By now, festival season is just over the horizon and it is
not uncommon to see a new wave of acts hitting the road to showcase their
material. Indie five-piece Fuzzy Sun are no anomaly to this. Having recently
played a string of European dates in February, the band were set to continue their
momentum with a headline UK tour in May and a corresponding number of new
releases. With the implementation of a
nationwide lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, many of the band’s
plans have been put on hold indefinitely. We spoke to frontman Kyle Ross to
gain a greater insight into what life is like as a band in lockdown.
S] Firstly, how are you coping with all of this?
Not too bad to be honest, I’m just bored. I just don’t know
how long it’s going to go on for, that’s the thing lingering in my head, I just
want to know when it’s gonna stop.
S] You guys were all set to go on a headline UK tour in May, what’s happening with that now?
‘The tour is hopefully getting rearranged and we hope to
have that sorted for September, it’s really frustrating, but I suppose it’s
better than not being able to play at all’
‘With the new releases coming out, we were hoping to build
momentum before the tour, but to be honest with you we have an absolute
shedload of songs, all written and demoed, so it’s just a case of putting those
out and hopefully getting a nice push from them.’
‘This does mean we can release more music later on in the
year and tie it in with the next tour in September, so its swings and
roundabouts, we just have to keep writing.
S] With the summer coming up, this would have been the perfect chance for you to do some festivals, have you had any news about that?
‘We didn’t have a lot of festival bookings unfortunately,
but with everything getting cancelled it hasn’t really affected us too much.
‘We’re awaiting confirmation on a few later on in the year that we haven’t announced yet, they’re really cool festivals as well so fingers crossed that we can still play them.’
S] I’ve noticed you have been very active on your social media as of late, how else have you been keeping busy?
We’ve been able to keep quite busy to be honest, we did an
isolation gig for ‘Jimmy’s Live’ over on their Instagram page and I’ll probably
do a few live acoustic sets soon.’
‘Also, we’ve been working on song covers together that our
followers have suggested, so that’s all been good fun.’
‘It’s allowed us to get some music videos edited too.’
‘Most days I’ve just been getting up and sitting with my
guitar to write new music and correct pre-existing music and making it perfect,
we’re hoping to maybe do some collabs with other bands at some point.’
It’s been a bit of a blessing in disguise in some ways,
we’re creating lots of content while we can’t do anything else.’
S] You mentioned you’ve been writing new music, how has this been possible without face-to-face interaction?
‘It’s a long-winded process of being in the room or studio
together essentially,’
‘If I have an idea I’ll bell George up and tell him an idea
for a tune and send him the project and then he can open it and add his parts
to it and so on.’
‘We are planning on
doing an acoustic album, where we take some of our best tunes and put that spin
on them, we’ll be able to do that from the comfort of our own homes, it would
be great to get something out.’
‘It’s not the same cause it’s not as immediate, when we are
all writing in the room together, I might hear Lou play a bassline and I can
say ‘I like it but why don’t we add this?’ whereas now we don’t really have
that dynamic where everyone can throw in ideas.’
S] What would the band have been doing this week if we weren’t in lockdown?’
‘When the lockdown got announced, we planned to go to Sweden
to film a new music video, we would have been there right now!’
‘A couple of lads
from Sweden came over to Barcelona to meet us on the Inhaler tour, and they
were really buzzing about doing a video with us and unfortunately that didn’t
play out.’
‘For the release of one of our new singles ‘A Modern Kind Of Blue’ later this month, we’ve actually managed to do a quarantine style music video with those guys and it looks really good.’
S] As one of the UK’s biggest new bands, do you feel this pandemic has caused you to lose momentum?
‘The live gigs is something where it’s a very different
experience to hearing us on our record, and I think those shows are really good
for keeping that momentum up as it’s a different medium and format for
listening to the music, it’s what people love.’
‘That momentum does get stifled, but it’s just like what
we’ve been doing on Instagram, you have to try and emulate it the best you can
and keep playing songs.’
‘We might have slowed down a bit but in the digital age we
live in, especially with music, there are ways around it.’
S] Lastly, away from the music side of things, I know you guys are big football fans, how are you coping without it?
‘Well, I’m a Manchester City fan so I’m pretty buzzing cause
at least Liverpool haven’t won the league.’
‘I was worried as well because our tour fell on the night of
the Champions League final and if we (City) would have got there, no one would
have come to our gig.’
‘I am really missing footie, but I’m glad our band hasn’t
been affected by it as well.’
Despite being on lockdown, the band are set to release two new singles later this month, ‘Warm Nights’ on the 8th and ‘A Modern Kind Of Blue’ on the 22nd of April respectively. Both will be available to stream on all major platforms.
Words: Owen Thompson
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