Hot off of smashing their sets at The Great Escape 2023, the UK’s #1 festival for new music, London-based queer punk rockers The Oozes chatted to us about their new track and upcoming album as well as collaborating with folk punk singer Frank Turner on their new track DBSAC.
Your new track Ready is about the coming out experience of a trans child, what were you wanting to say about this?
The song itself explores the idea of the unconditional love parents claim to give until their child goes against their parents ideas of who their child should be.
The song is quite the cathartic, anger-releasing gem, was the recording process similarly cathartic?
The overall process of recording Ready was almost a polar opposite to the heaviness the song carries. We all sat very happily in Lightship95, a floating red vessel, for a few days working on a set of tracks with two laid back individuals tracking and sculpting our sound. However the calming environment felt conducive for us to bring out the chaos required for Ready and also importantly feel able to relax after releasing a lot of intense emotion.
The DBSAC track was produced by Frank Turner – how did the collaboration come about?
This came totally out of the blue. A promoter of one of our shows spoke to us after a show and enthusiastically said we would be a perfect band for Frank to record as he had just built a studio to produce from. After that we soon had a zoom and thought he was a great guy, this was all back in 2021. Our first release with him producing was the single Sickening.
What was your biggest take away from working with Frank?
One of the most striking things would have to be Frank’s work ethic. You only have to look at his instagram and see he’s totalled 2752 shows so far. It’s also come up in conversations that he tries to respond to any message sent his way from fans. A lot to admire.
42 tour dates for a single tour – how do you prepare for such a heavy touring schedule in the space of just two months?
Lots of rehearsals! Also there is lot more to touring than meets the eye. We’ve learned from organising these dates much more about the industry and the roles of people behind it. We though we would be much more exhausted than we are but the routine really set in after a couple of weeks and we’re just enjoying it.
What are you usually most enjoying on tour?
No sooner had we released music, lockdown started, and with our interest in putting out music being to perform more, that dream is finally being fulfilled. Another amazing aspect has been our support bands who we feel really close to now after sharing so much time together (many of them have joined us on a lot of these dates). Without the fans we’ve made on the way, this tour would not have been at all possible, so this is really all for them.
If you could only take three things on tour with you (technical equipment and instruments excluded of course) what would it be and why?
Two Kinder Buenos and a Red Bull.
What’s next for The Oozes?
We have two shows at The Great Escape in Brighton coming up very soon after tour, one of which is headlining Volkes… you should come! We also are
working on some plans of playing shows across other parts of the world soon, much more time needed to confirm any of this though haha. LOTS of new music.
High Fives & Stage Dives 