Interview Splashh: ‘We Just Hope For The Best’

Long time coming. That’s what it feels like Splashh’s debut album, ‘Comfort’, has been. And yet it hasn’t at all – the band only formed in February of last year; that means it’s just twenty short months between the decision of guitarist / producer Toto Vivian and vocalist / guitarist Sasha Carlson to form the band and the UK release of the record. And it’s already out in the States.

It’s testament to the London-based four-piece’s super speedy rise that a delay of a few weeks feels like forever. The band came to life after New Zealander (via Australia) Carlson and Australian Vivian met up with Brit bassist Thomas Beale. Booking a gig before they’d even really thought about what they were going to do, drummer Jacob Moore was flown in from New Zealand by request just a day before it.



So that’s February 2012. By April we’d featured the band in a Neu piece, debut single ‘All I Wanna Do’ was announced in May and released in June; the band performed at that summer’s Latitude festival. Since then there’ve been further singles ‘Need It’ and ‘Vacation’, and the band featured in DIY’s own Class of 2013. ‘Comfort’ was announced weeks after that back in March – and so when summer arrived and it still hadn’t been released, it couldn’t help but make us come over a little Veruca Salt. We want it NOW.

“Well, that wasn’t our decision,” Carlson explains, speaking about the delay in ‘Comfort’ seeing light on these shores. It does seem a little odd, of course, given the quartet’s distinctively summery sound – a cliché it may be, but the core pair of Vivian and Carlson’s respective upbringings in warmer climes really must’ve made an impact on their songwriting – that the record it’s out until September. The oh-so-brief British summer is long gone.



“Hopefully it’ll make people feel like it’s still summer,” he adds. It’s definitely a familiar-sounding release. All previous singles feature within its ten tracks. “We didn’t know we were doing an album,” he laughs. “We did these songs within the first few months of us starting. We didn’t really know we’d be making an album, they were just songs we recorded. We don’t really treat it [‘Comfort] like our big debut album. It’s kinda just a collection of songs that we’ve had for a while that we feel is the first part of Splashh to get out there.”

Back in their bedroom days, the band were keen to stress that there were no ‘grand plans’; they were content to put their fate in the hands of those who knew better (their management, specifically) and just see how it goes. Another cliché from Down Under. “We just hope for the best.” It doesn’t seem like much has changed on Planet Splashh since then. “I mean, I know the tunes have already been out, but I hope people get in to them. And maybe it’ll be that it [the band’s music] reaches a bigger audience.”

The quartet have a tour planned for later in the year, “it’s going to be all over the UK,” he says, “and I guess some dates in Europe as well. I think it’ll be bigger rooms than our previous tour.” They’re hoping to “throw more of a party” live now the record’s out; once more of the audience know more of the songs. But, he’s keen to point out, the effect might not be that immediate. “I think with the record,” he tells us, “it takes, you know, more than a few listens to really get the vibe of it.”



Splashh’s debut album ‘Comfort’ is out now via Luv Luv Luv.

Read the full interview in the new edition of DIY Weekly, available from iTunes now.