Holy Roar band Pijn have just announced the release of a brand new EP – but you’re going to have to jump through a few hoops to get it. Well, kind of. It’ll be available digitally via the usual outlets, but if you want one of the limited edition cassettes, you’ll need to be at ArcTanGent this weekend.
With sets from Explosions in the Sky, Tesseract, Converge, Future of the Left, Defeater, Tall Ships, Brutus and loads more, the Bristol festival is top of its class. The band’s Joe Clayton and Nick Watmough take a break from fixing broken pedals in preparation for Sunday’s set, to fill us in on what the EP’s all about.
So guys, tell us about your new EP, ‘Tanzaro House’ – it’s recorded live, isn’t it?
Yeah, ‘Tanzaro House’ was recorded on 3rd January this year. We had settled on the lineup for our ‘Floodlit’ release shows and wanted to spend time together rehearsing, hanging out and writing new material, so we booked some studio time for us to do so with no pressure. Once we were set up and feeling comfortable, it was just a case of throwing a few mics up and being critical of ourselves.
How did you decide what tracks you wanted to include?
Honestly, we don’t have many tracks, so there wasn’t much choice. The songs tend to be quite long, however, so depending on what we choose four tracks can take us to nearly an hour. For the release shows, we wanted to play the two main songs from our record, and introduce some new material, and allow members who don’t get to play every show to have a proper moment in the set.
What do you most enjoy writing about, thematically?
A lot of the themes we find ourselves writing about relate to very difficult and personal experiences, and so, unfortunately, we do not tend to divulge that particular side of the band. However, as a group of people, we have common experiences, and we all find the expression of writing the music that we do has some positive impact. As we work together more as a collective and everyone is able to bring their influence and background into the fold, we can create a common theme for releases. Apologies for being so vague, but like many bands we hope that the themes can be interpreted by listeners and taken however they would like.
Andd ArcTanGent’s going to be the only place you can get hold of the ‘Tanzaro House’ cassette?
Yep. The only physical copies of the ‘Tanzaro House’ EP will be available this weekend, and once they’re gone, they are gone.
Are you going to hang around at the festival all weekend, or is it an in and out job for you? Are you planning to catch any other bands?
When we started throwing around ideas for Pijn, our aim was to get to a point when we could play shows like ArcTanGent, and so to be able to play this year, alongside such an incredible lineup, we will be there for every minute and try to experience everything we can. We have an extensive list of bands that we must see this weekend, from bands that have served as massive inspirations in our musical history (i.e., every headliner in Russian Circles, Converge and Explosions In The Sky), to our incredible label mates Employed To Serve, Bossk, and Ohhms. The best part of festivals like this is bringing together such a wide variety of bands, and so we will be checking out Brutus, Frontierer, Tricot and A-tota-so.
Have you been to the festival before?
This will be the first time any of us have been to the festival, we have heard so much about it, and so we are incredibly excited to see it all.
What else have you got coming up this year?
We have had an extremely busy year so far since the release of our record back in January, but there is still more to come before 2018. Later this month we will be in London for the Brontide farewell show, followed by some more shows in Europe and the UK before we hole up in the studio to piece together our album and see out the year.
Pijn’s live EP ‘Tanzaro House’ will be available on limited edition cassette at ArcTanGent, which runs from 17th-19th August.
