29 April 2024
Every Monday I will be bringing you an interview with an independent band, duo or music artist. This week, I caught up with Dublin band Pretty Ltd to find out more…
Who is in the band, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the name?
DJ Campbell – Vocals and Guitar / Dylan Scully – Bass and Backing Vocals / Tom Gaffney – Drums and Backing Vocals.
Myself (Dylan) and DJ met in college back in 2011 and have basically been playing together ever since then. We met Tom first playing a show together, then when we lost our drummer we put an open call up online and Tom replied with his Pokemon Go team and we knew we were on the same page.
The name is kind of an evolution on our old band name (Minus Ten Thousand Hours) which plays on the idea that it takes ten thousand hours to master something, Pretty Ltd is play on the idea that we’re not masters of anything, our skills and scope are pretty limited.
Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
Dylan: I grew up with the likes of The Beatles and Bob Dylan playing in my house, and from there I moved into progressively heavier music, moving through the likes of Blur, Fall Out Boy, Korn, Cradle Of Filth and then eventually regressing a little bit and moving back into poppier rock music like Biffy Clyro, Reuben, Dinosaur Pile-up and a lot of rap like Dr. Dre, Childish Gambino and Tyler the Creator. Nowadays I’m finding myself mostly listening to Irish and UK music, some of my favourites these days are Gaffa Tape Sandy, Idle Discourse, The Scratch, snake eyes to name a few.
DJ: I started out with Busted and Linkin Park, now it’s Linkin Park and Busted, with a hint of Biffy Clyro and Queens of the Stone Age.
Tom: It used to be Miles Davis, now it’s Miley Cyrus.
How would you describe your sound?
DJ: If Weezer got laid.
Dylan: Grungey/poppy/rocky/pop-rock/rock-pop.
Tom: Velourcore
What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our latest release is a single called Easy. The influence behind it lyrically is all about that one person in every friend group that always has something to complain about, and everyone’s looking at them like, ‘man, come on, your life is handy’. It’s always such minor inconveniences they bring up, and sure there’s a lot of people that have things better, maybe get things handed to them, but there’s also countless others that are way worse off, so you should be grateful for what you have.
What’s your local music scene like?
Dylan: Ireland has one of the hardest hitting local scenes right now in my opinion. There’s an outrageous amount of talent in Ireland, obviously there’s massive acts that are going international right now like The Scratch and Kojaque, but on a local level there are so many acts still in college right now that are absolutely blowing us away. Some of my favourites are Idle Discourse, Silverglass, WORN OUT, dryeyes, Skull The Pierre, Skies Behind, Under Starling, honestly I could go on and on if you let me.
What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
We’ve got a lot of music to release over the next while, we’ve been releasing a single a month since February, and we aim to keep that trend going for the foreseeable. We’re also writing our debut EP and aiming to be in the studio recording it in August. We don’t have any release planned for it yet, we’ll see how we get on first. We’re also trying to get ourselves over to the UK to play some shows, we’re still working on that.
Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
Dylan: I’d love Dr. Dre to produce a track, just to see what he’d do with it, to actually get someone on a track though, I’d love to have Patrick Stump sing a verse.
DJ: Either Samantha Mumba or Amanda Palmer.
Tom: OJ Simpson or Sophie Ellis Bextor.
Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
Our live shows are always a bit of craic, we’re not there to get people rowdy or riled up, we’re just there for a good time. We played in Galway recently as part of the Absent club night supporting CHERYM, and the night started off slow, but there was this one dude that came right up the front and genuinely became our hype man, dragging people in making them dance and just bringing good vibes, that was one of the best things I’ve ever seen while playing personally.
DJ does have this fear that he’s going to pass out when he goes for any particularly hard notes vocally.
What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
DJ: That I’m over 6ft and not depressed.
Upcoming live dates and performances
Friday 3rd May – Fred Zeppelin’s, Cork, Ireland
Friday 24th May – Upstairs Dolan’s, Limerick, Ireland (supporting Robert Grace)
You can find out more about Pretty Ltd via Apple Music, Bandcamp, Instagram, SoundCloud, Spotify or TikTok.
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