Brighton Music Blog favourites GAPS have got a new four track collaborative release with multi award winning British-Japanese producer Maya Jane Coles. It’s some of the most exciting new music to come out of Brighton recently, and just the excuse we needed to catch up with the Rachel and Ed over a coffee:

GAPS

Brighton Music Blog: So, you’ve got a new release out. Is it a single or an EP?

Rachel: It’s an EP.

Ed: <Puzzled look>

BMB: You don’t seem sure about that Ed?

E & R: <laughter>

E: I was wondering myself which it was! Yeah. It’s an EP.

BMB: How did the collaboration with Maya Jane Coles happen?

R: It’s sort of a long story but basically I met her years ago in Brighton at a party at my house and she was really sweet. She said she was a DJ, and we chatted about music and then that was that. Then a few years back before we’d even formed GAPS I saw her headlining a festival – it was so nice to see that someone you met randomly has done really well – so I sent her a message on Facebook and got back in touch. When we had our first single I cockily sent it to her to see if she’d be interested in doing a remix. There’s not that many people that I thought would be good for our sound, but she was always someone I’ve always had in mind. It was a bit out of our ballpark with us being totally unknown but she was really sweet and liked what we were doing but was too busy at the time, but was keen to hear more about GAPS and was interested to see if I wanted to do some vocal stuff with her. That was last summer.

BMB: What was the process for writing? To us they sound a lot like GAPS tracks that have been produced by someone else.

R: That’s exactly what they are. I didn’t do anything different to what I do with Ed. I sat in my bedsit and wrote and recorded it and then Ed took the stems, treated them, made them sparkle, and then we sent them onto Maya. So instead of Ed going to work on the production, they went to Maya instead.

BMB: So they’re basically written by you but produced by her?

R: Well, it’s half and half, a bit like me and Ed really. I wrote the initial idea, but obviously she has written all the production and the extra lines in it that you hear. So the guitar and the vocals are me and the rest is her.

BMB: How long has the writing process been going on? I saw she posted up your track Inside Your Head on her Soundcloud six months ago. And you haven’t had anything out this year and she hasn’t had any singles out this year.

R: It’s been really natural and organic really. We decided to do an EP together around Christmastime and I wrote my parts around February / March, then she was really, really busy so from then it was down to her having the time to work on them because she’s away every weekend and she has her own remixes to do. So it got written, then she did her bit, then it’s come out almost as soon as it was finished. It’s been quite fast moving in that sense.

BMB: And it’s out on Maya’s own record label I/AM/ME where your previous releases have been on Sexbeat on 7”s.

R: Sexbeat are friends of ours and they put our singles out to allow us to get music out there and still keep a lot of control over our music, which is what we wanted to do, but the EP was always going to be with Maya and down her routes.

BMB: Have you got any live dates coming up?

R: We haven’t got any in Brighton at the moment, but we’ve got a show at Servant Jazz Quarters on Tuesday 28th October so we’re looking forward to that.

E: It’s our first London headline.

R: Well, it’s our first paid London headline, so they’re advertising it as our first headline. So this is our first opportunity for Londoners to buy tickets and see us, which is cool for us. And we’ve got someone from Brighton supporting us who we both love called Lloyd Williams, who’s a brilliant folk musician.

BMB: Which leads nicely onto our last question which we ask everyone we interview. Are there any other Brighton bands you’d recommend?

R: Lloyd Williams is amazing. You should check him out.

E: We’re quite excited about bringing out the folk influence. It’ll be quite nice to get a folk guitarist play and then have us play afterwards. I think the two will fit together quite well, even though what we do is quite electronic there’s a folk influence there.

R: The scales that he uses are similar to ours, and he loves drone, I love drone, so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.

E: Do you know Eagles for Hands? We’re big fans and good friends with him. He’s doing very well for himself. He’s played at a couple of gigs of ours before and we’re trying to work with him in the future.

R: Another band that I’ve seen twice this week is Thieves by the code, and they sound a bit like Megadeth, but they’re amazing, really tight. Beautiful riffs. They’re just putting an album out in October. You should look out for them.

In Dark, In Day is out now via Beatport and gets a general release across other digital platforms next week.