boxboxbox Q&A

Your name:

Phil Brooker.

Where are you from?

Manchester, UK.

Name of band:

boxboxbox.

Who else is in your band? 

Lee Campbell and Helen Crowder.

How would you describe yourselves?

Blissy broken beats.

Who are your main influences musically?

Tricky one, this... we each like a lot of different stuff but some electronic-type bands that we're all into (and maybe we sound kind of like) are CHVRCHES, Purity Ring, Stumbleine, Elite Gymnastics, Khonnor, Keep Shelly in Athens, Cocteau Twins (if they picked up a sampler)... But maybe it's better to say that recently, I've been picking up on a lot of hip-hop and dance (and anything else that's got some smart samples in there), Lee's been more into house, and Helen's listening to a lot of singer-songwriter stuff.

What do you hope to achieve in music?

The main thing for me personally is to just make some recordings and play some shows that people can get into and that I can be proud of. If we end up doing something more  important along the way, great :-)

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?

Getting our new "Dive" EP finished and ready to go has been pretty big for me. It took SO long to just tweak and touch up once we'd done the recordings, because we're learning how to do everything ourselves - engineering, recording, mixing, mastering, everything! - and we wanted to make it as absolutely perfect as we possibly could. So it was a big thing for us to say "Yep, it's done, let's go!". And I think we're in a really good position now, we've learned so much, got some more recordings and live shows on the boil, so it's a pretty exciting time for us right now.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

I've had SO much fun with Lee and Helen making this stuff, it's kind of been good all the way through, wouldn't want to forget anything! But gun to my head, me and Lee were doing a lot of working together a long while before we joined up with Helen, and we knew we wanted to get a singer in but it was really frustrating and time-consuming trying to get in touch with potential singers and become a proper band like we wanted. So maybe that. But we absolutely lucked out with Helen, so it was SO worth the wait.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

Another tricky one, given how much different stuff we try to pull in from everywhere... But maybe "I GET WET" off our new EP. It's based on a sample from the original Andrew W.K. song of the same name, but we stretch and pull it around pretty drastically so it sounds really hymnal - VERY different from the original! And the verses are SO sweet and blissy, but the choruses are SO huge and overwhelming, we like to have these things playing off against each other.

Where can we listen to it? 

Our new EP (called "Dive") is streaming at soundcloud.com/boxboxbox/sets/dive and you can download it for free at whoaskedboxboxbox.bandcamp.com

Where can we find out more about your music?

Twitter: @b__o__x

Facebook: facebook.com/whoaskedboxboxbox

Tumblr: weareboxboxbox.tumblr.com

Anything else you’d like to say about your band/music that I forgot to ask?

Nah, you covered it :-) Hope you like our music!