Interview: New Carnival bassist Billy Foster

The Tab caught up with up with UoB’s Billy Foster earlier this week – the bassist for up and coming band New Carnival.

Chillin’

Tab: Ok, let’s get to know you a little bit first. I’ll ask a series of quick-fire questions , really highbrow stuff. Birmingham or Guildford? (home town)

Billy: Ooh, Birmingham

Adam’s Place or Roosters?

Adam’s Place.

Really?

Yeah, I’m a bit more of a cheesy chips kinda guy than a chicken guy

Well, OK. Club or pub?

Pub.

Fab n Fresh or Fifa sesh?

Fab n Fresh.

Good answer.

Yeah, Fifa stresses me out, I get all sweaty – it upsets me

Nice. So you’re not all at Birmingham, are you?

Yeah I’m the only one at Birmingham – Max (vox and guitar) and Bertie (drummer) are both at Bristol. But we know each other from home, we went to school together.

Cute. How long have you guys been together then?

I’d say things started happening in February 2010 – we started playing ambient jazz back then because we were in jazz bands at school.  But then we started putting 4/4 beats over the top of things and making it a bit more dancey and that’s more our sound now…jazz has very little to do with it.

The man in action

And you’ve just released a new song, haven’t you? Tell us about that.

Yes, we have, yeah. We released Let Me Shake last Monday. We actually recorded it about a year ago. It’s gonna be the second track of our new E.P that will be out soon.

Any idea what the E.P will be called?

Well, we’re still playing around with ideas. We released a demo a few years ago called ‘Wait and See’, so one idea was to call this one ‘Wait and Seem E.P’ so it says ‘wait and see me pee’…

Genius. And there’s a video coming out for Let Me Shake too, right?

Yeah, we filmed that on Saturday. There are a lot of dancers! There’s a bit of us holding some things…but yeah, mainly dancers. It was a lot of fun, though.

Cool, we’ll look out for that. Who writes the songs then?

Max. He’s the writer, the front man and the single one of the band…hello ladies!

Do you enjoy playing other instruments?

Yeah, I do. I used to play double bass, and I play synth for the band as well as the bass. I went through that phase at about 16 where I started learning the ukulele – quickly realising that it was really, really lame…but I probably play the guitar more than the bass. I have about four guitars and one bass.

Not just a bassist!

Is there a front man hiding in you somewhere then?

If there is, you’ll have to teach me to sing because I can’t sing at all.

Good job you’ve got front man Max for that then! The band are on Facebook and you can check out their new song here 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bgF4DNthCI