Formed by school friends Sarah Nimmo and Reva Gauntlett, this five-piece multi-instrumental band talked to FFS about their music. With their recent EP “Young Light” produced by Communion’s infamous Ian Grimble, we’re pretty sure NATGs are the ones to watch; big things are coming their way. They combine an awesome mix of different sounds and create something simply brilliant, and I had a little chat with Sarah, Reva and Josh about what they’ve been up to recently.
Hello, please introduce yourself and your music to the uninitiated.
Sarah: Hello, we are a five piece based between London and Brighton. We play something resembling ‘syncopated funk based pop’. Well, we do now, but our last EP ‘Young Light’ was more folk swayed than the stuff we currently perform. Me and Reva front the band on vocals and we have the lovely Jack Williams as our drummer, Hannah Rose on keys and saxophone and Josh Faull on bass and violin on some tracks.
Tell us a bit about your last/latest single?
Reva: We just released the video for ‘Young Light’ so I guess that’s our last release and it’s the closing track of our EP entitled ‘Young Light’. It’s a bit longer than our average song as the closing track and it’s a bit of a melancholy reflection on young love. We were finding our feet stylistically quite a bit during the recording process of the ‘Young Light’ EP and think that the track means a lot to us as an end and reflection of where we were at then.
What was your best ever gig?
Reva: Probably supporting Man Like Me at their ‘Squeeze’ launch last month at Dingwalls, Camden. It was a bit of a perfect day. We finished uni for good that week and I came to the soundcheck straight from my finals exam, so it was a bit of an overwhelming night. The show was sold out and Man Like Me are our favourite people to play with and it was also the first time we’d played Dingwalls and it’s a great venue so it was all a bit perfect for me. Oh, and it was also during that anomaly of a super hot sunny week in London, which topped it off.
What’s the worst thing about being a musician?
Sarah: The only time I’m like “fuck this” is when I feel like a removals man but without getting paid. Lugging amps is a killer.
What inspires you?
Josh: It’s a bit hard to explain what we mean but we’re inspired mostly by each other in the sense that our music becomes mainly inspired by each other’s influences. If Sarah is really into house music for a while or Jack introduces us to something really new, for example, the rest of the band bounces off of that excitement and so we normally take bits of influence from each other in that way.
If you won a billion pounds what would you do with it?
Sarah: Buy a label and sign ourselves
Out of your songs: which is your favourite and why?
Reva: Probably a song called ‘Others’, which we will be recording as part of the demos we’re doing in July. It’s a different, more developed sound than what you have heard on the ‘Young Light’ EP and in the direction of where the music is heading at the moment. I play a little synth on it which is really fun and live it’s probably my best tune right now.
What are you plans for the future?
Sarah: We will be recording lots of demos during July/ August in London as well as playing a few festivals and then we will be playing some regional dates in the UK later in the year. Then hopefully in November we’ll be going back to Paris and maybe some other places in Europe. We’re focusing mainly on recording a lot of new material at the moment. Now that we’ve finished uni and the music is full time, we’re excited for things in the pipeline for this year.
Finally, we’re always looking to expand our musical horizons. Do you have any recommendations of bands or artists we should be looking out for?
Reva: Josh has just discovered Sures, a young Australian band that he has faith will blow so check them out. Sarah is obsessed with a house duo from Oxford called Casino Times and I’m rinsing an LA band called The Internet, which features two Odd Future members. We saw them live at Field Day recently and they completely blew us away. Three quite different bands but definitely check them all out!
Finally, here is a little taster of their EP: ‘Young Light‘.