Slaves Interview

With the release of their debut album this month, we had a chat with Isaac Holman from Slaves, to find out more about the duo’s raw and raucous sound.

Hi Isaac, how are you?
Very well, thanks. How you doing?

Great, thanks! Where in the world are you at moment?
Right now, I’m in Kent. I moved back here a couple of days ago because we’re spending so much time at festivals over the summer that there’s not much point renting somewhere in London.

‘Are You Satisfied’ is released on 29th May; is it a risk releasing such a bolshy and boisterous debut album?
When we first started, we brought out ‘Sugar Coated Bitter Truth’, which was every song we had. From then until now we’ve been sharpening our tools and finding our sound, and I think we’ve really found it now. It feels like this is our statement and what we want people to hear.

The punk-garage combination is so refreshing, but it resonates the politically-challenging sound of the 1970s and ‘80s. Are you hoping to do that with Slaves?
It’s more about personal politics, like, if you’re not happy then you should do something about it. It’s motivation music and doing something for yourself. A lot of people are calling us a punk band, but it’s not what we decided, it’s just the music that came out when Laurie and I got together.

What was it that brought you both together?
I used to play in a band and Laurie used to come and watch us. One night after a few beers he said to me “If you need a bassist, I’m your guy.” And then, funnily enough, we ended up getting rid of our bassist so I called Laurie and he joined the band. Then we both realised it wasn’t the direction we wanted to go in so we broke off and started Slaves. That was probably three-and-a-half years ago now.

We hear a lot about overnight successes that have actually taken years; how did it happen for you both?
We definitely didn’t pop up overnight; we’ve earned our place and worked really hard, slogged around, did the toilet circuit and played to no one. Our first ever practice, we both agreed that we wouldn’t be able to play a stage because it was so stripped back and DIY, but we kept going and got every gig we could get. That’s the best way to do it – you can’t expect it to come to you, you’ve got to chase it.

How does it feel now that ‘The Hunter’ is getting so much radio play?
It’s crazy. We never expected it to go this far. We started for a bit of a laugh and it was fun, so it’s amazing that it’s getting commercial success because that’s something we really didn’t expect.

Would you still be doing music if Slaves hadn’t happened?
Yeah, I think it’s in my make-up. It’s really natural and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. Even if I was in a band that wasn’t doing much, I would always be creating music.

Is there anywhere that you’d most like to play?
I feel like we’ve ticked off everything we wanted to do. We always said we wanted to do Jools Holland and we managed to do that last year, which was a dream come true. We love playing the massive stages, but the club nights and basements are still really good fun. We want to play as much as we can anywhere and everywhere.