I recently caught up with Hamish from Scottish chaos causers Vukovi before they took to the stage at RiseFest the Northumbria Student Union in Newcastle to get a brief insight to life in the band and a look towards album number 3, Nula.
Give a little introduction and tell the readers of Discovery Music who you are and a little bit about yourself.
I’m Hamish, I play guitar in a band called Vukovi. We are a kind of sci-fi rock band, and we have a new album coming out in October called Nula. Let’s talk post covid shall we?
That leads me on nicely to the next question, how has the last year or so been since live music came back?
There has been a lot of pros and a lot of cons but honestly lockdown was actually really good for us as a band, we managed to sort a lot of stuff out during it all and we didn’t stop putting out music – a lot of bands tended to stop all of that we just kept going. We released a lot of singles and I think if we didn’t do that it would’ve been shit but we just kept writing and it kind of paid off. We feel a lot better about the band in general, before lockdown we were struggling with our position in the scene, but we feel a lot better now which is quite strange because covid did mess up a lot of bands sadly but yeah, it’s dead strange we just capitalised and wrote a record.
All the shows since we came back have been mental, everyone is just so much more game for live music and shows – people are skint but they all have so much more energy, its been saved for two years and it’s just been wild. I feel personally the shows have been better post covid they’ve been insane so yeah, it’s a weird one I have mixed emotions.
So, who is Nula?
That’s a big question. Nula is a character, I don’t know if anyone has seen some of our artwork for singles or the album, but Nula is the red haired girl on the covers. She is basically a character that Janine came up with – she wanted to write a sort of sci-fi comic and the album is a bit of a concept album but within the album it doesn’t really tell a lot of the story about the comic she is currently writing. Janine is making a pysical comic with an artist and Nula is the character and is basically an advanced alien who has been captured. Once the artist drew up, we instantly fell in love with the look and at the time Nula wasn’t even the name of the album, we just liked how it look, its clean I’ve never really heard the word mentioned a lot its quite a unique word if you know what I mean at least in the English language it is anyway. I also think Nula is Serbian for the number one, Vukovi is Serbian so yeah there’s a fun fact.
So yeah she’s a concept – we’ve never really been a band who just write albums that are just songs we always wanted to add like some more to it, it doesn’t have to be deep deep meaning but really something people can come up with their own meaning I guess and what it means to them. Its why the whole imagery is so elusive no one really knows what’s going on so I kind of like that.
How do you guys prepare for live shows?
Alcohol. It becomes a bad habit for lives shows, because on the way to the show you’re always like where can we find booze. Even if you’ve played 500 shows you still get really anxious before it, Janine and I do anyway for sure. I like a drink before, and I also like to head off on my own for around 20 minutes before the show to do some stretches and get warmed up that’s the main things I tend to do. But yeah, it has to be booze, I’m sure a lot of people tell you that.
If you had to bin one song from your live sets, what would it be?
Do you know the set? I know what it would be for Janine, we had an old song called Vincible years ago from one of our first EP’s she absolutley hates it – from our newer stuff its hard man, I don’t like playing All That Candy off the second album, it was one of the singles I really don’t like playing it, we don’t play it anymore. Janie also hates a song called Behave – Mark the drummer and I both love it we were both saying its a proper energy song and a good live song – Janine’s like nah but we’ve managed to keep it in the set somehow.
What’s next for Vukovi?
We have our biggest headline tour ever in October and were finally headlining shows in Europe as well which is cool because we planned it during covid and it was all cancelled – so after that there is a range of stuff happening but for now we can’t say really not many people know the stuff were doing so we can’t talk about it yet but its stuff we’ve wanted for a long time, it’s some good steps up’s for us that we needed. Its massive for us because we’ve been grinding at a low level for a long time so we’re all really hyped about it all. Apart from that all we want to do is to get away and play festivals all summer and just get out there all the time.
Finally, I like to ask this to everyone, it’s the big question. What’s your favourite biscuit?
Oh that’s a tough one – I was going to say Biscoff but that’s a boring one, probably Oreo for me. Although an Oreo with Biscoff spread in it, if you’ve not tried it then do it, it is incredible. I had never had it until lockdown and my ex girlfriend was like just try it and then you try it and you’re like oh my god, then the whole jars gone.
Would like to say a huge thanks to Hamish for taking the time to sit down and have a chat with me and give me a good, interesting insight to life in Vukovi. You can catch them on their UK tour in October where they will headline Glasgow’s SWG3 to promote their third record, Nula.