At this year's Great Escape, spoke to wing!, who blends trip-hop and post-rock in an absorbing fusion.
Photos: Hazel Blacher | L to R: Joe Killick, Kai Charlton, Adam Smith | Words: Lloyd Bolton
London-based producer wing! has been announced as the winners of the Green Man Rising competition, storming the final in a showcase held at Cardiff's Clwb Ifor Bach. wing! started out as the recording project of Adam Swan, but the group was expanded as a live act into a trio featuring Joe Killick on drums and Kai Charlton on bass. Having existed as a live act for little more than a year, wing! has enjoyed a rapid rise to prominence off the back of an impressive live presence, which has created a word-of-mouth buzz that continues to grow. The music draws on trip-hop, post-rock and ambient electronica influences, with Boards of Canada, Burial and Madlib all cited as among the live group's shared favourite artists. Translating the sound for the stage, the music is built around Ableton textures accompanied by live bass and drums, which give the set an absorbing, evolving quality, primordial in its murkiness and mysteriously evocative as one grasps for meaning in the absence of lyrics.
The band have so far only released two songs, one on Slow Dance's esteemed annual compilation series, and also have major supports with Butch Kassidy and Geordie Greep to their name. Now, off the back of The Great Escape, they are looking ahead to a headline at The Windmill on 12th June and will be at Green Man Festival this August. There, as winners of the Rising competition, they will open the Mountain Stage, as well as playing another show later in the weekend. We caught up with the band at The Great Escape to get a brief introduction into the world of wing!
HoH: First up, how loud do we need to be saying 'wing!'?
Adam: "Not that loud, it's just on an up, you know? It's lowercase."
What is the best way to arrive on stage?
Adam: "Too early, way too early."
Joe: "There's been a couple of times where that's happened…"
Adam: "… the Geordie Greep one [Windmill Brixton, last October] was like kinda full so we couldn't really leave. We just had to stay there for a really awkward amount of time."
If you were based anywhere else where would that be?
Joe: "I like here, I like Brighton a lot."
Kai: "Maybe Japan or something like that…"
Adam: "Somewhere that's really cold… like amazingly cold, like Iceland or something. Or more in Kent, we just go further into Kent, attack Kent, that's the way."
If you were a tribute band, who would it be a tribute to?
Joe: "I would love to do like a Boards of Canada tribute act."
Adam: "That's what it is anyway!"
Would you rather be 9 feet or 1 foot tall?
Kai: "I think I'd probably be 9 feet… 1 foot might be too little"
Joe: "1 foot I couldn't play…I'd be out of a job"
Adam: "I wouldn't need a keyboard stand if I was 1 foot…"
What is an instrument you wish you could play but can't?
Joe: "Really basic but I'd love to get really good at the piano, like hearing chords and playing them."
Kai: "I'd love to be good at singing."
Adam: "Yeah, there's a reason the music's instrumental! But I was thinking this the other day, 'Man, if I was singing I'd probably be writing some really shit songs, so maybe this is for the best that I'm shutting up, you know?"
Who would be your dream producer?
Adam: "Danger Mouse. Danger Mouse or Mad Lib. Mad Lib is my favourite producer ever… but I would just have to leave that man alone… Danger Mouse I reckon it would be, like, both of us [bugging each other], you know?"
Do you have any recordings in the pipeline to release?
Adam: "It's not announced but we have stuff on the way. They're all beats anyway so, like, they're just made, we don't have a big recording process a lot of the time."
So how does recording work for you as a band?
Adam: "I usually make them on my laptop and then I take them to Joe and Kai and then they'll play over the top. Live it usually takes on a little bit more of the dynamics of a live band rather than the sampley, loop-based stuff.
"[To Kai] I'm not doing loads with your bass, but right now I'm getting into sampling Joe's drums and like treating them as breaks and stuff."
Where do your song titles come from?
Adam: "The old titles were just like, whatever the most stupid thing was that I could think of. Now [it'll be] something that has a certain amount of meaning. Or something that I feel could have been an Oasis lyric… or a jazz standard."
Who would be your dream band to support?
Joe: "It's gotta be Boards of Canada again. Or Ugly would be really cool."
Kai: "Autechere, but I don't know if they do stuff."
Joe: "Burial?"
Adam: "Awh there's no way! That man hasn't left the house ever!"