Magnificent 7B§

“Aren’t Double Decker buses class?” asks Louise Mathews, singer with Belfast band Slipgate. “I’m so glad we have them now. I got on one the other day and sat right at the fucking front. It was brilliant.”

It’s a show-off evening. The sun is shining. Bill Clinton is receiving an honorary degree a few hundred meters up the street at Queen’s, and Translink have just unwittingly provided us with one of those weird little sources of mundane optimism. Double Decker buses have been thin on the ground here for the last few decades. Hijackers with an eye for apocalyptic imagery would probably have found them a bit too hard to resist once things began kicking off.

And can you imagine the insurance premiums? So, it’s nice to see them out on the arboreal roads of South Belfast. Especially when Louise and band-mate Chris Lindsay seem so upbeat about their own prospects and are determined to stress the positive.

“I’m reluctant to say much,” says bassist Chris, “because, bear in mind, every band likes to think that they’re involved in an exciting time in regard to Belfast music. But I do definitely think that it’s a lot better now than it was before, and I do think that there are a lot more bands now who are confident enough not just to stick to the generic, angry guitar stuff. A lot of the more interesting music coming out of Belfast at the minute seems to be being produced by people who were originally in fairly conventional rock bands, who took some time out, expanded their record collection, went to a few more different places, and came back to it with loads of new ideas.

The best thing that anyone ever says to me, though, and they say it quite a lot, is that Slipgate sound nothing like a Northern Ireland band.”

Now a year old, and fresh from a number of highly impressive EPs, the band are attempting to win battles on two fronts – successfully meshing rock and dance, and maintaining morale amongst the seven different members of the band.

As far as Chris is concerned, the latter doesn’t pose much of a problem.

“So far there haven’t been any major worries. Obviously, in every band there are tensions. But I’ve been in three-pieces where there were difficulties, and so far, it seems to be working really well with the seven of us.”

Even so, although examples of great electronic bands are not exactly thin on the ground, the cult of the lone, wired-in fanatic still looms large. Having seven people involved is a fairly unique situation, but one that Slipgate intend to exploit.

“It’s a collective process,” says Chris. “It really is as simple as that. We don’t really write songs in a conventional way, I suppose. A lot of it is based around jamming and laying lots of stuff down and then crafting it. We play it and see how everyone reacts. I know there are a lot of bands who are run by one personality, but that isn’t the case with Slipgate, and I can’t see anyone staging a coup.”

While live appearances will be kept to a premium (“We don’t want to be a circuit band,” claims Chris), a mini album is waiting to go (although Louise points out that since the debut release of Noel Gallagher’s pet bed-heads Proud Mary clocks in at 32 minutes – maybe Slipgate should ditch the ‘mini’.), and when it arrives the band hope that there will be enough in it to keep everyone happy.

“I think there’s a lot of conventional rock tricks there, but it does seem to build up the way music in a club builds. It’s developed fairly organically. We haven’t sat down and decided to sound the way we do – it’s just the product of a lot of different people and a lot of different influences.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” says Louise, “I like dancing, I like dance music and I wanted to sing in a band that would get people off their arses and moving. And Slipgate fitted the bill perfectly. When we’re practicing, I’m going every bit as mad as I would on a Saturday night. Which is a great

sign.”