Interview | Eyre Llew

Racking up over 50,000 Spotify plays and releasing nine singles in the space of two years, Nottingham trio Eyre Llew are making their mark on a scene touting them as ones to watch in the coming months. NRMB caught up with them to discuss their ambient style, an array of summer festival slots and what looks set to be a very bright future...

Dominic Penna: How would you best describe your unique sound and who influences it? Eyre Llew: We summarise our music by labelling it as Ambient-Rock. The début record we're making at the moment has calm and ethereal parts with rock chorus' and parts you can sing along to. It's pretty dynamic I suppose. We're influenced by bands/artists like Bon Iver, A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Caspian, Sigur Ros, Volcano Choir, Manchester Orchestra, Noah Gunderson and The National. Imagine a big blend of that and you might find Eyre Llew. DP: Is there a particular approach you take to songwriting or making music? EL: We love reverb! Guitar pedals in general are a big part to our sound. Some categorise us in the post-rock field because of it I think. Which we're happy about, I think the difference is we have vocals in our sound too. We experiment and just jam a lot of the time. We write loads of stuff and then have to say to ourselves "No, we have record this album first and rehearse for this tour" haha... Something we try to go by with the composition is if it holds emotion and calms you or if it's a huge sounding drop/chorus then we're happy with the song and would just keep trying out ideas on that. DP: What has been the highlight of your time together so far? EL: Our first ever gig one year ago with Pinkshinyultrablast and Flyying Colours was sold out. Drowned in Sound asked us to play that and we're so glad we did. Such a good night. We just came off our first tour in May where we played The Great Escape and all the Dot to Dot Festival dates amongst it. That was a real fun couple of weeks. We're back on tour in September around the UK which we can't wait for and we've booked our début headline show at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay, Wales. It's so beautiful there and we're really really excited to be putting that on, even if it isn't in our hometown! DP: Which gigs or festivals are you most excited for in the coming months? EL: Rockaway Beach in October looks like it will be a right hoot. The team for that are so great and they have a competition going in MOJO Magazine to win four tickets and a guitar we used in our latest music video. You should check it out. Of course our next show is Splendour in Nottingham which is always a great day and we must mention the Macmillan Fest dates in September too! A brilliant independent urban festival with a cool line up for a great cause? Bring it on! DP: Finally, what are your long term aims as a band? EL: We're recording an album right now so that's where our focus is at the moment. As soon as that's all tracked I'm sure we'll get on with writing the next one too. Between all that we'd like to tour as much as we can going places we've never been. We love the live shows. I think somewhere along the way we'd like to score for TV/film too which is certainly on the band's bucket list.

Eyre Llew's music can be streamed and purchased here; they play Splendour Festival on 23 July and MacMillan Festival on 3 September (both in Nottingham).