We caught up with Shaun Milton from Landscapes ahead of their set at Hevy Festial this summer to talk about their album plans, tattoo influence and horror.
You’re in the middle of a European tour with Endless Heights and Break Even, how is it going?
It has been quite a chaotic tour, it’s three bands in two vans so we are pretty crammed in. The guys we are on tour with a fucking awesome people, they are honestly some of the greatest people we have ever toured with. The guys in Endless Heights are such a tight unit of friends and you don’t normal see that in bands. You usually see good fiends but you don’t normally see them like that. They are absolutely loving every second of being in the UK, this is their first time out in Europe. And Break Even are just really lovely and humble people as well so we are just having the best time.
Do you think you will put an album out this year?
We are really hoping to get something released this year. Last year we recorded our forthcoming album which we’ve titled Modern Earth. Its aesthetic is the idea of looking at society and world of today and taking a step back. It is trying to figure out what people are doing with themselves and understanding each others problems, not in such a policital way but saying it in our own personal way.
So yeah, we recorded it last September out in California at Panda Studios but we weren’t overly happy with the end result. We felt there was a little more to do on it and we are all about quality control .People can wait and moan as long as they want but at the end of the day if we are not happy with it we are the ones who have to live with it. So we took it back The Ranch Production House in Southampton and that’s all together now so then we took a stepback on how we were going to approach out artwork.
We didn’t want to deal with photoshop as such so I began building a set and we’ve just had the first set of images back. Hopefully we should see the album out in the next few months fingers crossed.
Did you take time out to write the album or did you do it whilst touring?
We were bouncing ideas around on tours but we just found that we didn’t get the peace and quiet we needed. Sometimes it works better with just two or three of you and sometimes it works better as a whole band. We tend to find that the phrase is right and that too many cooks spoil the broth. This isn’t to say that we are not all involved in the writing but just that we need to break away from everything else with a focus on what we want to do.
For us it isn’t just about what is right for the sound everyone else is expecting, it is about what we feel comfortable with. It has got to be about what we are vibing and we all have such different influences. Tom is a big Morrisey fan, I’m a big everything fan, Kai is a big pissed jeans fan, Martin is well into Man Overboard. We’re all into different shit. Jordan for fuck sake is into Grime. So you look at all of us and you wouldn’t put us together but when we put our creative inputs together it works so well.
Where do you want to tour next?
We’re in the middle of a European tour at the moment but we’ve never been to Australia. We were supposed to go at the end of last year and sadly we had to pull out, but we are hoping that sometime next year we can get out there along with America. We are signed to Pure Noise Records so we want to create a foundation for ourselves. Everything is based around our releases so with our release taking a year longer than what it should have done it has put us back a bit.
Yanbo’s done by Petra Brkić
How do you feel about your work inspiring tattoos?
We are always completely overwhelmed, I remember the first person to get one, they were from Brazil of all places. He had ‘ I drain out every moment until its gone’ which is a really old lyric and we were all just astounded about how our music got that far.
So we made a policy that the moment that so many different people started getting these amazing tattoos that we were going show some sort of appreciation. I save all of the photos we’ve been tagged into and I try and post as many as I can. But we also made this deal that if we have control of the show we’ll stick you on the guest list.
So yeah we are completely touched, you think to yourself what is it that people are getting from that particular song and our whole aesthetic but at the same time their own decision. Tattoos are a really personal thing, id be a fucking liar if I didn’t turn around and say that I didn’t ever get a tattoo because it looked cool but at the same time it still means something to me, it marks a stage in your life.
It is a real privilege and an honour for us that people are getting tattoos that are anything to do with us. But at the same time it is a step in whatever path they have taken or are about to take and i’m fully supportive of it. I know that we had some people that were not even following us on our Facebook that were specifically coming to our page to call people out for getting tattooed. If you don’t want to get tattooed don’t tell someone how to live their life, so yeah we are completely supportive of it and we think its great.
Ben Abraham’s done by Lukasz Christopher at Oddfellows Tattoo Collective in Leeds
In line with the release of The Horror issue, what is your favourite horror film?
I could say a whole bunch but if it is just one, I want to say Alien. And I will tell you the reason why or else people might not think it is a horror and just a sci-fi.
It is a horror and the reason it is a such a horror is that Ripley is essentially one of the first female heroes to come forward and the horrifying aspect is the rape that is sat between the lines of that film is incredible. It is not gendered, it is the horrifying thought that this face hugger that resembles a vagina basically forces a phallic tube down your throat and impregnantes you and then it bursts out of you in the most terrifying, painful way possible. To me that is so fucking scary, it has got all the fright element to it and I am all about space and shit so I love it.