POST-BURNOUT
Back in May, as the sun provisionally reintroduced itself to the British Isles with the warmth and light its presence brings, Post-Burnout sat down with the Bristol band Spin Class. While their guitarist, Sonny Gazzard, was absent due to having only returned from a trip to Italy, the rest of the band spoke with us as they shared a bottle of wine in the kitchen of Max Cato Mason, the man behind their visual elements.
Sonny and the band’s vocalist, Louis Slater, had met at university in Bristol. Louis had auditioned to sing for Sonny’s band, NO:IR, but “just wasn’t quite the right fit.” “After the audition, we were just kind of like, ‘Do you want to make music again?’,” explains Louis of their origin.
“And Sam was living on my sofa for a bit, and could not play an instrument, but we were just jamming out. He had a bass, and he just played one note.” After Sam defends himself, Louis concedes, “OK, he could play two notes!”
This was Sam Savidge. “I’ve always been into music, super heavily, as a spectator,” Sam says. “I was content with just doing life. During lockdown, I just sat on my arse, playing games for all of it, when I should have been learning the bass. My father gave me his old bass, and he was like, ‘You’ve got to pick this up. You’ve got to try it.’”
Courtesy of Memphia
Sam had sour experiences with learning an instrument from a bad violin teacher as a child, which put him off engaging with music, but through encouragement from the rest of the band, Sam used his love of video games to learn the bass by playing the music-teaching game Rocksmith; which is similar in style to rhythm games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but with an actual instrument plugged in.
“To give credit to him, to be fair, he basically locked himself in his bedroom for a year and just practised for eight hours a day,” lauds Louis. “Yeah, I can testify to that,” adds Max. “I lived with him at the time, and all I would hear was [Mimes playing the bass] a different song every day.”
“Then it was just the three of us for, like, nine months, just writing songs on the sofa, and we couldn’t find a drummer at all,” continues Louis. “We really wanted to play a gig, and we’d known Harry for ages, and he was living in Brighton at the time, and we were like, ‘Can you play this one gig?’, and he was like, [Putting on a defiant voice] ‘Yeah, but only one gig!’”
This was Harry Parker. “I had played drums for ages, so I had a massive ego and was like, ‘Nah, fuck! I’m too good for you guys! Blah, blah, blah, blah’,” admits Harry. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do this one gig because you’re my mates. I’ll help you guys out for this one show.’
“Then I went back to Brighton after the show, and I went straight to the pub… – and I was hanging out with my dad in the pub – …and I had a few beers, and I literally just had this feeling. I was like, ‘Fuck! I can’t, now, go and watch this band, and watch someone else try and play drums to these songs.’ So, I literally just texted Sam, straight away, and I was like, ‘Actually, fuck that! I’ll be your drummer!’ [All laugh]”
Max had also been with the band from the get-go. Spin Class’s first show was in a friend’s living room, and Max had shot and edited the show for a mini-documentary and became, in Max’s words, their “extended limb,” or, in Louis’s words, “the fifth member.”
With a band formed, they just needed a name. “We had some really shit band names, leading up to Spin Class,” laughs Sam. Louis adds, “I don’t even know how it came about.” “I think it just came out in the living room,” responds Sam, “and it didn’t make our ears feel like it was fingers on a chalkboard. [Laughs]”
“Quietly unserious,” adds Max. “Which kind of represents the vibe we’re going for. When you listen to us and go, ‘Ugh! Alright!’” “It’s also an energetic thing, isn’t it?” includes Louis.
The name complements the band’s high-octane, eclectic, and genre-defying mix that incorporates elements from pop, metal, desert rock, grunge, and prog rock, presented with a light-hearted and jovial sense of humour. “I think it’s a similar sense of humour, and not similar music tastes, altogether,” Louis says of what makes the members work together. “We all like the same music, but I think we were all brought up and gravitated to quite different stuff.”
“A common thread would’ve probably been, like, Tenacious D or something like that,” says Sam, as the others laugh in agreement. “I think all of us thrive on it, but, very much, we all go in very different directions with our own music tastes, I think.”
Louis adds, “Well, what’s funny about it is, when we started writing in the living room… – because Sam was so new to the bass – …we were like, ‘Should we just fuckin’ be a punk band?’, and then that quickly went out the window. But I don’t think we ever sat down and were like, ‘Oh, this is the kind of band we want to be’; I think it had been quite natural.
“And I think the fact that we like loads of different kinds of music sort of helps with how we write the music, because there’s been a big medley of stuff in there, I suppose.” “It’s always been music first, as well,” adds Max.
“You know, the songs have to be good, and then the humour follows. We can always try and make light of it, but if the songs aren’t strong and they’re not great, then the humour means nothing. So, it’s always number one, and then we can’t help but not be silly. We’ve tried to do serious stuff, but we can’t, really!”
Courtesy of Memphia
After gaining notoriety in the Bristol music scene for standing out amidst a city revelling in the post-punk explosion that followed the success of local legends Idles, Spin Class released their first EP, Wednesday, in December 2024, after having only existed for less than two years.
For the members, the turnover rate didn’t feel as rapid as it appears to an outsider. For Wednesday, they enlisted the coveted local producer, Josh Gallop. Josh and the band recorded the songs the boys had written in their living room in February 2024, and then it was a matter of, essentially, waiting seven months to release the EP, as they dropped singles periodically throughout the year to promote it.
When we spoke, it was the eve of the release of the band’s first post-Wednesday song, called “Bagel Bagel Bagel,” which was released in May. The single was the first song off their new EP, Dinner at Derek’s, which drops on the 28th. Since then, its follow-up, called “Cake,” came out on June 20th.
The food-themed EP is named after a fictional restaurant, whose owner shares the name of Sam’s father, with each track representing a menu item at said establishment. To honour the eponymous patriarch, the singles’ album art features photos of Derek from his Taekwondo days.
“The legend goes that he was about to go into the Olympics, but my brother showed up, so he had to get a job!” laughs Sam. Pointing to Sam, Harry explains how the name came about: “It was us, sat there with a cigarette, and I just said it! It was literally just me and you in the kitchen!”
Once again, Dinner at Derek’s features the talents of Josh Gallop at the desk. Unlike Wednesday, however, which was primarily written by Louis, Sonny, and Sam as improvisatory jams, with Harry contributing drum sections after the fact, Derek’s was co-written by all of the members in a more controlled environment.
“The majority of the EP that’s about to come out was actually just live-written in rehearsals,” says Harry. “I think that’s why, if you go back and look at the first EP – even things down to the song lengths – the first EP was much longer, much experimental songs, because it was majority written in the living room, and you weren’t on a time restraint, and you could just mess around with stuff a bit more.
“This last EP, the majority of it was written in a live setting and, as I said, in rehearsal times, where you’re only there for, like, two or three hours, and you just have this sort of blast. I think that’s what made the songs so much shorter, but way more high-energy, and makes them feel a little bit more exciting.”
To celebrate the EP’s release, Spin Class will perform an in-store launch gig at the Bristol branch of Rough Trade on the 26th. We conclude by asking what comes next. “We’re definitely taking it as it comes,” responds Louis. “We’ve had talks about a potential little regional tour after this EP comes out. We’ve got nothing set in stone yet, but we’d love to do that.
“I think, definitely, the next move is to continue writing; just on to the next thing, see what we can come up with, and keep doing what we’re doing. We’re really, really grateful. The release of ‘Bagel Bagel Bagel’ has been a massive success in comparison to our first EP, so thank you to all who have already listened and engaged. But, yeah, just keep that rolling, basically.”
Spin Class’s new EP, Dinner At Derek’s, will be released on July 28th. The band will perform a launch gig for the EP at Rough Trade, Bristol, on the 26th. Tickets can be purchased here. You can keep up with all of Spin Class’s music and social media accounts through their Linktree.
Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.
Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.