The Screening are causing quite a buzz across England and America, having had their music on the trailers for  What Goes Upand The Shepherd, as well as playing at South By Southwest in LA, and sell out gigs in Texas. Now the Leicester  lads are back in England to turn the buzz into a bang, and with their forthcoming debut single Diem already creating a definitive rumble in the music world, I don’t think they’ll have too much trouble making their mark. We caught up with the boys in Camden, to ask them about days off, guilty music pleasures and N-Dubz covering Diem…

The Screening are a relatively new band – can you tell us how the band started?

Tom Nurse:  We’ve been around for about two or three years now, but we started off as school friends who just got together from listening to the same sort of music.

James Dunn: Living on the same street pretty much

Tom Nurse: And we’ve just built up a bit of a fan base in our home town of Leicester, things are going really well at the moment, we’ve started touring round the UK and are doing lots of exciting stuff.

Do you ever get sick of each other?

Tom Nurse: Yeah massively, every time I look at him now (J) to be fair, No we’re very close as people and as friends, we’re a very happy bunch, a very happy group.

What’s been the most exciting thing that’s happened to the band so far?

Tom Lewitt: We went to LA a couple of times, did some gigs there and that was great

Owen Ross: There was a good showcase in South By Southwest

T.N.: Yeah that’s probably one of the highlights so far, headlining loads of shows in LA, and South By Southwest was really good. We did a sold out show in Texas and had lots of brilliant feedback last year, and just lived the dream in LA for a couple of weeks. There’s been lots of good memories so far.

When someone comes to one of your gigs what can they expect?

T.L.: Energy, a great performance and good times

T.N.: And excitement, and great looking people. And brilliant songs. Anything else? (He laughs)

J.D.: Buy a tee shirt!

T.N.: (Laughing) Yeah you might be obliged to buy a tee shirt or two as well. No, we just try and put on the best show, and try to make sure people want to  come back again.

You’ve been quite busy recently with the new single coming out, but what do you do on a day off?

O.R.: When was my last day off? I probably woke up late, put clothes on, sat on the sofa, feeling terrible, eat some left over pizza from the night before, watched some CSI DVD’s and probably ordered some more pizza.

T.L.: I think about the band and the next gig

T.N. We write songs constantly, it’s like a 24 hour creative burst of enthusiasm

T.L .: And watch Blackadder!

T.N.: There’s no days off in the screening actually, there’s always a phone call or an email saying go here, go there. It’s good though, when you sit at home all day it gets a bit depressing. This is just what we do.

Do you have any guilty music pleasure?

J.D.: Take That

T.N.: I don’t think Take that are a guilty pleasure

J.D.: They are in some ways, aren’t they?

T.L.: I downloaded ‘Hold Me Now’ by Thomson Twins

T.N.: Warren G- ‘Regulate’

O.R.: That’s a tune, that’s not a guilty pleasure! I borrowed my housemates ‘Best of Destiny’s Child’ album

T.N.: Everyone loves pop, it’s what it’s there for.

If you could, what would you change about the music industry?

T.N.: Small time promoters should be shot. People who put on gigs in “London”, bands come down and play in front of no people, and don’t get paid anything

T.L.: And you don’t have to be like that, there’s a well known venue we played at the other night called the Casbah in Coventry, and people there treat you like they want you, they’re keen to have you play there

T.N.: There’s so many promoters, especially in London, everyone’s in a band and everyone’s a DJ and everyone’s a someone who’s gonna put on a great night, just bring 50 people down from wherever and you’ll get paid twelve pound, you buy all our beer we’ll make loads of money and then you go home.

T.L.: The good thing for us is that those days are behind us, we’ve experienced that

J.D.: I think they encourage the rubbish bands and then they kind of swamp the industry

T.N.: If every small time crappy band said, “we’re not going do this anymore” , if they all teamed together and said you stop going to London and taking your 50 mates on a coach and getting paid £2.20 to do it, you don’t do that, no one does it, and things might change

J.D.: It needs a massive overhaul because the way it is, nothings ever going to change

T.N.: If you’re a 17, 18 year old kid the idea of playing in LONDON if you’re not from London is like oh wow, or even playing anywhere that isn’t where you’re from, but bands end up getting ripped off, there’s so many nights where the promoters will put a pretend record label name to it, but you need to come and bring your own people and I mean, they might be crap, but you still can’t just rip them off

T.L.: There’s got to be a point to every gig you do, even if you don’t get paid, the person that organised it for you should get you something bigger next time, there should always be a point to it

The single Diem is available on iTunes now, and The Screening have begun their UK tour too – click here to find a venue near you…

Written by Bee Pahnke