The Whip

Interview

Manchester born and bred, The Whip give UKAdapta a candid interview about their newly found success as an electro pop outfit. With recent gigs in Japan and all over Europe, the band seem surpisingly well grounded. Find out why.

- Can you tell us who The Whip are and what’s your band’s personal history?

L: We are The Whip and we play music to anyone who cares to listen.

B: We play a kind of electronic music, but it’s also kind of indie music. You could say that it’s the perfect hybrid! Originally, we were all in different bands except me and Danny, our keyboardist, who couldn’t make it to the interview had been playing together for years.

N: But we all knew each other for years and we all know each other’s ex band members. In Manchester, there’s a really good music scene and everyone is very close; because of this, we all help each other out when a band is looking for a bass player or drummer, for example. There’s probably 70-80 decent musicians in Manchester and we have all been in bands with one another. We, as The Whip, eventually formed with the four of us, me on bass, Fee on drums, Danny on Keyboards and Bruce doing the vocals.

- What about your roots or influences?

L: N: & B: Cassius, New Order, Soul Wax, The Band & Fleetwood Mac.

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B: I think that nowadays, things aren’t as clean cut as they used to be which means that everybody listens to a little bit of everything, which is great. Everyone is just out to have fun and that’s what our band is all about.

N: We have this theory that in the last couple years, the crowds want to dance more. They don’t just want to stand around and watch a band. They want to move and have a good time.

- How does the creative process work for you guys when you are making new tracks?

L: Bruce just records a riff he has made up with his mobile phone and sends it to us!

Youtube : The Whip - Divebomb

We even made a song using a small video that Bruce had made on his digital camera whilst on holiday. All you could see were his feet and he was playing something on the guitar and it sounded really catchy!

-What equipment/setup are you using on stage?

N: It’s a pretty simple setup. We have a bass guitar, a really simple drum kit, vocals and some nice vintage keyboards. We usually travel to our gigs in a car so we can’t fit in that much stuff. Hopefully one day we’ll have a large van or something so we can bring all kinds of stuff.

Youtube : The Whip - Sister Siam

- Your Myspace account has been getting a lot of profile views. Is a community website like this important for your promotion?

B: Being able to speak to your fans, not just in the UK, but internationally has been an amazing experience. There used to be a time when you had demo-tapes or CD’s and you would have ask around for favors to get it heard. Nowadays, you don’t have to pull any strings, people can listen to it on Myspace and they either like it or they don’t.

N: We only started as a band three years ago. We would do the odd gig here and there, but once fans started to comment on our Myspace and other people would read these comments about us it actually got us more gigs and the more gigs we did, the more feedback on Myspace we would get. So it was a great circle.

Youtube : THE WHIP - TRASH @ DPERCUSSION

L: Another good thing was that we were made “Featured Artists” on Myspace which meant we got a lot more exposure and this really helped us. We were lucky though because we had no idea about it and none of our management knew either.

The Whip : http://myspace.com/thewhipmanchester

Written by Selph