The Brand New Heavies have been knocking out cool funky soulful hits for fifteen years. They have come along way since their humble beginnings in a garden shed in the 'sleepy' suburb of Ealing in West London.

I caught up with the pioneering London based band and chatted about the new line-up the new sound with Jan Kincaid, Andrew Love Levy, Simon Bartholomew and Nicole Russo


Although your new album sounds like it could or should be The Brand New Heavies, it is also quite different. Is this album a natural progression or has it been brought on by the change in the music scene and the need to re-assert yourself on the scene?


Jan Kincaid: It's a bit of everything. The biggest reason is that we've got Nicole as a new singer and she got her own vibe and voice. But we were all very conscious when we were making the record that we wanted to do something different and not just create the same record or make another 'Shelter' or do something like that.

Well any band has to progress its just a matter of how you do it

Jan: Exactly and we wanted to push the boundaries a bit and as much as we could but at the same time maintain something. Because I think that if you go too far then people are going to say that it's not the same thing at all. But I think that we've managed to retain something but also to move things forward and stretch out a bit and hopefully capture some new ears as well.

Simon Bartholomew: A lot of bands go through genres or eras; even the Rolling Stones did disco didn't they?

Exactly

In the 70s which is like weird. It's hard to imagine them influenced by disco. The kind of stuff where we are at, and what we listen to is all the sampling and stuff and it is the first record where we have actually brought a lot of scratching and sampling into it, which we have been listening to and seeing grow.

But that whole BNH live groove is still there. I think that you have managed to get a good balance between the two

Do you see yourself making a move on the US as the new sounds certainly sounds like it could give a few of the US artists a run for their money?

Andrew Love Levy: We've always got the US in mind when we are making music, because we are an international band we are internationally known. You have to be aware of certain tracks fitting into certain places. Not in a cold way but you have to be aware globally of your sound. Early next year or maybe the middle of next year we are going to be going out here so we can re-conquer

Simon: Yeah because America was the first place that showed us love. As they say! Because we had a number three out there before any UK labels would get into us. We were on an independent.

Was that via import or because you toured, how did that happen?

Actually someone heard the record and the very first version was a different singer than N'Dea and they got in touch with us. We then went out there and basically re-recorded the vocals with N'Dea and another song 'Never Stop' which became a number three hit over there and then the UK woke up to us

Typical the UK then taking interest

Yeah I think that happened to a few other bands as well. It's quite a common thing that unless you make it in America they won't support it here.

Jan: But it was definitely like that we were like a cool band we weren't like a mainstream act over here. We were definitely part of a big scene. It was what really caught the media's attention in the mainstream press was the American thing.

Nicole, this is aimed at you - have you joined the band or is like guesting?

Nicole: Yeah we wrote and did everything together really it wasn't just a matter of coming in and singing songs we started form the ground up.

And there is a list of illustrious ladies that have gone before you, how do you feel about stepping into their shoes and stepping up to the mic?

Nicole: Flattered! You know it is nice to kind of put in to the same bag as them. It is flattering but bizarrely when I did my showcase at Ronnie Scotts for my album two people that wrote reviews compared me, my sound to the Brand New Heavies, which is really funny. It's a weird thing.

Simon: It was all on the cards!

Nicole: It was all on the cards from a long time ago

How did it actually come about?

Nicole: The Brand New Heavies were being managed at the time by Wildlife and I met them through my record label Telstar. I had an album out at the time. And they hooked me up with Jan to write a couple of tracks together and then I met the guys very soon after and they asked me to do a tour of Indonesia. It was going to be, wasn't it? And Japan but it got halved by the SARS virus - unfortunately. But literally from there we immediately started writing. The first thing that I heard was like a hip hoppy, it's actually 'Need Some More' on the album and it was like a track in its entirety without any vocals or top line. So that was the first track I wrote. I took it away.

I was pissed off at having been dropped and everything else and just a bit phased and annoyed with the music industry

As you d o get

Disenchanted yeah! So I wrote that track really just as a way of exorcising those demons and I wrote those lyrics.


Well I think your voice sounds amazing and there are some serious harmonies in there.

Nicole: Thank you

RH: Yeah Nicole is killer at harmonies

Some of them just come out at you, those big blocks of harmonies!

Nicole: Thank you. I grew up really on a lot of Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan.

I was going to ask you who your influences were

They we're all quite gospelly

written by on 21/10/2004 00:00:00