After a big year of touring and TV appearances, Cheltenham six-piece Young Kato are looking forward to releasing their debut album. We got chance to catch up with them shortly after their performance at Y Not Festival this August.
Daniel Willis: Hi guys, how’s it going? How’s the festival season treating you so far?
Joe Lever (bassist): Hello! I’m good cheers. The festival season has been great, the ones we did in between the time we’ve been spending in the studio have been real fun. Y Not and Barn On The Farm were probably the highlights for me.
DW: How was the experience of playing at Y Not? Did you enjoy the festival and what were the crowds like?
JL: Sweet! The tent was absolutely rammed which was quite unexpected but we yeah we really enjoyed it. We had a few technical problems but hopefully the crowd didn’t notice too much. They seemed to be getting involved singing along to the few songs they had heard so that was really cool.
DW: You’ve had two singles out this year which have been quite well received, but is an album shortly on the way?
JL: Yes, we are recording our album at the moment. We are kind of doing it in a few different chunks. We have 3 songs fully recorded that we did a few weeks ago in London and we are doing the rest in September I think.
DW: You’ve played gigs with some great up and coming bands, 1975, Bastille, Swim Deep to name a few. Does it help to have loads of great bands around at the same time like that?
JL: Yeah! It’s inspiring speaking to other bands and seeing them doing well and stuff. I think it’s great that a lot of bands are getting attention after having worked hard on their songs and worked their way up, like Bastille or The 1975 for example. It’s all good.
DW: Plenty of bands have featured on (TV programme) Made in Chelsea but you actually got the chance to play on the show. How was that experience?
JL: Yeah it was an amazing opportunity. It came about through the music programmer for the show playing us a lot on Series 4 and then putting us forward when the producers wanted a band on the new series and we are very grateful for that. The experience itself was weird but cool. The most bizarre thing was watching it being aired on TV and seeing ourselves. As a small band it is a very strange experience seeing yourselves on primetime television, as you can imagine.
DW: When I first heard ‘Drink, Dance, Play’ I have to admit I thought it was Foals. Do you take influence from them, and which other bands influence you?
JL: Haha, fair enough. I don’t know? I absolutely love all their albums myself but I don’t know how much of an influence we take from them as a band. I see them as a completely different type of band to us personally but who knows. As there are 6 of us we obviously all listen to all different types of music – it would be a bit weird if we all listened to the same music.
Myself, I’m into more ‘indie guitar music’ I guess (to be pretty broad) whereas Harry (keys) is into very different music – different styles of dance music, jazz and other stuff that I don’t listen to. I think one thing we all admire, though, is good pop music, and music that connects with people.
DW: Not many bands these days have 6 members, do you think that makes the task easier or harder for you guys?
JL: Haha true! Not sure really. It’s easier in some ways and harder in others I guess?! It’s hard for us all to fit in the same photo for promo shots but easier for us to lug our gear around! It’s nice though, it seems more like a ‘gang’ operation. I think if we were a 3-piece or something it would feel a lot different.
DW: British guitar music died the death a little bit towards the end of the 2000s, do you think it’s making a comeback?
JL: Hmmm. I guess ‘guitar music’ has always and will always be around if you look for it, like it will never die, but more recently it seems guitar bands have been getting mainstream attention, which is great obviously.
DW: What have been your favourite gigs so far this year?
JL: I really enjoyed The Great Escape which was back in May. We were playing before The 1975 and Tribes and the room was packed. It was quite a small venue, like this hotel function room, but there was a real good energy there. It was sick. Either that or the Cheltenham show on our last tour back in June. Cheltenham is our hometown and we played this venue called The 2 Pigs which is like the first place we ever played as a band I think. The crowd was pretty crazy and it was cool going back there.
DW: What big plans have you got for the next year?
JL: An album! That is the most important thing for us. But obviously we love touring so hopefully a lot more of that. I dunno, we’ll see!
DW: Sounds great, we’re looking forward to it. Thanks Joe!
