iLiKETRAiNS iNTERViEW

Fresh from a game of crazy golf iLiKETRAiNS and I congregate at the Porter, a pub directly above the underground dungeon that is Moles, the venue at which the band are playing tonight. Made up of Dave Martin, (Vocals/Guitar) Guy Bannister, (Guitar) Alistair Bowis, (Bass) Simon Fogal (Drums) and Ashley Dean, (Trumpet/The Projector) they're a good-looking bunch of twenty-somethings not at all out of place in the hip city of Bath.

As a bit of preamble we discuss the vibes of the town and what impressions it had made on the band early on, Dave says that it looked good and that he got a certain energy from the atmosphere that he hoped would translate into their performance. However I imparted that it was voted highly in the Crappest Towns publication of this year, which was met with some disagreement. Still, after all the drinks had been acquired from the bar it was time to get down to business and so the interview began:

R13: The obvious question is: what do you like about trains, are you trainspotters by day?
Dave: (laughs) We weren't originally, we've only started liking trains since we got the name really, what do we love about them?
Guy: I like the smell of the underground, and the warmth of the air that gets pushed around...
Alistair: ...and the rats.
Ashley: I like how some trains look like dolphins, they're a weird sort of machine.

R13: If Dr. Beeching were here right now, what would you say to him?
Dave: Awwhaha, I'd smack him, I wouldn't say a word, no, I wouldn't use violence, we're against violence mainly, except for murders... Yeah murders are fine. I would talk it over with him, talk his reforms over.
Guy: Yeah, I'd have some sympathy with him, he was in an impossible situation where he had to reform the railway and there was only one way to do it, the way that he had been told to do it, so... hmm.

R13: Well, the life of Bobby Fisher is an enthralling subject to base a song around, is there a quirky trend you follow when writing new material now?
Dave: It is getting that way really, it's nice to get a subject that's out of the norm for the pop/rock world and then we do quite a lot of research to get our facts straight and then we go about writing it, which takes a while... Obviously we've got the songs about Fisher and Beeching, now we've got a new one about Scott of the Antarctic, and one about William Huskisson the first person to die on the passenger railways. Yeah it's definitely a trend we're willing to explore...
Guy: Dave always wrote stuff like 'Stainless Steel' and I watched a lot of TV as a student and it completely erased my imagination, because I can't make up a song, so I find it nice to find something that's real and write around it...
Dave: I think what we do with these subjects is we always write it from the first person so we put ourselves in different shoes for these stories, if that makes sense... So, we do use our imaginations in that respect, it's a framework to hang it around really.

R13: So, how would you define a post-murder ballad? As that's what your songs have been described as...
Dave: (confused) A post-murder ballad? Umm... I probably wouldn't describe it, I'd just write it...
Guy: I don't know...
Dave: Is that what it is, is that what we're doing? ...I guess it just means we listen to Nick Cave, and we set about taking that template and running with it.
Alistair: Taking murder to the next step...
iLiKETRAiNS: Hahahaha.

R13: Who are your main influences then?
Guy: Well we're all different, but generally speaking we like Sigur Ros, obviously Nick Cave, we like Radiohead and all that sort of genre, and God Speed You and I guess Mogwai.
Dave: No, that's definitely not an influence for everybody, I think you've only listened to them a bit.
Simon: I've seen them a few times...
Dave: I think one of the things is we didn't listen to the traditional... we get lumped in with post-rock bands, we never listened to Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, only listened to God Speed since making the music, we were informed by Sigur Ros, so I think that makes the difference in the music that we write, we're not really influenced by the traditional post-rock bands, even though we're doing a similar sort of thing.

R13: Do you have a collective favourite album?
Ashley: Blood On The Tracks.
Alistair: Born In The USA.
Guy: I think for the most of us it's ( ) by Sigur Ros...
Dave: There's not too many bands we all agree on is there...?

R13: Any news on your album, when's it coming out? It's definitely hotly anticipated...
Alistair:You've got a while to wait yet I think.
Guy: The sort of vague hope is for it to come out about this time next year. It gives us enough time to write it. We are planning to do an EP before.
Dave: Watch this space basically.

R13: But you're pleased with how it's going so far? Your single selling out straight away...
Dave: Yeah, very pleased with the single, sold-out by twelve o'clock on the day of its release, and everything is going in the right direction, I think this tour's been a big success so far. And we're enjoying it, and we're getting better, I think, so, it's all happening, it's been successful.

R13: Do you find your different tastes bring different elements to the band as a whole?
Dave: Oh yeah, I think so, I think so, Simon loves cock-rock.
Simon: A-hahaha.
Dave: Simon comes from the Led Zeppelin school of drumming, so he hits hard.
Simon: I try to, no, I think I do hit hard.
Ashley: Yeah, I used to watch a lot of Record Breakers as a kid, so I get a lot of things from Roy Castle.

R13: What about your visual references?
Dave: Yeah, the thing you have to watch when we're playing is Ash juggling in his corner with his projector breaking down, trying to get his slides straight.
Ashley: Yeah, when we played London, the inside of the projector corroded and the connection was really dodgy so there was blue sparks flying everywhere throughout the show.
Dave: That was the inaugural pyrotechnics gig for iLiKETRAiNS.
Alistair: That was Northampton not London.
Guy: All sounds the same...

R13: Looking forward to tonight?
Dave: Yeah, I think Bath has a good feel to it, so bring it on...

That was the end of the formal questions and we were left just discussing general topics and drinking. Being an unsigned band, as Guy put it "isn't very rock 'n' roll," as the band members have to work in the day, three of them photographing an eccentric millionaire's art archive. But, iLiKETRAiNS have the potential and brilliant talent to put an end to all that and make this a full-time venture by establishing a massive fanbase. Yet, maybe not all the fans are that with it, as the band's recent single, limited to 500 copies on vinyl and available pre-selling out, for £3.99 is now going for £7 on e-bay, which is great, one poor unsuspecting fan is purchasing the DVD of the first single 'BEFORETHECURTAiNSCLOSE' for £20, although you can buy it from the band's site for £4.
Dave relays his annoyance at the comparisons made between his haunting baritone and that of the Divine Comedy's frontman Neil Hannon, so I tell him to do a cover of 'National Express' and you can look forward to that in coming tours, maybe... As the promise of the gig co-headlining with Redjetson closes in, the air grows taut and buzzes and the band disappear off into the basement to ready themselves for the night.