out? Too long. I was ginger for a day.

Q: Your live show seems like a fantastical, wondrous party dependent on all your electronic gizmos functioning properly. Has your gear ever betrayed you on stage? 
Laurence: Plenty of times but I like the unpredictability of a live show. The worst thing you can see is a perfect live band. I once saw Linkin Park at Reading and it was like listening to a CD, not that I own any of their CDs. Yeah we've had stuff cut out on us but the bonus of being a new band is that nobody knows our music enough anyway to know it has gone wrong. I just dance harder.

Q: What's up with you Brits' tradition of crazy walks in music videos? It must take you guys forever to get down the street. 
Laurence: Hey where are you from? I didn't realise we were going international with this interview! Can we play in your country? The 'Found a Flat' walk was inspired by the Gondry video of 'Around the World' by Daft Punk. French, I'll have you know, but yeah I see the Madness thing going on, too. John Travolta knows the power of a good walk. We're tapping into that too. The best moment so far for me being in this band was having seen some kids at one of our shows doing that walk. It blew me away.

Q: Unicorns or Narwhals? Who would win in a fight? 
Laurence: Depends what territory. If the unicorn tried tackling a narwhal on its own turf it would probably drown. Likewise if the narwhal hit the land to tackle the unicorn it would resemble one of those slugs when people cruelly throw salt on them. I'm going for narwhal as unicorn is overdone. Especially on the T-shirts of East London homosexuals.


*Some quotes taken from their bio for the Found A Flat release on Split Records in 2013.

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