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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