It’s safe to say that Spring King are one of the most exciting new acts to emerge from the musical rafters over the past few years, and the hype that’s been circulating around the release of their debut album is more than justified. We caught up with lead singer and drummer Tarek Musa, shortly before their Live At Leeds set, where we discussed how influential Zane Lowe has been with their emergence and their upcoming tour.
How did it feel to have your single ‘City’ played as the first song on Beats radio? The support from Zane Lowe must be a very welcoming sight?
Yeah, definitely. The support has been incredible. But for all of us, finding out our song was going to be played came as a massive shock. When it finally happened none of us actually expected it, as it wasn’t really something that was planned. We’re so grateful to Zane, I mean once the song had been played it put us on a completely different platform and the exposure was like nothing we’d ever had before. We were completely over the moon for the best part of a week and just couldn’t believe it. It’s really helped us out, I mean it’s put our music out to a load of new ears and considering so many people would have been listening in we hope that people kind of get what we’re about now. We still get people coming up to us and saying they found out about us through Beats, so yeah, undoubtedly the exposure we’ve got from it has been priceless.
Have you seen a massive surge in support since the airplay?
I suppose at the start it was pretty gradual but it has definitely got bigger and bigger. The types of people who wanted to get in touch with us, as in different publications, changed, which definitely helped our reach to fans. Personally, I think you can be making the most brilliant music but if the coverage isn’t there then how are you going to get your music across to people? It’s a really hard thing to do and we’ve just managed to get incredibly lucky.
You’ve previously had a very DIY approach when it comes to making music, is that still the case?
Yeah, all the music we’ve done has been recorded by ourselves, mixed by ourselves and produced by ourselves. We either do it all at my house, or if we do go to a recording studio, like we did for our album, we still do it by ourselves. We don’t go out and hire an engineer, we just do it internally between us. Also we use photographers that are friends for all our press photos, videos too. Artwork is the same, either done by our friends or us.
I think keeping it all so intimate helps add to our music as there’s a real sense of collectiveness between us. It’s all in-house and we can’t really see that changing for a while. I mean it’s nice to work with new people, but we can just pick up the phone at 2am and know that our friends won’t be annoyed when we say ‘oh hey, can you do this for us, we need a poster’. It definitely makes things a lot more relaxed.
Are there any difficulties that arise from having both drumming and lead vocal duties?
It’s really exhausting sometimes. Even today I’m very conscious about the fact that I’ve got to go on stage and do that. I try and eat as little as possible before a show and I try not to drink too much liquid before I go on. It’s so easy to get a stitch halfway through a performance and I can tell you now that’s not great. It can be quite intense, especially with the pace of our music. I’ve been sick before, but it’s rock ‘n’ roll right? These things are meant to happen..
Your May tour sees you play some pretty esteemed venues, are you excited for that?
Oh god, definitely. We did a headline tour in February and this one is basically visiting the other cities that we had to miss out on the first one. But we’re really excited about it and it starts in Norwich on May 11th it all ends with a visit to Scala in London on 26th May. We can get ready for two weeks of madness, because that’s what it will be. People coming better get ready for some pretty sweaty gigs.