Hollie Carr speaks to Kubichek! ahead of their set at the Freshers’ Ball…
the interview
After springing from the remnants of various other bands in 2004, Kubichek! have been making waves of epic proportions across the North-East with their catchy lyrics, incessant riffs and downright cracking live shows. I caught up with Al from the band on the eve of their toughest gig yet; playing to a few thousand Durham freshers, the bodies of whom will most likely be filled to the brim with poisonous Klute music, sheer enthusiasm for uni life and no doubt a smattering of cheap wine, at the Freshers’ Ball in Yarm. Hopefully Kubichek!’s quirky take on the all-too-often clichéd indie-pop-punk band can infiltrate the alcohol fuelled daze…
The Interview
Hey guys, how’s the proverbial and constantly undefined “it” going?
‘It’ is going well, although I have earache and toothache at the same time, which isn’t very nice, but aside from that, everything’s lovely!

First off, how did the opening night at the Carling Academy go? I guess that must have been a pretty big night for you.
Obviously the night was built up about the opening of the venue and people will talk about how important it is to the city, but the best thing was sharing a bill with Field Music and The Futureheads, especially in such a massive room. We didn’t seem to be too nervous about it all, I think we’re slowly getting used to playing venues that size. Suppose we better had really!

What did you make of the new venue? Is it going to slowly but surely kill off some of the smaller venues in Newcastle?
I don’t see how it can as people will always want to go to gigs in small venues and a lot bands won’t ever be able to fill the rooms in the Academy, especially not the main hall. I’m not sure of their policy of bookings for the Academy 2, whether or not they’ll let local acts in, so there’s always going to be room for The Cluny or wherever, in my humble.

You’re pretty well known in North East by now, at least a name people have definitely heard of. Any nerves about spreading your wings and playing a lot further a field with Editors next month? How did that support slot come about?
We’ve played out of the region quite a lot over the past year, we see this as being one of the most important things to do, development wise – it’s a massive challenge trying to win a packed room of people over when they’ve only heard one tune on the radio or even know nothing about you whatsoever. Playing with Editors should be fun, they’re a great band with some excellent songs. We were asked to do it by The Fly, who are the backing of the tour – they run all the venues.

If most people were asked about the sound coming out of the North East right now, besides a clamour of “why aye man” and the wails of the ghost of Geoff from Byker Grove, people would probably think of the punky pop sounds of Maximo Park and The Futureheads, possibly with a bit of the industrial type of noise of Peace Burial at Sea if they were in the know but your sound seems pretty unique to come from the North East at the moment. Discuss.
Geoff is dead!? Some of us are clearly out of touch… What about Spuggy?
Anyway, back on subject… I think sometimes we do have similar elements in our music of all 3 bands mentioned – the pop sensibilities of Maximo Park, the jerkyness of The Futureheads and the joyous racket of PBAS, but I think it’s the fact that we try to put all 3 together at once that maybes makes it stand out. I don’t think the The Futureheads sound anything like Maximo Park to be honest.

Which other local bands would you tell people to look out for?
On behalf of the other lads, I’d say we’re all into the likes of This Aint Vegas, DARTZ!, We Start Fires, Lachrymose One, Field Music, The Catweasels, The Motorettes, Spraydog, Paper Cut Out and Ever Since The Lake Caught Fire

So, you’re playing the Durham Uni Freshers’ Ball tomorrow. Do you realise you have to follow in the footsteps of Busted and Javine who went on to be the UK’s entry for the Eurovision song contest. Do you think you can handle the challenge? What should freshers’ expect from you?
This is all news to us – we weren’t aware that Busted had ever played there. How well did they go down I wonder? It’s quite worrying cos if they did, we’ve got no chance! We’re gonna have to get another rehearsal in to tighten up our star jumps! Buggar! I think the Freshers will be quite happy to see something a little more home-grown and honest than the rest of the bill. I’m seriously worried now though!

You’ve so far shared a stage with the Futureheads, Nine Black Alps, ¡Forward Russia !, Resjetson, Tom Vek, Maximo Park and, ahem, Fightstar among other impressive names (maybe we won’t include Fightstar in that…). Are you excited about sharing a stage with S Club 7′s Jo, The Honeyz, Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon at the Freshers’ Ball? Won’t you scare them by showing them an actual instrument and not a backing tape?
The best thing is that we’ll have all the stage for us I think, and we get a decent sound check! It’ll be interesting being placed alongside the pop stars of yesteryear, but I don’t think we’ll think anything of it, we’ll just play as normal and see how it goes down. It is a warped bill though, I can’t get my head around it – the last freshers gig we did was with Goldie Lookin Chain, Bez and The Others – at least there we had some elements in common.

Are there any plans at the moment for Fantastic Plastic to put any more of your records out?
There are yes and we’re happy to be working with them again – we’re releasing our 2nd single Taxi on the 12th December. We should be getting the promos back soon and we’re making the video in the next few weeks.

Both you and Field Music are playing the Gonzo Bandwagon tour which has previously launched bands such as the Coral and even Maximo Park themselves on to bigger and better things. Surely you must have more than a tiny bit of excitement bottled up like a hand grenade inside of you?
We did ours on Sunday gone and it was ace – the interview was odd, mainly cos of the ridiculous heat being generated by the lighting, but the gig was amazing. We were only made aware of Maximo having done the same leg of the tour as us during the interview so I suppose it made us think ‘what if’ before we played. I think if our year ahead follows anything near a similar path to theirs then everyone involved would be more than content.

You’re also playing Durham Uni’s students union on 14th November with Dogs. Why should people who haven’t heard you before come and see you?
Finding new music is one of the greatest things in my life, bands and music can completely change a persons outlook and ideas – and if the chance of this is on your doorstep, then why not? If you don’t like it, there’s bar in the venue and another band following us! If you
do, then there you, it was worth leaving the house after all.

“Indie” or “alternative” music is possibly more popular with mainstream audiences than it has ever been before but yet it still seems just as hard as ever for bands such as yourself to get noticed outside of the local area. Does this piss you off?
We have been noticed a fair bit, but our strategy on a national level has been quite well planned – we’ve needed room to develop over the last 6 months so I suppose there’s no point in going all out straight away if you’re not 100% yet, as people will just dismiss you and it takes a long time to get audiences to give you a second chance. After the Editors tour and into the New Year, I’m hoping we’ll be away twice as much as we have been so far.

I’ve probably collected about an album’s length of your songs off various places on the internet, mainly after being pointed in the direction of them from your very website. Does this mean you’re pro file-sharing or do you still have reservations? Are the BPI and RIAA right to sue file sharers? Didn’t they say home taping would kill music? Look what happened there… Music’s still breathing.
We need to have our demos in circulation so that more and more people can try us out, and the best way for us to do that is to let people know where to find them ourselves. These are demos and we want them to be shared and we want people to discover us – they cost us nothing to make so no one is losing out. What pisses me off is when you see someone selling a compilation of our demos on eBay for a fiver. We went to the trouble to burn off, print a cover and post a CD to someone on their request, and a few months later they try and make money off it? It’s disgusting!

What’s a “kubichek”? Where would I find one? Or is it a verb? If I was to “kubichek” what would I be doing?
Kubichek! as a verb? Whatever next! It’s the name of someone we know – it just had a great ring to it when the lads brought it up and we all agreed on it.

Kubichek!’s website