How did you meet and what’s the story behind your and name?
Myself and Ben are cousins from Bath and Somerset and have been playing and recording songs together for some time. We met our cellist Nick in London through a friend of the family and then hunted for a bassist and drummer. The website Gumtree’s been good to us – we found both our bassist Jay and our drummer Kieran there! Our name, Urusen comes from a made up character that was in the artwork for our first self-released album – his name was an anagram of unsure and he kind of wandered through surreal landscapes not knowing where he was headed. We liked the sentiment – he’s not in our artwork any more but we ended up using his name as our name.
How would you describe your music?
Big harmonies, honest songs and lots of instruments – British folk meets Midlake and The National for a beer in the sunshine.
What have you been up to so far and what can we expect over the coming months?
We’ve been playing quite a few festivals this summer – highlights included the very first No Direction Home Festival and The Cambridge Folk Festival. Recording the album with Steve Osborne at Real World was a brilliant experience – it’s been in our back pockets for a while so it will be great when it’s finally out. We’re just building up to our album launch gig at The Lexington in London on 14th August – we have plans to tour in the future but it’s hard to focus beyond the release right now – if you like the sound of us you should come on the 14th – it’s going to be a memorable evening.
If you could duet with anybody who would it be and why?
With Crosby, Stills and Nash for the harmonies, with Gillian Welch just to stand next to her voice.
What’s your desert island disc and why would you take this one album?
We’d all have a different answer, but there is one album that over the last few years most of us in the band have collectively come back to and that’s The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake – each song is strong and unique and it’s full of raw emotion and beauty – plus it’s great to listen to on the road and I’m guessing there’d be a fair old journey to get to that desert island.
(Answers by Pete)
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