Kinesis - Interviewed

25 October 2002

Kinesis Interview
Contactmusic.com spoke to Conor from the band Kinesis

Contactmusic.com spoke to Conor from the band Kinesis.

How are you doing?
Not bad thanks, well we only got up about an hour ago!

So how did Kinesis come about?
Well the other 3 members which are Michael who sings and plays guitar, Tom who plays Bass & Neil who plays drums, they all went to school together and I grew up living around the corner from Mike so we were all friends so we decided to form a band, it wasn't really hard to find one an other because there aren't too many people who love music in Bolton, so it happened really naturally for us when forming the band.

How long have you been a band for?
2 years last month in fact so it's all quite new everything seems to be happening rather quickly and its all still rather exciting.

Were any of you in a band before Kinesis?
No Kinesis was a first for all of us, we were only 15-16 when we first formed this band.

So many 15 -16 year olds want to form a band but non of them seam to get anywhere, How did it all happen for you?
A lot of it was just getting off our arses and getting on with it we didn't expect to play local gigs in Bolton and expect A&R men to come and watch us, we took it upon our selves to get down to London because the music industry is so centralized that the only way we would have got spotted was by going to London, so we went down in our summer holidays and played a load of gigs. I don't think bands will get anywhere unless they take things upon themselves to get there.

Kinesis Interview ed @ www.contactmusic.com
Kinesis Interview ed @ www.contactmusic.com
For people who haven't heard Kinesis's music how would you best describe your sound?
I think we are kind of a mixture of all our influences kind of post pixies/pop/rock .. well not even pop rock . its hard rock with good melodies. I don't think you ought to be ashamed to write a good melody everybody loved The Beatles or Oasis and that is because they have songs you can sing along to. For people to write music that is deliberately obscure, I don't think that makes you anymore worth while as a musician than someone who can write a killer melody.

How do you go about writing music? Who usually comes up with the basic idea for a new track?
It's myself and Mike who write a lot of the basic music but then we all have a hand in it so if someone brings an idea in to a practice then as a band we will work it out together, It's never just one person writing any one song Michael and Tom write a lot of the Lyrics, as it most definitely is a group writing process, we are definitely not a dictatorship more of a democracy, we will try anything once and everyone's opinion is as valid as another persons.

Do you use a computer to do any of your demo recordings?
We have tried it a couple of times (recording demo's on computers) but now we have a record deal we can afford to go into a little demo studio and do our songs there. We have tried recording tracks on laptops "the quality was pretty good", it can save a lot of hassle when doing demos. The Streets album was recorded in his bedroom and it's like better than anything else that is out at the moment. People should embrace new technology, the whole garage rock thing seems to be coming back, to use vintage gear, but I think its good to have a mixture of both sides, using the old techniques but at the same time embracing new technology.

Where do you see Kinesis fitting in with today's music scene?
I'm not too sure about this, we have been on tour with so many different bands we were on tour with Biffy Clyro and Hell is For Heroes, we were quite suited to them they were almost like our piers we have also been on tour with Queen Adreena who are like Goth Rock and now we are with The beatings who are Garage Rock but next we are going on tour with Hundred Reasons who are EMO and I don't think we really fit into any of those categories, hopefully we can detach ourselves from any kind of scene and just exist on our own. I think that a lot of bands unless you are on the forefront of the music scene the 'brit pop' will be dragged into a scene and it will be the death of them but if you can stand out on your own you can grow along the way.
If we ever do make it big which I hope we do we will have all the ground work, like we have done all the little gigs in a ford fiesta so we will always remember where we came from and we haven't just had someone else do it for us, we appreciate what we have now because we have done a lot of uncomfortable tours in the backs of transit vans and things like that so when we got a van with a TV it was a huge luxury for us, we just appreciate everything we get, but now we have a TV and a play station so it's like we are living the life of Riley!


What are your ambitions as a band?
Hopefully just to make the band as big as it can be on our own terms so we don't know, we wouldn't call it a day if we told like a million albums we would try and get our music out to as many people as possible its just about pushing ourselves and making sure we don't fail.

What is in your CD player at the moment?
We have hundred reasons in at the moment because we are touring with them next month, I listen to The Streets and standard stuff like The Pixies and trail of Dead quite a lot of different stuff.

Who chose the name Kinesis?
Well it is defined as a movement in response to a stimulus so we wanted to do that ourselves create a stimulus, the hardest thing about being in a band is choosing the name!

Who was the last band you watched live and thought were amazing?
Oceansize, I remember seeing Oceansize and I came back from the gig wanting to give up the guitar, I was trying to write songs the day after and everything I did was pale in comparison to their music. They were they last band I watched and they really blew me away.


If someone comes to see Kinesis Live what can they expect?
Playing live at the minute is where we make more sense, because we haven't recorded a full album yet. Live is where you will capture the essence of Kinesis and also a lot of our energy, the songs may not be note perfect but there is a spectacle as well as sound, hopefully its quite a focused energy, we are releasing quite a lot of our things but I hope we do it in a positive way.

Kinesis will be playing at these venues with Hundred Reasons

28/10/02 UEA, Norwich
29/10/02 Leeds Cliff Hall, Folkestone
30/10/02 Guildhall, Southampton
01/11/02 Barrowlands, Glasgow
02/11/02 Octogon, Sheffield
03/11/02 University, Newcastle
04/11/02 Academy, Birmingham
06/11/02 Rock City, Nottingham
07/11/02 Academy, Manchester
08/11/02 Brixton Academy, London
10/11/02 Cardiff University
11/11/02 Exeter University
12/11/02 Bristol Academy

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