London Quintet Prego

by Jamie Mann

A band can only hope to project their sound to curious ears by evolving musically and creating music which invigorates its listeners. Prego’s pre-album releases are already solid featuring verses filled with ambience and allurement which ignite into vehement choruses that leave you temporarily immobile.

Should this band’s sound be deemed even more enthralling, 2010 should grant the quintet the chance to be everyone’s favourite ‘new’ band rather than mine and more importantly 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq and NME journalist Mark Beaumont.

Such music has been written by Caspar Williamson (bass), Christian Wieland (guitar/keyboards), Edd Simpson (vocals, guitar, synthesizers), Paul Jennings (drums) and Will Leslie (guitar/keyboard).

Beaumont in fact set up Year Zero Recordings, (named after the London club at which he first witnessed Prego) solely to release an earlier Prego single ‘Cause and Resolve’.

The label was retired after serving its purpose: to help promote the band. As Beaumont stated, after thirteen years of observing new bands, he labelled Prego as “the first band I’ve ever seen knowing that I’d be a fool not to help put out records.” http://www.melodic.net/newsOne.asp?newsId=13829

After almost 2 months of recording their debut album, the London 5-piece embarked upon an October tour in support of Fightstar; Prego demonstrated to numerous UK cities the intensity of their many singles and the compelling debut EP Primaries which sold out its 500 copies of the original pressing; they then went on to unleash a set broadcast live on BBC Radio Suffolk.

Most recently they headlined a local Battle of The Bands in Ipswich, where 3 members originally hail from. After more than 4 years of performing, Prego will again project a soundtrack of melodic guitars, dynamic bass lines, diverging drums and colossal synths to blessed audiences. The release of Prego’s album is set to conceive a revolution for shoegaze rock and for the band themselves.

Prego’s sound has often been compared to the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky all of which they cite as strong influences. Though many have labelled their sound solely as Indie, Prego incorporate a variety of genres into their music which is diversified by experimental rock and also features rhythms and harmonies attributed to post-rock; the trio of contending guitars create a wall of sound which points towards shoegaze rock.

Genre labelling aside Prego must be heard to be understood. The video for the latest single “Cause and Resolve” created and directed by Grant Berry is featured below.

I talked to front man Edd Simpson and bassist Caspar Williamson about life in Prego and the processes of writing, touring and recording:

Could you describe the writing process, do you group-write often? Have you scrapped many tracks over the years when perfecting your sound?

Edd: “The writing process generally involves me penning the song in its most embryonic form (i.e. me and a guitar) and then it takes on a whole new life when the other guys put their thoughts and ideas to it. There are constantly ideas that go by the wayside, sometimes you think something’s great only to then hear it again and realise it’s actually crap!”

Caspar: “The writing process varies, however most of the time Edd will come in with the bare bones of a song, the melody and a verse/chorus mainly, then we will go at it as a group, it pretty much always becomes clear what sort of direction it will take. For example ‘Cause & Resolve’ started as a 6min post-rock song!

We have but some great tunes on the backburner for the time being until we figure out what we want them to become, save them for the second album I guess.

Other songs we have scrapped, such as ‘Three’ of Primaries, we will never play that song again as it isn’t Prego as we are now.”

What is your schedule like in Prego? I feel fans are always kept updated on MySpace blogs – the content suggests constant writing/touring/writing.

Edd: “The schedule over the last year has been very much about touring and recording and less about writing. The majority of the album has been written for a little while so recording it this year was the big aim, and thankfully we’ve done that.”

Caspar: ”We are pretty disciplined with the schedule, we rehearse/write at least once/twice a week, the band definitely comes first and it can be awkward at times when you’ve got other plans, but we are all going for the same goals here so we know where the priorities have to be.

We’d love to tour more; it’s just hard with no outside funding from labels or management etc. We won’t write for a while as the album has been our main focus and is being mastered just before Xmas so it’ll be all wrapped up.

We have a facebook group with around 800/900 people as well as Twitter so we are trying to branch out on the contact with the fans! We love getting emails, but as we do all this ourselves we can take a while to write back.”

What has been your proudest moment in Prego?

Edd: “My proudest moment in Prego was probably listening back to the album for the first time, it’s been 5 years hard work and I’m thrilled with what we’ve come out with.”

Caspar: “There have been too many proud moments to mention for me personally, but a few would have to be;
-finishing the album and having a body of work I am proud to play for people
-getting support from radio and press I never dreamed off (Radio 1, Jon Kennedy Xfm, Kerrang etc)
-Playing venues that I will remember for the rest of my life, notably Glasgow ABC, Manchester Academy 1, and Shepherds Bush Empire.”

How did the recording of the album differ to that of Primaries?

Edd: “It was a hugely different experience in every way I think. We’d only been together a very short time during Primaries and I think that’s reflected in both the songs and the production, we were less evolved sonically, and it was a very different line up and a different producer. The album was a far more cohesive and focused experience and I think we knew exactly what we wanted to achieve sonically as well.”

Caspar:

“-Better musicians
-More time
-Good friends recording and producing us, Guy Massey is the man.
-Much more pimp studios!
-Dare I say, all killer no filler!?”

Has there been a progression in sound compared to what the world have already heard of Prego?

Edd: “Without a doubt there’s a progression in terms of recorded sound on this record compared to what we’ve released before, it’s far more epic and expansive, and we’ve thought about the sounds we use intensely through the process of making the record.”

Caspar: “I think the album will surprise a lot of people, the most jaw dropping moments aren’t necessarily the ‘epic Prego’ tunes one there… you’ll have to wait and see!”

Prego have played several festivals, what have been the largest crowds you have performed for?

Edd: “We performed for about 3-4,000 people at Wireless festival, that was an amazing experience.”

Caspar: “02 at Leeds was pretty scary at the time, nearly 1000 by the end of the set, but since the Fightstar tour we have nearly doubled that a couple of times, Shepherds Bush had a lot of people, 2,500 by the end of the night, I’d say two thirds of that where their by our final song! It’s just exciting now, we wouldn’t be fazed by doing arenas and stadiums; the sound is built for it, the more the merrier in our opinion.”

Caspar, Could you tell me about the t-shirts and the artwork for the Vatican Sessions E.P. which you designed last year?”

Caspar: “Yeah the imagery for that came from my interpretation of Edd’s lyrics for ‘Cause & Resolve’ actually, it kind of had a running theme into ‘Vatican Sessions’
Edd told me the song had parts about when you are having horrible nightmares about really bad things that you’ve done, or events that have happened, and the point at which the dream gets so bad you wake yourself up, only to realise after a few seconds of consciousness that the problems are actually real and not just a dream.

I was interested in the space between the two, the constant battle of being trapped in a form of limbo or twilight, and the idea of escapism or being trapped in that world…it was all very Labyrinth!”

Prego Official Website: http://www.pregomusic.com/

Prego Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/pregomusic