Bronze Medallists Interview

Words-Art Jefferson
Photography-Tim Bowditch, Clara Daisy Cowan and Elliot Sheppard

Music is a vessel allowing the artist to channel limitless creative energy through sound. The best musicians are able to erase all boundaries and explore depths not only through instrumentation but verbally. Understanding the power of wordplay with a complimenting musical backdrop behind each song is what Bronze Medallists does overtly well. Comprised of Oliver Price, Oliver Sheppard, Ben Ferrari, Luke Roberts and Valerie Balligand, the East London based band’s organic approach to their craft reflects through highly visual and poetic lyrics married with frankly, musically whatever the group feels will fit the vibrations of the track. Whether electronic, acoustic, pop, shoegaze, you name it, Bronze Medallists stretches the music ultimately forcing the listener to think less about genre and more on the quality and content. The band has gained support from BBC Radio 1’s Ally McCrae, BBC Radio Wales presenter Bethan Elfyn and XFM DJ John Kennedy, just to name a few. Since their 2011 debut release “Mathematics” on Tape Club Records, their arrival into a more spacious, dreamscape of music that allows for more possibilities proves that they are not only understanding of the necessity of change, but welcomes it. Their latest EP “Empire” is a finely produced four song release that is filled with clever storytelling, harsh realities, beautiful melodies and moody yet undeniably catchy rhythms. The record is a testament of the power to break free of any limitations, resulting in music that will stand the test of time – which is what art is supposed to do.

The Interview was conducted with Oliver Price of Bronze Medallists.

AJ-First I want to start off by asking about the songwriting. The lyrics in the music are extremely poetic and vivid. Is there a predominant writer or is it a collaborative effort?

OP-Oh thank you! Our song writing is very collaborative and democratic, one person will usually bring an idea to the table and everyone else will make suggestions or write bits and bobs and refine. Norwegian Wood was an exception, that was a pure brain fart when I couldn’t sleep so I started reading the Haruki Murakami book, which actually just made me more awake so I accepted defeat and just got up and wrote a song. It worked because it was a pure stream of consciousness so we didn’t touch it. “Empire”, “Mathematics”, “Binary Girl” and “EH 1” were all collaborative lyrical efforts, “Policy” was just me, but it only has about 5 words. I’ll let you decide which approach works better…

AJ-You’re based out of East London but going into a bit of the roots of the band, what is the history of Bronze Medallists?

OP-We started out as 3 friends getting together on Sundays for brunch and playing around in our home studio, because we had nothing better to do, then we realized it was the best thing we could do so we added an extra member and started playing gigs…It’s a bit corny but we were all out of big relationships and break ups of previous bands that had been ‘almost famous’. We felt as if people saw us as nearly men of indie pop, so we thought we’d make it official, hence the name, which is actually taken from an Idlewild song title.

AJ-The new EP “Empire” is a sonic excursion between pop, electronic and even contains bits of shoe gaze in there. From the release of “Mathematics” it feels like the sound has evolved into a more spacious, dream element of pop. Is that a safe analysis?

OP-For us the “Empire” EP was massively ambitious, we wanted it to morph from electronic noises into live string symphonies, record one song totally live (Policy) and give each song a unique sound and identity, but make it all flow together sonically and with a coherent attitude. Also lyrically we wanted to capture the dialectic between straight lines and curves in modern life and compliment this with the mixture of live and quantized electronic sounds (can you tell what hopeless geeks we are yet?). I hope we just about managed it, but it was a massive job and took us ages- we still make it all by ourselves in our bedrooms! So we don’t really try to contrive what genre we are trying to fit into as a rule, we just try to do something interesting and exciting and hope that the end result is vaguely relevant and not crap! Our next EP though is a new challenge altogether, we have decided to do away with live drums and use just electronic sounds, but record all the songs live. There is a lot of music made these days recording real instruments and quantizing and tuning it all in Pro Tools so it is perfect, we thought we’d try the opposite and record all electronic sounds but play them all live, imperfect. It might be cool or it might sound like a Casio workshop at the local nursery.

AJ-Were the lyrics to “Empire” based on a personal experience and if not, what was the inspiration behind it?

OP-Yes, Empire is true story.

AJ-In today’s climate of the ever-evolving music industry, do you think it’s a great time for artists to be as creative as they want and dictate the direction of their career considering the technological avenues that are available? I ask this because, one of the discussions that have been circulating in music is the number of artists who still chooses to follow formulas of trends. You guys seem to definitely enjoy being as creative as possible.

OP-For us the whole point is to be as creatively free as possible. This is actually quite hard. Paradoxically, it is usually easier to be creative if you impose limitations and restrictions for yourself to work within. We might try this one-day so that we can write more than one EP every 6 months!

AJ-Your music is beautifully produced as well so to me there is no surprise that you have gained support from various radio personalities. Can we look forward to a full length sometimes this year or early next year?

OP-At this rate the full length will be available in 2020, but it will be ridiculous in scope and concept. OK we’ll aim for late this year… give us a deadline – it will help. Actually, Beggars group – sign us and give us a deadline, that will help even more.

AJ-You guys are also playing the Secret Garden Festival this year which is exciting. What have you got in store for the audience this summer?

OP-We’ll be playing with visuals that we will project on old computer monitors as we play. Luke put them together; it’s playful and juxtaposing apparently, although I have never sat down to watch the whole thing so I don’t actually know what’s going on out there. He might have put loads of embarrassing pictures from my Facebook page on there for all I know. Leaving now to watch the whole live visual cycle start to finish…