Honey Glaze
Words by Luke Whorriskey Photographs by Lily Doidge
We caught up with Anouska (Noush), Tim and Yuri from London trio Honeyglaze just ahead of the release of their self-titled debut album in April 2022.
Hey guys, hope you’re well. Could you briefly tell us a little bit of background about the band, how you’d identify yourselves musically, how you got together...
YURI : We got together before the COVID, maybe about five months before the pandemic began. Noush was gonna play a show at the Windmill, and she wanted to play with a band so she called us to a session. We played that show, and then after it just kept going.
TIM: We didn’t play anywhere else other than The Windmill. I think we played like two or three shows that weren’t at the Windmill.
Where was the best show you did outside of The Windmill?
YURI: The Cavendish Arms, that was a Halloween special. It was our first and only headline show I think. We haven’t headlined since!
So, you’ve said in previous interviews, that the association to The Windmill isn’t something that you shy away from due to its spirit as a community rather than just the musical attachments. However, what artists either in the UK or abroad would you say you feel like you’re more closely aligned to in a musical sense?
YURI: I think it might differ individually. Especially in our approach to our instruments on an individual level. We all have different influences that are going on in London right now. Yeah, like, for example Vanishing Twin, who I really love at the moment. The drummer Valentina Magaletti, she’s sort of a big influence in how I think about drumming.
TIM: Yeah, maybe with the guitar there’s a lot of nice fingerstyle guitar going on right now. But musically, we love Squid, we don’t sound like them, but definitely love what they’re doing.
ANOUSKA: I think Broadcast for song writing as well as Cate Le Bon. They’re the two I always go back to or accidentally end up sounding like.
How did the songwriting for the songs from the record come about? Was it collaborative as a three? Or more individual led?
ANOUSKA: I brought these two together, because I had a lot of songs written. And I wanted to find two people that could arrange around that. But now we sort of write a lot more collaboratively. I bring less and less to the rehearsal every session. We write more together which is nice.
YURI: There has been a big shift from the period before we started recording the album comparing to now, I think that’s the biggest change.
It’s pretty clear in the direct sense, how Speedy Wunderground and Dan Carey have helped in the making of the record. But how much of an impact has there been with any general guidance or advice from him in terms of your approach as a band and producing a record?
TIM: We sent demos originally, and he wasn’t super interested in them. And then he saw a really, really bad live stream we did. It was the first time we had seen each other since the start of the pandemic, so we hadn’t even seen each other to practice in about five months. But he loved the livestream, so it definitely reinforced the idea of believing in ourselves live and to come to the recording to try to recreate that really intense experience of being at a gig.
ANOUSKA: That natural flow that you get when you play live is something which we hadn’t really focused on in terms of recording. We were initially doing tracking of the individual parts of all the songs, but then the album in the end was just two days of all of the set tracked at once basically.
YURI: Another bit of advice that he gave us too was the length, like, to make the songs a bit longer. We had a tendency to make everything as compact as possible.
ANOUSKA: We’re all really precise people. We’re like if we’ve done this once we don’t need to do it again, you’ve already heard it. And I think Dan was kind of like, ‘this sounds good, give us more of it!’
You’re still relatively early in your tenure as a band, but what have been your biggest pinch me moments so far?
ANOUSKA: Green Man festival! We were randomly put on a really big stage at Greenman last year.
TIM: It was like 10 times the amount of people we’d ever played to.
YURI: I think Greenman was the first time where I actually couldn’t identify people’s faces individually.
Which unheard song from the new record are you most excited to put out into the world and tell us why?
ANOUSKA: Half Past is the songwriting is what I’m most proud of. We wrote it all together. It’s the first song where we properly sat and came up with something as a band.
You only released your first single as a band ‘Burglar’ in September of last year. What was the motivation behind wanting to release a debut album sooner rather than later?
ANOUSKA: It was just Dan really.
YURI: We were gonna release an EP, which were made up of the demos we sent to Dan which he initially wasn’t interested in.
TIM:Yeah, but I don’t know, EP’s don’t always do it for me, just the concept of it. It’ll usually be made up of amazing songs but will somehow be slightly more forgettable than an LP.
ANOUSKA: They just feel a bit awkward, especially if it’s the first thing you put out. It doesn’t feel as whole it’s like there is stuff missing from it.
Finally, what is something in your Spotify wrapped which you’d be the most embarrassed about sharing?
ANOUSKA: Tim pranked me on my Spotify last year. I logged in on his computer and he played this song called ‘Stop the War’ by Speak the Hungarian Rapper, he like sleep-ified it for a couple of nights so that it was top of my Spotify wrapped, and when I saw it I was like ‘what the hell is this?’
