On Thursday, Big Long Sun release their second album whatever (whatever) on Miohmi records, and heading out on tour starting with a hometown gig at Alphabet, supported by Lemonsuckr and the Kitchen Sink Band. Three singles from the album have been released so far – a casual dance between friends, when the mood’s right and fast like I like my money, all of which have garnered attention beyond Brighton’s borders and had national radio airplay. After a bit of small talk covering specialist coffee and old cameras, I sat down with Jamie Broughton to chew the fat about the album, what’s next, and the other projects he’s involved with.

Brighton Music Blog: How would you describe whatever (whatever)?
Jamie Broughton: I’d call it Future Bedroom Rock Pop. It’s more gentrified than the first album – it feels like I’ve levelled up.

BMB: The first album was called big long sun : speaking. Was there a temptation to call it big long sun colon something else?
JB: No. Well, maybe I thought about it, but I thought it’d be too conceptual. And the first album just gave me the name for the project because I was just releasing under my own name before. I’ve never liked it when people do series of albums where they’re the same name, the title changed slightly.

BMB: Where did the title whatever (whatever) come from?
JB: There’s a few times in the album that I say the word whatever, and there’s especially one where I say whatever, whatever. It’s hard to explain how I say it until you hear it, but it just kept coming up, It’s like a repeated motif. And I like brackets.
So it’s whatever brackets whatever.
BMB: More interesting punctuation in in your titles, like the colon in big long sun : speaking
JB: Yeah. I like I like syntax, and I also like poetry. I like playing around with that. Even though it’s harder to look up, I just prefer how it looks.

BMB: The album has come really soon after the “I can hardly see a thing” EP which was released in March, and you’ve mentioned to me that the third album is almost ready too. Do you have a large amount of accumulated material that you’ve been sitting on or are you writing very quickly?
JB: Album three is in the final mixing and mastering stages – but to answer the question, I’m writing very quickly.

BMB: Let’s move on to the live shows. Last time I saw you there were seven, eight of you on stage?
JB: There will still be eight of us. And then maybe for a casual dance, we might get one or two or three more people on stage to play percussion just because it’s such a dense dance track. There aren’t enough members to do it the way it is when we’re recording.

BMB: Who is Big Long Sun at the moment? Obviously, the writing and recording is just you, there’s eight of you on stage, and I saw a promo photo that had just four of you in it.
JB: That was kind of an accident. There was just there was a photo taken of that four of us, and they wanted more press pics for the PR stuff. I liked that photo, so I sent it off and they used it for a lot of stuff. I guess Big Long sun is a name I gave to an art project, and the band and the music I’ve made for the band to play as the art project. So it’s kind of not a person as much as a concept. But I guess I’m the closest to being Big Long Sun.

BMB: “We’re big long sun and we play music for…” is something you say between songs in your live sets. Where did where did that come?
JB: It came from listening to French radio when I was in France last, and they had this line where they said “music pour tout le famille”, which is music for all the family. So I thought maybe I could go on at a gig and say “nous sommes big long sun, et nous jours musique pour tout le famille” – we’re big long sun, and we play music for all the family. And then it made me laugh, and I thought, what else do we make music for? So I made this huge list, and I got a couple of the other band members to add lines where they thought it was appropriate. I started saying it at shows, and then we got a great response. So I just printed it out and started giving it out to people, And then realized it was a sort of manifesto. And, and now with the merch that we’ve made for this tour, it’s we’ve screen printed it on loads of shirts.

BMB: As well as two big long sun albums and an EP in the space of a year, you’ve also put an album out as between the air. What distinguishes between the air’s music from big long sun’s?
JB: It’s a matter of branding, really. If you go back a year or so, everything I was putting out was being released as Jamie Broughton. I figured if I’m gonna try and get this to a bigger audience and actually develop a fan base I can’t really have such wildly different sounds. It deserved its own project name, and it frees me up creatively because it means I can do a dubstep album and stick it out under between the air. Not that I want to, but I could. And maybe I will. It’s nice to have two very opposite accounts where I can put stuff.

BMB: So is it just two identities or are there more waiting to be released?
JB: Well, I’m interested in having an account that’s just for my singer songwriter material that a lot a lot of people know me for. I used to do a lot more shows as a solo performer where I’d sing my kind of Nick Drake, Elliott Smith style music, which I feel wouldn’t really sit very well in the big, long sun or between the air identities. But I haven’t got time for that at the moment. There’s so many sides to the music that I want to make, some of them are gonna have to be prioritized.

BMB: You’re also involved with Radio Anorak
JB: I was I wasn’t involved from the beginning, but I was in the small number of people that were aware it was happening, and I was played all the early demos. I’d listen to what they were working on and say, keep doing this. It’s great. And then when they started getting ready to play shows they brought me in as an extra drummer, and then I stuck around on the guitar because I play so well with Ollie (big long sun’s guitarist who also plays with Radio Anorak). We’re kind of musical soulmates. There’s lots of music in the works for that project, driven by Toma and Hugo collaborating.
Toma being a very experienced musician and Hugo being a very experienced thinker and creative – they realized that when they put the two together, they had something really interesting, And they were interested in expanding that to a band and seeing what happened. I guess we’re seeing what’s happening – That’s exciting. I was trying to leave all my bands, I’ve stopped playing with Ideal Living now. And then Radio Anorak came along and I just couldn’t say no. So it was kind of like a Mission Impossible situation. I was broke in and now I love it. So I’m sticking around.

BMB: You’ve played in a lot bands over the years. Was that about deliberately trying to get experience of different things, or was it you trying to find what your thing was? Or was it that people could see that you’re more capable on in just picking up an instrument then going with it?
JB: I think the experience thing maybe was the subconscious intention. But it really just came down to the fact that I’m very social. I really like friends and making friends. And being a musician, the greatest privilege we have is getting to do what we love with friends. It’s a very social art form. It’s unlike being an artist or a poet or a photographer, all of which I think are lonely. I just love making music with friends, and if I had more time, if I had an extra two days a week, I’d stay in all these bands.

whatever (whatever) is available to pre-order on bandcamp. The band play at Alphabet on 24th July. Tickets available here