A Chat with LONG ISLAND (21.01.23)
Pushing the boundaries of modern-day indie-pop, UK-based LONG ISLAND proves they are not to be pigeon-holed with their inimitable music. We speak with the foursome about their new album infatuation’s a nightmare, what music means to them, future plans, and what alcoholic beverage they would be.
OSR: How did LONG ISLAND come about? What drew you to music?
LONG ISLAND: All four of us met at the University of Huddersfield. We were each doing music or music technology courses and kind of fell upon liking indie-pop as our middle ground, even though we have such a variety of influences. The album process was spearheaded by a university project to create an album for a module, and we ended up falling in love with the music so much that it made sense to continue it into what became LONG ISLAND! We sat with the music after that making little improvements and learning how to play it live to where we are now!
OSR: What does music mean to you?
LONG ISLAND: Music means an awful lot to everyone in this band. It’s a way for us to express ourselves and be involved in something tangible that shows it. It’s a snapshot of the time that these tracks were created and what we were all individually going through, which is cool to go back and look at.
OSR: What inspires you to make music?
LONG ISLAND: We’ve all loved music since we were kids, but we all have such a wide range of different influences. You can hear us drawing upon elements of so many styles that we love throughout the album, from electronic music to pop-punk to jazz. Aside from that, just being able to tell a story and have people connect and interpret that story in their own ways is incredible!
OSR: What can you tell us about your album infatuation’s a nightmare? Is there a backstory or theme?
LONG ISLAND: infatuation’s a nightmare is a culmination of nine tracks created during our time at university together, written with our wonderful friend Brad Weston (previously of the band TRASH). It follows the storyline of falling in and out of love with someone, and all the joy, pain and anger that follows that process. ‘wild nights’ throws you into the idea of first meeting someone and being so infatuated by them; ‘hurts like you’ falls upon the turning point of the album where you start to realise these issues that the relationship may be one-sided. The final three tracks are all forms of acceptance once the relationship has finished – blaming yourself, realising that actually you’re better off without them, and the time after a toxic relationship where you realise you were being manipulated the entire time.
OSR: What is your creative process?
LONG ISLAND: It differs from track to track really. Most often we get into a studio together and show each other some ideas we have and begin to work things out from there. We typically give each idea a couple of hours and if nothing is happening then it’s probably not going to work in the end. The best songs seem to be those ones that just come naturally. Some tracks on this album, like ‘hurts like you’, were written when we had no real idea for what we were doing. Cameron sat in the studio with a guitar and recorded some guitar parts with no other ideas for the track and we came up with the structure and production style from there – it was such a different way of working, but I think you can tell from the track!
OSR: What was the most exciting and most challenging thing about creating infatuation’s a nightmare?
LONG ISLAND: The time pressure was definitely the most challenging! This was originally a university project starting out where we had an album to write in just over two months – it was quite stressful going from having never worked together to being expected to have this grand output of work in that time. But once we started we realised our writing styles worked so well together and we were having so much fun writing that it seemed like this project could become an actual thing. I think around four weeks into the project we all discussed if this could actually become a project we could continue in the future, and I think that was one of the most exciting parts.
OSR: Do you actually believe that infatuation can be a nightmare?
LONG ISLAND: I think we’d like to say no, though it can often feel like it is. I think sometimes you get caught up in your perfect vision of someone that it takes a lot of bad to realise that something was really wrong in the first place.
OSR: If you were an alcoholic beverage, what would you be?
LONG ISLAND: It’s going to be the cliche answer, but it has to be a Long Island Iced Tea. It’s where the name came from originally – it became a staple of writing the album and band practices.
OSR: What do you hope people take from your music?
LONG ISLAND: We mainly just hope that people have fun listening to the songs. We had so much fun creating it and there are so many different styles we try out on the album, so there’s something that everyone can connect to! Infatuation may not be completely a nightmare too, but we hope that people take away that you should value yourself in a relationship. Maybe don’t get too blindsided by your ideal vision to not realise when you’re not being treated right.
OSR: Do you have future plans as LONG ISLAND?
LONG ISLAND: We’re obviously going to be creating a lot more music together. We already have some in the works and are planning on doing more. Expect some more music coming out this year! Also, lots of gigs are being planned right now! Come down and see us play all these songs out live, we try and make our gigs a lot of fun!
Many thanks to LONG ISLAND for speaking with us. For more from LONG ISLAND check out their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
