MONDAY MORNING MUSICAL MAYHEM - featuring Chris from FRAUDS
Updated: Apr 15, 2021
New interviews from people in the music scene every Monday, every week, every month!
Welcome to Monday Morning Musical Mayhem: an online series that will focus on musicians, bands, artists, and whoever else in the musical industry that reaches out to us! The goal is help spread the word about people doing rad stuff in the music world? Are you doing rad stuff? Email us at brutalrealitydigest@gmail.com to be featured! xoxoxo
We're back in action with a fresh instalment of MMMM! This time we cross the pond once again and chat with Chris, the drummer/singer of British Power Duo FRAUDS! We discuss Britishy things and probably more so what are you waiting for? Give it a read!
BRUTAL REALITY DIGEST: Identify yourself, your band, and weapon of choice.
CHRIS: Hello! We are Chris (drums/vocals) & Mike (geetarz/vocals) and we are Frauds.
BRD: How would you describe your sound to the uninitiated?
C: Hmmmm big riffs, big beats, big tunes served with big smiles about sums it up.
BRD: You guys hail from Croydon, England. What's something we should know about that place?
C: I remember at school finding out that Derren Brown came from Croydon and Eddie Izzard lived in Thorton Heath. When I was about 10 Crystal Palace Football Club went into administration and my dad took me to a fundraiser, which Eddie Izzard helped organize to raise money for the club. The line up was amazing it included Steve Coogan, Phil Jupitus & Sean Hughes. I was definitely too young to be there but it definitely gave me a love of stand up comedy from a really young age and that has definitely filtered into what we do as a band.
BRD: Your music videos are.... something else. Who are some of your cinematic influences that led you down that road?
C: Well we were really lucky early on to have a friend who is an amazing videographer/visual artist (check out Davids work here: www.sagberg.co.uk). He really took the reigns in terms of helping us with how we wanted things to look and he loves to push us into slightly awkward corners, which is wonderful. He’s now residing in Vienna, which means we’ll have to get out there to do something else with him, which we’d love to do (if possible) at some point for the upcoming album.
Since the pandemic hit we’ve basically had to make our own videos, which has been really fun! The Copenhagen video we tried to get loads of people in Copenhagen to send in videos of them in and around the city during lockdown but we only got about 5 videos back (you can see snippets at the end of the video). So in lieu of that I decided to have a day out around London going to anything that was vaguely related to Denmark and we made our own Danish T shirts to look like tourists. Our new video for Money Honey we took inspiration from Limmy and tried to pay tribute to him, I think it went quite well and we are excited make a couple more in the coming months.
BRD: Since you have such a unique sound, is it difficult to find appropriate bands to play and/or tour with?
C: No it’s actually quite the opposite as over the past few years we have built up a lot of relationships with bands around the UK. We put on our own all dayer at The Windmill Brixton 4 years in a row called “Sunburn” that was a celebration of the bands and an excuse hang out with them. There’s so many amazing bands and people out there, we are currently picking supports for our tour later this year and it’s going to be different each night along the way.
BRD: Who is the 2nd best duo out there besides you?
C: It has to be Vic & Bob!
BRD: If you could steal one song in history and claim it as a FRAUDS original, what would it be?
C: Probably The Rat by The Walkmen what an amazing track.
BRD: On the other end of the spectrum, if you could delete any song from history so you never had to hear it again, which one would you choose?
C: Easy it would have to be Sweet Child Of Mine by GnR.
BRD: Judging by your YouTube videos, you have a fairly energetic live show for just 2 guys. Do you have any wacky stories of the energy going awry?
C: There was a time when Mike jumped on me and we both fell about 8ft off of the stage, I remember thinking, “oh shit we are still falling” which was not good! Fortunately there were no injuries sustained which was very surprising.
BRD: What do you hope to accomplish in the remainder of 2021 both musically and personally?
C: Well to actually play live would be amazing, the stress of not playing has manifested itself into a dull ache and we gotta get the venues open and thriving. We also want to record the third album by the end of the year (its nearly done and its going to be HUGGGE).