FOUNDING MEMBER

Sauna Youth are a four piece from The South, who have been around for about a year now, making a heavily-Ramones-influenced racket. It's great stuff. Recently, we had a chat with founding member Lindsay about what the band are up to, and where they're heading.

Where are you all from, and how did you get together?
We're all from the South of England. We met by chance in a health spa where we all happened to be working, except Murphy, who was a customer.

There were only 15 copies of your tape 'Distractions', were they handmade? Are you an artsy band?
They were handmade. I, Lindsay, selected the tracks and mixed it all together. Richard dubbed the tapes and made the artwork. Does that make us artsy?

It does a bit! Are tapes and such the way forward, do you think? A bit cheaper to make than vinyl, but more interesting the a CD or download?
A big factor for me about tapes is the nostalgia element. I mean, the first album I owned was Michael Jackson 'Bad' on tape. I also like the immediacy of the format - you can get something out there really quick and, of course yeah, it's way cheaper than vinyl. It was cool when you used to find those really long strands of discarded tape on the street. An interesting project I read about was this where the artist respools that tape, plays it back and releases the results.

For those who won't have heard you yet, how would you describe your music?
Someone said it was like Minor Threat covering Wire. This is interesting because as any cool punk will tell you, MT covered '12 X U' by Wire pretty successfully. In fact, so successfully that when I saw Wire at ATP a couple of years ago they played 12 X U in the style of the Minor Threat cover version, like really fast and aggressively. So, are people implying with that comparison that we sound like a band covering itself? I'm going to say, yeah okay.

I tell people we sound like the Ramones.

A lot of the influences you've named on your MySpace are quite vintage (Ramones, Undertones etc) - is that a result of being inspired by them during your youth, or do you just find recent bands a uninspiring?
I don't think it's a question of finding recent bands uninspiring, I think it's more that we specifically wanted to be in a band that uses that Ramones drumbeat for the majority of the time. I'm kind of obsesssed with it, unfortunately for our part-time model drummer Reza.

If Sauna Youth had a mission statement, what would it be?
Sorry / You're Welcome.

Do you have any releases or interesting projects in the works?
We have a new mixtape coming up, a new 7" and a 12" LP. I would also like to write a musical.

And finally: What other up and coming bands should we be checking out?
Twisted, Endless War, Fair Ohs, Love Triangle. Blogs are cool.