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We catch up with the recent Polydor signees to hear about their evolution and relentless touring schedule. |
| Photos: Frazer McGoldrick | Words: Bella Platt |
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The soundcheck at YES Manchester is not a gentle thing. Bleech 9:3 are making the walls remember them as they run through opening number ‘Jacky’, bass rumbling through the venue to the crowd already waiting outside the door. The band are coming to the end of a relentless run of 73 days on the road playing a packed schedule of shows. They finish on the 10th of June. Baz Quinlan, lead singer, is already thinking past it. |
“After we finish touring all the anxieties will pile up in the direction of the first album,” he says, leaning forward. “It cannot be understated how important it is that we do our best work for it.” |
That weight is appropriate. Since releasing ‘Ceiling’ last October and signing with Polydor shortly after, the Dublin-born, London-based band have moved fast and purposefully. Tonight they’ll walk out to ‘Danny Boy’ and hold a 150-person crowd captivated, the intimacy of the show likely to soon become a rarity. |
Baz doesn’t talk around sobriety. It comes up early, and it’s a humble foundation to most of what follows. “The story you tell yourself is so important,” he says. “The story for me has been that I will not be put down. Not by life, or by myself – and I will turn it around.” He says it slowly and without performance. A confidence necessary for a man at the front of something that, not long ago, didn’t exist at all. |
It is unsurprising that his resulting music has matured over the years alongside his journey with sobriety. Reminiscing about his earlier band JaVill, he reflects, “I think I was fresh off the back of a life-changing, spiritual experience… Obviously that was reflected in the music we were writing”. Talking through the transition to forming Bleech 9:3, he considers, “deeper thoughts take longer to mature inside you”. The result is a band whose songs carry real consequence: addiction, darkness, tenderness. Whose best moments land not because they reach for impact, but because they already have it. “Lyrics reflect the experiences we’ve had,” Baz adds. “The songs that come out tend to be a soundtrack to those experiences.” |
Baz and Sam, the guitarist, moved to London first. The Dublin scene had started to feel small in a way that didn’t seem to be about geography. Past bands that had run their course, and there was a growing sense that the next thing had to be a clean break or not happen at all. |
Their first night in London was in Streatham. “He gave me the bed,” Baz says of Sam. “He slept on a tiny couch, God love him.” |
The next morning, Baz was up before dawn for a job interview at All Saints. It is funny in the retelling, but there’s a specific kind of trust underneath it that only forms when people have genuinely inconvenienced themselves for each other. Baz’s brother James, and drummer Rusty joined the pair in London soon after. |
Before long, the city started giving back. The shows built towards a sound that pulls harder than their short time together might suggest. On record, sludgy riffs recall 90s Seattle. Think Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam: precise and dark and structurally demanding. Live, it’s something else again. Baz is magnetising, all controlled velocity and outpoured feeling, while Sam leads from the guitar with a clarity that gives every song its spine. |
There are other obsessions that murmur below the surface. The band are serious film people, referencing the work of David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick and Vincent Gallo’s ‘Buffalo 66’, to name a few. It reflects directly to how they think of their own work as something cinematic, scored to a specific interior life. This instinct has always been there but finding someone who understood it was harder. |
Previous video experiences had left them wary, a creative disconnect that dulled something they cared about. Then they found Flo Webb, who made the music video for ‘Ceiling’, which was, by their own admission, a departure from their previous experiences. “We could communicate exactly what we were inspired by,” Sam says. “However amazing the brief for the shoot was, she (Flo Webb) made it even better.” |
The Polydor record deal happened quickly after they released “Ceiling” in October 2025. But that’s not to say the decision wasn’t calculated. “We were clear with all of the labels interested – why do you want to sign us? We had to get a gauge of what their ideas were.” Creative control was non-negotiable; decisions arrived at through gut feeling as much as negotiation. “Any smart label director will pay attention to what the market is doing. There’s a clear change and interest in alternative music by young people – we’ve been able to benefit from that.” He continues, “The age of people at our shows is mad. Very young, yet so fervently interested.” It’s unclear if he feels pride or something closer to wonder. |
Despite the major label signing, Bleech 9:3 remain closely engaged with the direct relationship with an audience established in the gig space. At shows recently, there has been what Baz calls “lad culture”, moshing that tips into something more intimidating, crowd behaviour that makes certain people in the room feel unwelcome. |
“We are not about any type of lad culture,” Baz says, measured and direct. “I define it as aggressive, over-the-top, intimidating, just socially unaware stuff. Which most of the time is harmless, no malintent behind it. Regardless, there are still people in the room feeling intimidated.” He doesn’t hedge it. “Shows are for everyone. If we see it happening, we will speak about it. Simple as that.” |
Sam adds a note of context, “Coming from Dublin we understand the lad culture; it’s a chance to all be one. But we don’t want people to get hurt.” With a dry smile, he adds, “For people doing English football chants…we’re an Irish band. Just want you to know that.” It gets a laugh. But their exhaustion is palpable, the first major tour has taken a toll. |
Baz looks, frankly, destroyed, in the way that only makes sense if you’ve been doing something you love for two-and-a-half months straight. There’s a tiredness behind the eyes that no amount of good press shifts. But ask about the fans and something else surfaces. “Getting a big record deal is something you dream of,” he’d said earlier. But back-to-back sold-out shows, rooms of people who learnt every word, and another tour already locked in for October, that’s a dream that doesn’t fit in a pull quote. |
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