A returning two-day festival from the folk behind Sŵn, Celebrate This Place welcomes postpunk party groovers Warmduscher to the fold alongside the likes of Fat Dog, Special Interest and Casisdead. Clams Baker Jr – who fronts a band formed by members of Fat White Family, Insecure Men and Paranoid London – gives Emma Way the lowdown on Warmduscher’s live set and their upcoming new album.
How would you describe Warmduscher as a band to someone who may not have heard of you before?
We cover a couple of different genres, I guess you could say. We’re all over the place in terms of sound, but we’re definitely known as a live band. We’re always doing our best to put on a really good show.
You’ve made albums with the mindset of them being like live sets, right?
Not the last one, but [2018’s] Whale City was like that – and [2019’s] Tainted Lunch, to a degree. For Whale City we went in, with producer Dan Carey, and the idea was that we would play each side of the album live, so we’d have to record everything all at once. It was on tape, so if you messed up once you’d have to go back and start it all the way from the beginning. We didn’t mess up that much luckily, so it was pretty painless. That was Dan Carey’s idea because he had come to see us live and he wanted to capture that somehow on a recording.
For Tainted Lunch we recorded everything live but weren’t as strict in terms of us having to do one whole side of the album at once – and for our last album [At The Hotspot, 2022] we did a hybrid of that with Joe Goddard and Al Doyle of Hot Chip. Some of the songs were recorded live and some were done by punching in.
What was it about Dan Carey that made you want to write your most recent single, Love Strong, with him?
He’s just amazing to work with. It’s always an easy job because he totally gets us. We would have continually done every album with him, if it wasn’t for time constraints and stuff. It’s always good to switch up like we did, we’re lucky he had time to do Love Strong. We wanted to do the new album with him, but he’s so busy we’d have had to wait for a while.
I guess there is another time constraint, in that you all come from different bands, and all have different projects on the side. Do you have to be really on it with planning your time?
It’s not as bad as it used to be, because when the band started it was more like a side project for everyone. Now it’s morphed into this. It would be difficult to get everyone together – I think that’s why we would get things done so fast, everything was almost rushed, with the exception of the most recent album. We’ve had lots of time, which has been weird to get used to. Although it’s a little difficult right now with Adam [J. Harmer, guitarist] because he’s in Fat White Family and they’re touring now.
Have you got any new release news?
We’ve got an album done, 11 or 12 tracks, and we’re just figuring out when it’s going to come out. We had a setback with a label, which was frustrating, but it is what it is. Fingers crossed we’ll have it out by the end of the year, have a single out by August. We just put out a remix that we did for Personal Trainer – we do little things like that.
Did you readopt any of the sounds from At The Hotspot on this next album?
It’s kind of a totally different thing again. We self-produced this one – when I say we, Ben [Hopcraft, bassist] did and Jamie from Teeth, but we’re obviously all in on it. It’s different to the last one and to all the other ones in the sense that we used different influences like gqom, which is a South African style of music. Ben was listening to a lot of that stuff then and they have heavy drums and a lot of good energy. The last album was really synthy, being produced by Joe and Al from Hot Chip.
There was a real dance element to At The Hotspot, did you want to revisit that?
It’s not as dancey, but it’s still the same energy that we always feel like we have. All the songs are fast-paced, it’s still high energy and has some cool guests on it.
And being in a high energy band and being the front person, how are you different to your onstage persona?
Offstage, I think I’m just a different person. I don’t go out so much, put it that way – I’m happy to stay home because I do so many different projects and stuff. So to be honest, if I don’t have a gig, I’m happy! I like writing, my favourite part of all is the creative aspect of making music. So, I’m always doing something – right now I’m working on my own album.
Warmduscher headline Celebrate This Place at the Tramshed, Cardiff on Sun 26 May.
Tickets: £25 (£40 for Sat 25 + Sun 26). Info: here
words EMMA WAY
