Issue 153

Interview: Polytechnic

26th February 2007

Tom Leaning enrols onto the Polytechnic music course and talks to lead-guitarist, Denny Hilton, from their tour bus.

An obvious question first, but why the name 'Polytechnic'?
There's no great reason. Polytechnics in this country were underfunded institutions of public enlightenment... and they were the crucibles of rock music back in the day, the first live venue circuit. So 'Polytechnic' got written on a piece of paper, and the name just stuck. I like how they don't exist anymore.

I think Peet is the newest member of Polytechnic. Why was he brought into the band and what does his keyboard playing bring to Polytechnic's sound?
We'd always put keys lines over demos when we recorded them. We'd reached a point playing live around Manchester where the songs were missing piano melodies, and backing vocals too, so we went and stole Peet from a friend's band. It was weird; we'd been offered a last minute support slot for The Subways at the Academy in Manchester, which is a pretty big venue. Peet was working in a bookstore down the road, we called him up, and he just walked over and played for us. That was our first gig as a five-piece.

Polytechnic's debut album release date is, hopefully, not far away. How close is the release date, and how enjoyable has it been for the band to record your first album?
The album's called 'Down Til Dawn', and it's out in April. We recorded most of it last autumn in a beautiful studio up in the rainy Welsh mountains, co-producing it with Tom Stanley. Half of it we mixed with Ken Nelson in Liverpool. It's was a really intense experience from start to finish. We experimented a lot, and we intentionally worked on the 'LP' concept, trying to put a set of songs together which belonged with each other, even though that meant losing tunes we'd been playing live for a while. So we're really excited by it. I think it covers more ground than a lot of people will be expecting - it's not as straightforwardly noisy as our live shows, it has more scope.

As the lead-guitarist, what is your favourite Polytechnic track to play and why?
It depends on the day. We have this new b-side we've been playing called 'Squalor', which is just a satisfying squall of guitar noise. That's been fun lately.

Just to clarify, you are a Manc-based band, but where does each band-member come from originally?
Everywhere - Dylan and Yuri are from Devon (Yuri via Tokyo), I grew up in Stoke, Peet's from Durham, and Tim is fast becoming Eastbourne's favourite son. We've lived in Manchester for a while though, and just being based here you immediately get the 'Manchester band' brand, and all the associations that brings with the brilliant musical history of the place. That's great, but it can distract sometimes from what's going on... the music community here is really vital right now, there's all kinds of sounds coming out of the city; Cherry Ghost, Longcut, Beep Seals, Answering Machine...

Since 2005, you've been virtually touring non-stop, supporting bands like The Longcut, Doves and The Strokes. Who have been the most fun bands to tour with and why?
Playing with those kinds of bands is a real honour. Supporting The Breeders was a great moment. And we had a lot of fun on tour with the Young Knives last year.

Are there any music scenes around at the moment that are really pissing you off? (Feel free to have a rant!)
That's hard. 'Scene' is a media word, you know? That constant pursuit of novelty, that doesn't interest me much. There's definitely a general trend away from guitar music, which is a shame. Some of the best guitar rock albums last year were by veteran bands like Sonic Youth and Built To Spill, which says a lot. I'm not with the whole cheap revival of bad dance music right now, but then I like the Klaxons, who spawned that monster. There's seems to be a lot of Springsteen in the air too. I love Springsteen, but the whole soulless, pretentious, careerist overblown rock thing that bands seem to be aiming at with that particular revival isn't glamorous at all.

And finally, 2007 will hopefully be a big year for Polytechnic. What are the band's goals for the coming year?
A few more support slots, the album release, headline UK tour, US/European tours, acrimonious break up, solo careers, failure, re-formation, comeback tour, international acclaim... Actually we've never really had any goals beyond the songs we've been working on, so anything after that is great. We're supporting the Shins next week, that's going to be amazing. Really, I just want people to hear the album we made. And I want to play every festival possible... Drunk, onstage, summer twilight - there are few better moments than that.

Tom Leaning