Music

Brainlove Festival: Bleeding Heart Narrative

Hans Rolo | Wednesday 16 May, 2012 19:28

Today’s Brainlove Festival artist of the day is Bleeding Heart Narrative, who released a thrillingly ambitious EP called “Bison” on the label last year. Recently seen giving When Saints Go machine a run for their money as support at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, BHN will play Brainlove Festival for the first time early in the afternoon.

You can read our interview with the band’s drummer Simon below, read the rest of the BRNLV Festival interview series here, and once thoroughly convinced by the lineup’s breadth and quality, get your hands on tickets here.

Could you introduce a little about yourself first and foremost?
We’re Bleeding Heart Narrative and we’re a six-piece from North/East London.

For people who haven’t seen you live before, what can they expect?
You can expect a pretty big but coherent noise from guitars, drums, cellos, violins, synths, voices and a wood block. The last time we played the Windmill I managed to catapult my glasses off my face with one of my drumsticks and smash them to pieces against a wall, so there’s always a chance that’ll happen again too.

Have you played or even been to the Brainlove Festival prior to this year?
Our singer, Oli, has played the last couple of years, but the rest of us have somehow contrived to book holidays before we’ve been asked. We’re excited to finally play as a full band.

What are you looking forward to most about it?
Our last EP came out on Brainlove so we’ve been exposed to a few of the other bands on the label’s roster as a result. It’ll be good to finally hear some of them live. Also, what’s not to look forward to about a day with music, bbq and booze at the Windmill?

Looking at the line-up, who are you excited about seeing live?
Mat Riviere. We were lucky enough to tour with him recently so it’ll be good to reacquaint myself with his set.

How do you find festivals in general? Do you prefer smaller venue shows?
I’ve not been to a big UK festival as a punter for a while now, mostly because of how expensive they’ve become, so in that sense it’s great to see a lot of smaller, venue specific events come to the fore. While there’s been a decline in the number of beer-sponsored 3-dayers, there seems to be more call for festivals like Brainlove, Southsea and Swn, where people can come and listen to great music for a fraction of the cost. Having said all that, playing Green Man last year was a pretty incredible experience, so I can’t pretend I’d ever write bigger festivals off completely!

Do you enjoy the prospect of people that necessarily aren’t that familiar with your music getting the chance to stumble upon you?
That’s what festivals are all about, right? It’s always exciting to try to win people over who haven’t heard of you. I think we’re also excited about people stumbling across us who have heard our music too, though. The sound of the band has changed quite a bit over the years, so it’s always good to surprise a few people who had us pegged in a certain genre.

Could you tell us a little bit about the track you chose to give away as a free download?
Well, it’s called Shoals and it’s the opening track from the EP Bison, which we released on Brainlove at the end of last year. We made a video for it too, which you can find here

What do your band have going on at the moment? Anything you’re working on or forthcoming releases in the works?
At the moment we’re just concentrating on writing, recording and gigging as much as possible. We’ve got a really busy few weeks coming up with The Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City, a couple of London gigs and, of course, Brainlove Festival, and in between we’re recording some new material and making more videos for the remaining tracks from Bison. Fingers crossed there’ll be some new material released in the near future…

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