Introducing... Go Lazarus

The three strapping gentlemen you see above are tonsillitis sufferer Adam, almost-apple-genius Ant and half Italian, half film nerd Dan. These men are each a third of the alternative rock band Go Lazarus. They spent their twenties looking for the perfect sound, experimenting with different bands such I Am Without Shoes and Red Feather Lake, and have combined all their varying musical tastes and copious experience within the industry together to create something new, catchy and pretty damn epic. This month I caught up with Ant and Dan to get to know the inner workings of Go Lazarus.

When and why did Go Lazarus start?

Ant: Well, GL actually started in 2006 but when Dan and I were at college, we used to play together a load, like Stone Roses covers and stuff, then life kind of got in the way. We went to uni so stopped for a bit, then started, then Ant went travelling for a year, so we stopped, and when he got back we finally decided to do something properly.

Dan: It's like the Blues Brother, we were trying to get the band back together... we basically procrastinated for ten years.

If GL could play with any band, who would it be?

Ant: Mutually, it'd be the Stone Roses. Imagine saying something like "Did you like our support act, the Stones Roses? They're pretty good, ain't they?". It would be cool to play with Alexisonfire but they're a completely different genre so it'd be a weird gig...

Dan: I'd quite like to play with Bloc Party... or early the Cure... or maybe Led Zeppelin.

So if you could be one musician for the day, who would it be?

Dan: Buddy Rich, all jazz on your ass. That is jazz not jizz by the way, that could be awkward.

Ant: I'd have Eddie Hazel [psychedelic guitarist from Funkadelic] but he did have a pretty bad PCP addiction so… maybe not.

Dan: Adam would probably be Daniel Beddingfield, he actually loves him. 

Use one word to describe Go Lazarus.

Ant: Fractured

Dan: What? (A similar reaction to my own).

Ant: Musically, recording, writing, when we're tryna organise who drives to a gig... fractured.

Dan: Tempestuous.

It was at this point Ant and Dan decided to look up old Victorian words that are the best to describe oneself.

Ant: Lunting; walking whilst smoking a pipe... haha, this is a good one; "Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist".

Where is the band going to be in five years time?

Ant: Lunting whilst fractured; then spermologing.

Dan: Hopefully still together.

Ant: Emotionally.

Dan: Spiritually, physically...

Ant: Hopefully we'll still have all our teeth.

Dan: and our hair... we're pretty fucking rock and roll. Yeah.

Who writes the songs in the band?

Ant: That would be me.

Where does your inspiration for song writing come from?

Ant: Just life, I guess. I write what I want to listen, I write something I hope the other two will like. 

Lyrically some songs mean a lot, for instance 'Avalanche' was about someone who's parents passed away, but sometimes I write throwaway songs that I just feel like writing at the time.

Tell me about the new EP.

Ant: It was recorded in Cambridge last December with a guy called Mattie Moon.

Dan: We spent the majority of the year writing the tracks and went down there for a couple of weeks to a shitty little industrial estate with no heating. We laid the tracks down and he spent a month producing them.

Ant: At one point, I had four amps at once, it was like an acid trip with an ego.

Some of your songs seem to be different genres, some more rock based, some more indie based. 

What direction do you see GL going for in the future?

Ant: I like stuff to be up tempo 'cause I get bored. I get a lot of my influence from The Rapture and warehouse parties, much to Dan's annoyance. It's all varied though. We'll just continue playing the best music, a combination of all our influences put together.

Since the release of the EP "3 Strikes" in February, Go Lazarus had been played on the radio in America, Australlia, Canada and have been played on numerous occasions on BBC Introducing. It can be bought on iTunes or listened to at www.soundcloud.com/golazarus.