Jack: I’d been working at Modern World as Assistant Engineer for about 6 months when the opportunity arose for us to record during some downtime. We knew Adam through college, as he was our Music Technology teacher, but being an ex-engineer at Olympic studios, and already having engineered on loads of successful records we thought it would be a great opportunity to work with him on a professional level, so we asked him if he wanted to produce the EP for us. The time in the studio was pretty successful managing to record and mix most of the songs in just a few days. It was also a good chance for the band to hang out in a great studio and bond a bit more.

Marianne: Yeah it felt like we'd formed a family in the studio! It was good working together in a new way, and pulling together a set of songs we'd just written together; I really enjoyed seeing those songs transform from just basic ideas into something quite different, such as the song 'Origami Bird' - it originally began with just guitar and vocals and then piano, but then Rob wrote a string section for it which we recorded in the studio, and the whole song was changed completely. We were really excited to hear the final mixes.

You’re currently writing your debut album.  Tell us a bit more about it.

Jack: Unfortunately, a few of the songs on the EP are old material, so probably won’t make it on to an album. Having said that we’re working on newer stuff, some of which we’ve recorded demos of in Marianne’s basement - these can be heard on the myspace.  At the moment we’re just working on writing and gigging new stuff but don’t have any plans as to where and who will record them. It would be great to spend a couple of weeks in studio or maybe taking our gear out to Sweden or somewhere nice and remote to do the recordings, that’s what would happen in an ideal world. It would be safe to say that the newer songs are less like the traditional folk stuff on the EP and more contemporary, acoustic, folk ‘n’ roll!!

Marianne: Yes we definitely want it to be quite uplifting, but we'll keep a few of our sparser songs with the home-made ukulele in there as well for some contrast! We've definitely moved on a lot from when we wrote the EP over a year ago, and have started to come into our own more, so the music here will be quite different. Most of the material is there now, so we're really excited about what might happen with it! I'd really like to bring in some other musicians to play on the album - I really love the set-up in bands like Beirut, so maybe on a smaller scale! It'd be fun to write in some other parts on some of the songs, and see what other instruments could work well with our music. We thought first about releasing the material as separate EP's, but I think it'll be nice to keep them together as a whole, as they're a bit like chapters in one story. We'll see..!

What else is going on for Hot Feet in 2009?

Ben: New videos, photos, websites and lots of live gigs.

Marianne: Yes, I think gigging is the main thing on the agenda! And maybe a bit of busking in Europe?! We're hoping to book gigs mainly in London over the summer, so I think we'll see how that goes and take it from there! Keep writing new material as well - it's nice to always play fresh material at gigs, and to always be working on new ideas.

Jack: We’ve entered this years Surface Unsigned Acts competition also. So far we’ve done pretty well. We’ve won both heats of the first two rounds in our region. I think our aim is to try and get through to the final, as that would mean playing at the O2 Arena in London, which would be a great experience in itself. We’re also playing our first major festival in the summer, the folk tent at Bloom festival in Gloucestershire, so we’re pretty excited about that too. We’re starting to venture out, playing more and more gigs in London. 2009 is when we’d like to get the album polished off too. We’re also in the process of making a music video for ‘Golden Apple’ with director Daisy Moseley, which is also quite exciting!

You describe your sound as folk ‘n’ roll. Tell us a bit more about this.

Jack: I think it would be hard to place our music into a specific genre. As a band we all come from different musical backgrounds, Sam’s classically trained, Rob plays jazz piano, I’ve had lessons in classical, jazz, gypsy jazz, flamenco and rock guitar so I think when we all play together it creates quite a magical fusion. I wouldn’t describe our sound as strictly folk as the sound produced is quite different to a traditional folk sound. I guess folk music could be described as music of the people, so I’d like to think that a lot of people can relate to our sound in that respect, being quite a natural and acoustic set up. Our set up is pretty simple, and typical of a folk group, guitar, double bass, violin, drums and vocals. I’d say the ‘n’ roll bit is just all the other influences that affect the way we play and our overall sound. For example, Marianne's Dad plays a cool blues harp on a few of the songs, helping to add blues and 'roll' to the folk sound.

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