Unknown Era

Unknown Era - Photo by Akor O.S Opaluwa

How did you all meet?
I met Josh, the bassist and Lewis, the guitarist in school. We’ve been best mates for eight years now. I then met Gaz at The Maze, he introduced us to everybody else in the band and it all came together from there.

How would you describe Unknown Era’s sound to someone who hadn’t heard you before?
Gypsy, reggae, ska, hip hop, dancey music.

Was this fusion-mashup style planned with setting up the band, or did it happen more naturally?
It was completely natural. The songs we play now were originally written in a ska/reggae style like the kind of stuff I do solo, but as soon as we involved the rest of the band, because of all their individual influences, it just took off into something we didn’t really expect. Andy is a jazz drummer, Laurence is into gypsy and swing music, Josh is into blues, I’m into hip hop and reggae, so it just merged into the sound we have now.

Where do you draw your influences from?
It depends on the genre – With reggae it would be Bob Marley, stereotypically, for gypsy it would be Balkan Beat Box, Tomer Yosef, for hip hop Wu Tang Clan, and Jeff Buckley is a big influence of mine as well.

Does having so many members make it difficult to organise rehearsals and recording time?
Sometimes, there’s a few members, that I won’t name, that are very difficult to organise.

What are the different strengths that each of you bring to the table?
Josh is amazing at writing music and form, but I’d say I’m the best song writer. Andy and Laurence are both good at organising the structure of the songs and doing the breakdowns. Gaz has got the knowledge, he’s the band manager and is sort of like our dad, but everyone is great at their own individual things.

Who would you say your most mischievous band member is?
Me and Gaz are pretty much the party animals of the band, but Molly is on a whole different level – she’ll go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday morning, so it’s probably not fair to put her in the same category as us.

Unknown Era - Photo by Akor O.S Opaluwa
 

You recently, successfully, raised money on Kickstarter to fund your EP and merchandise. Did you expect to raise as much as you did?
No, not even close. We around raised 1,400 and the target was 1,000. For the first week it was going really fast, but then it started to slow down and I thought we might not even make it at all, but in the last couple of days it whizzed straight up to 1,400 and we were over the moon. We have even got a band credit card now!

There were some pretty interesting ‘rewards’ going for Kickstarter backers, such as ‘Kane will get your name tattooed on his body’ for £500 and over. Would you go any further than that in order to raise money for the good of the band?
Getting someone’s name tattooed on me is quite far as it is, but if someone threw me an idea… I mean I’m pretty crazy, a few of us are, so I’m sure we would be down for certain things.

The band is still young, but you seem to have caught a fair bit of attention already, did you expect to have this much support so early on?
No, we’ve basically got as far I have done in two years with my solo work in about six or seven months, so I didn’t expect it at all.

How do you plan to keep pushing things further?
Well, the songs on our EP now are all songs I had written even before the band got together, so we haven’t had much of a chance yet to work on something ourselves. This EP is sounding amazing, so I can’t wait to actually sit down and write an album together, I can’t even imagine how good it’s going to be.

You recently headlined The Great Notts Show in Market Square, how did it feel to play a gig in the very heart of your hometown?
Amazing, I didn’t expect it to be that good of a turnout. I was there for most of the day with Motormouf as he was hosting and it wasn’t really that busy, but as soon as we started playing it was like everybody all of a sudden got dragged into the city centre, it was packed, there was a really good energy.

Unknown Era - Photo by Akor O.S Opaluwa

What do you love about Nottingham’s music scene?
The relationships everybody has with each other. If you go to London, they have got an amazing music scene but nobody is really together or has those same kind of relationships. Here everyone knows everybody, everyone works together and looks after each other, it’s brilliant, it’s like a little family.

What’s the best gig you’ve played so far?
We played in Hull with Counting Coins at the Adelphi, it was completely sold out and wall to wall with people moshing, crowd surfing and trying to climb on stage, there was sweat dripping from the ceiling. We had so much love showed to us after the set, and while on stage, a forty year old woman asked me to impregnate her...

What would you say has been your biggest achievement so far?
Probably the EP and how quickly we got it done to say we’ve not even been together for that long, and definitely the Kickstarter as well because that blew all of our minds.

Can you tell us what we can expect from the EP?
The EP is like a mish mash of everything. Some of it is personal to me but it’s also easy for everyone else to relate to. There’s songs about Nottingham and songs about going out on the weekend, getting in trouble and being naughty. Emily has got a great song on there too. We are having an EP Launch at Rough Trade on Saturday 7 November and it’s free entry. We’re being supported by Ghekko (if you don’t already know who he is research him) and a new Nottingham reggae/ska band called Fusionistic. We’ll also be having an after party at The Maze where each member of the band will be doing a DJ set which will be good because you’ll be able to hear all of our individual styles through our sets.

Is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?
Buy the EP, buy our merchandise and keep coming to our gigs and supporting us. If you haven’t seen us already, then come and watch us play because you will get addicted. Also, myself and a few other members of the band have some solo projects going on which you can find through our Facebook page. 

Unknown Era are playing at Rough Trade on Saturday 7 November to celebrate the launch of their debut EP. Doors are 7pm - 11pm, entry is free. 

Unknown Era on Facebook