At the tail end of 2015, Rough Hands entered Brighton Electric Studios to record their long-awaited debut album Let Me Win Your Hearts And Minds. Pushed to their absolute musical limits by producer Jag Jago (The Ghost Of A Thousand, The Maccabees, The Xcerts) and mastered by Peter van ‘t Riet (DragonForce, … And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead), the album will no doubt be regarded as one of the most exciting releases of 2016. Formed in 2011 in London/Brighton Rough Hands have released two 7” records – their Self Titled debut via Holy Roar Records (UK) / Day By Day Records (EU), followed by their more progressive and textured Nothing’s Changed. Let Me Win Your Hearts And Minds will be released on August 5th 2016 on 12″ vinyl and cassette tape by prolific UK based label Dog Knights Productions, home to Nai Harvest, Old Gray, Birdskulls and many more. You listen to Swim in the Blues from the upcoming album below.
I caught up with Rough Hands for an interview where they talks about their upcoming album, fans, inspirations and more!
Are you looking forward to the release of Let Me Win Your Hearts and Minds?
Yeah definitely, we’ve been sitting on these tracks for almost a year now and can’t wait for people to hear them
How is the album different to your other releases?
Firstly the writing process was completely different, the early Rough Hands E.P’s were pretty much banged out a few weeks before recording, with different tracks being written by different members of the band. This time around it was done by all five of us in a practice room once a week for six months. We would just jam for lengthy periods of time and let one of our phones record it and then piece songs together from these terrible phone speaker demos. Secondly we were all in very different place in terms of what we were listening to, which in fact was very little heavy music.
How has the release of ‘Swim in the Blues been?
Yeah it seems to have been positive so far, we are fully aware that we are really gonna have to go out and play shows to get these songs out to people. We didn’t expect a huge reaction purely from a few internet posts.
What would you say to your fans that go to gigs and buy your music?
Thanks for the support over the last few years
What music inspires you guys?
As a band we all have a collective penchant for club music, groove is a very important aspect of the record and I think that comes from our love for techno and acid house, the more gritty and underground end of dance music, it’s not necessarily an obvious influence, but us wanting to have straight up songs that you can instantly nod your head to definitely comes from that world. One of the more obvious collective influences on Rough Hands is Deftones, they are a band we all have loved for years and owe alot to. Individually we are all into a wide array of music, Alex was into bands Alice in Chains and Melvins whilst we were writing, Dex is big into Dream Pop and I think that contributes to us wanting to focus on creating an atmosphere. Having said all that we are very strong believers in the idea of creating something new, we aren’t satisfied unless we are experimenting somehow.
Where would you like to see yourselves in 5 years time?
Not being completely broke, not struggling to pay rent, drinking Peroni instead of Lidl beer
Have you got any tours planned for this year?
We have nothing booked in for definite just yet, but we do have stuff being worked on. Regardless we are going to be out on the road as much as we can following the release date