Two Door Cinema Club Bring the Cool to Benidorm

21:30h in Benidorm on Friday 26th July and I'm standing with Alex Trimble, Sam Halliday and Kevin Baird aka Two Door Cinema Club in the middle of a football pitch. We were, of course, backstage at Low Cost Festival. Alex heads back to his dressing room with the Spanish translator we didn't need and birthday boy Sam goes off to catering, leaving Kevin who says, "Shall we just do the interview here?"

We sit down on the sub-benches and the interview commences. I ask when they arrived here in Spain, "We got here this afternoon, we were shooting a video in London. We actually flew out from Gatwick on an Easyjet flight. We haven´t been to Benidorm before but haven´t seen any of it yet. Wer'e heading down to Alicante for the rest of the weekend for Sam's stag do!"

What was it like playing the main stage at T in the Park? "It was great having played before to have a point of reference. When you've played the smaller stages you know how important it is to be playing the headline stage. In 2010 we played the Small Tent at T and last year the 2nd Stage, so it's good to have that."
Their music has been used in adverts for the likes of Vodafone, Meteor, clothing retailers Debenhams and Next and by Microsoft. I wonder how much say the boys have in it, "We have full control over what we do, for instance, we've been asked to do loads - I won't tell you what - that we decided not to do. We're not fortunate enough to be in Adeles' postition where we can turn down the offers all the time. In the beginning it really helped to get us known and in fact a track for Debenhams became a single when we weren't releasing it, purely on the basis of the advert. We've also had tracks for Playstation and Xbox, Fifa games and NBA which has got us known in America so it's all been good really... It's also quite lucrative. I wouldn't want to not be able to decide what we do as I'm a control freak."

I ask Kevin what the first gig was he ever attended as a fan, "I think it was probably a Radio 1
Roadshow, I can remember it came to our hometown in Ireland which was quite major as nobody ever came. Zoe Ball was the presenter and I remember seeing The Corrs."

On Wikipedia Two Door Cinema Clubs' Genre is described as Indie rock dance-punk synthpop new wave post-punk revival, I ask if he could sum up their genre in no more than 3 words. "Alternelectronica, when we first started out someone came up with that and we thought it was really good. I guess we're more Indie now, we used to be to be three guys and beats, but now we have a drummer..."

The band have 1.5 Million Likes on Facebook and growing, I ask how important Kevin thinks social media is for musicians? "It's definitely the way things are going now, but just because you have 1.5 million Likes doesn't mean they all see your posts. Facebook uses algorithms to decide how important each post is and how they show up in feeds. For example, if you add a photo or not it can make a big difference and you can actually pay to promote an individual post and decide how many hits you want it to get." Wow, so you've really thought about this? [Laughs] "Well as I said, I'm a control freak."

As his manager makes exaggerated winding notions with his hands as he's on the phone, I ask Kevin one last question, what's the most expensive item of clothing he's ever bought? "I bought a Cristian Dior jacket... the other guys still make fun of me for it, I bought it in Browns in London." Eeek! How much was it? "I'm not saying... but it was a lot."

Two Door Cinema Club played the main stage at midnight, despite being 90% Spanish the crowd sang along to every song. It was one of the most incredible performances I have ever seen, their energy was phenomenal with some amazing pyrotechnics.

Down at the Apple Tree with Nina Nesbitt

Ahead of her King Tuts gig on the 17^th May, I was lucky enough to go backstage to catch up with one of my favourite musicians of the moment, singer/songwriter, Nina Nesbitt. On entering the young star’s dressing room I noticed a small fridge containing a pint glass of milk, bizarrely, lit up like the Crown Jewels. Nina had no more clues than I did as to why it was there.

On the 23^rd of April Nina released her EP ‘The Apple Tree’ with five original tracks which fans went mad for. She reached number 6 in the album chart on iTunes and is still, one month later, number 5 in the Singer/Songwriter chart. I asked how she reacted to it’s success, “I thought it was quite funny to be honest, I didn’t really expect it to do that well, I was just putting it out there for fans to hear the music. Then, it charted. It’s just weird, but I’m really grateful that loads of people have bought it, it’s cool.”

The talented 17 year old now has over 16,000 twitter followers and Sold Out her own headline mini-UK tour. “It’s a bit crazy,” she smiles, “a year ago I played my first gig in Manchester. Since then it’s escalated really fast but it’s great, I’m really grateful that I’ve got loads of followers and people coming to see the gigs.”

Along with the positive, there is also the negative. There’s lots of internet ‘trolls’ out there, sending hate for no apparent reason. After supporting Ed Sheeran on tour a rumour spread that they were an item, promting abuse from many of his young fans. Nina tells me, “I think I’ve been quite fortunate with the number of people that send me abuse, I get about 1 or 2 every month but it can be pretty deep, they don’t know me at all. If they knew me, I don’t mind them not liking me but I find it quite odd when people say ‘I hate you’ or make up things like ‘you’ve stolen my boyfriend’ because I’m not dating Ed Sheeran. I don’t know why anyone would hate me if they don’t know me, it’s weird.  Fair enough not liking my music but when they send me stuff I do get quite angry and have to laugh at them, my fans are really supportive as well.” Her fans don’t let the trolls off lightly and as Nina says herself, it’s better just to ignore it.

I asked Nina her highlight gig to date, “I had a really good gig in Denmark supporting Ed Sheeran and usually as a support act you get about 50% listening and then the rest coming in and chatting away, in Denmark it was like pin drop silence. For The Apple Tree they were all singing along and I loved that gig, it was nice to know that there are actually people that don’t know you that do listen because most people aren't bothered if they don't know your name. Or in September last year I had my tenth gig at the Glasgow SECC, it was Jim Gellatly from Clyde1 that had asked me to play and it was just two songs at this arena, just me and my guitar. It was crazy, but the crowd were really good there.” Although, after her sold out gig in King Tuts, Glasgow, that night, she posted on her Facebook, “That was my favourite gig I've played, thank you GLASGOW! It was crazy to hear you all singing back the songs word for word that I wrote in my room a few months back.”  

I first met Nina at the Young Scot Awards last month when I was reporting and she won an award in the Entertainment category. She told me how much it meant to win as other stories were so inspirational. “I’m so grateful to have won an award like that. It’s so important that I’ve got support from Scotland and it’s great I think because that’s where I’m from.”

For her tour she plays an acoustic set with either piano or guitar, “I’ve brought in a trigger pedal which triggers beats off behind me and I think when my album comes out I would think about getting a band, I’m not really wanting to get the standard four piece band though, I’d like something a bit different.”

“I think quite a lot of people’s parents would hope they’d go to uni but I’ve always been quite a strong willed child “, she laughs, “and my parents know that once my mind made up about something, it’s what I’m going to do. They’re great and really supportive, it’s good that they understand music is a career because some people don’t think it is.”

“I’m writing with Elliot aka Example, over the summer. We need to find a date that we’re both free but I’m really looking forward to writing with him. At the moment I have a lot of tracks for the album but I’d like some cool co-writes on it. I think our song-writing style is quite similar even though our music is quite different.”

A couple of times I asked Nina about designers or coveted items but she seems to have little interest in the latest designer must have but much prefers to mooch about in vintage shops.

“A mansion and a swimming pool,” she chooses as something she’d love to buy but couldn’t justify spending the money on, “but I couldn’t afford that anyway!” she laughs. (Although she will be able to soon as her success continues!)

Nina’s had an immense amount of airplay for an unsigned artist. Jim Gellatly plays her single ‘The Apple Tree’ every Sunday and Radio Scotland have added it to their playlist, in fact my granny was telling me the other day how she’d heard Nina’s “lovely voice” on the radio. She has also found herself a big fan in Fearne Cotton and is in fact her ‘Big Thing This Week’ which means she’ll be played on Radio1 everyday. “It’s definitely a really important part of music, radio play, it’s really weird to hear it on the radio. All of the Scottish stations have been really supportive as well, it’s amazing.”

When I ask how she came to song-writing she tells me she loved to write stories when she was 5, when she was 10 she picked up keyboard and started putting the stories to music. Two years ago she taught herself guitar and that’s when her songs developed.

I asked about her music video influences but she struggles to tell me one she wishes was hers. “To be honest I don’t watch a lot of music videos but most these days seem to be girls dancing around with no clothes on,” she sighs. Nina has spoken out before about her disapproval for people stripping off to sell records, The Guardian were supposed to be writing about the ‘Up and coming star Nina Nesbitt’ but instead decided a porn pop star was more important, proving her point perhaps.

Just like me Nina is not a fan of camping and mud, which would explain why she hasn’t been an avid festival goer. However, as a playing artist it’s a different story. “I’m excited to be doing some pretty big festivals this year.”

The interview concluded with Nina and I posing for photographs which took longer than anticipated as the camera was on video setting. Luckily, Nina isn’t the diva type and laughed about it.  

You can purchase both the 'Live Take EP' and 'The Apple Tree' from iTunes now!