Melbourne four-piece APES have been receiving some serious love on the UK airwaves from the likes of BBC Radio 1 and they head to the UK to play two dates in Manchester and London in October (TICKETS HERE).
Led by vocalist and guitarist Benjamin Dowd, APES sound is one that owes as much to indie punk as it does to rock’n’roll with a proud nod to the Aussies garage past that has produced so many great artists. Saying that, APES stamp down a sound of their own with strong hooks and singable choruses you might struggle to get out of your head. Having supported the likes of The Datsuns, Royal Blood and Dune Rats in their native home, their trip to the UK is building a lot of excitement. So with all that said, we caught up with the lads for a few words:
What are you up to at this very moment?
Working on making this huge playlist for a flight to the UK at the moment haha and having a deadest ball doing it! Going through the new Royal Blood album and adding a few tunes at the moment, Band of Skulls is teed up next, that Himalayan album kicks ass.
What can fans expect to experience at one of your shows?
I guess the main thing they’ll see is a lot of spikes and dives in the set! Generally the set will go all over the place; there are slow burners and a few really loud, heavier songs in our set, so you will get a good variety. Also we love to have a bit of fun with it! So there will be plenty of beers and banter haha, also were bringing our lighting tech these days so expect some cool lights hopefully!
What is your favourite song to perform live?
NEW SONGS! Hahaha, we’ve just written a few new bangers that we’ve been playing the last few shows, it’s so refreshing and exciting to execute some new material, so at the moment there definitely the favourites to get around. We have this newie called “Black Lung” which Im loving at the moment, it’s like a westernie type of hard rock ballad, we hope you enjoy it!
When you’re not performing what do you do to keep yourself busy when you’re on tour / on the road?
Haha, we’re not very good at seeing sights or going for walks on the beach haha. Generally we love to kill time between soundcheck by just going to a pub around the corner, grabbing a bit to eat and having a few beers! It sounds quite Bogan but ey, I guess that’s just the inner Victoria coming out in us haha, it’s the best way to kill an hour on the road after soundcheck or something though, who needs a beach?….
What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?
Tough question! My personal favourite show was when we opened for FIDLAR in Sydney. The venue was awesome and the crowd were unreal to play to and their fans really took to us on the night. We had played a few shows in Sydney before this one, but we always kind of struggled to win them over as it’s a tough city! This was the first time we ever felt that we had won an entire room over that wasn’t ours! Not to mention it was the first time we had taken our lighting guy on the road so having that awesome stage production was a plus! To top it off we got to see FIDLAR rip the arts factory a new one, it was such a sick night.
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