London-based, Scots-leaning four-piece Flutes have evolved/formed from previous acts Runner and Pushboxer (both possibly familiar to readers of Jockrock and isthismusic.com)

Here, we let them answer the questions crucial to any band, in their own words…

Who?

Andrew James Bruce (bass guitar, vocals, piano, organ, guitar)
Alex Louis Walker (drums, vocals)
Robert James Marshall (guitar, piano, vocals)
Godfrey Charlie Donal McFall (vocals, guitar)

When?

We have been writing and recording as a four-piece since 2007; however, in some form or another have been playing music together since 2001. I used to write some music with Andy at university and then met Rob in 2005 which was when we started to write and perform our songs in public a lot more Rob and I formed a band with Alex in 2006 where the focus was: play as many gigs as you can, as loud as you can, as fast as you can, dance a lot, drink a lot and drive a massive rickety schoolbus up and down the country. Frankly we had no idea what we were doing but we had come great fun doing it.

When Andy joined the band in the summer of 2007 we started to get a little more structure around our approach and in 2009 we decided we should probably try to put an album together…that took a little longer than we’d anticipated.

Where?

I’m not sure I ever thought we’d ever actually release a collection of songs that we could all say we’re proud of. We’ve had so many false starts and near misses that it felt inevitable that something minor but sufficiently annoying would come between us and actually recording this album.

We opted to record at Chem 19 in Blantyre as many of our favourite bands (Mogwai, Arab Strap, Twilight Sad etc) have recorded there. Having only recorded a handful of demos and a couple of singles, none of us would claim to be an expert in the studio so it was a blessing that we landed upon our now close friend and producer extraordinaire Jamie Savage. I’d always read about the impact a producer can have although had not properly appreciated it until we were dancing around at 4am in the morning screaming Robert Burn’s poetry over what has now become my favourite track on the album, a song called Kilburn. We made sure we gave ourselves enough time and freedom to produce the most interesting versions of the songs we could and I’m so pleased with what we ended up with.

What?

It’s strange that you’ve asked us to describe ourselves in five words as we decided the best way to help Jamie (Savage, producer at Chem 19) and us focus throughout the recording process was to draw out five words that we could all agree most appropriately described our music:

– Warm
– Unsettling
– Big
– Bold
– Beautiful (in parts)

Our first single Auld Archie came out on 10th September
Our next single Sand comes out on Monday 5th November
Our debut album Flutes is released on Monday 3rd December

Why?

This is pretty simple – because we have to. It’s a genuine compulsion. We have considered breaking this band up about 70 times but we always end up longing for it. We’re not really young anymore and have plenty of other commitments that contend with the band for our time, however I expect we’ll be writing songs together for a good while longer.

Oh and I like writing songs about love, old people and old people in love.

More at the soundcloud page, below, at www.facebook.com/flutesband, or follow the band at twitter.com/uptheflutes