Formed in London in 2007, the band is a colourful explosion of flamboyant, high-energy performances and musical miscellany. As well as originals, the mix includes traditional Balkan, Klezmer, Turkish, Russian and Gypsy tunes, plus even a small\u00a0hint of hip-hop.<\/p>\n
TSMB is a fearsome blend of clarinets, brass, percussion, guitar and vocals. Highlights from its strange and wonderful history include shows at Glastonbury, the Royal Albert Hall, WOMAD, Kensington Palace, HMV Forum and The Roundhouse, as well as recording at Abbey Road and Air Studios. The band has taken the music all around the Balkans and as far afield as Georgia in the Caucuses and beyond!<\/p>\n
Always open to adventure, the band\u2019s recent projects have included a unique collaboration with DJ Yoda which proved a firm festival favourite, and curating an ongoing series of events as part of a residency at Shoreditch arts hub Rich Mix.<\/p>\n
Nick:<\/strong> Some of us had been in the London Gypsy Orchestra. The TSMB was formed out of the LGO brass section, plus our bandleader Issy and some others. There was a violinist and a mandolin player initially.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> I had originally studied as a clarinettist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and originally had trained to play clarinet in a symphony orchestra. However over the course of college realised that although I loved classical music, I wanted to explore other musical styles too \u2013 I had spent some time in West Africa and Czech Republic and realised that I need to play more than just classical music. After leaving college I wasn\u2019t sure exactly what I wanted to really do, but then discovered this style of music through the LGO and fell totally in love with it and haven\u2019t looked back since!<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> I\u2019m a relative newcomer, having joined in late 2011, and the band was a total change of scene from what I had been used to – jazz, and before that some classical whilst studying. I had just returned to the UK feeling slightly negative about pursuing music after teaching it abroad, and TSMB was exactly what I needed to revive and completely reinstate my enthusiasm for playing!<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> Some of us would meet up before LGO rehearsals and jam different tunes. Then at one of the LGO gigs, we were short on the set length and the conductor asked if we wanted to play some of the tunes we had been working on, and TSMB was born! After that, we then got to play at a Balkan Beats night in the Buffalo Bar and Radio Gagarin night at the Notting Hill Arts Club and things just sort of grew from there onwards.<\/p>\n There was a bit of a joke at the time about how it would be awesome to have a gig as the in-house band on the Trans-Siberian Railway and one of our members has actually contacted them a few times to offer this service, though we have never heard back. However, the name stuck!<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> We like a range of current and past Balkan sounds. I like everything from Klezmer from the 1920s to the soundtrack pop of Goran Bregovic, the somewhat traditional sounds of bands like Taraf de Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia to modern electronic oompah from any of the countries, east of Berlin, doing it.<\/p>\n \u00a0Issy:<\/strong> When choosing songs, I also have been looking a lot at Turkish artists such as Selim Sesler, Tarkan, Sefarad and Candan Ercetin. I have also learnt a lot from other musicians I have played with in the past such as \u00c7i\u011fdem Aslan (She\u2019koyokh) and Illana Cravitz (London Klezmer Quartet).<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> Our repertoire spans a pretty wide geographic area. It\u2019s mostly arrangements of traditional tunes, but through our mish-mash of musical backgrounds and influences (not only Balkan and Klezmer but classical, jazz, South American, African, punk…) the band has come to develop its own distinctive sound. From this, some of the tunes have grown into rather personalised takes on the original style, as opposed to faithful reproductions!<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> Too add to what Emily says, there are so many of us, and our ages range from mid-20s to mid-70s, so we all bring something with us from our own experience and memories of music, and culture in general. One of our trumpet players, Pippa, saw Louis Armstrong play in the late 50s, for instance, and quite a few of have lived abroad, in Eastern Europe and Turkey, and you can\u2019t help but pick up a bit here, a bit there, not all of it conscious, but it definitely emerges, helps us onto the same wavelength, I think.<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> We\u2019ve toured using just public transport \u2013 long train journeys through Austria, Hungary and Bosnia \u2013 and using local drivers and minibuses. It looks chaotic from the outside, I guess, but usually everybody and everything gets gathered up together! We are lucky enough to have several sound engineers in the band, who have been able to quickly sort out the various onstage set-ups \u2013 sometimes, in the Balkans, these have been products of enthusiasm rather than expertise, lethal in the wrong hands\u2026<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> I think we have known each other for a while and have learnt to deal with difficult situations together. Also, even though we are numerous, we don\u2019t actually need a lot of onstage equipment such as drumkits, and we are equally at home playing acoustically or plugged in.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> We have a giant water bed big enough for 13 that we take with us on overnight trips. Not really, but we did once manage to get some people to believe that in the bar after a gig.<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> We put on a big show, I think, no matter where we play. We are kind of loud, and now have a large repertoire of songs. We dress up a bit, make up a bit, wear clothes from the Soviet Union, are into wigs and frocks. We feature horse-dancing competitions, singalongs and trumpet duels.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> The live show is generally quite interactive \u2013 I can be quite merciless on the audience! I think though our main feature is fun \u2013 both for the performers and for the audience. There is definitely no standing around looking moody and staring at our shoes whilst onstage.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> It\u2019s very energetic stuff, and works best of all when the audience are willing to throw themselves into the spirit of things! Recently we have had a massive, high-speed, hokey-kokey-style circle-dance, people on each other\u2019s backs pretending to be galloping horses, and Madonna singalongs in a Russian oompah style. I\u2019d like to say it makes more sense when you\u2019re there in the middle of it, but maybe it doesn\u2019t. You\u2019ll have to come and see and judge for yourself!<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s a typical TSMB audience member. We\u2019ve played for late-night crowds off their faces in clubs and at festivals, for shoppers innocently heading for Primark, for tourists and locals passing by in squares in Bosnia, for people in parks in Georgia, and for children and their parents in Regents Park, and none of them have thrown things at us.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> We generally have quite a mixed audience of all ages and nationalities. This has been quite noticeable at our monthly events at Rich Mix, where there have been people who come along every month to see us.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> For a while there was a group of people dressed as Elvis that used to show up quite regularly.<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> Oh yes \u2013 the Elvi. (Presley, not Costello\u2026) Where are they now, I often wonder\u2026 sometimes wonder\u2026<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> I loved playing on the bridge in Mostar in Bosnia on our first tour. It was a real highlight, the first of many. I also loved playing to big mad crowds one night in Glastonbury, while the next day\u2019s gig by the side of some tent \u2013 it wasn\u2019t even in a field \u2013 to some hippies, toddlers and a dog (and the dog didn\u2019t even stay) was NOT the best experience. However, you play to whoever\u2019s there. One of the many gigs we did during the London Olympics was so badly organised we played to about 5 people, but we still played our socks off, as did everybody on that bill I love regular nights like the Hootenanny in Brixton, where people go determined to have a good time, and you can really feel that.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> Playing in Sarajevo was real privilege and it was incredible to play to a room full of people who sang along to every word and jumped to their feet at each new tune. Also playing at WOMAD was absolutely unbelievable. I think my least favourite gigs have been when we have played at corporate events \u2013 although those gigs are good for the bank balance and allow us to invest in new albums etc, they are somewhat hard work\u2026<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> We\u2019ve played to some of our biggest and most enthusiastic crowds at festivals, and I have to say I enjoy playing at our current \u2018home turf\u2019 Rich Mix as well. It\u2019s also great to play at specific Balkan nights as you get to perform for people who already really love the music. My least favourite gigs are any that book us to march for long periods of time in the freezing cold and rain, which happens more frequently than I\u2019d like as a downside of the implication of having \u2018March Band\u2019 in your name.<\/p>\n Nick: <\/strong>We\u2019ve played in the Balkans, and had no \u2018coals to Newcastle\u2019 moments. Imagine if a group from Sarajevo came here playing Morris Dancing music, we\u2019d probably throw rocks at them. We get a good reception wherever we go. A kid in Gori (Stalin\u2019s birthplace in Georgia) did ask us to play some Led Zepplin, which we weren\u2019t able to do!<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> Also randomly according to our online sales, we get an awful lot of downloads in Japan!<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> Music for the TSMB has to fit a certain brief: usually minor chords, a tune that will fit into the modes used in eastern music. I\u2019m a bit crap at lyrics, and don\u2019t care for them, much, but the ones I write are on-topic: sad tales from what I call the Soviet Onion.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> It tends to be a mixture of traditional tunes which myself and other members transcribe and arrange for the band and then originals in a similar style written mostly by Nick, but also Emily and Sarah (our trombone player). We have also brought in tunes and jammed\/arranged them as a group.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> They often come in fully arranged (as it\u2019s easiest to approach writing for a band of this size with a certain degree of organisation), but do also evolve. When we\u2019ve played with new percussionists they\u2019ve sometimes added their own spin to an \u2018old favourite\u2019 tune and we end up with a totally different and fresh feel underpinning it which the rest of us will follow and develop.<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> I have a lot of respect for people who stick their necks out to do something that goes against the grain. So in pop I like early Roxy Music and 1970s Bowie, from punk I was a big fan of early Adam and the Ants and The Clash. I\u2019m a big fan of people like Lee Perry and Toots Hibbert (the most unique voice in reggae). Joni Mitchell is brilliant, an innovator, and without the ego of the other people from that whole sixties thing, a lot of which I hated \u2013 I love sixties pop. I\u2019m a big Shangri-Las fan, too. I\u2019ve liked most of what Bosnian bandleader Goran Bregovic has done, though part of his drive to create new music in the Balkans seems to have involved not crediting a lot of the original musicians. Filip Koutev, who brought lots of Bulgarian music to the fore, was amazing. I love Balkan music pioneers the Three Mustaphas Three. And I still love bands from what now seems like long ago, like The Monochrome Set and The Band of Holy Joy, still innovating after all this time.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> I am a huge fan of ska and reggae, so probably one of my all-time favourite bands is the Specials. I generally admire people who try and say and do something with their music or art form, such as Pete Seeger.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> In a similar vein, I respect artists who are innovative and original (Bj\u00f6rk, Miles Davis, Prince, The Beach Boys). Having said that I can also appreciate the craftsmanship, if not the artistic vision, behind a well-produced pop song.<\/p>\n Nick:<\/strong> Being well over the age of anybody I would have listened to when I was young, I sort of don\u2019t offer a strong opinion. Ha ha, but here\u2019s one anyway: A lot of it seems very bland, X-Factor-type stuff, young people\u2019s music paradoxically determined by old farts. Middle-aged parents seem to like the same music as their teenage kids, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s ever good for culture in general. However, I\u2019m sure that\u2019s not the whole picture! The current bands I know and like are Vampire Weekend and Bastille \u2013 there, that\u2019s their cred gone… I also think Imogen Heap is doing some interesting work.<\/p>\n Issy:<\/strong> Malian musicians such as Amadou and Mariam are great and I really love the guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela. I think there is a massive schism between how the music scene is represented in the mainstream media and what is actually happening. I would say it is a really exciting time to discover music: whatever you think of it, the Internet has given us the ability to access music from around the world and the live music scene in London particularly, is incredibly diverse \u2013 on any night of the week you could probably see any style of music you wanted. I mean the fact that we, as a bunch of English people in London, play Balkan music, and people actually come and see us is amazing, and I think testament to the vitality and inclusivity of the current music scene.<\/p>\n Emily:<\/strong> I agree that a narrow range of music is hugely over-represented in the mainstream media. I think Issy is completely right about the diversity of interesting music available, if you just scratch the surface. In booking bands to play during our residency at Rich Mix we have tried to represent this and offer something to people that is outside of their usual listening habits – prog rock, Bollywood, folk, a funk band with 5 trombones – nothing is off limits! In terms of my current favourite music, I like Beirut a lot – they also heavily incorporate the Balkan brass sound and other \u2018world\u2019 musics – we play a Turkish song called \u015eiki \u015eiki Baba in the style that they covered it in.<\/p>\nWhat brought you all together and how did you decide on that moniker?<\/h3>\n
What are the diverse influences that shape your current sound?<\/h3>\n
At present you are a 13-piece band, how does that function when touring and the onstage set-up?<\/h3>\n
What can someone that has yet to see your live show expect to see and hear?<\/h3>\n
What types of people do you attract along to your events?<\/h3>\n
You have played many big established festivals and historic venues, what were the high and low points and stand-out memories?<\/h3>\n
What Countries are most receptive to your current set?<\/h3>\n
How do your songs develop? What is the usual process of writing new material?<\/h3>\n
What are your Heroes and Zeroes from music and beyond?<\/h3>\n
What is your current favourite music and influences? What do you think of the current music scene?<\/h3>\n
You have collaborated with DJ Yoda, how did that come about and work out?<\/h3>\n