Volume Magazine Interview, May 2008

Birmingham's reluctant stars Sunset Cinema Club have taken the Midland's music scene by storm and are worshipped by just about every local band. The boys talk to Kay Wrate about wanting high tops, becoming old and the death of music in 1996.

"I want a high top," announces Dom, the singer of Sunset Cinema Club, anti-heroes of the current music scene in Birmingham. I assure him that with enough determination and hairspray, anything is possible. Greg, his slightly less supportive band mate, reminds him that he might end up looking like Mick Hucknall. The boys, who took their name from a local but now abandoned porn emporium, have been together for a devoted seven years and met over an exchange of grunge mix tapes in the late 90's. They found their drummer John when a local punk band parted ways, and the rest is history. They are described on their Myspace as the 'pixies if they were more black' by 'some dude from Lichfield', which is a fair analysis. Their songs harbour horny undertones and a funk-rock awkwardness.

SCC describe their music as noisy, funky, dance-y, unpredictable party music. Greg says "It's difficult to explain what we sound like. We try not to rip off any one bad; we rip off about ten bands". Song writing duties are split equally between Greg and Dom. "The song writing in the band is half and half, but we do interfere with each other's writing. If I do something abysmal then Dom will say 'That's crap – so something else' and if Dom does something that's too cutting edge for my ears, I'll go and bastardise it with some poppy middle eights". When we move on to the awkward subject of who writes the band's rather horny lyrics, the boys erupt into laughter. "What you hear is always a much toned down version of what was originally intended, but it's more about us failing in that department. Our roadie hogs all the girls. He's more in-touch with 'the youth' – he listens to Avril Lavigne and all that Jazz!"

I interrogate them about what they're listening to at the moment. Judging from previous answers, I get the feeling that it won't be anything current. Greg admits; "I'm listening to Big Country and Kid Creole and the Coconuts, a big funk band from the 80's – Princess Di was a big fan of them; she hired them to play one of her birthday parties."

Dom, on the other hand has less obscure tastes; "I was listening to Tom Waits in my car." "Everything after 1996 is crap" says Greg audaciously. "a lot of bands that I hear today sound like they're playing different variations on the Power Ranger's theme tune, with added lyrics about depression and obsession etc etc"

However, the boys think the current music scene in Birmingham is thriving, and take me through a few names to watch out for: "There's a new band called Calories that we like a lot. Ace Bushy Striptease are a crazy-ass band too, and Miss Halliwell, who have two bassists, they're doing something that's quite strange but really good."

SCC are popular with the other new and local bands in Birmingham, and their talents stretch further than the band. They run a successful club night called Tropical Hotdog, which brings the locals flocking. Dom also worked in a local recording studio, so he's created demos for many of the up and coming bands in the area. "People like us, we're liked…We have our own club night and we give local bands gigs, which helps no end. If we were a high school kid, we'd be the kid that got on with the geeks and the jocks."

The band has just finished recording an album. "We don't know how we're going to get it out there, but we will," explains Greg. "Every song on the album is quite poppy and catchy, so now we're wondering if we should go weird. We're in a confused stage at the moment – It's called a quarter life crisis I think! I'm thinking of doing some improvised sax and stuff. We might go all contemporary on the next record, but we'll see."

Age seem's to be a pressing subject for the boys, which seems strange given that they're only 25. "I think maybe 28-30 might have to be out cut-off point for SCC. I'll just become part of an Oasis tribute act or something," muses Dom. Greg overhears the conversation anf doesn't realise we're contructing Dom's career fall-back plan. "What's going on here then?" asks Greg. I delicately explain that Dom's left Sunset. The boys roar with laughter and admit, "We're like two senile old coots chewing hay on a porch." For now though, the boys will have to put their zimmer frames to one side and set their sights on Brum domination.

There's always a story about where a band takes its name from. For Birmingham-based three-piece Sunset Cinema Club though, their main influence is a little different than most: pornography.

Sort of…

Speaking live on BBC WM Introducing, bassist Greg Haines explained: "It goes over people's heads most of the time. They think we're just another band trying to be cool, calling ourselves a 'club' - there are a lot about at the moment. "But when we announce our name on stage - especially in Birmingham - you always get one guy at the back give a big, dirty laugh. That's because we're named after a porn cinema in Birmingham. It closed down but the building's still there. "We were too young to have ever been there (before it shut) but of course we wondered; we were dirty little teenagers! It sums up our band really - that whole juvenile thing!"

There's nothing juvenile about Sunset Cinema Club's music though. Their catchy blend of punk and rock has come into its own, regularly receiving airplay nationally on BBC Radio 1. For seven years they've honed their craft, gigging extensively around the country and continually churning out new tracks. The lads are from Redditch originally ("a town where nothing happens - at all") but now call Birmingham their home.

They effectively double as promoters too, holding a monthly night for new bands to take to the stage - Tropical Hotdog. "It's the first Friday of every month," said Greg. "It's At The Island Bar. If you've never been there before you really should because it's an amazing place; Birmingham's best bar by far. We get our favourite local bands playing live as well as bands that we meet when we're out on the road."

Location, location, location. Is success and wealth in the music business really just a question of origin? Greg from Sunset Cinema Club believes differently, "You're never going to take on the world if you can't impress your dad."

When you ponder about the home of UK rock & roll, do you picture the punk-heart of our beloved London? Or do you imagine mod Manchester as the mecca of our music? Or perhaps Bristol is the burghal of our beat? Maybe Sheffield? Or even Redditch?

Hang on, Redditch?! Redditch as in West Midlands Redditch? Home of Halfords HQ and the Kingfisher Shopping Centre (one of the largest in the country, mind)? Just ask Greg Haines, bassist for the ear-splitting Sunset Cinema Club. To him Redditch is just a "little crappy suburban town with nothing in it. It's one of those towns where nothing happens. There's no culture." And he should know, he's from Redditch.

So, does hailing from Redditch have any lasting effect on the life of a young band? It would seem so. Greg's three-piece noise patrol recently endured what they call "the worst week ever." "We went down to XFM in London and they messed up our timetable so we ended up having to pay lots of parking tickets. We still don't know if [the session] is actually going to get played on the radio. Then we had a gig on the Friday and our car got towed away. And then that was rounded off quite nicely by the Dot To Dot Festival in Bristol because we didn't find the venue in time so we didn't actually get to play. Dom managed to get there before us so he did a little impromptu acoustic set. We turned up a bit later with a very sorry look on our faces."

Added to this calendar of catastrophe were complications with the release of their latest single, Gojira Suit, and the entire shipment now has to be given away for free. Clearly, as Greg summarised, "It was a bit of a disaster really."

However, despite all the mayhem Sunset Cinema Club have been astonishingly fortuitous in their rise through the ranks of the many: Lauded by Steve Lamacq on the strength of a demo alone; slapped alongside scenesters The Twang in NME's recent Best Midlands feature (although they belong to a more "lo-fi clique", allegedly); honoured with a session on Huw Stephens' Unsigned Radio 1 show; scheduled to play at both Latitude and Tin Pan Alley festivals this summer; and all without a sniff of an EP or an album. Yet.

Weened on the teet of American, not British, indie, the band eschew what Greg coins the "poncey electro stuff" of the moment. Their meat-and-two-veg material comes with a heavy free-jazz, space-funk sound instead. "We go out of our way to be original but sometimes that plays against us because it's funky, but in a bizarre, retarded redneck-funk kind of way."

Their low, scrambling basslines and robust, awkward guitars are pierced by barking vocals that seems cast from the mould shed by Test Icicles last year. "When we first started we were trying to make this Fugazi meets Funkadelic sound [but] it's grown up since then, we've become a bit more pop aware. But we still enjoy bashing people's eardrums in."

Sunset Cinema Club appear to contravene the stereotypical Redditch black mark and with a cursory glance at the town's history books - Black Sabbath's Tony Martin,

Zeppelin's John Bonham and Duran Duran's John Taylor were all Redditch dwellers – it's clear the town is actually a breeding ground for tenable musical talent. No surprise then that Sunset Cinema Club are making waves with all the right people.

Words - Christian Rose-Day

After witnessing Sunset Cinema Club play a gig in their dressing gowns which ended up with their bass player Greg stripped down to just a very tight pair of underpants, Media Assassin thought it would be a good idea to have a little chat with them. Of course, it was nothing to do with the fact that they are proving to be one of the most exciting acts in the country, just the thing with the pants. Andy Roberts tries to keep his clothes on…

"We're all dirty little geeks," admits Greg Haines, bass wielding one third of smut junky funksters, Sunset Cinema Club. Explaining that they took their name from a Birmingham adult cinema, the truth comes out somewhat sheepishly; "We used to come up Birmingham when we were 15 to practise, we'd pass it and talk about walking in and buying something but obviously never did."

Media Assassin caught up with Greg a couple of hours before their first Radio 1 session with Huw Stephens was aired and it seems that the band's inability to keep it clean almost got them into a little spot of embarrassment over the airwaves;

"I'm just waiting to hear what it sounds like. They asked me about what Ninki Vs Dingle meant, but I'm bearing in mind that all our parents will be listening... So I'm there going 'it's about, errr'…I actually got the name from when I was in Wales one weekend and these girls told me that Ninki and Dingle were their pet names for fannies and willies so I went to say in the microphone; 'I met this little girl in Wales,' then realised I sounded like a complete paedophile and I actually said that out loud; 'Oh no I sound like a proper paedo now don't I?' So I'm not sure that they'll play that. Everyone would start calling us 'paedocore'. I might submit that as a genre to Myspace. I used to have a proper comb over, I was playing up to the paedocore thing, but I don't think that's a good way to go."

Indeed, but why the fascination with sexual frustration? "People always sing about what they want rather than what they've got. But we're a bit more blatant about it. We don't really do 'tact' very well"

Despite the overload of filthy lyrical content, SCC manage to avoid coming across as some sniggering sexist jock band. The emphasis is on having fun rather than a playground fixation on rude bits, which is important for the band themselves to avoid not being taken seriously;

"I've always been terrified of that. We don't really get knocked much, we're quite lucky. There's nothing worse than working on something for five years and have someone completely throw it down the drain with a really cutting remark. I remember when I left 35 Seconds someone said 'Why did you leave Sunset Cinema Club? They're a novelty band,' and I was completely devastated. I know we take the piss, but I don't want to be Bloodhound Gang, you know what I mean?"

Novelty bands generally don't stir up as much excitement as SCC are at the moment, their party like approach has won them friends in the right places; "Huw Stephens (Radio 1's nearest thing to the late great John Peel) is the man – he playes us pretty much every week. We definitely owe him a bottle of champagne or something; he's the one who tipped us off to the NME. People take us a lot more seriously since we got a session. And we still don't have management. That was completely out of the blue 'cus he just liked our music."

Not only are SCC receiving regular plays from the BBC, but have started appearing frequently in the NME. They were part of the 'Best Midlands' in said mag and scored high on scene kudos by name checking absent friends, Greg's old band 35 Seconds and Johnny Foreigner, via donning some home-made t-shirts; "The night before we'd been to see 35 Seconds live and we're so blown away by them it was like; 'why the fuck weren't they there?' I'm goof mates with a lot of the bands in that shoot but half of them I think are a pile of shit. There are so many better bands out there in Birmingham, but because they don't know and talk to the right people and go to the right nights out they get excluded. But I'm not gonna start slagging bands off, it's way too early"

Leave that until you reach the top ay? "Yeah, something like that. Ha ha ha ha!"

And with a trademark manic laugh, we leave Greg to get some beersin from the offy so that he, Dom and Johnny can listen back to their Radio 1 session hoping that they don't embarrass themselves in front of their parents too much.

'The Story of SCC' - the gospel according to Dave Edwards of Rippletank Promotions...

Nearly a decade ago, i sat in Norfolk House on Smallbrook Queensway doing the newly introduced driving theory multiple-choice paper. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a gaily coloured sign above a large door outside at the street level below.

"SUNSET CINEMA CLUB" it read, like a beacon to all the porn lovers passing by outside.

I thought at that moment that I had found the best possible name for a band. Unfortunately, I forgot all about the Sunset Cinema Club in a haze of drugs, booze and women during my student daze. The business changed hands, the name changed to something far lass showbiz ('Adult World' - 'Ed) and it looked as if the 'best possible name for a band' had been lost forever, doomed to the annals of time and space...

Late May 2002, my own band finished what turned out to be our last gig at the now sorely missed 'The Venue.

Whilst having a post-performance cigarette at the side of the stage, three figures appeared, dressed like lost extras from the old Peruvian pan-pipe players Fast Show sketch. They introduced themselves as 'ENTER THE MIDGET' and my life was changed forever, though I didn't know it yet. Within a year, the 'Midget had morphed into a funky, experimental mess with dub quality oozing from within them, singing about PJ Harvey's wardrobe and grinding jelly babies. I didn't know what they had called themselves yet but was desperate to get hold of their first CD, the hard to forget 'Homina Homina'. There it was, my eyes were drawn not to the still from 'Terror of Mechagodzilla' on the sleeve but to the writing at the bottom in a Postman Pat-esque font; 'Sunset Cinema Club'.

Bastards!

They had that name but were quickly forgiven - I had found my new favourite band so having the best band name seemed too natural to dispute.

Homina Homina spent a lot of time in the drawer of my CD player for about a year. Along came Crossfest in the summer of 2004 and I waited all day to a packed 'Cross. Alas, fortune was not on my side - the show was stopped to everyone's dismay (someone got stabbed! - 'Ed) and i ended up finishing my evening getting battered in Alvechurch of all places.

Not a lot was seen from the band for a while , the odd show at the old cinema up the road and occasional appearance in Birmingham wasn't enough for a band so gifted and it seemed like they may have been going to waste (Steady! I was at uni! - Greg'Ed).

Then XFM radio started playing new CD 'Baka! Nani O Shite Masu Ka' and the torch-paper was lit (We played Academy 2 with Arctic Monkeys don't you know - Smug'Ed).