Elephant Race

The sound of 5 different tastes of music colliding.

On The Spot: Elephant Race Talking to Kamal Rasool Guitarist of Elephant Race How did you come up with your band name? Well basically, we had gone through a few other band names along the way, but one day I just blurted out the name Elephant Race when we were all out. Everyone agreed and it all started from there. Another way we like to look at though is that an Elephant Race would be insanely chaotic, natural, unpredictable and just plain surreal, comparing to the music we create. Could you give us a brief description of each member of the band? sure: Kaci Goucem Lead Vocals Kaci is half English and half Algerian and is influenced by such bands as Pink Floyd, The Hives and Bloc Party! He comes from a very musically talented family, his father being a talented guitarist, teaching him how to play guitar and sing and his younger brother also being a talented guitarist and in a band himself! Sam Rowe Bass and backing vocals Sam is half English and half Welsh and is influenced by such bands as Foals and Rage Against the Machine. Sam is actually also a talented drummer who has entered competitions such as the Young Musicians of the Gulf! He decided to self teach himself the bass about 2 years ago, he is quite musically multi talented and takes ease into learning new instruments and giving input into our tracks. He also provides the high pitched vocals we need for some of our tracks! Charles Prest Lead Guitar Charles is probably the most experienced musician within the band, having been in a couple of bands in the past and being playing guitar since he was very young, he is the man who cracks out the insane solo’s! He is half Jamaican and half English and takes influence by progressive rock bands such as The Mars Volta and At the Drive in. He is probably the most modest within the band, being very positive and always giving input into the structure of our songs! Kamal Rasool Rhythm Guitar/ Lyricist Kamal is half Turkish and half Bahraini and probably the least musically experienced within the band, having only started self teaching himself guitar around 2 years ago! Needless to say, he does bring a lot to the table by taking influence by such noise pop and psychedelic groups as Animal Collective, Deerhunter and Micachu! Being the only A level English student, Kamal finds ease and comfort into writing lyrics for the songs, the context of these lyrics often very different from one another, although the rest of the band do contribute as well towards the lyrics of various songs. Miguel Cardoso - Drums Miguel is half Portuguese and half English and takes influence by a lot of electronic indie stuff such as Late of the Pier and Midnight Juggernaughts, although from a drummer point of view is also very influenced by Foals. Miguel is probably the most laid back/chilled within the group, just taking it as it comes and providing input when only necessary! How would you describe your music? Well, we like to take the genre indie experimental. Just because of how many different genres and bands were influenced by, our songs may sound very different to one another take that as good or bad, we like it that way and its interesting in live performances to see peoples opinions of us. You cant really nail us down to one genre you know.. were not hipsters. We take indie rock as our main genre, well because that’s why we started the band. We all love indie, we all love being independent and that’s what our music’s about, its up beat catchy riffs, layered down with a lot more, it can get hectic at times! So how long have you been together as a band and how did you manage to incorporate each others style into one product? Its been about 1 and half years since we started the band, a lot has changed since then though and we have actually have grown/developed a lot as a band, to the extent that incorporating our styles within songs is just, well, pretty easy for us. I mean just a few months ago, Sam was like ‘check out this funk riff I made the other day’ and we were all like ‘okay sweet, lets do this’ and that’s how our song ‘Trippy Slide’ was made, within about a day or two. We always do make sure though to keep that indie element close to each and every one of our songs though, as if we took that way, we wouldn’t really have any closure on where the line is, how far we can go with this ‘experimental’ idea you know. Would you describe your music as lyrically influenced or musically influenced and why? To be honest, it may be a bit of both, but the stuff that were all into as a band really does have very little comparison to our own music. This stands out the most within the lyrically influenced side of things I think, I personally love to listen to the lyrics of songs, no matter what genre, but I don’t really take that into consideration when I write lyrics to our songs, it just comes from a thought or experience, and I think it’s the same when it comes to being

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