Modestep Interview

With a new album out 25th May, we speak to multi-genre quartet, Modestep, about their obvious London influences, touring the festival circuit this European summer and how they spend their time on the road.

How are you feeling about the release of ‘London Road’?
We can’t wait for it to just be out. We’ve been sat on the records for about 8 or 9 months now and we just want people to hear it.

How did you approach the second album? Is it a follow-up to ‘Evolution Theory’ or an entirely new project?
We consider this (London Road) to be our first album and we’re calling it ‘Chapter 1’. The first one was a bit of a botch job, to be honest. So we took a year out, sat down and worked on a record that we’re really proud of and gave us a bit of an identity as a band. This is what we always wanted to write, but we didn’t have the time, the resources or the knowhow last time.

There’s a mix of urban, electronic and metal on the album; is this a result of all of your different styles and tastes put together?
Yeah, it’s a combination of what we listen to and have listened to but as well as that, it’s what we’ve learned from our live shows, and touring it for three years kind of gave us an insight into the sound we really wanted to push on the record. I feel like when you’ve been touring with a whole live band for three years, it gives you a knowledge of what to give a crowd to make them do certain things in terms of the reactions and responses you want. It’s an album that sums up our live experience over the last three years.

You’ve unveiled most if not all of the tracks on your Soundcloud; what was the influence behind this?
To be honest, we couldn’t wait any longer for anyone to hear the music! Because radio doesn’t support us, and TV doesn’t really support us in any way, we needed another way to publicise our music. With our 4 million subscribers on our Soundcloud, we felt like there was no better way to get it into people’s hands. So instead of, The Prodigy for example, streaming their album start to finish on iTunes, we already have 4 million people ready to hear this, so why not? We’ve been leaking out the tunes one by one and on the last one, you can buy the full album. This week alone we hit half a million plays.

The album’s coming out just in time for the start of the European festival season; where are you most looking forward to playing?
It’s got to be Reading and Glastonbury. At Reading, we’re playing the main stage which is a bit of a frightening prospect because we’ve only ever done tents there before! It’s our first real big main stage festival performance I think. We’ve done main stages, but not like Reading. So yeah… shitting our pants over that one.

Is there anywhere in the world that you haven’t played that you’d most like to?
South America! We’ve got a really big fanbase in South America and have done for about five years. I don’t know why it is, maybe it’s because it costs a lot to go there and there’s not many places you can tour and all that. We really want to go there because we know the party atmosphere over there is like nowhere else in the world, and we have a really big fanbase over there, so why not?

What sort of things do you all get up to on the road besides the shows?
We kind of just get fucked and play video games! We’re constantly working, but when we have a bit of free time it’s mainly just FIFA.

As the album is heavily influenced by London culture and music, we’d like to know your favourite:

Music Venue in London
Before it got knocked down, it was The Astoria. One that’s still open? Fabric.

Pub/Bar in London
I like Garlic and Shots in Soho. They do all different kinds of shots… They do like 300 different types of shots! It’s a right metal hole though. It stinks! It’s a proper dive bar. It’s all horror related and all the shots are too – there’s a zombie propped up against the bar! It’s tiny and they just play death metal. It’s awesome!

Street in London
I guess it would have to be London Road!

‘London Road’ is out 25th May on Max Records in conjunction with INgrooves.