I stumbled across TV Face by pure accident (the power of social media) and had a virtual chat with the lovely Brigit. Please meet the self proclaimed country bumpkins, residing in semi-rural Lancashire, who could never afford to live in London, although they are tempted by the image that the streets are paved with gold….
Their ELEVENTH song of the year 'New Anatomies,' a song about body-mods, AI, new shapes, new sizes, new disguises was released 27th of November!
The third EP of the year - REQUEEN THE HIVE - will be out on 25th of December and can be ordered via Bandcamp:
Please give us a little intro about your band.
TV FACE, a DIY, post-punk trio from Lancaster, formed in early 2019 and consist of sTeVe (vocals/guitar), Brigit (bass/vocals) and Neil (drums). We like to make a racket for a living. We write angular musical missives about things like beekeeping, potato salad and urban planning.
'TV Face' is an unusual name – can you please elaborate on that one?
The band called TV FACE are called TV FACE because sTeVe has a childhood memory of finding a smashed-up TV on a military firing range in Scotland, and being blown away by seeing its insides. He’s been obsessed with TVs and other electrical doodahs ever since.
You releasing a single on the last Friday of every month in 2020 – that is a very ambitious project. How did you come up with that idea?
So… we wanted to record and release an album, but we couldn’t afford the studio time because we are both money-poor and time-poor. So, we decided to release an album in slow motion. We wanted to do things differently, and do everything ourselves. We wanted to respond creatively to the different ways people consume music in current streaming culture. We thought about oldskool singles clubs, and wondered if we could do something like that for TV FACE. And it turns out we could!
Do you have any hobbies that you turn to to rejuvenate your creativity?
No, we don’t have time for hobbies because we’re always making the next single, the next artwork, the next t-shirt, the next video! It never ends! But we do watch a lot of TV, and we also have some hobbits.
I read that you recorded and produced your songs in several locations – one being in 'cupboards under the stairs' – I am intrigued to hear a bit more about that one!
Not to be thwarted by the pandemic, we had to relocate some of our recording from our favourite cellar to making a blanket-fort-come-vocal-booth in a cupboard under the stairs. We’ve also built boxes to put our amps in, so as not to annoy the neighbours. It’s worked really well. We recommend that you hoard blankets and bits of wood in preparation for the (already arrived) apocalypse. We also used things like this to make videos at home. Instead of a green screen, we used an old sleeping bag. You have to improvise!
You have very eye catching designs – who is responsible for the amazing artwork and who comes up with the idea for those?
Our singist / guitarist sTeVe is the art department of the band. The imagery often emerges from the lyrics for each song and vice-versa. Like everything in TV FACE, the core ideas often get fleshed out in conversations between us. The most successful illustrations really get to the central themes of the song. It's become apparent throughout the year that the lyrics and accompanying image for each song communicate the whole more effectively than each does on their own. There’s been some strong love for the artwork, and it was really important to us that each release had its own visual identity.
For three of the songs, we’ve also made a video – Like Dominoes, Work Hard Have Fun, Requeen The Hive – and these give us a chance to explore the visual elements of the songs in more detail. We love making videos, and we’ve had a lot of fun doing so, adapting to the limitations of lockdown and social distancing as we’ve progressed through the project.
Basically, every release is more than a song
What's the best/worst advice you ever received?
This band has tried to ignore the kind of people who congregate around bands doling out words of wisdom. We make decisions based on what is creatively enriching, not based on strategy and pandering to facile punk rock pastiche.
The best advice we’ve ever had is just to keep sharing your work, don’t wait to be ‘discovered’, honed and packaged. You do you.
Bands to watch out for? / What's on your playlist right now??
We’ve made three playlists on Spotify to accompany each EP, a mix of old and new music, including contemporary bands like Nova Twins, Those Fucking Snowflakes, Moor Mother, Scrounge, and Pozi.
What are your plans for 2021?
We are going to remix, remaster and release the album on 12” vinyl in Spring 2021, promote it with a tour (Covid permitting!). Then we’re going to write another album. We’ll probably release the next one all at once instead of one song a month!
Check out the video for their previous single "Requeen the Hive" here: