In conversation with Mystery Jets
Always the Sun Festival comes to Guildford’s Stoke Park on the 10th & 11th of September for two days of the finest music, theatre, arts, crafts, food, drink and family fun. We caught up with Blaine Harrison, front-man of headliners Mystery Jets, who released their highly acclaimed 5th album, Curve of the Earth, earlier this year.
You released Curve of the Earth earlier this year after some time off – how has it been getting back on the road and playing your new tunes?
It feels great to be out on the road again. We’ve had a couple of years out. I’ve always loved both sides of the process as much as the other.
I absolutely love getting lost in ‘studio world’ and making a record and writing and obsessing over that but equally the flipside of it which is very much what we’re in now is incredibly exciting and having not done festivals for the last couple of summers I think we’re all just feeling really pumped about getting out and playing to as many people as possible.
It feels like there’s been a real sense of new people coming across us through them discovering our new record and hearing stuff on the radio and equally having that part of the crowd who like what you do and have an expectation of you; that’s a great challenge to provide something for those people that they haven’t seen before – I love festivals.
You headline Always The Sun Festival this September and your summer is filled with festivals – with the release of your new album earlier this year, what are your sets consisting of at the moment – a mix of old and new?
The last week or so we’ve been in quite lengthy discussions with the guys in the band about what a festival set needs to be and about how far you can take people into where you are now and how much do you need to keep one foot in the door where you’ve come from.
I think festivals really are about uniting people, it’s kind of what I’ve always loved about them. It’s your chance to win over new people as well as giving something to your fans that have followed you for years and they’ve got particular favourites that they love hearing. I think it’s about making those two worlds meet and I feel like we’ve crafted a festival set now which I think does that in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re just playing your most well-known songs with a couple of newbies chucked in, it feels like it has the peaks and troughs that we would put into a set at one of our own shows.
It’s almost a reappraisal of some of our older material but put through the filters of the band we are today. We’ve got Jack who’s our new bass player and I think the way we play now, I feel we’re more animated than we have been in years. We use the stage a lot, it’s not about a fancy light show, I think it’s all about us interacting with each other and carrying that through all the songs, old and new. It’s all about having that interaction with each other and with the audience as well.
Does your rider include any extravagances?
Lots of synthetic meat products seemed to have ended up on our rider. Three of us, occasionally four, our ex-meat eaters, so we kind of go in for all the Linda McCartney veggie range and the whole Quorn range at one time or another. It’s a real mezze platter at the moment. And we stress that all beverages and all ales are locally sourced, we try to specify within a 1 mile radius of the venue. Preferably brewed on site is what we’re going for!
Do you have any experiences of Guildford or being in and around Surrey?
I went to art school, just down the road in Kingston and lots of my friends are from round there. It’s a lovely part of the world. In the sixties it seemed to be where all the rock stars used to buy their houses. You drive around places like Haslemere and Liphook (where I have friends) and it’s a beautiful part of the world. When I was at Uni there we used to go out a lot, lots of camping trips around there, so I know it well.