It’s freezing in Camden on this mid-April evening. In the dressing room by the side of the Barfly stage, with K.C, Nathan and Will, who comprise three-quarters of Little Death. Malia, bassist and backing vocalist, is “running late”, and should hopefully be arriving shortly. The three guys present are a bit anxious.

Tonight is a particularly poignant show for the band; the band have been playing gigs relentlessly in their chosen London stomping-grounds, and, co-current to this, have been holed up in a recording studio laying down tracks for their forthcoming EP, which is due out on indie label Maven. The reasons why the band felt that this was a necessary step are two fold.
“We’ve been a band for two years now”, says K.C. “But we’ve never had particularly good-quality recordings before. So we really wanted to give our older songs a chance to be recorded in the way they should be, but also wanted to give some newer songs a chance to come to light. This is, I would say, our first proper recording”.

Nathan, guitarist and backing vocalist, further adds to this sentiment of completion: “We’ve been sitting on these ‘new’ songs since they were written back in June last year”. There is a real sense of satisfaction, and anticipation of fan and press reactions to the recordings, which the band have clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating. Nathan indicates they are very eager to get to the next phase of releasing the EP.
“We actually put out a single last year”, K.C points out, elaborating the band’s purpose behind the forthcoming release. “It didn’t really get across who we are as a band; we didn’t have enough physical time and space to demonstrate what we could do. We really wanted to do this EP, to get at least four or five songs out there, rather than just the one; it doesn’t end as abruptly, and the songs on this EP really flow well together”.

From the day I met Little Death over a year ago, I was certain that they were a “Hoxton” band, having witnessed their compelling, sometimes enchanting live performance in various venues in and around the Shoreditch area. Yet they sound nothing like many of their Nu-raving, house-hungry East London contemporaries. But what do they actually make of the current London music scene, awash with almost identical and so-called indie bands?
“It’s so hit and miss in London”, states K.C, “people are quite spoiled here, in terms of shows to see and bands to check out. But I mean that in a good way; it’s good for us, because it means each show we play, we have to do our absolute best in order to stand out”.
“When we play live, we also use it as an opportunity to try new stuff out,” adds Will. “I mean, we are constantly churning new songs out; I think it’s great to be able to offer a different set to the audience each time we play”.

This attitude is no doubt because Little Death are not from around here - their American accents a bit of a giveaway. Nathan hails from Canada (after asking which part of the USA he was from, rather embarrassingly); KC and the currently-absent Malia are, in fact, American, but from different States (California and Texas respectively); Will, actually, is the only ‘token Brit of the bunch’. “But I was born in Bermuda”, he tells me. It’s a very eclectic mix of international congregation – the UN would be pleased. But why choose to settle in London, and why form a band here?
“We were actually on our way to Belgium…” laughs Will. KC jests furthers, “Yeah, we lost our bags here en-route. We got stranded at Heathrow. We thought we might as well stick around, and we might as well form a band. Whatever, y’know?”

Forging a home-from-home in London, for most of the band at least, can’t be easy. Not just in a location-wise sense; choosing to base their musical operations in East London is a particular gamble – however vibrant the scene is there, the inhabitants of this pop-music Mecca can be rather unforgiving to bands that they don’t want to hear, especially if there’s not a set fashion sense involved. Little Death, in acknowledgement of this, do not feel part of the East London scene at all.
“It’s not that we see ourselves as separate from the people in that scene”, says Nathan, “I guess we just never really think about where we fit in, making music and playing them live anywhere we can is on the top of the agenda”. K.C nods in agreement; “It might be a bit naïve of us; there is a danger that we could lose focus, because of course we need to be playing to people who appreciate what we’re doing in order to progress. That being said, we love a lot of bands from East London” – Little Death are good friends with Absentee offshoot Wet Paint, a member of which actually used to rehearse with Little Death – “and hanging out and being around bands like that, it really feels like rock music, and the attitude of rock music, has actually come back. It’s pretty exciting, compared to the position we were in two years ago”.

I take note of the way the band refer to how they used to be when they first formed in 2006; it seems, to them, that it might as well have been a thousand years ago. Are they happy with how things have progressed since then, and the position they find themselves in now (bearing in mind the band have recently received the Levi’s “Ones To Watch” musical accolade in The Fly magazine)?
“It’s important to keep things in perspective”, answers K.C. “A lot of bands would feel frustrated if things weren’t beginning to happen for them after this much commitment. Things happen so quickly in respect of music in London now, in part due to the freedom of information via the internet. Because of this, because of internet tools like Myspace, bands can get huge, just like that”, he demonstrates with a quick click of his fingers, “or they simply don’t”. Nathan adds “Even so, with bands that appear to have taken off just-like-that, they’ve actually been working to achieve that goal for a long time beforehand”.
The inference from this, K.C figures, is that there is not a hell of a lot they can do to influence people’s opinions of the band, in aim of enlarging their existing fanbase – other than writing the best songs they possibly can, and playing as passionately as their bodies will allow them to.

This is the focal point of Little Death, their mission statement, of sorts – they want to be able to make a living out of their music; enough to eat and sleep and just carry on doing what they’ve been doing for the last two years. What do they think it would take to make that step towards, for want of a better phrase, commercial success? “TV ads!” states an amused Will. “Yeah, I’m working on a jingle for a car advert”, says K.C (who, we’ve just established, is the resident song-writer). “Maybe for a Mini Cooper – I’m sure they’d love a song penned by a band with the word ‘Death’ in their name. That would keep customers happy”. Synch-licensors and publishers: take note.

Achal Dhillon
www.myspace.com/lovelittledeath