You’re infamous for your live shows. Can you describe the WonderfullyCourteousGentlemen live experience?

Bridge:  MEGA! Expect Greek tragedy and glowsticks. It’s the power of dance music but a lot more exciting to watch then a lone-knob twiddler. Nick is an immense drummer, and me and Dave hit samplers, keys and guitars.. Build-ups and drops are essential to our live show so it’s pretty much guaranteed people are going to be dancing by the end of our set, if not I’ve always got big shapes to throw. We’re all pretty energetic when we play, I can’t stand seeing a band who stand still, you can’t expect anyone else to get into it if you look like you’re not. We do everything live which adds to our energy in a kind of nervous, ramshackle way. With technology you can do more stuff, but it can also go quite drastically wrong. Once, at a gig  there was a screaming, (unintended) feedback loop happening, I looked over to Dave and he was on his knees just looking forlornly at his FX pedals. Those moments are painful, but relatively infrequent these days.

How did you meet and go on to form the band?

Bridge:  Me and Dave met at a shit job and he introduced me to Nick. We had a few practices and Dave suddenly announced he had got us a gig….in a month. We had to hastily scrape together a set of tunes I already had, to play at this burlesque themed party. Hence the name WonderfullyCourteousGentlemen, after that it just stuck. Now though we all write together, I don’t actually think any of the tunes from that first gig are still in our set.

What’s been the highlight so far?

Bridge:  Being asked to play Glastonbury, but next to that playing ‘Nailstock’ the village festival of Nailsworth, Stroud where I grew up. It’s all bunting and country dancing until it gets dark (when we played) and then the kids come out. Someone got bottled and another person broke their back. It had to be shut down before the last band played. Dark times on the village green…. I took the others to the quaint village pub to escape the carnage and we arrived to find the landlord holding the door shut against someone punching it and screaming to let him in. However- very admirably- they both paused in their charade to let us in before continuing, amazing.

What music are you listening to at the moment?

Bridge-, The Knife, Holy Fuck, ….and you will know us by the trail of dead, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails.

Dave- Prefuse 73, Peter Bjorn and John, Enya

Nick- Psapp, Apparat, Erland Oye, Post War Years

What’s your dream collaboration?

As a band - Holy Fuck. Personally, I’d say Thom Yorke - though I’d probably just sit nervously, occasionally punctuating the uncomfortable silence with the offer of a cup of tea, but would then probably still be too nervous to make it.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Bridge:  I don’t know where we get inspiration from. For the music, technology has a lot to do with it, you can just be playing around with sounds and something leaps out at you, you then have something to work from and you slowly develop a theme and the tune builds itself around that. Most often the end product doesn’t even have the initial sound in it. There is a fair amount of calculated decisions as well though.  We purposefully make things more experimental and interesting otherwise we might end up sounding like Travis.  Lyrically I’m inspired by the rhythm of lines. I sing quite percussively and I like repetition of vocal sounds, assonance etc. Again, it just seems to come and write itself.

With great tunes like theirs we don’t think it will be long before Wonderfully Courteous Gentlemen get the recognition they deserve. Their new EP “You Can Can” is available now for free download through Mediafire or you can get hold of a CD copy for a very reasonable £3 from their website.
Do yourselves a favour and get it while you can.

http://www.mediafire.com/youcancan
www.myspace.com/courteousgentlemen 
http://wonderfullycourteousgentlemen.com/