Tropicaledonia calling for Spring Break
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Ever since coming together at short notice for a couple of last-minute slots at Belladrum’s Burke and Hair stage back in 2014, there’s been no rest for Spring Break. The “vaguely psychedelic” Highland hip hop group – MC Ross Carbarns (Butterscotch), guitarist/musical director Ben Hesling, singer Emily MacKinnon, and producer Marc Clement – have, in their short time together, won awards and fans across the country with their sharp lyrics, sharper suits and smooth beats. Now ahead of the release of their long-awaited debut LP Tropicaledonia Ross and Ben give Kyle Walker the inside track on a Spring Break that’ll live long in the memory
On Spring Break’s first gig
Ross: Initially it was going to be doing a thing that my friend Robbie and I had performed up in the Shed for the Arts in Motion people. I was doing raps and spoken word poetry, and he was doing breakdancing along to that. And then the days of Belladrum fell on his sister’s wedding so he basically couldn’t do it. So I thought, me and Ben had been jamming quite a lot.
Ben: This was like three weeks before Belladrum or something. At the time I was playing quite a lot of gigs with Emily and two weeks after Belladrum we had a showcase night at the Ironworks so if I was going to do something with Ross I’d kind of need to do it with Emily as well – the idea being that Ross would come up and do a couple of tunes as Spring Break at the showcase at the Ironworks.
Ross: That’s just effective time management!
Ben: So I also kind of realised because of the nature of the music I’d kind of have to get some drums involved, so I phoned up my pal Marc Clement, who gave us some beats to loop. On the Friday night there must be about, I dunno, about 80 people at the Burke and Hair, and it went down really well. On the Saturday night, there must have been about 200 people there and Marc was there as well. And it was after that second performance that he turned round and he was like, ‘I get it, I absolutely get this now – I didn’t really realise what you were doing beforehand but now I see it, now it works.’
On making a name for themselves
Ben: We basically said yes to everything we were offered and it was all a bit stressful because none of us drove, none of us drive, which again in the Highlands you do travel quite a bit, but we did it – we pulled it off, so yeah.
Ross: It was a total learning curve as well. We did loads of low-paid if not unpaid gigs so it was very much tenaciously trying to carve a niche for ourselves, you know what I mean? STV for instance, we didn’t even get a bottle of water out of that! (laughs) I’ll never let that go – not even a Glasgow tap water!
On THOSE shirts and suits
Ben: Well we only thought we’d ever do those two gigs at Belladrum, we never actually thought that this would be a thing you know so we thought right what’s the stupidest band name we can come up with, and what’s the most ridiculous thing we could wear? And it worked, because people love it, you know? You’ve kind of already won the crowd over without playing a note, because they’re already laughing at you. So you know, they’re already sat there with a smile on your face, everybody kind of knows what’s about to happen before you even start.
Ross: It’s always a double-edged sword when your bad clothes gets more compliments than you do!
On appearing in an advert for Bowers and Wilkins speakers
Ben: Yeah, basically it was one of those ones where we knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy.
Ross: It was pretty surreal as well, you know – is this actually happening? I’d never done anything like it, so I was like – but all the people were absolutely brand new, all the staff at the production company were totally sound, we were treated really well. It was just a very peculiar experience in the sense that listening to the same 30 seconds of your song for eight hours is quite testing, but we can still listen to that song now without having a meltdown. So it’s alright! We still got away without a complete nervous breakdown!
On winning Best Live Act at the Scottish Alternative Music Awards 2015
Ross: Yeah, that was pretty ridiculous. I mean, I knew two of the other artists that were in that category of four – guys I’d known for years. Mog especially, he was pretty much the most revered underground hip hop artist in Scotland, he’s got this huge back catalogue and he’s a tremendous artist. So when they announced it, I just burst out laughing when I saw who we were in the category with, because I thought, ‘Well that’s it, we’re screwed – Mog’s definitely going to get this.’ But, I dunno, it was just a bit of a weird one. It’s not a case of we beat this person or whatever, we just managed to drum up enough support to win it.
On new album Tropicaledonia
Ross: The name was me just trying to think of something quintessentially Scottish and something that summed us up – something that was unique and odd. It had to have a slight soupçon of shortbread tin Scotland about it but also something a bit psychedelic and colourful, so after much deliberation – with myself – I decided on Tropicaledonia.
Ben: The original set of tunes [for 2015 EP Departure Lounge] were restricted in a way because of the live setup. Everything was coming off the loop pedal so from a music point of view everything sort of had to be in four bar chunks. Everything had to sort of start of nakedly to layer something on top of that and then layer something on top of that and then you could take out two of the layers and sort of add dynamics to it like that.
Ross: All the hooks were guitar-based and stuff like that because Ben was controlling everything from the loop pedal and what he was playing live so musically it was all very much dependant on that. Whereas now we’ve got the decks and then a computer with a backing track and things like that as well, so like Ben said the sound has expanded – there’s pianos in there and horns and strings that are getting thrown into the backing track, so there’s a bit more expansion of the sound in a sense.
On doing it all themselves
Ben: If you’re DIYing it you’re basically having to do the entire product. You’re doing all the administration, all the legal, sorting out the copyright issues, signing up with a collection agency for royalties, creating the press release, getting the files together, and uploading it all to the different platforms that you’re going to have to use digitally. You’re talking to the CD manufacturers trying to coordinate the artwork; you’re trying to coordinate the music videos and photoshoots and all of this is on zero budget, you know. I feel like I’ve aged about a month! But it’s fine, you know – and you only do it once.
Ross: It’s slightly sobering as well, you know, you envy these people who can turn up and play gigs and that’s all they have to do, you know? All the other, the whole other strata of work, it’s not glamourous and it is essentially learning law in a lot of ways, essentially.
On the album launch night
Ben: Yeah, we’re doing something that used to happen quite a lot, which doesn’t happen so much anymore. You didn’t actually have a gig, what you did was invited the press and the music industry folks to somewhere and you’d play them the album through hi-fi while talking to them about it. For us and what we do, our ethos and where we’re coming from, we just want to get together and have a good time. Ross and I are going to be absolutely delighted with ourselves – for one night only.
Ross: That’s it, and then back to the standard issue crises!
Spring Break’s Tropicaledonia is out now. The band will launch the album officially with a listening party at the Old High Church on Saturday from 7pm, before a live gig at Mad Hatters at 10.30pm. Entry for both nights are free. For more information, or to buy the album, go to http://springbreakscot.bandcamp.com
