Interview The Japanese House: Making Waves

Amber Bain doesn’t do ordinary. From launching her first music as The Japanese House with a Zane Lowe nod, to leaping aboard a six-month arena tour with The 1975 before she’d even shifted her early-days stage fright, everything’s been next-level bonkers from day one. When she admits to having shared producer Guy Chambers’ studio space with Robbie Williams himself, it barely raises an eyebrow. “I went in two or three times, and in between times Robbie Williams was in the studio. I actually used his laptop charger – I wrote him a note, dunno if he saw it,” she smiles. “I can’t believe that I made my EP in the same studio as ‘Party Like A Russian’!” she laughs, nodding to Robbie’s frankly batshit new single. Following those huge arena dates, she’s finally over the jitters, too – mostly through learning to deal with her near-constant embarrassing antics. Forgetting the words to her own songs and on-stage shoelace malfunctions are common occurrences – “Tying your shoelaces, with a guitar on, on stage, is really awkward. You just have to crouch down and get on with it,” she offers by way of (admittedly niche) advice.

Among all this calamity and celeb-spotting, the ‘Swim Against The Tide’ EP took shape. Like the two releases before it, Amber trawled her teenage songbook for much of the record, piecing it together on long tour bus stints and snatched studio time. “’Leon’’s really old – I wrote that before ‘Still’, so probably when I was like sixteen,” she admits. Huge lead single ‘Face Like Thunder’ was also birthed way before debut EP ‘Pools To Bathe In’, Amber and co-producer George Daniel of The 1975 rejigging the track to fit their newfound production prowess.