The Sheffield Scenester

SCOFF

DT

OL

DARREN

During a relatively warm Spring lunchtime Sheffield Scenester met up with The Cartels at The Lescar.....So settling down with drinks in the beer garden we aimed to find out what has happened to The Cartels over the last year and what the future hes in store for them -

Darren (bass), DT (guitar and backing vocals), Oliver (bongos as he calls them - drums) and Scoff (lead vocals)

Scenester - You’ve got a new member, Scoff, so how did you get together then?

DT – I was out doing an acoustic gig at The Grapes, I finished my set and Scoff were up next so I stuck around and watched him, he were alright so I had a chat with him after and asked him if he fancied trying out for the band and that, and I suppose the rest is history.
Darren – Then he supported us at The Boardwalk that was good.
DT – It gave the rest of the band a chance to have a look and see what they thought. I think everyone were impressed weren’t they, so got a general nod of heads. So he came down to practice…..
Oliver – I were mostly impressed wi'how tall he was...!
DT - and I thought this kid can sing!
Scoff – Then I went wi' DT...we went through a few tunes.
Oliver – Yeah it just flew right from the start really, everyone from the start were wondering what is it going to be like, but we started playing...and it came just like that, right naturally. We’d lost a guitarist as well, Jonny decided to leave, no hard feelings, he just decided it wasn’t for him…you know what I mean. That left an open gap to fill really cos there were two guitarists and Daz is like a sh*t hot bass player, and he just had the chance to fill that spot which brought a much more crisper sound with the bass line that he had.
DT – In one sense it’s given me a chance to stamp my idea of sound onto the band with effects and how we want it to sound.
Oliver – That’s another thing DT had two jobs to fill guitar wise, before he just had effects, now he’s got to play rhythm, lead, effects and all the little sounds that come with the band. It also gave me more of a chance to do the drumming that I like to do, cos I like to play with Daz’s bass line cos we’re on the same wavelength with rhythm.
Everything just sounded much, much better, and with Scoff coming in as singer and DT as a singer, they’re both two different kind of singers. Scoff’s got more of a vocal range and DT’s got a softer sort of thing with harmonies so everything just came naturally.
DT – It’s nice to share writing responsibilities cos Scoff’s got his own songs and we’ve got our own songs, so somewhere in the middle we’ve got these songs that we just bring together.
Scoff – They just work don’t they..? Cos I was doing my own thing with Real Gone Kid and some of them have come into The Cartels and some haven’t and some of DT’s stuff we’ve stripped back haven’t we?
Oliver – Some of the old songs we still like, DT will probably just play them solo now, but songs like ‘Heart Of Gold’ you probably won’t see done by the full band no more.
DT – We got a brand spanking new set, there are probably two songs that we played last year, ‘True Love Spreads’ and ‘All Sing Together’, but apart from that we've got too many songs, so we need to prioritise which ones we want. We probably got a set list of about eight or so songs that we’ve got to practise and get tight, we may only get to play about six...but only when we’re ready, there’s no rush at the moment. It’ll be nice to come back for Tramlines but we don’t want to rush it.
Scoff – ‘True Love Spreads’ has changed though hasn’t it?
DT - Everything’s got a different spin on it, we’ve kinda gone in with a blank canvas, like whatever we’ve got before let’s try it...but try it in a different way.
Scoff – I’d seen these playing and that was my first point of interest, now it’s strange cos they’ve changed with me coming in.
Oliver – I think we’re sounding better than what we’ve ever done, like last year when we had Jonny in, we had a nice chunk of publicity and we picked up a nice fan base and a lot of people think that we’ve been together for along time because of that...but we’ve only been together for two years now!
DT – It were a good learning curve though last year so it’s nice now to take...not so much a back seat, but to play an instrument...cos last year I was singing and doing what I do when I do my acoustic, just strumming.
Oliver – I think in terms of Scoff coming in, I think he’s come in at just the right time, if it had been a few years down the line it would have been a difficult situation with having to get everything ready and change everything, so he’s come in just bang on time! So we would like to do a gig this year but there’s no rush at the moment…

Scenester – How about influences?

Oliver – We’re influenced by a lot of stuff at the moment, I mean my favourite band in the whole world is The Who but with the band that I’m in I probably wouldn’t play anything like that cos it’s not really what we’re doing. We’re all kinda influenced by all sorts of different things, but we’ve all got the same sort of influences in the one pot, then outside of that, we’ve got our own influences.
DT – I think we’re all into bands from the nineties cos we were brought up in that sort of era.
Scoff – I love Motown and stuff like that, Joe Cocker and things like that – really good soul and bluesy stuff.
Darren – Well I was brought up on Motown and soul, all that sort of stuff, my grandad is a jazz DJ so I was brought up on jazz as well, and then the Manchester scene, all the early stuff, the early Happy Mondays, Charlatans, Stone Roses…..
Oliver – Yeah baby, I’m a massive fan of The Verve really, and we’ve all come across reviews where people have said we sound like The Verve...but I wouldn’t want to sound like anybody, I mean we’re not into that whole thing... where you get a whole bunch of crazy electronic instruments and make up some new sound. We just want to do something that sounds good...that people enjoy and that we enjoy...you know that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, we’re not bothered if we sound like so and so.
Scoff – It’s that age old question really of what do you sound like…..
Oliver – Yeah there was one review that said we sounded like The Courteeners which I weren’t right bothered about.
Darren – I think it were a lot deeper than just the sound of the band, I mean the singer were a busker and a lot of the songs they sang were the songs he used to go busking with around Manchester, and then eventually he got a band together and that is literally how we started, so I think to get it to that point, I think the person who did that review were probably spot on.
Oliver – Yeah I don’t think they're crap or anything, it’s just I didn’t get where they got that from..?! We just go in the studio and play something we like and get a buzz out of and if people like it, absolutely brilliant……well some people aren’t gonna like it, as long as some people like it and we like it, like Little Boots uses that crazy little instrument, but we’ve not set out to sound completely different and completely new, I’m getting older and I ain’t got time for that sh*t…..know what I mean?