Band Of The Week #156 - Bleach Lab
This week’s Band of the Week is South London’s Bleach Lab - who have just released their debut EP ‘A Calm Sense Of Surrounding’. Using the sound of the ocean as their key inspiration, this EP sees the band explore the five stages of grief. They took a moment to explain the EP in more depth.
Hey Bleach Lab, how are you? So your debut EP is finally here, how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
We are excited. It feels like sending off our kid to nursery for the first time. Daunting but incredibly exciting for us after all the work and love that has gone into it. We are really proud of it and are just looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
It is titled ‘A Calm Sense of Surrounding’ - does that have a certain meaning behind it?
We wanted this to remain open to interpretation to a point. We really want listeners to be able to adopt their own meaning and feelings about it. For us, we came up with the name of the EP once we had finished writing it. The name is supposed to represent the sense of peace we felt once we had processed everything, worked through it all and reached a clearing where we could let go and breathe.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from creating it?
Well, it was recorded after the first lockdown where some restrictions were still in place. Mostly we had to record separately, which was not ideal but we made it work. We recorded with our dear friend Max Mannone in his studio in London. He mastered our first few singles and he stepped up to engineer, produce and mix the whole EP. We owe so much to him for everything he did. We also had our friend Zara Hudson-Kozdoj playing cello on Never Be, which was a delight. We're so happy with what it added to the song. Interestingly, the closing track Scars wasn't finished when we started and we weren't planning on recording it. We hadn't played it together as a band at the time either. It made for a very different process of recording it but it also meant we were totally surprised with how it came out.
What are the key themes and influences on the EP?
The five stages of grief came about as a theme unintentionally after we had finished writing the first few tracks. Although unintentional at first, we decided to lean into this and have it act as a running theme and inspiration throughout the EP. We wanted it to serve as a means to explore and make relatable the emotional fallout of events in our own lives. Events which ranged from failed past relationships to coping with the death of a loved one. In terms of musical influences, we all have different influences depending on what part we play in the band but some to mention are Chastity Belt, Slowdive, Lana Del Ray and The War On Drugs.
The EP, in a way, feels like a journey of grief, and like you are reaching for the final stage of accepting it. Was this your intention?
As we mentioned, although we didn’t realise when we started writing the tracks, we knew by the end that we essentially seemed to be covering a lot of the main aspects of the 'five stages of grief'. Therefore, when it came to the track list order, they are literally set out in that way covering denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. We thought it worked out really great, it was almost a perfect accident.
The sea is used quite a bit in this EP as a metaphor, can you tell us a bit more about that?
I think the reason for it is that the sea can be this all-encompassing, all-consuming power one moment and then serene and peaceful the next. Jenna lives down in Brighton and takes a lot of long walks along the seafront which probably infiltrates into her writing. It just seems to slip in unnoticed, it wasn't really until we heard the songs a few times that we noticed it was a recurring theme. We took the theme and ran with it though, and it has been beautifully displayed in our artwork as well.
Do you have a favourite lyric on the EP? If so, which one and why?
It is quite hard to say! I (Jenna) would probably have to say the Flood chorus 'Your words flood in, I'm drowning in my skin. You broke me from within, you never felt a thing'. Again, with the sea metaphors. It perfectly encompasses the way that I had been feeling at the time, as though someone can cause you to feel so unheard and unloved and it doesn't seem to impact them in any way.
Now the debut EP is finally out there, what next for Bleach Lab? What does 2021 have in store for you?
We want the same thing as everyone else, GIGS! gigs, gigs, gigs. We have been very busy pandemic aside; we have lots planned so keep your eyes and ears thoroughly peeled.