Band Interview: Bison Face
Games Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are pleased to bring you an interview with Ernie, the main songwriter and frontman of grungy rock band, Bison Face!
How did you get started as a band?
It started as me just writing and demoing about 5 or so songs while I was doing some session work and bandless at the end of 2018; Those ideas eventually became the first bunch of tracks for Bison Face. I’ve known Alex for a long time so when he moved back up from Brighton we started jamming the ideas together, and we went through a few rhythm section changes for several months. Alex grew up knowing Jonny, and instantly was like “Dude, we need this guy, he plays like Grohl”. We found Arthur in February this year after he heard us talking shop in the bar he works in. It all finally clicked into place from there.
How would you describe your sound?
We’re a loud grungy guitar band that ran out of petrol and stopped at a desert gas station in space. “Tatooine Grunge”, that’s going to be my new description, I’ve just decided.
What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?
The core influences are bands like Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpins, Radiohead and QOTSA. But there are a huge number of influences smattered across the tracks; Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Muse, The Durutti Column, there’s even some John Williams floating about in there. Blur were a big influence growing up too.
When I started playing guitar I was teaching myself by ear and I developed this weird hybrid of the Nirvana power chords and the Stooges/Jimmy Page frenetic loose playing.
Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?
For us so far they’ve helped us, our debut single has done better than we could have hoped on those platforms, but there’s pros and cons; I think they are great tools for spreading the word and people having access to your music from all over the world, but obviously from a business sense, streaming doesn’t really help the artists financially, so it can be a struggle to fund things yourselves. I don’t really remember a time when it hadn’t dominated the industry already, growing up I bought CDs all the time and I buy records I like on vinyl but there aren’t a lot who do anymore.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?
I don’t think I ever really switch off. Being outdoors is great, I’ve been fully utilising the daily allowance for outdoor exercise by going on hikes most days. I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading more and getting a lot of art done, which has been a nice change of pace from the usual ‘trying to cram everything into a working day’ routine. And drinking whiskey, that’s happened a lot…
What are your future plans musically? Tours?
We’ve got an EP which is ALMOST fully recorded, but obviously the lockdown has delayed things somewhat. As soon as the measures lift a little we’ll get that finished, released and then we’ll be out playing shows again. We’ve got a lot of new material that’s come out of the isolation so it’ll be fun to incorporate some new tricks into our live arsenal. We never even got to play a release show for the debut single, so there will have to some sort of ‘lockdown lift/ladybird belated release’ gig locally.
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