Anella

Anella (Press)

For an artist who admits he hadn’t paused long enough to ask himself that very question, the mixtape arrives as something deeper than a collection of songs. It’s a checkpoint. A moment of clarity carved out of constant movement. “So, yeah, I’m in Def Jam’s office in New York right now,” he says, mid-whirlwind. “We’re about to drop a project called Ask Me How I’ve Been this Friday… shaking hands, kissing babies, signing babies, whatever people say. We’re not kissing babies—that was wild.”

Even in the middle of that chaos, Anella doesn’t separate creativity from promotion. “I think I’m always in a creative headspace… I’m an open book.”

No Rules, Just Instinct

From the beginning, Anella’s approach to music wasn’t shaped by industry expectations—because he didn’t know they existed.

“When I started making music I didn’t know there were rules,” he explains. “I thought music was about not having any boundaries… not having any distinctions.” That instinctive freedom now feels perfectly in tune with how audiences consume music today. “With streaming now… everything’s in one spot. I think it’s more about the message or the feeling of the music nowadays rather than the sound.”

Built in Real Rooms

Before label offices and release campaigns, there were small venues and long nights. Anella’s foundation wasn’t built online—it was earned in person. “I started doing live venues… I was getting paid like 150 for three hours,” he recalls. “And then I started developing a crowd—and that’s really where I found my love for music.”

That connection still sits at the heart of everything he does. “It feels a lot more spiritual when I’m face to face with people.”

Even now, as audiences grow, the intention hasn’t changed. “I write all my music as if I’m talking to a mirror… I’m not trying to speak to 20,000 people at once.”

When Passion Becomes Pressure

As his career expands, so too does the pressure behind it. What once felt effortless now carries weight. “I made my art my way of living… there’s that voice in my head now that’s like, oh, this has to be good—someone has to like this.”

Instead of resisting that shift, Anella has embraced it, using it to shape Ask Me How I’ve Been into his most intentional project yet. “This is the first project that I picked out all the music and brought it to them and said, ‘this is what I want to put out.’”

Anella

Anella (Press)

Writing Through Conflict

Much of the mixtape wrestles with internal struggles—often disguised as relationships. “I write music about struggle… a lot of the problems I have, I personify when I write music.”

On Can’t Have Both, that tension becomes explicit: “You can either go out and have the fun and that comes with the problems… but you can’t have both.”

Elsewhere, Gone Girl captures the spiral of trying to understand someone else’s decisions, only to turn that lens inward. “I’m going to try to do the same thing you did… and then realising, oh yeah, this is hectic. I don’t need to do this.”

Honesty at All Costs

Anella’s defining trait is his unfiltered honesty—something he recognises cuts both ways. “My biggest perk… and also the biggest downfall… is how honest I am.”

But when it comes to music, that honesty is non-negotiable. “I’d never have a problem being honest when it comes to making music because that’s where I feel it the most.”

Finding His Identity

Compared to earlier releases, Ask Me How I’ve Been feels more cohesive—less like fragments, more like a full picture. “They were all pieces of me… but if you’re not me, it’s hard to connect.”

Now, that clarity has arrived. “This project is me… it’s a lot easier to listen to and be like, ‘oh, this is who this guy is.’”

It’s not just artistic growth—it’s personal. “I’ve definitely grown as a man… I’m comfortable with not being comfortable.”

Letting Go to Move Forward

Growth hasn’t come without sacrifice. Anella speaks candidly about the need to leave things behind. “As much as I enjoy this, there are downsides to it… I have to let go of these activities… even some friends and relationships.”

At the same time, he’s no longer chasing approval. “I’m not scared to put out what I like… people are going to label it whatever the hell they want.”

Why Ask Me How I’ve Been Matters

The project’s title isn’t just a phrase—it’s a realisation. “I really sat down and decided to ask myself like, ‘yo, are you okay?’”

It’s a sentiment that stretches beyond the music itself. “I think we all forget to enjoy where we are because we’re so focused on where we want to be… check on people… tell somebody you care, even if it’s yourself.”

A Beginning, Not a Peak

Despite the clarity of this release, Anella is sitting on a vast archive of unreleased material—hundreds of songs waiting for their moment. “I have like five to 600 unreleased songs on my phone… that I would put out right now.”

They’re not held back by fear, but by timing. “If I were to put it out now, it wouldn’t be appreciated for what it is… I have to build that trust first.”

That patience speaks to a bigger vision. Ask Me How I’ve Been may feel like a defining moment, but it’s framed as the start of something much larger—more structured, more intentional, and quietly expansive in its evolution.

Looking ahead, collaboration is firmly on his mind. “My number one dream collaboration is Adele… and we would call it Adella.”

But more than that, it’s about building something collective. “How can I build a community if I don’t have a community of my own?”

Anella

Anella (Press)

As the conversation winds down, there’s a sense that everything is just beginning to click into place. The chaos, the honesty, the pressure, the growth—they all feed into an artist who finally stopped long enough to ask himself the question. And now that he has the answer, he’s ready to keep moving forward.

Interview with Anella by Henry Finnegan, March 2026. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto

mgk Sells Out The O2 For The First Time With A Chaotic, Genre-Hopping Spectacle

Ure is entitled to take as long a break as he wants. However, he is just as aggravated with himself, as his fanbase might be. “No! You should be rude and ask why it took so long, because I ask myself that as well”. I got to speak to Ure about how moments in his artistic career are still felt today, and with a new album and tour on its way in May and June 2026, why he still feels more is yet to come.

Midge Ure

Midge Ure (Nathan Roach)

Creating The New Album

“There is a whole slew of factors. There is no record label banging on your door insisting this has to be ready for the summer, like they used to. There’s no clock counting down to the day you get kicked out of the studio, so you don’t have that deadline looming over you anymore.”

His upcoming double album A Man Of Two Worlds, and its accompanying tour, represents staring a lot of creative and practical hardships in the face to create a huge project, and it all began with the COVID-19 lockdown.

“There’s the fact that I do this 99% of this alone. The only way I can gauge if it’s good or not is to walk away from it and do something else. During lockdown, when I was writing songs, there was nothing to walk away to! I couldn’t just go out on tour and play a few dates to clear my head, and then go back and listen to it.”

The new album has two distinct halves – one album of songs, and one album of instrumentals. Experimenting with instrumentals was key in the process of the concept of A Man Of Two Worlds coming to fruition.

“I ended up with an album that I thought was two albums until I played it to a friend, and he said “no, these are sister and brother. These two things belong together. They were created in the same environment, at the same time, have the same essence, the same atmosphere, the same melodic structure – they belong together”. And that excited me – the idea of putting out a double album”.

Ultravox and instrumental music throughout Ure’s career

While this is the first instrumental album of Ure’s career, he has dabbled with individual instrumental tracks on most of his albums. He seems almost fascinated by the additional challenges, and his voice noticeably escalates as he lists all of their components.

“Instrumental music is very different from writing a backing track and forgetting to write the lyrics. It’s a piece of music that has to stand up on its own right, and tell its own little story, which can mean something different for everyone. But do it without the aid of lyrics, without the big chorus, or without a big build-up to the chorus, or the mid-section, or the intimate verse”.

He remains remorseless for opening even Ultravox’s biggest album, 1980’s Vienna, with a 7-minute instrumental. Even the length of the synth-pop, smash hit, title track was too long for many radio playlists (an epic 4:37). “The Americans weren’t happy about it! They freaked when we played them the album. They said we had to change the running order, because we had to start with the radio-friendly hits. And we said no! It starts like that because that’s how we want it to start. That’s a lovely way to start it, I think. But, I’ve always been a bit awkward”.

Ultravox lost their argument, and the running order was changed on US pressings. Ure reflects upon what he thinks captured so many listeners’ imaginations, even though record execs might not have seen Vienna as an accessible record.
“The thing that made it work was that none of it was sequenced, and all of it was played live – it was human. There are a lot of electronics in it, but there are a lot of traditional rock instruments in there as well. A lot of guitar throughout it. A lot of the music that came out straight after that, using new technology, was all sequenced and quantised, and the human element was really taken out of it. All very robotic, where a lot of the old – stuff really wasn’t.”

Creating a new live experience

The A Man Of Two Worlds tour will be another departure from the norm. The concept of the tour had been brewing for a while, before the decision was made to put a new album out in 2026. Ure decided that it would be unfair to unleash a wave of unfamiliar material on an audience in one go. He explains that those older instrumental tracks will be integral to how the performance unfolds.

“This time around, I wanted to add more of the older instrumental stuff. So I figured out how to incorporate them in amongst all this other stuff. The way that I’m thinking of doing it is to kind of sequence maybe half of the show where it’s non-stop, and it takes people on a journey. Maybe starting with an instrumental piece, which morphs straight into an album track, which morphs straight into a single of some description, which morphs straight into something else, and then goes back into another instrumental piece.”

Midge Ure

Midge Ure (Coal Poet Media)

Metal Gear Solid and finding a new audience today

Ure is well aware that with such a lengthy career and so many projects, that he is going to have a variety of fans at his concerts (“50% of the audience who come and see you, probably don’t know more than 5% of what you’ve done, because they are there with their other halves!”), but not even he had anticipated that he would “touch base with a youth gaming audience, that [he] didn’t even know existed”.

In 2015, Ultravox’s Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, and a solo cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, both recorded during the 1980s, featured in the popular video game Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Over the following years, they would both become the most streamed songs of his entire catalogue. So, how does it feel to become a part of a new entertainment medium at this stage?

“It’s fantastic. When Ultravox got back together again (in 2013), Hideo Kojima who was the creator and director of Metal Gear Solid, who I didn’t know, was a massive Ultravox fan, and he turned up to see Ultravox in London. Through his interpreter, he said “I want to use your version of The Man Who Sold The World”, and I said okay, thinking that it would never happen. But of course, it did! Hideo Kojima and I have become friends since that point. So it was quite something.”

It was a similar resurgence to that of Kate Bush classic Running Up That Hill, after the song was used in the Stranger Things soundtrack. Speaking of whom, Ure was also lucky enough to collaborate with the enigmatic singer when she appeared on his 1988 track Sister And Brother.

“It was wonderful. I’m a huge Kate fan. I’m just annoyed that I wasn’t in the studio when she sang it. I gave her the multi-track tape and sent it across to her studio, not expecting to hear anything for weeks. She was in the middle of her own album. Then she called up a few days later, and said “do you want to come over and hear what I’ve done?”. I expected just a single Kate vocal, and of course there was a Kate choir on the end! I just stood at the back of the room with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. It’s Kate Bush singing my song, this is just ludicrous.”

Live Aid lives on (In the West End)

Ure is no stranger to collaboration, and of course, philanthropy, having co-wrote and produced the 1984 charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas, performed by the supergroup Band Aid, organised with Bob Geldof. He also organised the legendary Live Aid and Live 8 charity concerts with Geldof. In 2024, musical Just For One Day opened at The Old Vic in London, telling the story of the original Live Aid. However, as Ure explains, that this almost wasn’t the case.

“When they kept coming to us, asking if we could do a musical, we (the Band Aid Trust) kept saying no, because it’s such a miserable story to tell. The whole point of Band Aid and Live Aid was all about famine. They managed to tell the story incredibly well, so it was very balanced, and it wasn’t just fluff and nonsense. They asked the awkward, cynical and important questions that had been asked over the years about why it had to happen. The whole thing was funny, and poignant, and incredibly touching at times.”.

Over forty years since the original single and concert, their importance is still felt, and the Band Aid Trust continues to raise money. The musical’s first run rose over a million pounds for the trust, and it will soon tour around the UK.
“We tend to think that it’s such a weird thing to write a musical about, but we forget that it was a massive social moment. A historic social moment when the masses stood up and said “this isn’t right – we need to do something about this”, and it was at a time when music was still powerful enough to carry that.”

Whether or not he feels that music has that power, he is not remotely deterred from continuing to release exciting new material, and taking it on the road. It should have that power once again.

Midge Ure

Midge Ure (Coal Poet Media)

New album A Man Of Two Worlds will be released, and Ure’s UK tour will begin on 8th May 2026.

Interview with Midge Ure by Nick Pollard, March 2026.

Peter Gabriel From The Fireside To Artificial Intelligence: Input/Output Tour At The O2 Arena

Alana Springsteen

Alana Springsteen (Bill Reynolds)

So when I caught up with the Nashville-based singer-songwriter ahead of her upcoming appearance at C2C in London, I was curious about the person behind that performance. As it turns out, the artist fans see on stage is becoming closer and closer to the real person behind the songs.

Life Between the Road and Home

When we speak, Springsteen has just returned to Nashville after a whirlwind run abroad.

“I just got back about a week ago from Switzerland,” she says. “So I’m kind of in between runs. C2C is coming up really quickly, so I’m here for a week or two doing laundry and unpacking my bags.”

It is a brief pause before the next chapter of touring begins.

“I love the pace of it,” she adds. “I love travelling. Coming from such a small town, I never dreamed I would get to see the world like this. It’s a dream come true.”

The Chameleon Effect

With such a fast-paced career, I ask whether she ever feels like she is living two lives. One as the performer on stage and the other as the person at home.

“That’s a bit of a loaded question for me,” she laughs.

It is also something she has been unpacking deeply over the past few years.

“For most of my life I was a bit of a chameleon,” she explains, referencing a track from her debut album Twenty Something. “I learned from a really young age to prioritise everybody else’s needs before my own and just be whatever version of myself people needed in that moment.”

Writing that album sparked a period of intense self-reflection that has only deepened since.

“I started asking myself why I was like that,” she says. “I’ve been going to therapy and really digging into the root of those patterns. The more I heal and get comfortable in my own skin, the more that gap closes between the persona and who I am.”

The result is something audiences can feel live.

“I’m so much more present on stage now,” she says. “The energy is still high because the adrenaline is real, but my goal as a performer is to just be myself with the walls down.”

Alana Springsteen @ The Long Road Festival 2025

Alana Springsteen @ The Long Road Festival 2025 (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

From Twenty Something to I Hope This Helps

Springsteen’s debut album Twenty Something captured a moment in time. It explored relationships, identity, and the chaos of early adulthood.

“That record came after some really horrible relationships,” she says candidly. “I lost trust in everyone else, but the worst part was losing trust in myself.”

Songs like Chameleon, Caught Up To Me, and If You Love Me Now became part of a process of rebuilding that trust.

But the next album goes even deeper.

“The difference between that record and the music that’s coming now is like treating the symptoms versus getting to the root,” she explains. “I had to go all the way back to my childhood and start healing from there.”

The new record, I Hope This Helps, opens with a deeply personal track titled Note To Self.

“It’s a letter to my inner child,” she says. “It’s me going back and saying, ‘I know why you felt like you had to be strong and carry everything on your own. But I’ve become the person you needed back then.’”

When Songs Become Conversations

Listening to the album, I tell Springsteen something I had not expected. The music hit me not just as a fan but as a parent. As a father of young daughters, Note To Self made me reflect on how I want to raise them and make sure they grow up without the emotional burdens many of us carry. Springsteen pauses, clearly moved.

“That means so much to hear,” she says. “Thank you for telling me that.”

She recalls playing the song for her own mother for the first time.

“She was crying by the end of it. I asked her if she was okay and she said, ‘Is that your story or mine?’”

That moment captured exactly what she hopes her music can do.

“As an artist, what lights me up is starting those conversations between people,” she says. “Helping people connect and giving them the language to talk about things they could not express before.”

The Pressure of Success

Springsteen has already scored major collaborations with artists including Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, William Black, and Breland. With success comes expectations. She admits that when she started writing her sophomore album she initially headed in the wrong direction.

“I went into it thinking this was going to be my villain era,” she laughs. “I wanted to write confident up-tempo songs and really big moments.”

But something did not feel right.

“It started to feel like putting on a costume,” she says.

One night alone in a Los Angeles hotel room changed everything.

“I just broke down and started typing confessions into my phone,” she says. “That later became Love Me Anyway.”

From that moment, the direction of the album shifted.

“I realised I needed this record as a human being,” she says. “Regardless of any awards or recognition, I know I will look back years from now and say that album changed my life.”

Owning the Black Sheep

The emotional journey of the album is deliberate.

“I structured the record to move from my most broken and insecure moments to the songs where I felt the most empowered,” she says.

One of the defining moments comes with the track Black Sheep.

“For most of my life I wasn’t comfortable with that label,” she admits. “But writing that song from a place of confidence felt amazing.”

Instead of apologising for being different, she embraces it.

“The things that made me feel like I didn’t fit growing up are the reason I’m built to do what I’m doing,” she says. “They’re my superpower.”

Alana Springsteen @ The Long Road Festival 2025

Alana Springsteen @ The Long Road Festival 2025 (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

Looking Back and Forward

With I Hope This Helps marking such a transformative moment, I ask what her 15-year-old self might think if she could see where things have led. Springsteen smiles.

“I think she would be absolutely shocked,” she says. “From a career standpoint but also from a personal standpoint.”

More importantly, she believes that younger version of herself would be proud.

“At the end of the day we are only in competition with ourselves,” she says. “I don’t care about impressing everybody else. I just want to impress that girl. I just want to make her proud.”

Judging by the emotional depth of I Hope This Helps and the connection it is already making with listeners, it is safe to say she has done exactly that.

I Hope This Helps is announced 13th March 2026, and Springsteen will also be performing at C2C Festival in London, where fans will hopefully get the chance to hear the new material live.

The Long Road Festival 2025 – Day Three: Soul, Chaos & Catharsis

“It’s been a decade,” says vocalist and rhythm guitarist Kimi Shelter, half laughing, half wincing. “It’s gone by in a blink of an eye. A very painful blink of an eye! But we’re really excited. Four albums in ten years — that feels like something.”

Starbenders

Starbenders (Alec Weeks)

From the outside, Starbenders’ evolution looks fearless. From the inside, it’s been forged through change, upheaval and creative restlessness — not least the departure of drummer Emily Moon in 2024 and the arrival of new recruit Qi Wei, whose presence has helped shape the spirit of The Beast Goes On.

But if there’s one thing Starbenders refuse to be boxed into, it’s a neat genre label. “We’ve always been that band who can sort of do both,” says Shelter. “You know that meme, ‘get yourself a girl who can do both’? For us it’s ‘get yourself a band who can do all fifty-million rock genres’.”

Bassist Aaron Lecesne shrugs. “We don’t know what to say either.”

After four records, Shelter believes the confusion might actually be the point. “I think we can stake a claim to our own subset now. It’s just ‘Starbenders’.”

A Scream, A Switchblade & A Sense Of Humour

If there’s a moment that encapsulates the band’s feral theatricality, it’s the closing scream on Summon My Heart — a full-bodied, glass-shattering exorcism.

“The voice is a strange thing,” Shelter says. “It’s only going to be what you’re given that day. You can’t force it. So I was grateful it came out like that.”

Lead guitarist Kriss Tokaji remembers the session vividly. “There was a strong presence in her that day. It was power, all the way.”

Shelter grins: “Like a Pomeranian with a switchblade. ‘Rarr! Rarr! Rarr!’”

It’s the kind of gloriously unhinged phrase that feels tailor-made for a future album title. Not that the band are short on those. “We’ve got a working list,” Lecesne confirms. One standout contender? A Reptile Dysfunction.

Covers, Curveballs & Creative Trust

The Beast Goes On features two unexpected covers: Bad Religion’s 21st Century Digital Boy and All The Damn Vampires’ Saturday. Both are given the full Starbenders treatment — swaggering, sleazy and laced with glam-punk bite.

“We wanted to throw some Stooges-type flair into it,” Shelter explains of the Bad Religion cut. “We’re that band you can throw different things at and see what happens.”

The same philosophy guided Saturday, originally written by Davey Oberlin. “We were asked if we wanted to try it,” Shelter says. “And we’re really happy with how it came out.”

That willingness to mutate material extends beyond studio recordings and into the band’s visual output. The cinematic strangeness of their recent videos — particularly Tokyo, with its alien-drenched fever dream aesthetic — has become central to the Starbenders universe.

“When I think of Tokyo, I only envision nighttime,” Shelter says of the song’s inspiration. “Lights, people, that weird time warp feeling. The video concept was entirely director Hannah Gray Hall’s beautiful, twisted brain. We always give directors full leeway. It’s exciting — their vision married with ours.”

Tokaji adds with a grin: “It’s not for anyone who doesn’t like needles. Or rats.”

Starbenders

Starbenders (Alec Weeks)

Ancient Curses & Modern Chaos

Lyrically, Shelter continues to draw from unlikely wells. On Forever Mine, the chorus line — “I bind your thoughts, I bind your lies / I bind your dreams, I bind your thighs” — is lifted from research into Ancient Greek curse tablets.

“They’d carve all kinds of wild stuff into stone,” she explains. “It makes you feel connected to people from the past. Not much has changed, really. So it was my take on a binding spell.”

Provocative lines aren’t new territory for Starbenders — Shelter cites Seven White Horses and its unapologetic “suck me, fuck me, make it last” as another example of lyrical mischief. But beneath the shock lies something more reflective.

“I don’t think we’ve ever written a concept album,” she says. “It’s more like a chunk of time. Some songs were written years apart. I see them as siblings. They just end up together when the moment feels right.”

A New Chapter, A New Language

The emotional spine of The Beast Goes On is shaped by transition — particularly the band’s recalibration after Moon’s departure and Wei’s arrival.

Somebody Else became the first track completed during that uncertain period. “It was this weird moment of continuance and perseverance,” Shelter says. “Wrapping our heads around creating without that person in the band anymore.”

Wei would later put her stamp on the track — famously heading straight from a 20-hour flight into the studio.

“When she first joined, she wasn’t fluent in English,” Shelter recalls. “So we were purely communicating through music. It forced us back to the most original form of communication. That’s how our relationship was forged.”

Lecesne nods. “It was fresh. You can hear that shift in the song.”

For Shelter, that spirit of survival pulses throughout the record. “It was the first sign that we’re gonna live on. We’re gonna survive.”

On The Road & In Their Element

That resilience was tested and proven on tour, most notably during their run with Nita Strauss on the Call Of The Void tour — Wei’s first outing with the band.

“It was our first tour with Wei, so we hold it near and dear,” Shelter says. “Nita is incredible and very sweet. No drama. You get up there, you play, you inspire each other.”

With Diamante also on the bill, it became a celebration of women commanding the stage. “It was fun being around other girls who were throwing it down,” Shelter says. “That’s always a good time.”

Ten years in, four albums deep and newly energised, Starbenders remain impossible to categorise and uninterested in compromise. The Beast Goes On feels less like a reinvention and more like a sharpening of teeth — a band embracing their chaos, humour and bite in equal measure.

Like a Pomeranian with a switchblade? Absolutely. Just don’t expect them to sit still long enough for you to put a label on it.

Interview with Starbenders by Nick Pollard, February 2026.

White Lies Illuminate The Roundhouse On Night Two Of Their Hometown Return

It has been eight years, ten by &U&I’s own cheerful approximation, since the Birmingham math-rock trio last shared a stage. Yet here they are again in a packed, sweaty rehearsal space in the heart of Digbeth, their trademark intensity intact. After their blistering return show, I sat down with Tom Peckett (vocals/guitar), Wiz (drums), and Rich (bass) to talk about how this comeback came together, how it feels to be back in the room, and what might be next for the band who never fully closed the door.

&U&I @ Muthers Studio

&U&I @ Muthers Studio (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

“Why now?” Reunions rarely happen without a catalyst. For &U&I, that spark came courtesy of long-time friends and tourmates Maybe She Will.”
– Tom: “Some friends of ours who we used to tour with a long time ago called Maybe She Will are doing like a 20th anniversary celebration gig in Hackney. Me and Wiz went to London to watch a band called Bear vs Shark, and we met John from Maybe She Will there. He said, ‘Oh, would you do this London gig with us?’ because we used to do some shows with them a long time ago. And we were like, ‘Yeah, definitely. When is it? Book us in for it.’”
A beat passes before the band collectively cracks a grin.
– Tom: “We forgot about it.”
– Wiz: “Rich went back to Laos, and then we got a message from John going, ‘You still good for that gig?’ So we had to message Rich and go, ‘Can you get back to England for the 29th?’”
– Rich: “And I very kindly managed to get myself sorted and come back over.”

So tonight, the band took the opportunity to shake off any rust in front of a live audience, though from the outside, there was barely a flicker of hesitation.
– Tom: “We thought tonight would be a good chance to kind of practice before that gig.”
Old Shoes, Same Fit
Playing together for the first time in years, that should come with nerves. But if the three musicians felt any, that tension dissolved almost instantly.
– Rich: “I was pretty nervous, if I’m honest. Not actually before tonight, it was just coming back.”
– Wiz (laughing): “I was nervous about the amount of beers you’ve had.”
– Rich: “Come on, I kept it… I didn’t want to ruin it.”
But the transition back felt almost alarmingly natural.
– Tom: “When Rich came back, that’s when it really started to click. Me and Peckett were practicing by ourselves, and it was good, but it just wasn’t completely right. It didn’t feel like we were ready.”
– Wiz: “It was the first practice last Wednesday when you came back. We played the set twice, on the second time it was like, ‘I wonder if we could get away with it.’ It’s amazing how much it comes back. Muscle memory did a lot of lifting.”
The moment they reunited in the room, everything snapped into place.
– Tom: “We just went straight into one of the songs and it just went great, like to the point where we were like, we could have done that on stage straight off. Like you said, old shoes. It very much felt like, no, this was… it’s like we haven’t left.”
“We thought people didn’t really care anymore.”
There’s humility in every answer the band gives about tonight’s packed room.
– Tom: “I mentioned on stage that we didn’t expect that, not to insult anybody who turned up, like, ‘Oh, what are you doing here?’ It was like… we thought people didn’t really care anymore. So it was really nice that there was a lot when we were posting about the gigs, and lots of people actually turned up.”
It wasn’t just nostalgia. The room felt charged, renewed, not remembered. And that energy didn’t go unnoticed.
– Tom: “I think it’s reignited our kind of love for playing &U&I.”
– Rich: “If we make enough money to pay for my airfares, then I’ll come back.”
He laughs, but there’s heart behind it.
Balancing Projects, Geography, and Life
All three members now juggle full-time jobs, other musical projects, and in Rich’s case, life in Southeast Asia. But none of that rules out continuing &U&I.
– Wiz: “We’re not inundated with gigs with the other projects. Me and Tom are in a band called To The Wall and we’re about to release an EP. But it’s not like we’re going to be on tour forever with another band that we can’t commit to this.”
– Tom: “We’re in a good situation, if Rich is back in Laos, we can do the other things we’re working on. And as soon as Rich comes back, we can find time. We don’t have to say, ‘We can’t do that because we’re on a six-week tour of Europe,’ because that’s logistically impossible.”
They grin at the idea. They’ve been there before.
Festivals? 2000Trees? ArcTanGent? When I ask if they could see themselves playing festivals again, 2000 Trees, ArcTanGent, or anything similar, the reaction is instant and mischievous.
– Rich: “James Scarlett. We’re doing 2000 Trees next year. You heard it here first.”
– Tom: “Or ACG. Or both.”
As the laughter dies down, they add:
– Tom: “It’s on the horizon. As good as booked.”

&U&I @ Muthers Studio

&U&I @ Muthers Studio (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

Math Rock, Not Math Rock, and Everything In Between.

Online, &U&I are often labelled as a “complex math-rock band” something they only partly relate to.
– Tom: “My bass player from my function band came tonight and he messaged me saying, ‘Really enjoyed tonight, great to see you rocking out. Very complicated songs.’”
– Tom: “There’s definitely an appeal to a certain group of people. We tend to get that math-rock badge very often. But some of the later stuff we wrote, on Mercy especially, was a bit more straightforward.”
– Wiz: “We’ve never written music to fit into anything. Not in a pretentious way, just we never thought about it that much.”
– Tom: “We used to spend ages making things really complicated. Then sometimes a song would just fall out of us in twenty minutes.”
That mixture, meticulous intricacy meets spontaneous catharsis, is precisely what gives their music its distinctive texture.
Writing Again? Don’t Rule It Out When the idea of new material comes up, there’s no hesitation.
– Rich: “I write all the songs anyway, so I guess I could just do them from Southeast Asia.”
– Wiz: “He’d send over instructions like: ‘Hit this drum, this drum, how hard to hit that drum.’”
– Tom: “I don’t think we could write it off.”
– Wiz: “If we did get booked for some festivals… we could tee up maybe some new music.”
– Rich: “Yeah. We can’t just be doing the same old, same old. So we’ll do a festival and knock out a couple of tracks for it.”

He looks at me and grins.
– Tom: “You happy now?”
So… what is next? The final question hangs in the air: is this a one-off? A spark? Or a full return?
– Tom: “I don’t think we could ever go, ‘Well, that’s the end of this band.’”
– Wiz: “Whenever anyone’s back, if anything crops up, festivals, one-off shows, we’re always going to do it because it’s just good fun.”
– Rich: “Any gigs in Laos? You guys going over there? Math rock is absolutely massive in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos.”
The room breaks into laughter, but the sentiment underneath is sincere: this reunion has reminded them of something they didn’t realise they’d missed.
– Tom: “We’ve all been best mates since school and we’ve been doing this since we were like 12 years old. It’s just a laugh, really, isn’t it?”
Walking Away, For Now

As the interview winds down, the band are buzzing, tired, loud, and loose in the way only musicians riding the high of a triumphant return can be. Tonight wasn’t a victory lap. It wasn’t nostalgia. It wasn’t “one for the old days.” It was three musicians rediscovering a shared identity they’d put down but never abandoned. And if this show is anything to go by, &U&I aren’t done. Not even close. Rockshot Magazine will be there when the next chapter lands, whether it’s in Digbeth, Hackney, or, impossibly, Laos.

&U&I @ Muthers Studio

&U&I @ Muthers Studio (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

Interview with &U&I @ Muthers Studios, Birmingham, by Henry Finnegan on 15th November 2025. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto

&U&I, Back In Birmingham As If They Never Left