San Cisco

London has recently welcomed Australian Indie band San Cisco with open arms. After BBM spent the evening at their gig in Soho, London, we ventured to Colombia Records to interview San Cisco. This young, fresh and funky sounding band creates sunshine in a song and has a big career ahead of them. San Cisco have already won 8 WAMIs (Aussie equivalent to the BRIT), San Cisco is sure to be a name you will see on festival line ups across Australia and the UK.

Hi guys how are you? We were at your gig on Tuesday night in Soho, which we loved so much! How have you found it performing in London?
Good thank you! We’ve only played one gig and we were a bit worried thinking that no one was going to turn up! It’s quite a nice little venue though.

How do you think the London crowd reacted to your gig and the sort of music you played?
We only had a half an hour set, so it was hard to really get stuck in straight away, but we didn’t know what the crowd expected from us and it was hard to interact with them as they were a lot lower down than we were from the stage. It happened really quickly and it’s the first time that we’ve played for people that we didn’t really know how they would react.

Have you had a great reception on all of your tours? How do you like London, is this your first time?
Not all of us have been here before, for some of us it’s our first time, but it’s the first time as a band.

How do you all know each other and where did you first all meet?
Well Jordi and I have known each other for a while, and the three boys all went to school together. Jordi, he won some recording time as part of a competition and he kind of called on all of his friends to come and play on it, and we formed the band from there.

So you were originally called King George a few years back, why the change?
We didn’t really like that name, it was suited to the kind of folkish/ acoustic music that we were making at the time. The name sort of came about because we wanted to play new kinds of music, we were listening to a bit more and we thought that King George’s didn’t really suit anymore; we just wanted a make-over. I don’t think anyone actually really liked that name, it just kind of stuck!

You have quite a unique sound; do you draw inspiration from other bands? Who influences you most?
We all listen to different stuff so when we all get together and write songs it all makes sense with different influences from different people.

Who should our readers be listening to from Australia? How do you separate yourselves from other bands that have a similar following?
The music is more ‘sunny’, and just generally more upbeat that’s released in Australia, whereas over here it’s more serious.

What music do you listen to at home when you’re chilling out?
Gorillaz, The Strokes, The Black Keys.

You have just been nominated for three ARIA awards, which is a massive achievement, and you have also picked up 8 WAMI’s which are your equivalent to BRITS, what do you want to achieve next?
Yeah we’ve been nominated but we won’t win, it’s cool that we’ve been nominated though. It’s literally come straight off the single, we wouldn’t necessarily put ourselves in the same category as the other artists that have been nominated though, and some of the artists are on another level.

Your debut album is set for release with Fat Possum Records at the end of next month, and with Colombia next year, how has it been making your first album?
Well the 3rd December were doing an EP for here, so not for a while, then the album will be next year sometime, maybe January. It’s all different releases dates it’s pretty weird trying to get your head around it all. It’s different in Australia, then it’s different in the UK and then it’s different again for America.

If you could collaborate with any artist who would it be?
We’re probably too new on the scene to have anyone featuring or collaborating with anyone, but maybe ‘Snakadaktal’. To have them come and sing some parts would be pretty cool. Or we wanted to do a cover of ‘Roses’ by Andre 3000-Outkast, that’d be good too with other Aussie Indie bands, but we never really got round to doing it. Maybe not writing songs together because that’d be pretty tough, but maybe having guest vocals to come and feature on the songs, that’d be cool, that’d be really cool.

Did you have much input into the production of the video for your track awkward? It’s very modern and simplistic?
We dressed ourselves, it was pretty hands on, and we just wanted something simple as a new band. We normally do videos where we’re just frolicking about, so we had to kind of force ourselves to do something a bit more stylised.

What else can we expect from you guys over the next year or so? Hopefully you’ll be back in the UK for the massive festival season next year?
I think we’ll be back around January, February, March time for a tour possibly we don’t know. We’ve got America where were playing, SCJ, New York, L.A, Minneapolis, then we’re home for a week where we film our video, and then were going on a national tour for our album, that comes out in November. Then we have the summer that’s the most fun because of all the festivals and stuff. We’ll be bouncing around between the UK and America for all the festivals.

What Australian Festivals are you playing?
I don’t think were allowed to say!? We’re doing Homebake, that line-ups been released already, and were doing Rocket, that’s when we get home, that’s the scary one; it’s just one big stage that all the bands share!

Cheers guys, good luck with the rest of your tours. Nice to have you in London.

By Frankie Salt

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