Foto-© Stephan Strache

Throwback: Der Verkehr auf deutschen Bundesautobahnen meint es gnädig mit uns, uns glückt die Punktlandung am Maifeld Derby Freitag, um dann durchweg freundlichen und hilfsbereiten Menschen vor Ort vorzufinden. Dementsprechend treffen wir pünktlich Easy Life im Backstagebereich. Angenehmere Gesprächspartner können wir uns nicht Wünschen. Die Engländer sind in Form von Frontmann Murray Matravers trotz der kurzfristigen Absage des Puls Festivals am Tag drauf (Anmerkung: Das bayrische Puls Festival wurde am Freitag auf Empfehlung der Sicherheitsbehörden vom Veranstalter kurzfristig aufgrund des Fehlens zahlreicher Sicherheitskräfte abgebrochen werden. Easy Life hätten tags drauf dort gespielt.) bester Laune und sehr angenehme, kurzweilige Gesprächspartner. Passend zum nächstwöchigen Release des Zweitwerks Maybe In Another Life gibt es heute unser Interview!

First at all: thank you for your time.
You are welcome. It’s nice to talk to you and your blog. Thanks for having us.

It’s a pity Puls Festival is canceld. But you are coming back to Germany at the end of july to play Appletree Garden.
Yes, we play Appletree Garden. Another really good Festival. The line-up of this one is great. Really cool. We had a walk around earlier. It seems to be we haven’t done too much festivals in Europe. The ones we had, had this size and a very well curated line up. I’m excited for today. I think it will be a really good show.

So you have to do it twice as hard. Otherwise you’ve got the chance to get bored. We read you’re most creative when you get bored.
I think it’s just like, if we are busy, when we are on tour, I never write any music. I have to be bored or just alone and have nothing better to do. So I play playstation or write music usually. Maybe I write a new song tommorrow. But probably not, I may sleep.

When yo do it twice as hard, sleep sounds good.
Exactly. We were sad tomorrow is canceld. Now all of us our whole crew can get drunk and can watch Bonobo and have a really good time. When you know you got another one tomorrow you hold back. It’s natural.

Is there someone else you wanna watch?
We wanna see Caribou, Arlo Parks and Bonobo. Bonobo we want to go for. Tickets for a Bonobo show are so expensive, when he plays London like a hundred and something pounds or so. It’s gonna be incredible. It’s expensive. The production is huge. It’s a DJ set. But it’s gonne be crazy. His desk is huge. 160 channels running. We have 60 channels. But Bonobo has around 160 channels. Everything will be in stereo and sounds big and beautiful. It’s gonna be a really nice gig. But stop talking about Bonobo. Although we are huge fans.
(Anmerkung: Bonobo spielte auf dem Maifeld Derby mit Band. Es war phantastisch.)

Let’s talk about your music. Your music is great fun to listen to. We wonder is theres a special trick to write something that fun in this dark days?
Maybe. I think a lot of our music tends to be quiet uplifting, melodicaly and harmonical things. Perhaps it counter the subject which can be a lot more seriously or melancholy. So I think Easy Life has always defintivly a strange feel good thing going on, but actually it’s all very depressive. Which I find is very typical of the British attitude in generall.

Otherwise you could be Australians. So it’s a concious decision to do good fun music?
Yeah, I think so. Especially as a band we like play live. It is our thing. We really enjoy doing that. Because of that somethimes when we write the music, we try to write music that would be a party live. Perhaps that helps us in the studio, to try to make music that let the people jump around and enjoy life.

You seems to enjoy yourself as well.
Yeah. That’s what it is. It’s still kind of a hobby. A joyable thing. More a hobby than work. Also it’s a business thing at the same time, but it’s still probably 80% hobby. We definitly have a really good time. Otherwise the music would suffer. We have to love it, otherwise why should everbody elso love it? That’s why the first single Pocket was ever written. Because it was for us to enjoy.

What is first? Music or lyrics?
Songtitle. Try to start with the title is what I usually do. I have a list of titles. Like hundreds of titles. That was an actually tip I learned from this dude. I never met him, but heard it from a friend. He turned up to the studio with all the titles written on laminated paper and than he arranged them and anyone in the studio graped them. I don’t do it that extreme but I think it’s quite useful to have the title first and than everything flows with the same kind of idea through. Rather the music first or the lyrics than at least the title as the overall theme or message. It’s very chronological. It’s not only this structure, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes the title is the last thing we have. If we have a good title, everything flows. But I think it helps.

And we think you’re very fast. One year after your first album the second one will be released soon.
Yeah. We always been quite fast doing music. Because everyone knows what to do. And I don’t have to do much with my time besides music. It’s true, I’m honestly trying getting better in having something else to do. Because I can be quite fast getting bored and isolated. But we are happy to have already produced the next album, cause now we are not able to work on a new album, because we are touring so much and haven’t much time to think of it. This one came so fast because we were still in lockdown and were not touring so hard, so we had time and space to make the album. The first album took us nearly three or four years. The second just came really fast.

So you were more focused?
I think we were more inspiried in generell. The Life’s a beach record was passed and it was difficult to play shows. You were allowed to do shows but bars are still closed. We only played some small shows and some very few festivals. When the second record got on the way we only played around two gigs in two years. That’s why the record comes so fast. Because we feel responsible to our fans.

How many festivals do you play this summer?
Actuall I know it exactly. We play 22. We play Glastonbury as our highlight, because we play the Pyramid Stage, the biggest stage in the word. We are all nervous, defintly. But we also play a couple of festivals in Europe. Down The Rabbit Hole in the Netherlands, Appletree Garden back in Germany. Somerwhere else in Southern Europe where Duran Duran plays the same day and Sommersonic Festival in Japan. We just go on all over for festivals which just isn’t typical for us. We usually just play the UK festivals. But this one is taking us all over. Which is good, but hard. But we are still going strong.

Are you looking forward to play them?
Yeah. To play festivals is always great. We feel how we grew not only in UK. It’s great to bring our songs to festivals. We havn’t been so much in Europe yet. So I am are very happy to be here. We actual get the attention, we always wanted to get in Europe. We love this places in Germany, because you are treated so well compared to the UK. It’s all pretty comfortable. You’ve got a backstage, where nobody stresses you. The catering is amazing. Breakfast, lunch & dinner. In the UK you get some sandwiches from the shop next door. Honestly even now, when we are still known in UK. In Germnay even when we played tiny shows everything was fine. The people came to our shows and are very grateful.

It’s funny. We always look to the UK and think it’s the home of good music. You can even hear good radio stations in the UK.
There are not much cool radio stations in England. Perhaps some small in London. Our mainstream radio is probably just as terrible as your mainstream radio. Music is been so commercialized. Down with mainstream radio.

How did your collaboration with Kevin Abstract from Brockhampton come about?
We’ve been following Brockhampton for years and years. We are following each other on social media. I was out in LA, he linked up. He just left Brockhampton at this time. He was working on his own projects and he showed it to me and I showed him our latest projects. When I showed him Miss Holloway, he was like: ‘Oh this is very cool, maybe we can work on it togheter.’ It was very chilled, he was very chilled.

Is it always that easy to get in contact with others?
No. That’s really not. There’s a bunch of messages that never get responded. But Kevin is a really chilled dude.

We read you grew up on a farm. Do you all live in harmony with nature? Or with this plant maybe? (Anmerkung: Im Backstagebereich stand eine ziemlich bemitleidenswerte, halb vertrocknete Zimmerpflanze.)
Well, this plant is obviously quite unhappy. When we arrived I took the time to top the plant inside water for hours.

Perhaps you have to pee on it?
First it has to recover than you have to pee on it. But this was the first thing Sam did. We are very in love with nature. If Sam was not in the band he wanted to become a gardener. Throughout the lockdown, all I did in my house was to garden basically. It completely changed, it’s now my green safe space. I thinks it’s a typical English thing. Straight lines and everything clean.

If you could curate your own festival, who absolutely needs to play there?
Wow. That’s what we are trying to do. Depending who is the headliner. Perhaps we are the headliner. Little Sims, Kendrick Lamar, Kevin Abstract. Gus Dapperton. Lot’s of people, that we just loved worked with or that are cultural in the same way. Perhaps Slowthai. But I think it’s kind of a fulltime job to book a festival. But we try to do it. And I just liked Abba for just half an hour. And probably we’ve got a reggae stage. With Julian Marley. Or even a Marley stage for all his children. We need a reggae area. Cause we played a festival with a reggae beach. Inside the festival area they created a beach. I just had my shoes off and went to the beach. I was skanking the whole day. It was a separate area. So nice.

How would your Bedroomdisco look like?
Bedroomdisco. What music we dropped in our bedroom and singing to our hairbrush? We have noticed how cheesy music is. Besides off our albums we play a timeless sort of music. Shania Twain, Bee Gees, Abba, Country Music. Enrique Iglesias, Shaggy. All the best stuff. And I think reggae music and dope music. My bedroom is my reggae stage. Groundation. Alborosie.

Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure.
Thank you for having us.

Easy Life Tour:
05.03.23 Hamburg, Uebel & Gefaehrlich
11.03.23 Berlin, Huxley’s Neue Welt
18.03.23 Köln, Kantine