It may be late on a Sunday evening but for The Kinetiks the work doesn’t stop. Ensconced in their North County Dublin rehearsal space, the four-piece are busy preparing for the final of the National Student Music Awards.

As singer and guitarist Gaz Hardy explains, “It was originally our manager who put us forward. We got through the preliminary round and now we’re in the final in Dublin this week. Then it goes onto London. I think Delorentos won it a couple of years ago and it hasn’t done them any harm so we thought we might as well give it a go as three of us are at college anyway.”
The roots of the band go back a bit further than higher education however. “Me and Sean (Brenning, guitarist) used to mess around on a few songs but we got fed up with that and started looking for a drummer. We heard about a drummer who lived in the next village so we went down to his house for a couple of jams, then one of his very good mates was a bass player.” Thus Jon McIntosh and Jim McGuire completed the picture. “None of us had ever been in a band before this one, I’d never even played with a drummer before.”
Did this lack of experience give them impetus to get going? “I think so. There are no preconceptions and no virtuosos. We’re all at the same level, we just got our instruments together and learnt how to play as a band. There was no one way ahead of anybody else, which meant that no-one got disheartened if the others couldn’t keep up.”
For a new band, though, it can be quite a steep learning curve. “Definitely. You learn something new from every gig you play. At the start we were so unbelievably green, even towards soundchecks and things like that. We were four rabbits staring into headlights for the first dozen or so gigs. We’d watch all these other bands at soundcheck talking about monitors and the like and we just didn’t have a breeze. We’d just plug in and hack away at a couple of songs as best we could. You got used to it, though.”
“The blueprint was there from the start in terms of the bands we liked and knew we wanted to emulate,” he continues. “We’re all in our early 20s so it’s natural that we’ll develop. When you start off you may want to sound like The Who or The Beatles but when you plug in you’re not going to sound like anybody but yourself, which is a good thing.” With a debut EP appearing, that sense of self is fast developing, as is their desire to learn about all aspects of the industry.
“The course I’m on at the moment is sound engineering and I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been in the band. It’s been great. This week we’ve been recording demos and I can do the engineering side and take it home and mix it, which I wouldn’t have been able to do six or eight months ago. At the minute, though, to be honest weeks are going by without us setting foot in college but I guess it can’t be helped.”
While Gaz acknowledges the potential benefits of having a foot in the door of the college circuit, he also admits it’s tough to make headway.
“There a few bands who are dominating all those gigs – The Blizzards, Director, The Marshals. We’d have a lot of time and respect for them but Ents officers only have a year to make their name so they’re not going to give high profile slots to up-and-coming bands. If they pull in the Blizzards or Director it looks better. We’re trying to break into that circuit because if you’re after people who are into their music you can’t get better than students. Playing to a couple of hundred a night would do you the world of good.”
What with their appearance in the NSMA’s and the making of a video via the Hot Press/Tisch initiative, The Kinetiks are exploring every route that presents itself. “You can’t turn down any opportunity and often you have to go hunting for them. We played a gig in Drogheda the other week and we thought it might have been a bit of a nothing night and we ended up getting a support with the Chalets out of it. You have to play every gig like it’s your last because you never know who might be watching.”
High Horse Olympics is out now on Rapture Records. The Kinetiks play McHughs, Drogheda on May 6 (with The Chalets, part of Drogheda Arts Festival) & May 11 and Tower Records, Dublin on May 25.
Pics: Naomi McArdle