Band Spotlight: The Orielles

Not long after the release of their new full-length project ‘Disco Volador’ we spoke to one of the most unique and exciting bands in the UK right now about their origins, touring and what goes into making one of their records. Growing up in Halifax, did you originally struggle to get noticed as a band? I think initially, yes. It’s such a small place and at the time we were growing up there, there was a lack of live music venues and also not really a ‘scene’ as such to do things with other bands in a DIY sense. I think in a way though this meant that we had to really work hard and push ourselves to achieve things. We’d look outside of the town for shows and opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to us. For example, we really found a home in Sheffield and Leeds. We made friends with bands there and hung out and played way more shows in these places. I think people from Halifax seem to get offended when we get called a Manchester band, we all live in Manchester now and have done for a few years, but we like being referred to as a ‘Northern band’ because a lot of Northern towns and cities helped to shape us as a group and helped kickstart our career. Also, over the past 5 years we have lived in Halifax, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool so we’re all over the place! We formed pretty randomly to be honest, only Henry could actually play an instrument, Esme and Sidonie just decided to head over for the jam regardless and it went from there. We taught ourselves everything from playing, to setting up, to performing, to emailing gig promoters, to getting press! You guys were set to play a host of new festivals this summer as well as touring your new album ‘Disco Volador’, you must be pretty gutted? We feel pretty bummed to say the least! But every single band in the world is in the same position right now so we can’t let it get to us. There are other ways in which we are trying to keep up the momentum and keep pushing the record and other ways that we are using our creativity to keep busy. Just looking forward to the next time we can play live again, it’s going to be nuts! On the topic of the new album, the name is something that really interests me, What are its origins? So we initially had the working title as ‘Boogie to Space, Space to Boogie’ after a lot of coincidental moments happened during the writing and recording process, a lunar eclipse, the anniversary of the moon-landing and the anniversary of Eno’s ‘Apollo’. It wasn’t until Esme was playing with a frisbee that the name was really formed. It was written on the back of the frisbee, the Spanish translation for the object. After doing some more research we realised it fit with our concept so well! Not only does it translate as frisbee, but translates literally to ‘flying disc’ or ‘UFO’. The notion and feeling of ‘flying’ literally and metaphorically runs throughout the record. The concept of the album is so cool, did you take inspiration from anything when creating it? Was this a strenuous process? We took inspiration from a lot of different music as well as film, literature and just our surroundings and people. Like all creative endeavours, there are moments that are more strenuous and blocks or obstacles that need overcoming, but that is part of the process! To be honest, the majority of this process was straight forward and fell into place. I think this is because we had more of a vision for how we wanted it to sound than we did for the first one, so our ideas were easy to convey and make happen. What’s it like when The Orielles are in the studio? It’s fun as! Typical day looks like this; we wake up around 10am, get showered and breakfast down then begin live tracking at around 11:30. By 2 or 3pm we usually have a take that we’re happy with so break for lunch. We cook together in the studio and listen to jams in the kitchen which is chill. Adam, the studio cat, is around and chilling, usually trying to eat some scraps of leftover food. In the afternoon, we head into the control room and begin building on a track, adding keys and guitar before later moving onto vocals and percussion. We end the night with a lot of wine and start adding weird stuff to the mix! This is a really fun part of the night, around 2am things begin to get delirious and we get freaky with the production and ideas. Nights usually end with Youtube videos together or an episode of something. Do you think you’ve changed stylistically since Silver Dollar Moment? Yes, absolutely! It was a very natural change and progression. We had been listening to a lot of different music between releasing SDM and writing the new record and this enabled us to be more creative and experimental. We also had been practicing and learning as much as possible during this time so that we could really get our chops involved. Moving on to touring, how do you guys entertain yourselves when you’re on the road? It’s easy to pass the time when you’re surrounded by your best mates and people you love. We enjoy playing a game called ‘bangers’ in which we take turns playing songs that we all LOVE and consider being in banger territory. We also like charity shopping when we’re in different UK cities. Festivals are easy cos there’s so much going on that you can always discover something fun or just have a wander around. Lastly, what’s a memorable story to tell from a particular tour or festival? We had a lot of time to pass at Latitude festival a few years back so decided to play a huge game of ‘odds’ in the artist area. We got every single band there involved. It even got to the point where Esme was learning Jon Hopkins’ backing dancer routine haha.