The Balance
Quade: Are a Bristol based band who are already making an impact by word of mouth. Their first release The Balance can be heard via the usual streaming services, you also may of heard their music at the Dior fashion show in Paris.
Intrigued ?
We heard about Quade thanks to a guy called Andy -from Artists First a creative collective celebrating its 30th year. I caught up with Quades Tom Connolly over a coffee to talk about their music and how their sound ended up on the catwalk
Quade: Are a Bristol based band who are already making an impact by word of mouth. Their first release The Balance can be heard via the usual streaming services, you also may have heard their music at the Dior fashion show in Paris.
Intrigued ?
We heard about Quade thanks to a guy called Andy – from Artists First, a creative collective celebrating its 30th year. I caught up with Quade’s Tom Connolly over a coffee to talk about their music and how their sound ended up on the catwalk
The Interview
Hi Tom, how did the band originate ?
We formed about a year ago during lockdown. Within a small shed in a rural valley near Bath, the majority of us had not played the instruments we now play. Having been such tight knit friends for so long, growing up in the same area I think we realised how strange it was not having done much music together.
We have all been into music for years — Barney and Matt being very much involved in the electronic world as DJs. I think we were keen to see what we could do with our disparate and varied musical backgrounds. I’m into minimalist folk compared to the electronic interests of the others, for example.
The name of the band is Quade ?
Quade is named after an old white beaten up Ford Focus that we took around France. It broke down on us in the middle of some scorching hot cornfields several hours from Lyon and the repairs cost about three times the price of the car. We believe it’s somewhere in Spain now, through some strange turn of events. Anyway, we thought this would be an easier name to explain after having faffed around with other names for so long.
The name of the band is Quade ?
Quade is named after an old white beaten up Ford Focus that we took around France. It broke down on us in the middle of some scorching hot cornfields several hours from Lyon and the repairs cost about three times the price of the car. We believe it’s somewhere in Spain now, through some strange turn of events. Anyway, we thought this would be an easier name to explain after having faffed around with other names for so long.
Quade live
Who are the members in the band and what do you play ?
Barney is bass and vocals, Matt is on synth, Leo is on Drums, and I’m on the fiddle and synth. The process of making music is completely collaborative, we have very vocal rehearsals.
“I think we were all keen to try and work with the associations certain instruments have, to create a sound that is genuinely unidentifiable at times.”
A fiddle and a synth that’s an interesting mix of working with traditional and contemporary instruments?
My family have roots in Ireland and we would often go over there and where I heard fiddle players such as Martin Hayes, Matt Cranitch and Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh who is a contemporary fiddler.
I think we were all keen to try and work with the associations certain instruments have, to create a sound that is genuinely unidentifiable at times. The fiddle conjures up very evocative, often archaic, images and we wanted to place this in a very different context.
“It’s the minimalist drone”
As a band we have our own individual musical influences. One thing we all share is an appreciation of the stretched out and motorik sound of bands such as Neu! and Can . It’s the minimalist drone, in particular, as well as the motorik drive that we all really appreciate.
FASHION
You went into the studio in April to record The Balance , released it in May as a single. By July it was picked up by Dior to be included in their Winter Haute Couture Collection 2021-2022 . That’s some timeline and achievement .
We were inside the studio, just off the Gloucester road . We had two songs that we were hoping to record. Then when we were in the studio, the songs evolved into one . We found the experience of recording ‘the Balance’ so transcendental we decided to just go with this.
The Dior Autumn-Winter 2021-2022 Haute Couture Show
How did The Balance come to be included as the second and penultimate track in the Dior Winter Fashion Show?
Leo, Barney, and I were having a Sunday afternoon pint when Matt messaged us coming back from London, asking if we had seen the email from Dior. We thought it was some kind of scam mail and so didn’t take it seriously , but when we checked it out again it turned out to be genuine and they wanted to use the track for their forthcoming collection. Completely out of the blue and a total surprise.
(left to right): Tom Connolly, Matt Griffiths, Barney Matthews, Leo Fini
How do you think they got to hear it ?
We know that Ivan Smagghe and Nathan Gregory Wilkins played it on their show on NTS. We suspect that perhaps the shared Parisian connection between Ivan Smagghe and Dior must have been the link, but we are genuinely none the wiser!
Although The Balance is not a cinematic score it is an atmospheric piece of music. The track fits really well with the ambiance and the backdrop of the fashion show.
The lyrics to ‘the Balance’ were largely inspired by the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker — a film we all fell in love with. I don’t want to speak for Barney, who wrote the lyrics, but I believe the constant questions he poses are meant to reflect the ambiguity of the film. I think he also questions his very authority to discuss such heavy material — which the film goes into.
The Future
So what does the future hold ?
Our next gig will be September 16th in Brighton at a venue called the Bee’s mouth. And we will be supporting Caroline at the Jam Jar in Bristol on the 14th October. We are also working on producing new material too.
Many Thanks Tom
Looking forward to hearing the new material and seeing the band live.
Here are the links
Facebook: facebook.com/quadebanduk
Instagram: @quade_band_uk
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