Preview: The Yorker Presents Littlemores and The Mountaineering Club

Ahead of Monday night’s social, The Yorker caught up with the two live acts to talk venues, EPs, and small-scale arson...

“The Mountaineering Club” – a quick scout around the website suggests you are all actually avid mountaineers, or is that not really the case?

Tom: We just thought it was a cool name, there’s quite a lot of good imagery and baggage that goes with the word. We all kind of like outdoorsy stuff, but not actual mountain climbing... we’re all quite keen photographers as well, and mountains looks pretty cool, especially in black and white.

You talked about photography – are the visuals very much a part of your show?

Leo: Yeah, if we get the chance we’ll always have a projector, so it’s quite a visual set. I think image is quite important.

I understand you have a finished EP, what kind of thing can we expect?

Tom: Yeah, we finished recording it over the summer. It’s standard length, so five tracks. We ran the whole thing through a few tapes, so it’s got quite an interesting sound...it works quite well because the guy who mixed it did a lot of stuff to the vocals to make them sound a little bit different.

Leo: It takes a while to get used to it; you have to listen to it a couple of times before you get into it.

Tom: Leo’s quite into electronica, so that’s where all the beats come from, and I’m really into the whole shoegaze scene, so bands like My Bloody Valentine, there’s quite a lot of that coming in. Rich brings in the classical stuff...it’s an interesting combination.

So you’ve been gigging a lot round York, what would be your ultimate venue?

Tom: Yeah we do four or five gigs a term – we have to get a degree as well! I don’t know, it’s quite a sub-genre theme, I don’t think what we play would work well in a massive venue at all.

Leo: I reckon a living room in some fancy mansion, that’d be cool.

Tom: It’d be awesome to play – you know the Brudenell in Leeds? Somewhere like that, and there’s a really good scene happening in Leeds, it’d be good to get in on it. We’re not making music that’s going to work on radio 1, so that’s no really our aim... we’re aiming at a really specific market of people, I hate to say more intelligent, but you know like IDM [Intelligent Dance Music]... they were campaigning for people who like listening to music, rather than just having it on in the background.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?

Leo: We’re going to get our EP sorted.

Tom: Yeah we’re just arguing about artwork at the moment. We’ll probably use one of our photos... but we have an awful lot of them! I think it’s kinda cool when a bands been involved all the way – you know Sigur Ros? They do their own album artwork a lot of the time, and I think that’s really cool, when you have an album with your photo on and your name on it. Like we were saying, imagery’s really important, so we want to get that into the artwork.

Rich: To have something in your hand that you like, as well...

Tom: Yeah, it has to be a nice physical thing.

So you prefer buying the physical product rather than downloading music?

Tom: I’ll normally download it, and then if I like it I’ll go find a nice physical version.

What kind of thing are you listening to at the moment?

Tom: I’m going to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor at All Tomorrow’s Parties soon so I’m listening to them a lot.

Rich: Cinematic Orchestra.

Leo: I’m listening to a lot of Ricardo Villalobos at the moment.

Can’t beat the Chilean techno.

So the name, Littlemores, where did that come from?

Kai: We can’t really tell you that. It’s a secret.

Sounds like it could be a good story!

Jack: We tell different stories every time.

Kai: Do you want to hear some fake stories?

Jack: We were on the Yorkshire moors, walking along, and it was a really big moor, and we wished it could be just a little moor...

Ben: That was a shit anecdote.

I understand you’ve known each other a long time; you must have some pretty good stories – were any of you troublemakers in school?

Jack: Conor (who’s the singer who’s not here) was a bit of a... well a bit of an arsonist... someone had brought some safety matches in, and we were playing about with them in the playground (this was when we were four years old) and, er, Conor got his hat burnt. That was about as far as our troublemaking went.

You’ve recently won York’s Battle of the Bands, what was that like?

Kai: That was awesome. It was really amazing. We went into it just because it was a gig, and it was good to play in front of people... It was really weird yeah... it was weird that we won, we were up against some good bands, some really good bands – there was a band called Lost from Atlas, who were in the finals with us, and they’re amazing.

Have things gained momentum for you guys since then?

Ben: Definitely, we’ve started getting out of York a little bit. With the money that we won, we’ve started getting some recording done, got some new equipment, become a little bit more professional. We’ve been noticed more.

So you’ve made two EPs, what can we expect on them?

Kai: Well I wouldn’t expect you to buy one of them, the old one’s the rubbish one, so we re-did it. What could you expect... I dunno... something amazing! Good lyrics, good songs...

Ben: Something you won’t be disappointed with.

Kai: (laughs) yeah, something that’s well average.

Now things have started picking up speed for the band, what’s the ultimate venue you’d want to play?

Jack: Madison Square Garden.

Kai: Even somewhere local, like the o2 Academy in Leeds would be amazing. We get mixed reviews about whether we sound better inside or on an outside on an open stage... there’s something about the energy of being in a smaller venue.

If you had to pick one band that’s influenced your sound above all others, who would it be?

Ben: I’m not sure you could pin it down to just one band... lyrically, and probably genre-wise, it would be The Libertines, yeah The Libertines or The Specials.

Are you excited about the gig on Monday?

Ben: I’m really excited, yeah!

Kai: The only thing I remember about Yates’s is that they have really nice toilets...

Join The Mountaineering Club and Littlemores at The Yorker Presents, Monday 15th at Yates's. Tickets £2 adv, £3 OTD.

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