Review Fix Exclusive: Bison Face’s Ernie Hill Talks Goals And More

Review Fix chats with Bison Face’s Ernie Hill, Songwriter, Singer and Guitarist, who discusses the band’s influences, goals and origin.

Review Fix: How did the project start?

Ernie Hill: Back in late 2018 I had just come off doing a few session tours playing guitar, and on the road I’d been writing a few songs. When I got home I decided I needed a more personal creative outlet, so I made a couple of actual demos. I floated these to my friend Alex (Bowden, Guitar) whom I had been in a band with at school. We decided to make my little project an actual band, and I holed myself up and wrote a few more in February 2019. When Al moved back from Brighton we started working on a live show, and our first setlist was those 6 tracks. We went through a few rhythm section changes and now we’ve got Jonny (Bennett, Drums) and Arthur (Sawyer, Bass) to complete the line-up, and it’s the best it’s been! 

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Hill: The best songs are happy accidents, melodies or riffs manifest themselves in my head at any point, sometimes annoyingly so. I try and create constantly, I don’t usually sit down with the goal of “writing a song”. I play guitar most of the day, fiddle with a keyboard or scribble my thoughts down as prose, poems, art or nonsense. So, there’s usually something being created, and that in turn can inspire me to write about a particular feeling or event lyrics wise. Once the tracks are there we go into a practice room and jam them out as a band, this is where they take their final form, everyone puts their own little feel and inflections into their parts, and whatever feels natural to do live is what the song is cemented as. 

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

Hill: Personally, at the moment my favourite song I’ve penned so far is ‘Mallrats’, it’s a high energy garage rock song. It’s just pure fun, and really encapsulates the core sound of the band. The stop start rhythm came from me tapping drum patterns on my legs on a bus and I started humming the lead guitar part; Cut to me jumping off a stop early to whip out voice notes and hum the bones of the whole track in one go. I got in and pretty much had the instrumental demo done in 20 minutes. Lyrically it’s quite dark, it deals with mental health, anxiety attacks, loss and loneliness, but it comes sugar coated in an upbeat rock song.

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2020?

Hill: After the lockdown measures here have eased up we’re going to record our first EP and have that released as soon as we can. We’ve been sitting on those tracks and playing them live for a while so it’ll be great to finally get a studio version out in the world. Then we just want to play shows. That’s what we’ve missed most, practicing in a room together and then having our hard work pay off in a live setting, we live for the gigs so we’ll be touring as soon as it’s feasible!

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

Hill: I want people to be able to listen to it and escape, have a good time. Lose their minds for a bit at a live show and just feel pure enjoyment. But also, I want the lyrics to be available to anyone who needs them. If writing something that means a lot to me can help someone the way that other music has helped me, then my job is done. That makes it all worthwhile. Music saved me and gave me purpose, and continues to do so. If music I’ve written can be that for someone else then I can’t ask for much more.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Hill: We’ll be recording and releasing our aforementioned debut EP. And we need to play a belated release show for our single ‘Ladybird’ that came out at the start of lockdown. After that it’s just touring hopefully. I’ve spent the whole of isolation writing new material so we’ve got plenty of new inspiration to go on once the EP cycle has been exhausted. First and foremost, we just looking forward to cracking some beers and catching up properly, planning the studio time. We’re all excited to start the engine back up, so we’ll see how the industry landscape looks in a post pandemic world!