Two Year Break, the London four piece made their Download Festival debut this year. They played a spirited set for the Donington faithful on the Wednesday night, giving fans and attendees their first taste of live music for the weekend. We caught up with frontman Brad Tyler to discuss playing Download, how it came about, how it went and what it meant to the band, we touch upon their latest album, navigating the current landscape in the age of the viral moment and also wrestling Charlie Simpson…sort of.
So, Two Year Break at Download Festival on Wednesday. How did it go?
It went really really well, we had some hiccups and I don’t like to pretend we didn’t. We had some technical issues, but we pulled through and once they were over we all started again we had a really great show, but it started a bit wobbly. There was a moment there where I thought we weren’t going to play.
Technical issues are never fun and you never want them, but especially not when it’s Download.
That’s the thing, everyone gets technical difficulties, but we’ve never had them this severe before which is why we were a bit thrown, there were loads of people trying to help, so you’re trying to focus on what they’re doing, but no one knew what the problem was and we were losing time. There was a point where they said why don’t you play this without the clicks? And for those of you that don’t know we play with a click in our that is all synced up with the extra noises and sub drops, we have too many layers of sounds in our music, that we would have to have about 20 people onstage to play them all, so a lot of it comes through a speaker, so if we didn’t play to a click then it would be possible to play, but it would sound very shit. When they said we could play without a click, our thought was well, we can’t so if we don’t fix this then the set is off, but we fixed it thankfully. The only thing we didn’t get to do, was I spent 12 hours making videos for the backdrop, it wasn’t just our logo, it had some jokes and some comedy bits to get people involved, I spent quite a lot of time on that but we didn’t get to use it, as we had to turn that off as well, other than that we had a great time.
How did Two Year Break end up on the Download bill, what is the story there?
So, there is a thing called Takeover Download that is run people at the festival, and you send a live video of yourselves playing to the Takeover, loads and loads of bands do it, and then a small group of people who are part of the community choose 6 bands out of 300 bands or so and they picked us. We applied once before and we didn’t get it last time, then this time our manager didn’t tell us and she just did it politely behind our backs and then text us one day to say we’re playing Download.Essentially if you have a live video, I think last time we sent a higher quality video from our Underworld show, we have all the proper produced live audio from the show, loads of angles and we didn’t get accepted, but this year we did. So for anyone who is reading who wants to play Download as part of the Takeover community, submit a live video of yourselves, what’s the worst that can happen?
You have a new album Light It Up out. What was more anxiety inducing for you as a band, getting the album out or preparing to play Download?
Probably the release of the album I’d say. I don’t really get anxious or if I do, I’m not aware that I’m getting anxious, I got a bit anxious when it all went wrong, but before that I was ok, it’s not until I’m stood there about to go on that I’m a bit like oh my god, so I probably get more anxious doing the album stuff, making sure we’ve got music videos ready, like is this the right one to release first, is all of the album going to get listened to, that is more anxiety inducing and stressful for me than playing Download. I would say that when we play our own show I’m less stressed because I know that people have come to see our band, but when you play something like Download or when you support a bigger band it can be more stressful because they don’t know who we are, so you’ve got to make sure you impress.
Obviously playing Download is a big thing for any band. But how do you judge a show like this? Do you go by how it made you feel when you were onstage or by the vibes from the crowd and how they walked away from it?
I think it’s a mixture of both. I really appreciate when people say nice things, but it’s hard sometimes to take those comments in, as we spoke about before this with having imposter syndrome, you feel like people are just saying those things because you’ve liked the band for years or whatever the case is. It’s hard to judge sometimes, so I judge it based on how I feel I did in the moment and the thing with Two Year Break is, we’re all friends and we all take it seriously, but also we’re not serious and I think people can see we’re having a laugh. I think once we got over the technical stuff we all did have a laugh, I jumped into the wrestling ring that happened to be there with the Charlie Simpspon cardboard cutout and RKO’d him and threw him into the crowd. Not saying that stuff isn’t us, but it’s very silly and in the moment, if we were a serious metal band, we would have our synced up moments and things we have to do, whereas I just saw a wrestling ring and ran into it. I think I judge it on did I have fun in the end, did it look like we were having good banter and showing that we were friends onstage.
It’s interesting that you mention the Charlie Simpson cut out moment being spontaneous and not prepared. I think one of the biggest things about the industry currently is that everyone is trying to capture a moment or go viral or get those TikTok clips, whereas you are out there doing something off the cuff in that moment, but there are people out there actually manufacturing these things.
Earlier on in the day I saw that wrestling ring my first thought was that it would be sick to get in there, but I didn’t want to get into trouble, I might look like I like to break the rules, but I don’t and I didn’t want to get us kicked out, so after all the issues happened, I went down the stairs on the last song Lovin’ Every Day with the Charlie Simpson cut out and started putting it in people’s faces when we were singing,I knew the wrestling ring was there and there was that spark, i wasn’t thinking about it, obviously if it gets captured then great, but I didn’t go there hoping it would get filmed, I just did it because it was funny and we are just four lads who don’t really know what we’re doing, but we’re just having a laugh on stage and I think, well I hope it comes across that we’re not contrived and that we are just being ourselves.
As a band that is still relatively young in your career, how are you finding navigating the business side of things with all the changes in the ways bands are presented and marketed now?
I think we just had to get used to it. About 5 or 6 years ago I stopped doing a 9-5 and made my life work around the music industry. I learnt how to market, how to do music videos and photography, I know that all this stuff needs to be done, so I don’t mind doing it, I don’t like how much it’s all changed since I first started doing it, we used to run adverts and not everyone necessarily knew they were adverts, they used to just pop up but now everyone knows they are adverts, but now its all 20 second TikTok clips and that is where I feel a bit like how my parents did when they’d say back in my day… I don’t want to go outside and sing in a field and sing my songs into a camera then cut it up into different things for TikTok and I won’t, that stuff annoys me. I got into it and I got used to taking on all those other elements of being in a band then all the TikTok stuff started happening and I’m having a bit of resentment towards that stuff, I don’t like TikTok in itself, if I’m filming a video I wanna film in landscape and use my nice expensive camera, for someone to then go, can you do it vertical please? So there you go, that’s how I see it.
I think it’s one of those things you have to adapt to, but at the same time I don’t think it creates a level playing field for everyone, but then maybe it does and I’m missing something
It’s opened it up so that anyone can do well and you don’t have to rely on labels, but that was kind of the way when we started doing marketing, we could market ourselves and we could put a little bit of our own pocket money in, whereas now its moved more to that TikTok’s and more spontaneous stuff, but like you say it’s opened up so that anyone can do it, but why do they get to, but it means that everyone has to do it which it makes it a bit of a chore. It’s not art, it doesn’t art, like it’s not a choice, we have to do this. There is a balance, but it feels at the moment like you have to do TikTok and you have to think about it.
In closing, what has Two Year Break got coming up? What should people be looking out for?
If you want to see us at our best, we have a Summer Time, Fun Time, Who’s round is it? Tour coming up in July. It’s called that because we are going on tour with our friends in Crushed by Waves and Royals, so that is three bands that are all friends and have all toured together previously, so it’s all going to be silly jokey references from before, so it’s a serious, not serious tour. So if you want to see the true silliness of all three of those bands just bring friends and enjoying ourselves then you should come out to the tour.
for more information on Two Year Break including tour dates please head here
