News Amusement: ‘We’re Very Eager For People To Hear New Material’

For Amusement, 2012 has been a year of steady growth. They’ve incorporated new elements into their sound, as well as recruiting two new members to help fully-realise their creations in a live setting. It’s a far-flung reality from all the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ we spilled upon our first interaction with the band back in June of 2011. The group’s recent ‘King of the World’ single is the crowning piece in this gradual progression; a royal pop song dressed in pretty synthetics and a giant, arena-bred chorus.
DIY spoke to the band about their last twelve months and how they’ve progressed from an ambitious bedroom act into a fully-fledged band with a cause.

On DIY we pretty much went ahead and said that ‘King of the World’ was your best track to date. Did you feel the same when you finished recording it? To me it feels like you’ve really turned a page.
King of the World’ was one of many ideas we created during time spent at my Grandparent’s empty house. There is a about 4 hours of short ideas recorded now. Having something you feel is a strong idea, and then taking that into the studio to refine and work around really pushes us to turn the original idea into something as listenable as possible.

The first time I saw you play live you were using an iPhone as backing percussion. Now you’re a fully fledged four piece. Did you always aim to expand your line-up in order to make the live show more fully realised?
It was always a goal to have a fuller line up on stage. Starting as a much more production based project, we kind of wanted let nature take its course in terms of how our live show should work. Once the iPhone died. Noone needs stuff like that happening. There’s no excuse, and having a full band now just feels more organic and real.

When you wrote your first ever songs did you have the live setting in mind? Often bands can put songs out online, gain support, without knowing how to translate these songs in a live setting.
I don’t think we had a live setting in mind at all. It is genuinely hard to translate a production-fill­ed demo into something that’s really visual and interesting on stage. Songs written in a live environment already have that natural orchestration.

Apart from the obvious live asset, what do Holly and Ulysses add to the songwriting process?
It’s really nice to be able to hear little ideas at early stages sounding fuller. It gives us a better picture of where the song could go. They both have amazing ideas and personalities, Ulysses is European beyond belief, and Holly played drums for Frankie Cocozza. They’ve both done all this weird stuff, and their experience and attitude to music completely comes across when we play together.

What do you have planned for 2013?
We are going to release a single and celebrate the world still being here.

How would you sum up the past year?
We spent a while sorting out the live show and getting new people involved; all as passionate as we are. During that lull, we were able to write a lot of songs. It’s been beneficial in that respect. We’re very eager for people to hear new material. It’s been a very quick year despite the clocks going back.