Neu Sex Beet

London-based trio Sex Beet have been lumped in with the current fad for referring to anything and everything as ‘surf’, and they’re not happy about it.

‘I can’t surf for shit!’ claims Tom, with bandmate (and most vocal member of the trio) Luke adding ‘I went boogie boarding once, that was good. You just have to lie there’. It’s thanks to Luke’s choice of guitar pedal that they’re so lazily written off. ‘We don’t even like surf music that much’, he explains, ‘it’s just because I found a cheap echo pedal for my guitar, and that makes it sound surfy, and then we had that one song with ‘surf’ in the title’ (2009 single ‘She Don’t Surf’). Perhaps it’s just confusion over the music’s obvious 1950s rock ‘n roll influences? ‘I like a bit of rockabilly and stuff, maybe that comes through a bit… I suppose it’s because there’s loads of people talking about surf at the minute’.

So how would they describe their music? ‘Noise’, all three are quick to state. ‘I always just say it’s noisy’. Luke elaborates: ‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, there’s that sort of thing where you meet family and friends who ask ‘oh, what are you doing now?’ ‘I’m in a rock ‘n roll band’, and they’re all ‘what’s it like?’ ‘noisy…’ then your Auntie ends up going on MySpace and playing it in front of everyone’.

The boys are aiming to record their debut full-length album in September, before heading over to the US. ‘There’s a guy who worked at my University called Warren, he’s said he’s gonna record it, but maybe he’s changed his mind since. He did a load of Fall records, he’s really good. We want to start recording in the first week of September, and hopefully we’ll have it finished by the time we go to the US’. There aren’t any definite plans for release as yet, ‘there’s a label that are paying for us to go to America, but I don’t wanna jinx it… if it happens it’ll be really cool’.

The DIY ethic appears to run strong here, all the trio’s previous releases have been with small independents, and there’s no manager as yet - they’re apparently the beneficiaries of a string of good luck. ‘We didn’t start with any aim, well, apart from getting some free drinks and making the noisiest thing we could do, but… it just happened. It sort of just spiralled out of control, that’s the best way to put it, people paying for us to go abroad, and I had a phonecall yesterday from Marc Riley wanting us to do a session on 6 Music in two weeks. It’s just insane. Every month something crazy’s happening that we’re not expecting. If it keeps up, we’ll probably be as big as U2 in about two years’. ‘We’re just saying ‘yes’ to a load of stuff that’s ridiculous’ adds Tom.

Is there anything they’d say ‘no’ to, then? ‘We’ve started saying ‘no’ to a lot of gigs in London now, just because they’re usually shit. I don’t like a lot of London bands, particularly. Everyone’s just best mates with everyone, and they all just play the same nights to the same people every night.’ Tom chips in ‘It’s better playing shows outside of London, or even Britain, basically. With this chilled out stuff, everyone just stands there, it’s a bit weird, a bit like being a cabaret act or something’. Luke continues on ‘We played at the Lexington a couple of weeks ago, and people were fucking sat down. Maybe we were shit, but… afterwards we had people saying ‘yeah, you were really good, I really liked that’ and buying the record and stuff, but… why were you sat down the whole time?!’

Would they relocate, then? ‘There’s not really anywhere else we could do the band There’s a good scene in Birmingham, some really good bands we’re friends with, and they run a night called Cold Rice, which is always really good. That’s probably the only scene I see us fitting in to, No one in London likes us, no one in Leicester likes us…’

Ah, back to Leicester? ‘I went back the other week to a barbecue at my Dad’s, and in the house behind him was some man, probably in his early twenties, you could see him through the window, just listening to Kasabian really fucking loudly, singing really out of tune. It just made me think, ‘why the fuck am I back in Leicester?”. That’ll be a no.