Pumarosa talk forest fires and festival madness at Latitude 2016

Fresh from a spell-binding set at the Sunrise Arena earlier this afternoon, Pumarosa are beginning to meander their way through Latitude, stopping off in the mysterious forests for a nice old sitdown. For them, the ‘which country am I in today?’ mayhem of touring Europe is right about to kick off, and fresh out the studio, the band are raring to go.

“We did a festival yesterday, we’ve got today, and we start from here, fresh,” Isabel Munoz-Newsome says, having a quick post-set moment of recuperation in Latitude’s woodland with bandmate Nicolas Owen. “We’ve just been recording with Dan Carey, doing our album, for two weeks, in a completely different gear. Its been amazing, beautiful, but so exhusting because I feel like I have to be as alert as Dan is,” Isabel laughs. “He doesn’t get tired,” Nicholas adds. “At four in the afternoon, when everyone’s desperate for food, he’ll be like, no!”

Earlier on today, Isabel’s limb twirling dance moved spawned multiple imitations across the Sunrise Arena, with everyone from the hardcore rabble up the front, to stray children in the woodland really going for it. “Older guys as well!” Isabel enthuses. “Older men, really dancing hard, which was great. It’s nice having a crowd that’s really diverse age-wise,” she adds “which Latitude definitely does.”

Pumarosa particularly relished the opportunity to play in an environment befitting of their spun-out, wild songs “Lots of the lyrics are about forests,” Isabel points out. “The black lake, and the forest fire,” she laughs, “I was like, guys, I’m singing about this place.”

Today saw Pumarosa debut a brand new album track for the second time, ever. “We did it at Glastonbury, and it went really well, so we thought, why not?” Isabel reasons. “It’s more cosy.” Said song includes an absolutely thrashing tamborine interlude, one which she readily admits she’s still nailing.

“This is really embarrassing, but its only recently I’ve started to get better at the tambourine,” Isabel hoots. “Nick’s obviously a drummer and super tight, and he’s always looking at me like…no. We put it at the end because ‘Priestess’ is quite demonic.” “It’s astructural,” Nick agrees. “It’s not really a song.” “It’s nice, a musical passage where people can get into really feeling it. And then ending really soft and a bit ethereal.” Isabel grins.