Dig It! Magazine

How are you guys after this amazing show?

Isma: I’m feeling grateful! And appreciate you and everyone coming to see us. It feels like a great day and it’s a very great step for our band to play an iconic venue like The Dublin Castle, yeah I feel really good *laughs* and I think the rest of us thinks the same

Danny: Today has been one of those days where everything came naturally and smoothly

How did you guys get together? What is the history behind And The Sunset Burns?

Isma: The band started out as Danny’s idea, I joined him, we knew each other because we’re both from Spain

Danny: I would say this project started out two years ago, so 2022, I came here with another friend 7 years ago chasing opportunities to play music and we did play around but nothing felt like okay this is it until we met Ruben, well Isma joined before him and then with Ruben in the band we started out and added Alex and felt like the band is complete now.

Ruben: Felt like we completed the puzzle! We felt ready to get on the circuit and get the album prepared

Danny: The first time we played was last May in Acton

Ruben: Where I grew up, we played a warmup show there and sort of took it from there

Who are your influences? There’s a lot going on in the band, as there’s a latin influence as well 

Isma: Yeah for sure! The influences come from English and American bands so we are inspired by bands like The Rolling Stones or The Doors but Danny and me also like Spanish artists so it’s everything mixed together.

Alex: I think what’s nice about it is that individually we all have influences and a lot of the times they overlap but I think we all bring each sound together individually

Isma: In the end it all comes together

Ruben: Even myself, I’m English, but even before I’ve met these guys I’ve always been into latin music, I’ve always loved latin sounds, latin music and then it felt really natural to like fall into and create music with these guys, we all share a love for rock and roll. I think rock and roll connects us all, but we bring different aspects wether it’s punk or indie, hard rock, but we also have that latin sound that makes us a bit different to other bands on the circuit.

Danny: Actually Ruben and Alex are the ones who push more for the latin sound! *laughs* it’s really fun!

Alex: I haven’t really thought about it that way! There’s a lot of Spanish sounding music that I really like and some of it can be a bit cringy and whatnot and with these guys it definitely feels genuine and musically it’s very different!

Ruben: But yeah as Danny was saying it’s us who are kind of pushing the latin sound, Don Diablo, a song we released last year, that came from my suggestion I guess, initially to say let’s do at least one song inspired by, I mean we kind of had that Spanish sound but we didn’t have any original songs with Spanish lyrics 

Danny: We never even thought about it! Never thought about singing in Spanish 

Ruben: But it just worked so well I think, I was very happy

So, you have a new single out, Just Another Day in New York City, with a music video as well..

Isma: The song comes from Ruben so we were like (to Ruben) you have to sing this one because it feels connected to you. 

We wanted to do a simple video that also has connections to New York. But there’s not a lot going on, we just wanted to show ourselves in the video because the other ones we have are a bit more cinematic

Ruben: It’s just us, and it shows how the band is playing with a few clips from New York 

Alex: tell us about what inspired the song!

Ruben: So I went to New York last year with my sister, just for a week, and I’ve been listening to a lot of songs that were inspired by New York and about New York so like Manhattan by Ella Fitzgerald, The Only Living Boy by Simon and Garfunkel, so many songs about New York and my experience with the city was incredible just the feeling of there being so much to do, so much going on, it felt like it was just a great thing to just give yourself to the city and New York obviously the sounds of the city were Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground has always been close to my kind of inspiration so I thought it was just fitting to write a song about it.

Alex: And all of it is kind of telling a story about what a day would be like there, what places would you go, everything based on Ruben’s experiences.

Ruben: To give an example, there’s a lyric that goes ‘spend the night in Greenwich Village with plenty of drinks and plenty of spillage’ and that’s about how I got pretty drunk on a night out, and Greenwich Village for people who don’t know is kind of the jazz area, the big music scene area and I went to this kind of club and I ended up very drunk and fell down the stairs carrying a bottle of beer but I tried to hold on to the beer instead of just getting rid of it and I ended up crushing my hand on this bottle and slashing my palm so I had a pretty big like gash in my palm, lots of blood so I ended up losing the beer and losing a lot of blood in the process as well.

Alex: Through pain you also get some good songs

So what’s the writing process like? 

Ruben: So obviously we’ve got two kind of main writers Danny and myself but maybe Danny can tell more on this

Danny: Yeah so in my case I realised that it always starts with a spark, it’s never like I sit down and I know I’m gonna write about this, I tried so many times but it just never happened like that, you can make a song like that but it’ll probably be uninteresting but then the idea can come from anything, then I record a voice note as fast as I can and I try to get most of the song done in that moment or at least a few lines and when I have time I will then write the song but I’ll say that 90% of the time the song gets written in the moment. 

All the songs we play come from us. All of it.

Alex: I think in certain bands there’s different songwriting processes for example two big ones: you’ve got the Rolling Stones where two people write every song and then the Beatles way where everyone writes a song and then everyone plays it and it all sounds quite different and I think that we fall more into the Beatles category in that way. Danny will write a song and then Ruben and they sound different but they’re still sort of connected through the people playing it and I think that gives a sort of variety to our sound as well.

Isma: In the end the good thing is that we go together to the rehearsal room and make everything as smooth as possible

Danny: And prior to going to the rehearsals, everything is a demo before that

Ruben: Our new song for instance, I wrote that, I had the barebones for it but I brought it to the band and Danny and others had lots of things to put in that, they really transformed it and took it to the next level, we decided to make it halftime and change the dynamic of the song  and it’s so amazing and rewarding to see where you have the seed of a song and bring it to people and watch it grow and become so much more than you could’ve imagined. It’s really special and great to be a part of that

Danny: I think that’s one of the best things about being in a band because when you write a song it’s really personal most of the time and first you sell the idea to these people you like and trust but still it’s like okay here’s a bit of me! And as Ruben said, the song becomes a part of all of us and it’s just better, one of the best feelings ever

Do you guys get along in the studio? 

Alex: I would say so! We’ve met these guys through the internet and I think that it’s very rare that you actually meet people who play music you like and also have a lot of common ground, and just get on well just as people, bands these days have a guy who’s 50 and then you have a 20 year old and someone is a bit strange  but I think it’s quite special that we all get along as people as well and can play and that’s a very seamless process in terms of both the music we create and the connection we have outside of the band 

Ruben: I think we all play music like we try and I think we do really well and when we are in the studio we try not to bring our egos too much, I think a lot of bands and musicians that I’ve worked with bring their egos to it and in the studio it doesn’t always feel like everyone is collaborating for the purpose of the music, sometimes it becomes this conflict but I never had that in this band which is special

Isma: We’ve been very lucky that when we recorded in the studio, we were in this place in Hackney provided by Ruben’s old friend who used to play with him and was very helpful during the process even when we were a bit confused in which direction to take with the song, he helped us figure it out and try everything out so that was like, not sure how to say it, cherry on the cake? 

Ruben: Cherry on the cake!

Isma: Ah yes cherry on the cake. You see I always need help from this guy! *laughs* 

Alex: When we play together we also push each other creatively to try and make different things and fortunately we are with a producer who does just that and gives you space for it and sometimes it’s a challenge, he will challenge you and take you to places creatively that you might’ve not been before 

Danny: David Barton by the way!

Most of the times those ideas end up on the record actually. *laughs*

Alex: And as a band it’s a real privilege to have that 

Any crazy stories? 

Ruben: When we were shooting a clip in Spain, first music video we shot, in the hometown of Danny and Isma, we were shooting in like ancient caves to bring the background of the band to life but we shot from like 6 am to like 1 am so all day. It was pretty painful and one of Isma’s friends who you can see in the video we are like spraying his face with vinegar so that flies would fly on his face and he’s been in Italy before this for a few days so he had a sunburn and was also hungover, had like two hours of sleep 

Danny: Perfect for the video *laughs* 

Ruben: Yeah we wanted like a hungover battered Englishman so he didn’t even have to act *laughs* and then we had a flight with him at like 7 am so he was acting for 13 hours straight and we had no sleep so we just went back to their house and had a few beers and had to drive to the airport

Alex: At a speed we don’t condone to doing but it was in a time of need. Life in the fast lane!

Ruben: We’ll have more stories once we get on tour properly

Isma: We’re trying to make it happen! We’re constantly reaching out to venues and everyone to play in London, Brighton and these guys really want to play in Spain

Danny: Once again they’re the ones pushing it *laughs*

Isma: They love Spain more than we do!

Any last words? Is there an album coming out?

Isma: The album will be released this year if everything goes as planned, we’re gonna put another single out soon and later on try to make a tour out of it once the album is out

Danny: The next song that we’re putting out, has a bit more of a Spanish feel to it and the video will be really cool as well, the video will be done by Brenda River, my girlfriend and by a Spanish dancer, Nora who is really good

Ruben: Musically it’s the most latin sounding song but it has English lyrics so I think it captures that fusion quite nicely, should be out soon!

And The Sunset Burns will be headlining the magazine’s first event with Bad Apple Promotion on June 4th at The Old Blue Last, tickets on DICE. Come on down!

Thanks for reading! Picture credit to the lovely Brenda River.

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