The Gold Supply

The Gold Supply are a brand new, science-fiction, space-zombie-in-a-coma, Nordic-noir, UK-based band made up of ex-major-label musicians that formed in the turmoil of the global pandemic and world chaos. They reflect this ‘new normal’ in their music by… just being totally chilled. The band released a debut, promo-only EP in December to great acclaim, and had some incredibly positive reviews alongside plenty of airplay courtesy of BBCIntroducing, AmazingRadio, Radio-Wigwam etc. They took time out of their hectic schedule to fill me in on all the details!

As ex-major label artists, how do you compare what you are doing now with those experiences?

‘’We were signed to Universal Records/Mercury Records years ago and we learnt so, so much from that. It’s amazing that you can have this little fun band, hanging out with your mates, and then you sign a record deal and you’re suddenly running your own business. And that’s exactly what it’s like. You change from being mates to business partners. You stop talking about songs and start talking about ‘streams’ and ‘marketing’ and ‘public relations’ and ‘radio plugging’ etc, etc. We weren’t prepared for it at all and had no clue what we were doing. Before the record deal we had had lots of Radio One day time play, and ‘single-of-the-week’ in Melody Maker, and once we signed the deal none of that happened. It did make us think maybe we are better off working with much smaller companies who actually like what we do, rather than the major labels. Luckily i don’t think the major labels would touch us now anyway!’’

Do you find you have more creative freedoms within this latest venture?

‘’The bigger a band gets the more people are involved in the creative decisions. You can always be in control of the music to some extent but once you sign to a big record company then they will decide your producer, your engineer, your studio, your mastering, your next single, your video etc. So, you have to be comfortable to give that up. So, right now, we are a tiny band and so we choose and control all of that. It’s so, so, so nice to have that control now, (although it is loads of work!), we would only let someone in to influence those decisions for us if they had been working with us for years.’’

What factors made you pursue The Gold Supply professionally when it started out as nothing more than a ‘boredom buster’?

‘’The truth is that we all missed being in a band. You can work 9am-5pm your whole life but at the very end, you need to be proud that you created something in your life, that you enjoyed yourself, that you tried to make a difference. We had great feedback about our first little demo/promo EP

(“Underwater Completely”) and it just gave us the confidence to go for it. I don’t know if people realise but every tweet about our band, every ‘like’ on Instagram; every time someone says they liked your song… it makes a difference to the band, it grows confidence, it helps, it supports, it makes a band think that they can do something worthwhile.’’

https://open.spotify.com/ artist/6pNP5VvgoBxX5Ul3tKVArI

How did world events, such as the pandemic, political events etc, influence your writing?

‘’It had a huge influence. I can’t work out if it had an influence just because we are older and more aware of the world these days or if it’s because the world really is more insane than it has been before. At the time we were making our first demo’s there was Donald Trump in America, there was Brexit, there was more fighting in Afghanistan and a global pandemic. It felt such a weird and quite scary time and even now i can hear that fear in our music, the resignation of not being able to help or change anything.’’

What are you ambitions for The Gold Supply?

‘’This will sound a little bit silly, but the key ambition is to make some records that we are proud of. I’d like to create something that even in ten years’ time i will be proud to be associated with. It doesn’t need to sell a lot of copies; it just needs to be something that we’re proud to be involved with. Apart from that, there are some more specific ambitions: We would absolutely love to play on one of the stages at Glastonbury as weirdly none of us have done that before. We’ve played Reading Festival etc and most of the others but never Glastonbury so maybe over the next couple of years we could work towards that. We’d like to release a full album in early 2023, we’d be excited to do that as i think you can be slightly more ambitious with an album in terms of song-length and trying to create a consistent mood and mindset through the record. Let’s see what happens, if there is another pandemic then all these plans are trashed!’’

When can we expect your next release?

‘’Well, we have a plan! We’ve never had a plan before but right now we do have a plan. We are working on the demos right now for our second EP. We’ll finish eight or nine songs by the end of

November and then try and select the best four for release. We will then record them properly in early February with a view to a release in about April 2022 – and then ideally, we would play some of the summer festivals to promote it. It sounds so easy when it’s said like that, but it’ll be chaos for the next six months as usual!’’

Link to 30-second promo video: https://youtu.be/onAFA i3N4Q8

Link to Instagram: https://www.instagr am.com/the_gold_supply/

Link to Twitter: https://twitter.com/T he_Gold_Supply

Contact: http://Optimisticbg@gmail.