Review Fix: Xander and the Keys’ Xander Allen Talks Origin and Future

Review Fix chats with Xander Allen and the Keys frontman Xander, who lets us know how the band was formed, which inspires their sound and what’s next.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Xander Allen: I (Xander) used to play around bournemouth at all the open mic nights with my acoustic. I eventually met Luke Adams (our manager) at a recording studio. We all sat around and listened to my demos and people really liked it so we got a drummer in and that’s how we started. It (Xander and the Keys) was originally just me on guitar and a drummer (Marko Owen) eventually we got a bass player and the rest is history…

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Allen: It depends, sometimes you spend ages sitting on song ideas and when you try them out they don’t work. Some of our most popular tunes were written off the cuff. Cigarette Blues, Shivers.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?

Allen: Well our original fans would probably say ‘Shoebox Alleyway’ or ‘Shivers’ but recently we recorded a track called ‘Faux Embrace’ the process was different for that song. I was with my friend who had written this slam poetry type of poem and I was like, “that’s awesome can I use it in a song?” And after tweaking it to work as a singable song it turned out to be one of my personal favourites.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the remainder of 2016?

Allen: Well we have a few more gigs lined up but generally we are getting the last bits ready for 2017, it’s going to be very busy. Touring and promoting our new material.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Allen: I guess it’s subjective. Despite the songs having a certain meaning at the time we wrote them, people make of them how they want. At gigs though people just go crazy.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Allen: We have a busy year ahead of us. Promoting and touring but I’m just excited to see what people think of our new material, I think we have really matured musically.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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