We caught up with Marcus from indie-electro-pop duo Thumpers ahead of their Birmingham show at Hare & Hounds on Friday 23rd May to talk Bambi, celebration hats and spontaneous combustion…

So, first up – can you shed any light on the name Thumpers… big Bambi fans perhaps?

It’s funny how many people have said that. It wasn’t something that consciously came up with and thought that would be great, but equally it’s not something I’m upset about. There’s a big-heartedness to the music we make I think and there’s optimism and sense of celebration in our songs and none of those things are out of kilter with watching Bambi! Primarily the reason we were called Thumpers was because, I think a lot of people who have come to see us play live will testify to this, Jack plays really loudly and we wanted to forgone rhythm and we wanted to make sure that we made the kind of music that is body orientated, something that really moves you in a physical sense.

And is that an influence from previously performing with Friendly Fires who are known for their energetic carnivalesque stage presence? Is that what we can expect from your live shows?

I think Jack and myself were hugely inspired watching them play. The very first time we saw them and we played with them years ago in 2007 at Lovebox, I didn’t know them at all and I saw the show and was like ‘What the f**k is this?’ Especially at that festival you can be completely f**ked or completely sober and they are the band you wanna see and move to. So yea there is definitely some inspiration there. What has been amazing recently since we have played in the US, where our album is already out, people have much more of a tendency to enjoy us in that kind of way when they have heard our album on record and know where all the drops are and the respites and soaring bits are. We have already started to see that in the UK where people know more of our songs, that people are bringing their own atmosphere to gigs. They are turning up with their celebration hats on. Not literally obviously, no one has a celebration hat.

What would a celebration hat entail for you?

I dunno, you could probably drink some sort of cocktail our of it though at the very least.

Having previously been in a slightly larger group, Pull Tiger Tail, what have you learnt moving forward as a duo?

Well yeah it was a bigger group in terms of writing, but we are actually a bigger group now playing live because we can have about five or six people on stage. A lot changed, there was quite a big period of time before PTT ended and the beginning of Thumpers and we changed our processes deliberately but with genuine reasons, we had to think what do we wanna do differently. One thing we wanted to change was writing songs by recording first and learning how to play them live second instead of being a more traditional organic rehearsal room band. But we never wanted to lose the sense of playing as a collective. Although we were only a three piece we had a lot of instruments that we would all swap playing and shared, and we wanted to have even more of that. We envisaged the band to have a richer sound, especially live. When we finished the album we said there would be no limits in what we can sound like in terms of how many things are going on at once. But when we came to learning that live the problem posed was that we didn’t know anyone who could do all those things. We have been really lucky to have found friends of ours who nail it live for us and are a joy to play with.

Are there any plans for Thumpers to grow out of a duo then or are these only guest appearances?

If we could do that in an honest way then yeah. The reason why we present ourselves as a duo is because that’s how the writing is done so it would have been weird not to. But in terms of performing live we’d love to have more live footage of us playing together and maybe work on a tailor made session which has all of the members past and present that have been in the live band to date. That’s definitely a project for the future.

A lot of reviewers claim your tracks can sound really American. Is that influence from being on Sub Pop Records? How do you feel about this and can you explain why?

I think growing up me and Jack liked a lot of American music. There were a lot of American bands we were really in to whereas, although we were a fan of a few British indie bands, there weren’t as many.

Could you not relate to them as much?

Or could relate to them too much? I don’t know what it is, it’s just a taste thing I suppose. We were definitely in awe of a lot of the releases from Sub Pop, the artists they put out and a lot of American labels too. One thing I really love about the American scene as well from an outside perspective, this could be totally wrong, but the live scene there, as far as I’ve experienced, is very different to the UK scene. Obviously it’s much bigger but in the UK it’s like you can be a good live band, and don’t get me wrong there are a lot of good UK bands who are good live, but there’s something kind of different and intangible about being a band like that in the US. You can actually make a living doing that and that changes the way it’s perceived and I think there’s a romance to that for me when I was growing up, and that probably fed my like for American music. I think also the way we use rhythm is not in line when you traditionally think of indie music from the UK, like American hip hop has more of a layered production. It’s not something we consciously thought, but people have said it to us a lot and I don’t think they’re wrong.

How excited were you for the release of the album in the UK, is it more nerve-racking releasing your material here or in America?

Oh definitely. It was never our plan to release in the US first, we are happy it happened that way… happy that it is out in America at all! There’s always a greater nervousness and excitement to having your work released in your own country, where you can go into any shop and see it. That context means everything to you in terms of getting the record yourself. In all the right ways it is a different experience completely.

Where are you most looking forward to playing on your tour from previous performance history?

Love playing in Newcastle, it is really fun. We played a really good festival there last year, Chase Park festival, it felt like a really genuine (although we were playing) local festival that people came to consistently and every band got a good reception. London, because we are based there which is always fun and we have had some good gigs in Brighton. Don’t tell the rest of the cities, they all score very high!

What festivals are planned for this year?

We are playing Blissfields festival which will be good, Secret Garden Party and quite a lot of festivals around Europe, we are playing in Austria and a couple of more boutique festivals around the UK as well. I think we are playing a festival maybe once or twice every weekend. We are trying to beat the 16 we played last year. Festivals are a lot of fun, they are an excuse to go and see all of the other bands on the circuit. You play once but generally you can squeeze in like 11 other bands in a day so kind of a dream come true.

And finally, you are watching a gig and one of the members spontaneously combusts on stage and you are called on stage to replace them, which band would it be?

I don’t wanna combust or offend anyone but if someone’s got to go, I would love to be on stage with The Strokes, but I cant play drums so I would probably have to combust Nikolai. I’m in the middle of the band then and I get to watch everyone else. Sorry Nikolai, its an important question and I have to answer honestly! I have been electrocuted on stage a lot but none of them have been near death experiences. It’s fine, it would never happen… combustion is impossible.

THUMPERS PLAY HARE & HOUNDS BIRMINGHAM ON FRI 23RD MAY 2014, WITH SUPPORT FROM CUT RIBBONS, FIELD HARMONICS & ARC VEL. TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE.