“Music for every occasion” (weekly uploaded chart)

Sat. 25|05

Workout: Polyamorous - Breaking Benjamin

Ski: Source of Inspiration - Royal Audio Tunes

Feel like dying: Where Is My Mind - Sunday Girl

Club banger: Day ‘N’ Night (Crookers Remix) - Kid Cudi

Driving down the Highway: Straight Up The Dial - Hooded Fang

Sick guitar riff: Mr. Brightside - The Killers

Rap your s**t: Che Idea - Flaminio Maphia

Non mainstream: Closer Than This - St. Lucia

Long time never heard of: You You You - James Kakande

(best one in the photo)

“Music for every occasion” (weekly uploaded chart)

Sat. 12|05

Workout: Last Resort -  Papa Roach

Ski: The Red - Jaylib

Feel like dying: A Drop in The Ocean - Ron Pope

Club banger: Beam Me Up - CAZZETTE

Driving down the Highway: Eddy’s Song - Sticky FIngers

Sick guitar riff: The Pretender - Foo Fighters

Rap your s**t: Rockstar (feat. Brian May) - Dappy

Non mainstream: Private Party - Harlan

Long time never heard of: Closer - Ne-Yo

(don’t feel like smashing anything recently, so i’m taking off the Smash Everything playlist for a while. It’s temporary so it might come back)

[best one in the photo as always]

NO CHURCH IN THE WILD

The Lowdown: Is Tropical

“Small communities of people working together and supporting each other is always going to be the basis of musical ingenuity”

Gary, Dom, and Simon are the three London boys playing disjointed, lo-fi, indie art pop that catches you up in its riptide. They play with their faces masked by bandanas and facing each other rather than the crowd. Live they’re not exactly the most talkative bunch, but before they tour the U.S with Crystal Fighters later this month AltSoundscaught up with Is Tropical to discuss beaches, DJ sets, and, erm, CSI: Miami.

Altsounds: So, you boys are about to tour the states with Crystal Fighters, what are you most looking forward to about travelling round the good old US of A?

Is Tropical: Really long drives and trying to meet up with Horatio from CSI Miami. 

AltSounds: What? LA is way cooler than Miami, or at least it was when Grissom was around, I guess Horatio is pretty fly. Anything else distinctly American you’re excited about?

Is Tropical: Generally food and buying cheap stuff and hanging with our bros and sis’ we met our first time around. We want house parties and frat parties with red plastic cups, and MEXICAN FOOD.

AltSounds: They do have the best Mexican food, apart from Mexico, obviously. Do you have a favourite place to play live out of everywhere you’ve been?

Is Tropical: Anywhere new is always really exciting to go tour around and play. South America, Scandinavia and Japan have treated us very well in the past and we’re looking forward to playing our new songs over the coming months, wherever we get the chance. 

AltSounds: So, just playing live will do then really. While we’re on the subject, I’m sure you get this question a lot, but what’s with the veiled faces?

Is Tropical: That started out of a desire to make our gigs a bit more theatrical. It felt better going through some kind of pre-show ritual, so that when the music starts we could instantly be in that focused and intense place that could elevate a gig into a real spectacle. The best live shows we’d seen always had that element of unreality to it, something that didn’t just make you feel like you were watching three knob-heads on stage playing songs they had written. 

AltSounds: Okay, not looking like a knob is a good idea, it could quite easily back fire, but mainly do you not just find it bloody annoying?

Is Tropical: Does what annoy us? Nothing annoys us, we are so chill.

AltSounds: You are one of the most relaxed bands around and your name goes with the whole laid back beach lifestyle as does your sound, how would you describe your approach to your life and art? Big philosophical question there I know.

Is Tropical: Kind of unintentional I guess. All three of us grew up in towns near the sea, so like a lot of people we’ve met from places like that the sea’s always there, it’s kind of always in the back of your mind. Skateboarding and surfing are things we’ve always fallen back on to chill in between tours or to catch up with friends back home. 

AltSounds: I guess that love of sports like that has transcended into you designing some stuff for Billabong, but how did that all come about?

Is Tropical: Our mate Erwann who we met doing an interview at the start of the band got the hook up on that one. We were lucky enough to spend a few days in France on the coast, played a gig outside and dived in the pool all because of it. Any excuse for a pool party…

We have absolutely no idea what they’re on about here either, but you know, who doesn’t love a pool party, right? They’re going to fit in just fine in America.

AltSounds: And I know you design some of your own merch, but I guess its different designing for a massive brand like Billabong, right?

Is Tropical: Well the image they ended up choosing for the t-shirt was one of our very first attempts at a press shot. It’s kind of a hodge-podge of visual things we’d been using for a while, so when we found out about the collaboration the only challenge was bringing it all together so it would look good on a shirt and still represent us in some way. It’s always a bit more complicated doing something not purely for yourself — we’re used to only having ourselves to blame. We like Billabong’s aesthetic though and we found that it came pretty easy once we had a general idea.

Is Tropical: We had drawn up a wish-list when we were thinking about approaching labels before our first single came out, and Kitsuné was, obviously, there. The label has a really boutique feel and that individuality and bravery when it comes to trendsetting was something we thought would benefit us as a band, and we were right. Working with the family at Kitsuné has never really been a problem, and every time we’re in the same place we try to have a catch up there’s a lot of sick bands we’ve met through doing the Kitsuné shows, like Housse De Racket, Citizens, etc.

AltSounds: Obviously it’s mainly an electro label, but a lot of ‘indietronica’ bands like yourselves end up just doing DJ sets for the rest of their lives, do you mind that or are you purely about the band?

Is Tropical: DJ sets are fun because you can get fucked up before you go on stage; we try not to play live when we’re wasted as it’s all barely held together anyway.

It’s probably a good job nobody can see their faces then.

Is Tropical: It’s been a learning curve, trying to work out the best times to drop songs, and sometimes people take it a bit too seriously, but travelling to DJ is a really fun part of being in a band. 

AltSounds: You might be on a French label, but you’ve always been big backers of your local scene. Is there something particularly appealing to you about working with other local artists?

Is Tropical: London is definitely our HQ and having all our mates around to play new stuff to and hear what they’ve been doing keeps us feeling fresh and inspired. There’s a huge amount of talent in London, and creative people endeavour to help each other achieve what they want to achieve. That’s good.

AltSounds: Definitely. What is it you think makes local scenes thrive regardless of the internet?

Is Tropical: There’s no reason why the internet would stop local music scenes from coming up and getting noticed internationally. The borders between musical scenes have broken down, but small communities of people working together and supporting each other is always going to be the basis of musical ingenuity. Music is very easily shared now but also it’s a lot easier for people to travel, so if you hear that the best place to hear two-step is Leeds, you could probably go there and check it out, rather than having to save up for 4 years to rent a horse. 

We’d ask them how much they earned at this point if we hadn’t been told it was a rude question by our parents, besides if it’s going to take them four years to buy a horse they can’t be doing too well for themselves now can they? Instead we turn talk back to the internet.

AltSounds: Yes the internet, you’re modern men, but what in God’s name are all those symbols about under your Twitter handle?
Is Tropical: What?

Clearly not the most internet savvy of all the bands we’ve ever met, we’re regretting the use of ‘handle’ now, it’s thrown many a good men off, we hastily move on none the wiser as to why symbols adorn the walls of nearly every social network they have an account on and ask them about new material.

Is Tropical: We’re hoping to be releasing a single and a super top secret other thing before the end of the year, for sure. Keep peeled.

Well, that’s all we’ve got time for, but it’s all systems go for Is Tropical, a band sure to brighten up your summer. We recommend you check out their debut album Native Toand see them live If you can, well you can’t really see them beneath the masks, but you get the gist of things.