Interview with Al Bairre

Following the release of their debut full-length album; Experience The Al Bairre Show With Al Bairre Experience, we interview Al Bairre to chat about their moms, global fame and the Al Bairre Experience.

We interviewed you late into 2014, and it seems as though many exciting things have happened since then, including the release of your first official LP, a collaboration with PH Fat and the Xperia Mashlab. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit on these two ventures as well as some others from last year?

Mashlab was a blast. We’re now besties with PHFat and regularly meet up for walks in the mountain. Our track we did with them called “Caviar Dreams” actually won ‘Best Mashlab of 2015’. So that was lovely.

Then in November we released our first ever proper LP called Experience The Al Bairre Show With Al Bairre Experience. That was also so lovely.

Last year you mentioned you hadn’t had a chance to play overseas yet and you called the music scene here a “dream”. Since then you have gone on tour to the UK and had a lot of international success and recognition of your recorded music. How has this extended your opinion of the music scene here? And what was it like to engage with the international arena?

We still think it’s a dream over here. The only thing is that over that side they have more than 4 clubs and their local bands are Foals, Coldplay and One Direction. So it’s also nice over there.

It seems as though many of your tracks, most recently “Let’s Fall in Love Some More”, have been picked up by many major, highly regarded international platforms like BIRP, Spotify and Indie Shuffle – how has that affected or increased your listenership? How did it come about?

In November when we released our new album Experience The Al Bairre Show With Al Bairre Experience, we released it on all the platforms across the whole wide world. After that Spotify just picked it up somehow and all of a sudden “Let’s Fall In Love Some More” was in the top 10 of their USA Viral Chart, UK Viral Chart and Global Viral Chart.

We still have no idea how it happened. We also had no idea it was even happening. We can’t get Spotify here in SA, so we found out from a UK pal who sent us a mail. That was a good time.

Your music has also been included for quite a few advertisements including for the US chocolate brand Hershey. Was this something you had anticipated?

We just got an email to come down and audition for the role of ‘The house-party band’ in a Hershey’s TV commercial for the U.S. During filming we had to actually play a show, so we set up a stage and a PA and played 3 of our songs over and over again for 4 hours while all the extras had to pretend to dance. After hearing “We Move On”, over and over again for 4 hours they decided that that was actually the song they wanted to use for the whole advert.

Your album released on the 23rd November of Experience the Al Bairre Show with the Al Bairre Experience has brought the public long standing favourites that you had written and launched quite early on in you career – why did you choose to include these singles? Have they been re-recorded or are these the original tracks?

For some reason when we started the band, recording our songs wasn’t very high on our list of things we were gonna do. Our first EP was meant to be just a demo, but when we released it at the very very beginning, everyone ended up really liking the songs. So we just let it slide.

Then with this new album there were 3 of our fav’s from the first EP that were looking at the new songs and I could see they were feeling super left out. So we told them they could join, but only if we could take them apart and re-record them so they sounded even more divine. Shortly after that we came to an agreement and now here we are.

Has the album been well received thus far?

Yeah. Our moms said it was nice.

How have your newer tracks and your process of writing music changed or developed since your initial release of the EP When I was Tall?

We recorded the first EP before we had even played a proper show so there was a chance that everyone would think we were stinky and not even listen to the EP. So we were just writing songs we thought were lovely.

Nowadays when we write we write with everyone in mind so we can all have a good time. Fun first.

You have received so much recognition without releasing an album thus far, so why now? What motivated this release?

Fame. We wanted to be on radio so we could become famous. We’re tired of having to stand in lines and drive ourselves around.

Is there a general concept/theme/inspiration that connects the tracks? Or is it just an Al Bairre compilation?

The theme is experiencing Al Bairre. Put that shit on, pour yourself a whiskey and let us, let you, experience us.