Not all acts who play at the iconic Coachella make it big, but Glass Animals are already being touted as the most promising in this year's edition of the music fest. Their debut album, 'Zaba', was released less than a year ago to much praise. It granted the Oxford band a loyal base of fans and followers, which is why they're having a busy summer touring all over the world. We caught with 26-year-old Drew MacFarlane, the band's guitarist/keyboardist, ahead of their set in the Gobi Stage.
How is the album going?
I think it's going really well.
We've started very small, and we released the album last year after a long build. It wasn't a major hyped up thing, we got momentum over time. It's really cool because something that happens slowly, off the back of a lot of touring, Europe, America, Australia, and then gradually we started to get more and more radio play in America and other places in the world. Now it feels like we've got a lot of momentum, it feels like we're really strong place to finish the touring in the next couple of months.
The LA Times says you're the most promising band to make it big after Coachella, do you feel the pressure?
I don't feel like it puts too much pressure on. It's cool that somebody would think that.
It's really good. It's not going to change the way that we play, it's just our normal set, we wanna have a good time with it.
Your Music is very different, how do you categorise it?
It's a really tough question, it's funny because you know, we make music that is quite a personal thing, so it's quite hard to categorise.
We started doing electronic based music, and then when we went into the studio for the album, we became much more interested in incorporating a lot more variety to it. There's always a very strong oriented electronic side to it, but then there's also a soulful side.
People are not buying music anymore. How do you feel about illegal downloads?
I think it is really important to look realistically at the environment in which you're making music. I was like 13 when Napster came along and you could just get anything you wanted. That really changed the way people think about listening to music. There was so much music out there. One of the things that is interesting is that nowadays streaming companies are trying to find a way - I don't know if they've got it perfect yet - but they're trying to find a way to turn that into a viable source of income, so people actually are credited and recognised for their work, which I think is a good thing. It will take time for them to get that right, there's a lot of stuff going on now which makes it kind of difficult.
Things like Spotify for us, as a new band, it's been really good. They've been really supportive for us and from the beginning I feel like we owe them a lot. I'm really happy with them.
You've got a lot of fans, do you manage your own social media?
We do social media ourselves, we control our Facebook, our Twitter and Instagram pages. It's a really good way to engage fans, people that might be interested in music. For us it's s personal thing, not a tool of management.
Are concerts your main source of income?
I actually don't know (giggles). It's really nice to get up on stage, that we're able to go on tour. But it's still really early for us as a band, so i don't actually know what our main source of income is.
What do you listen to?
Recently I've been listening to Steely Dan a lot. Another thing is the new D'Angelo record. He's amazing. His record of 2000 is one of my favourites of all time.
