aaamusic | On 03, May 2011

Bright Spark Destroyer is a five-man band with 32-bit synesthaesia. Starting as a long-distance writing and recording project between five musicians in different cities in late 2009, most of the band relocated to London following the release of their EP, Holy Yell, in June 2010.

David Adams, Ian Butterworth, James Ellis, Simon Reid, Joe Rowan exploited all the available online tools to carry on their project with passion and determination; they talk to AAAMusic about their experience:

“It’s part of our process now, we make it easier on ourselves by using collaborative programs like SoundCloud, so we can comment on each other’s demos and collect all our ideas in the same place.”

If you are curious about how they met, they said that

“Three of us were involved in putting on a clubnight called Superconnected years ago and our bands had all crossed paths.  We all found ourselves without projects at the same time and wanted to try working together.  We’re kind of a hive-mind, or mindless if you like.”

Obviously it’s easier to write a song that recording it in a long-distance, so they had to arrange sessions in a “real” place and start to cut the record:

“How did you manage the recording session for their EP living in long distance?

Bright Spark Destryer: Lots of driving.  We recorded a couple of songs at a friend’s studio, but most of the parts were recorded in people’s living rooms, garages and such to save time and money.”

But at one point all the members of the band decided to move to London to make their life and their music creation simpler:

“It just happened naturally, once we finished the EP we always had the idea in the back of our minds that it would be great if we could rehearse regularly and write as more of a group.  One by one we found ourselves presented with opportunities to move and we took them.  Simon still lives in Oxford, but that’s just how he rolls.”

If you ask them  why they want to destroy a bright spark, they’ll answer:

“We don’t, but some things do so we named the band after them.”
‘The Shortest Distance’ is a song about love and mathematics – using asymptotes as a metaphor for the sexual tension building in a strong friendship (“we get so close/but we do not intersect”). The song explores the most direct ways to dispel an anxious situation, these being honesty, apology and – perhaps cynically – bribery (“If that doesn’t work/then go out and buy them something nice”).

“The whole song has a theme about not hanging around and waiting to things to happen and I guess it summed up how to get to a solution in the most direct way.”
Musically the song reflects the mood of the lyrics, with the opening chimes of the first verse hanging in the air accompanied by a mid-tempo beat and a gentle guitar that seems to melt with them. The beat stops to leave alone on the scene James Reed’s thin and lively voice, but only for a short while.

The refrain is airy and fresh, it’s a lovely indie-pop tune in which I can hear a far influence by Jonsi reinterpreted in a buoyant style. The last twenty seconds are a beautiful intertwine of all instruments that seems to go in crescendo but suddenly stop and end the tune, I found it a smart idea to close it.

Maybe some people think that one song is not enough to judge a band, but I don’t agree, Bright Spark Destroyer with The Shortest Distance leave me with the desire to listen to more.

The track has already gained radio support, being played on Tom Robinson’s Friday night show and on his guest spot on the Nemone show, as well as various plays on Fresh On the Net and a feature on the Introducing Inquisition.

Chris Bristow – visual effects artist at Munky, who has worked on numer ous promos, including Riva Starr’s I Was Drunk and Tom Kingsley-directed videos for Guillemots andDarwin Deez – makes an outing as animator/director himself, with a video for “The Shortest Distance”.

A hypnotic burst of imagination it is too, composed of non-sequiteur illustrations co-existing in space.

Come along to Ronnie Scott’s on 10^th May and join Bright Spark Destroyer single launch party!