With a debut album and UK tour already under their belts, 2020 is looking bright for October Drift. Following the release of Forever Whatever in January the quartet pushed outside of their comfort zones to release a powerful and intense video for their single Oh The Silence. Keen to find out more, we sat down with vocalist Kiran Roy to talk about how the video came together, themes and more.
Can you give us your quick elevator pitch on this track? Why does this one stand out for you as a band?
Oh The Silence is the latest single from our debut album Forever Whatever. This is my favourite song on the album and I think it’s the strongest in terms of a mainstream single at least. I’m really proud of the lyrics, the choruses explode and it’s got a kind of anthemic melody and instrumentation.
How did you tackle the writing process for the song? Was there anything unique about this track compared to your usual/previous approach?
We normally start with a riff or idea and then I’ll trial and error different vocal ideas on it. Unusually Chris wrote the vocal melody for this song and I fitted lyrics around it. He’s got a great ear for melodies and structure and leans more towards pop sensibilities than I do, which comes across in this track. It’s our most radio friendly, pop song. Not that it doesn’t still blow your head off by the end.
Can you tell us how the song’s theme came about?
It’s about boredom, loneliness. It’s about that empty feeling you get after coming home after a holiday or festival (or a tour!). It’s about texting around your friends to see if anythings going on and never finding out. It’s about waiting for something to happen.
Tell us about the video, do the themes of the single transfer to the video?
We’ve been thrown out of our comfort zones recently by making our own music videos. We drove up to an old airfield up on the hills near us at the crack of dawn and shot out the back of the van with the boot open. At first I tried singing the song following the van on a hoverboard/segway thing but the surface was so uneven I never made it through the song without falling off. Eventually we just tried a take running after the van, just in one take, which ended up being the video! We got lucky with the fog, I think it adds to the feeling of nowhere-ness and I’m actually pleased the segway didn’t work out. I think running in the foggy empty space ties in with the themes of the song nicely. Oh, and excuse my dodgy lip-syncing.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories from the video shoot?
We have a bunch of outtakes of me falling off a hoverboard. We’ll probably post them sometime! There was also this arctic lorry training going on up at the airfield, if the song was much longer we would have ploughed into them.
Anything else you’d like to add for our readers?
We have plenty more to come and maybe see you in a field over the summer.
Forever Whatever is out now via Physical Education Records, available to stream or purchase HERE.
