Just before Are You Listening? Festival we talked to, and saw, one of the most exciting new bands in the UK. The album had already blown us away and the live performance absolutely backed it up. Slung are the real deal. In the time since we spoke they have had their first play on the Radio One Rock Show.
We met up with three quarters of Slung before their gig at the Purple Turtle, bassist Vlad Matveikov, lead guitarist Ali Johnson and singer Katie Oldham. Drummer Ravi Martin was busy fretting over the bands kit and ensuring everything was in place for later. All three struck me as incredibly personable and were very relaxed. Vlad has an easy-going charm that will serve the band well, whilst Katie Oldham is clearly growing into the role of frontwoman and gaining in confidence all the time. The album ‘In Ways’ is one of the strongest debut albums released this year and this is a band you could see rapidly establishing themselves in bigger venues than the pub circuit and absolutely belonging there.
Reading Indie Life: This doesn’t sound like anybody’s first band. How did you guys come together, what’s the back story?
Ali Johnson: I met this fellow (pointing to Vlad) in a campsite in Australia 15 years ago and we were playing acoustic guitars back then; we didn’t have any electric guitars.
Vlad Matveikov: No, we barely had shoes Ali.
Ali: I remember it well, but we ended up moving back to Brighton and made a lot of music throughout our 20s. We were in various different bands, weren’t we? COVID hit. You (Vlad) started making some rather good music and asked me if I wanted to get on board. And then it was the grand old search for a singer and a drummer, wasn’t it?
Vlad: That old Chestnut.
Ali: We got rather lucky, I think.
Katie Oldham: I was the last piece of the puzzle to fall in because I’d played in a different band where I played drums and done the vocals in a two piece. And that kind of came to an end. I was quite low confidence. Vlad encouraged me to give it a shot being at the front instead of hiding behind the kit. So, we started jamming and it all kind of came together and I found a nice vocal coach. And now you can’t stop me from bellowing all the time. So yeah, it was quite serendipitous, all of it coming together when it did.
RIL: And how long ago was that now? When did Slung the finished product form?
Katie: Two years.
Vlad: Yeah, about two years. So yeah, we recorded the album in December 2023.
Katie: The first thing we did as a band was record the album!
Vlad: Yeah. We hadn’t played a show together, so we made the album that we’ve put out on Friday.
Katie: Never performed live together ever. Never been on a stage together ever but made this album.
Vlad: We’d Written a few songs and lit a fire under our bums to finish writing the rest of it in the studio and then figured out how to do it live and see if we could spend copious amount of time with each other in the van without killing ourselves or our band members.
RIL: So, does that mean the first couple of singles you put out were done after the album?
Vlad: That’s it, quite a lot after.
Katie: And what’s funny now is when we, for me anyway, when I listened back to the album, like my vocals sound so timid and so shy because that’s like how I felt at the time. Like I say, I had a bit of, quite a lot of nervousness and obviously it was before we ever played a gig. So that’s kind of encapsulated a moment in time of how it felt then. But then the two singles that actually came before that album, which for example, ‘Fire to Burn’ is really belty, really strong and
Ali: You found your confidence by then.
Katie: Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Ali: And doing those shows before sort of really gave you that confidence.
Katie: Yeah, as soon as we started playing the shows, which we had done by the time we got to those singles, I felt like a different, I don’t know, different performer. So it’s funny to sort of then dial it back again for this album release after.
RIL: So does that mean you’ve got quite a few other things in the back pocket to record?
Vlad: Maybe. There are always riffs brewing. There are melodies hatching.
Katie: They’ve got a lot of ideas. I think we’re all keen to see what we cook up next because yeah, it was such a backwards process. I think between us, we’ve got so many things we want to bring in to be like, oh, let’s go this way, let’s do it like that. I think it’s going to be a big collaborative effort.
Vlad: It’s a little bit of a cliche to say that by the time you release something it doesn’t feel so fresh to you as to the people who discover it. But we really did make the album before we played our first gig, so it feels like, I don’t know about you guys. My body is ready for new music.
Ali: And doing ‘Fire to Burn’ and ‘Neurotic’ was a good feeling, having those new songs added to our repertoire after just sitting on what we have for the album, it’s like, yo, we can write songs a different way too.
Katie: I feel like those two singles have like a different sonic quality to what’s on the record.
Vlad: It’s because we started writing them in Spain, I think.
Katie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we wrote them all together from the first steps, whereas some of the other songs, as Vlad was saying, they were things that you’ve been sitting on for a while and that you guys jammed for quite a few years. And then the rest of us joined and it started to take shape. Whereas ‘Fire To Burn’ and ‘Neurotic’ were collaborative from the first note. So it really was representative of our potential and like the kind of things that are going to come next, I think.
RIL: So, if you were to record ‘In Ways’ now, would you do some things differently?
Vlad: Probably just a mild 99% of it all.
Katie: Well, I don’t know, like I think, sorry to just jump in and make it about myself. But vocally, I probably would have more confidence. But what was quite nice is, I don’t know if you guys found this, when we first heard the test pressings of the record on vinyl, it was like hearing a different band because we felt so far removed from being the people who’d recorded that. Like we’d all grown, we’d all matured, we’d all got to know each other more. Obviously we’ve been friends for a long time, but we’d never known each other in that kind of family relationship that it is in a band. So, after playing all these gigs, playing in Europe, travelling around together, all these crazy escapades, and then listening back to this first thing that we did was like childhood, you know? There was a naivety. A sweetness to it that I think by the time we ended up performing it, we’re a bit more like, yeah, you know, like the teenage era. But when you listen to it, it’s like, oh man, maybe there’s something in that actually. There’s the softness of delivery and the sweetness of it.
Vlad: Yeah, it’s just, it’s a sonic photograph. It’s a really nice memory to treasure and that’s what made those ideas and songs real. So, it’s really great that they exist in this way. I wouldn’t change a thing about them, but yeah, if we went in to record them now they would end up different naturally, for sure.
Ali: We do get to; we get to play it live. If there’s a bit that we want to do in a slightly different way, we get to do it live and do it for an audience. I, you know, there’s a solo in ‘Collider’. I will always reference the solo that’s on the record. But live, let’s just do some more stuff, you know, throw some extra notes in there. Let’s make it fun.
RIL: Was a lot of the music together before you came to it, Katie?
Katie: In Ways, kind of. There were a few songs. So this, the idea that ended up being Slung, was mostly your (Vlad’s) solo project, I would say that was collaborative with quite a few other vocalists.
Vlad: Yeah. There were about nine songs with four different drummers and different vocalists. We’ve kept five of those. And then we added a few things of our own and it took shape. It’s about half and half then I guess.
Katie: Yeah, on this record, I would say me writing and coming up with the melodies and the lyrics, half of them were me and half of them were either references from the previous vocalist of those demos or some of them which were just so good, like ‘Limassol’. When I heard that demo, I was like, there’s no way I can do anything better than that. It was so good. And that was with a guy called Mykl Barton from Sick Joy, a local band in Brighton.
Ali: Great band, great singer.
Katie: And it was just the most perfect thing I’ve ever heard. (to Vlad) I had such a beef with that song because I was like, there’s no way that I can even do it as good, let alone make it sound better.
Ali: You have made it your own, in my opinion.
Vlad: And better.
Ali: It’s your song on the record, it’s your song and it’s the way you sing it that I look forward to hearing when we play. It’s great.
RIL: Are there tracks which are more personal to you Katie?
Katie: So, the first one that I did just for me was ‘Nothing Left’. I’d been in a previous project that had… I was quite… I was quite invested in and it kind of fell apart in a way that was quite sad for me and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go. That was the first song I tackled, but I was like, I don’t really know how to just be like “Hee hee” and write a song because I just feel so miserable. I feel so down about this thing that happened and I was like, well just write that. I can’t do anything until it’s out of the way. It’s like it’s a thorn to get out. And then hopefully it’ll free up some space and the creativity will flow, which it did. But then afterwards, I felt quite embarrassed about that song for quite a while because it’s, it’s very dramatic. It’s so dramatic. But it’s like, like we said about the sonic photograph, that was how it felt. I was in a dramatic, miserable era. Like I needed to just purge it. And it took me a while to not be embarrassed about that song. And now I think it has a new life that… I spoke to a girl after our hometown debut of this album. The release show on Friday. And she was like, “I just went through a breakup. And that song, I was in floods of tears”. And I was like, now it’s yours. OK. Like, that’s it. It wasn’t necessarily about a romantic breakup, but the shoe fits. Take it. It belongs to everyone now. And I’m, I’m not embarrassed about it anymore.
Ali: But it is a big tune and it’s one that we actually left out of the live set last year because it was emotionally difficult. I don’t think we all wanted to jump on it immediately.
Katie: But now it gets a lot of reception.
Ali: But now it is an important part of our repertoire. It’s in our set every night. And. Yeah, very powerful tune. And working out how we’ve done it like that took some development on how we played it. Getting the dynamics right, so it fit right with the emotion. I thought that was really interesting.
RIL: Brighton’s got a really vibrant music scene, have you done a lot of playing around there over the last year?
Vlad: Katie and I moved to Spain for a year to sort of try and live abroad at the very beginning of this. So, we made an album, moved to a different country and then decided to book twenty-eight shows across England, Scotland and Wales. But living in Valencia in an apartment and flying back each month was still cheaper than living in Brighton.
Katie: Not good for the planet.
Vlad: Which is not good for the planet, but financially viable, which is crazy in ways. But yeah. So actually our last year was oddly regimented. Everything was done so far in advance. And we played loads of shows, but not a lot of them in Brighton. And it was, yeah, launching a new band, not putting out any music and emailing your promoter friends be like, “Hey, would you mind taking a punt on a band that doesn’t exist? But do you mind giving us a good slot so we play in front of a crowd because it’s a really long drive and a flight.” And yeah, so there’s a lot of emails and a lot of “please”. And it kind of now justifies having done it because, you know, when they hear the record, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I always knew it was going to be great”. You’re like, “No, you didn’t.”
Katie: But that’s what’s so charming about this. And it was so, so shocking, I think for us, on Friday when we played this hometown show where we were debuting this record, is that we sold it out. And like, that was a complete shock. It’s not just being humble. We were shocked. We could not believe it.
Ali: Yeah, none of us were ready for that.
Katie: Because we’d not necessarily done what we would have liked to have done, which was put a lot of energy and investment into our hometown with this project. Like we’ve obviously done that. We’ve been around Brighton, for years. We’ve got a lovely community of people that are kind enough to give us the time of day. But I think all of us ideally would have liked to have built a bit more at home and then out. But we were just doing everything backwards, recording the album, moving to Spain. We played more times in Spain than we did in Brighton. It’s crazy. And then so ultimately, when we did play and now on this tour, it is such a testament to people who have trusted us and we’ve asked them to believe in us for a minute and they have. And we can’t even express the gratitude that we have because, yeah, we would have loved to have done it in a more organic way. But now, now we can. We’re back. We’re all in the same country, we’re all in the same town. So, we can now at the end of this album and the start of whatever comes next, we can do a big reset. It’s so funny. We’ve done everything back to front, but there’s enough wonderful people around us and in our community that are willing to give us the time of day.
Vlad: Yeah, it was like proof of concept that we, you know, it wasn’t so mad to do it, that show was kind of like, oh, OK, it worked.
Katie: But also, proof of just how amazing the community is in Brighton.
Vlad and Ali: Oh yeah.
Katie: And how people show up for people even when it’s not transactional. You know, like they are a good enough friend and a good enough supporter. We all are there, like, supporting everyone. It is an amazing town, and it is, it really is bursting with musicians. It’s weird to meet someone that’s not in a band. What do you mean you’re not playing? That’s so strange. Yeah, it’s a great town.
RIL: It does feel very much like you guys just appeared out of nowhere to the outside world with such a fully formed concept. It seems very odd to hear you say you have barely played anything because listening to the album, it has such a great sound to it. It has a really classic kind of rock sound. It just feels like this could be a third or fourth album, rather than a debut.
Vlad: I think they’re just honest rock songs and it’s not trying to be any one sub-genre and it’s just, I think we were just chipping away at writing songs that felt good to us, and it feels so relieving that sounds good to other people too.
Katie: Yeah, and I guess that we have been around for a long time just as people, like we’ve been in all these bands, we’ve been in and around the music scene. We’ve experienced so much life and so much art and so much emotion. I think, I don’t know personally for me, like my old projects that we, I was trying to do stuff that was more commercial, more like, oh, this is going to fit in. This is going to be good for Radio 6. You know, really pushing to create something that’s consumable by the target you want to be in basically…
Ali: For an agenda.
Katie: Yeah. It’s like to please the people you want to please, to get the people in the room. And I think at this point we’ve all matured to the point where we’re just like, I just need this out. Like there’s so much art in all of us. There’s so much honesty that it needs to be released, so I guess a worry of ours was that it sounds so different, the whole album. You know, what did Band Camp say it was, “audacious,” when they did the write up for the album. To start with ‘Laughter’ and end with ‘Falling Down.’ ‘Laughter’, which is an aggressive punk song with a really off kilter time signature drum beat kind of thing. And then Falling Down is like country, it has a slow fade out and they call it audacious. And I quite like that because it kind of is. But they’re just really true songs to all of us.
Ali: We all like those genres, we all like those songs.
Vlad: And some of the best records go on that journey right? Like there isn’t one record that’s like in fifth gear that goes throughout.
Ali: And if it’s ten ‘Matadors’, it wouldn’t be fun.
Vlad: That’s it.
Ali: It wouldn’t have the same ride. Whereas because you’ve got those ebb and flow of dynamics like where ‘Matador hits’, it’s like “What is this?”
Katie: Yeah, what was that doing there?
Vlad: Curating contrast and different flavours.
Ali: There’ll be more of that, right?
Vlad: I don’t know.
Ali: (Laughing) Ten matadors.
Vlad: (Laughing) Yeah.
RIL: What would success look like for Slung as a band?
Vlad: I think it’s like doing something for yourself is the most important thing, because that’s where it begins. If you do something for yourself and it doesn’t succeed, whatever the definition of success could be to anyone, that’s fine because you know you’ve done it for yourself and you’ve done your very best. If you’re doing it for other people and it doesn’t hit the mark, there is no sadder thing in music than to write something to a fictional brief and realise how fictional it was.
Katie: A pitch for a reception and not get one. That would just be terrible.
Vlad: I think we all need to negotiate what success and goals are to us as a band and see how we want to go about them. But I just, I really hope that whatever we do next, we just do for ourselves and we find that nice Venn diagram that everybody is happy with.
Katie: I think it’s cooking, I think we’re all on the same page. There’s some real like growth, maturity, this real magic that’s kicking under everything, which is quite exciting. And I think none of us is really like ride or die if we don’t play Glastonbury, then this was all for nothing. It sounds cliche, but every single thing that we do, like that show in Brighton. And I know I keep saying it, but that was just, I was speechless. My hands were shaking. I was just like, this is mental. And it was one of those out of body experiences that I feel like in other stuff that we’ve done, personally, like I’ve tried so, so, so hard for success that even the good things haven’t meant enough because they’re not enough. You know what I mean? Whereas now we can get a little notification on our phones. Someone in Switzerland bought your album. We’re like Switzerland, Oh my God. That actually feels 100% good. You could get something that only feels 60% good. It’s not amazing then.
Ali: I’m in agreement.
Katie: I have a goal and that is for the song ‘Nothing Left’, because it used to be embarrassing. That it goes quite quiet at one point, and I would love, I’m just going to send this out into the universe, I would love one day to be on a stage where I start to sing the quiet bit and then everyone else in the crowd sings over me. When we were napping earlier, I had that come to me in a little dream and it woke me up a little bit. I was, you know, when you’re like dipping in and out of sleep And I was like, was that real? Just imagining everyone singing that back to me. It would be amazing. But that’s something I’m just manifesting on a small scale.
RIL: Music videos often seem like an afterthought for newer bands these days, but you guys seem to have a strong concept for every single one. Is that coming from you, or people you collaborate with?
Katie: Again, everything back to front, everything backwards.
Vlad: I think we’re just having fun with them.
Katie: So much fun.
Ali: I’ve really enjoyed making the videos.
Katie: Like we were saying about tangible goals and stuff. I felt really like this is a dream come true. A few moments, especially on the ‘Class A Cherry’ shoot, which was actually one of the earliest ones that we did. We did a two-day shoot and we had a team, I mean, it’s friends, it’s all self-funded and stuff. There was a clapper board. You know what you see in the movies, those black and white things, and it said, “Slung: Class A Cherry.” And I got to do that. And I was like, this is it. This is what I dreamed of when I was a little girl, you know what I mean? Like it’s, you know, if no one even sees this video, it gets eight hundred hits on YouTube and that’s it. I got to do a little clapper board of a little movie that I was in. Stunning. That’s success.
Ali: Yeah, for me it was me the Dame from the panto.
Katie: Oh my gosh. There was a very funny story about the ‘Thinking About It’ music video that we managed to hire a panto Dame from my hometown local Christmas pantomime to come and star in our music video and they were so amazing.
Ali: What a hero.
Katie: That was an amazing experience. We’ve just had so much fun. And yeah, to get to this point that we can just do that. It’s kind of you’ve only got one life, so just do fun things, have a lovely time.
Ali: We are spoiled by the good people around us. In Brighton. It’s so important to us to get anything done. We have the people that we can talk to that are willing to help us.
Katie: One of the main people that we’ve cast in our music videos is a guy called Alessandro that works at Small Pond, the rehearsal studios. And he’s a really good friend of ours and he’s just so funny. And we managed to convince him to star in a couple of our music videos now including ‘Class A Cherry’ and ‘Fire to Burn’. Was he in anymore?
Ali: He will be(laughing).
Katie: He will be. He was just like, when’s the next one guys? He’s so funny. Like all of our mates are just up for being involved. All of this cast is just our friends, you know? And we got to work with this director, Jordan Wright, who was an assistant on the first video we ever did, right, Collider? Apart from Limassol, but yeah. And from there, he was just so keen, “If you want to work together” and we’re like, “Hell yeah”, we do. And then we just did all of the rest of our videos with him because he was just so enthusiastic and so up for playing.
Vlad: His day job was making educational videos for BT staff and he was just like, wow, I get to play. We get to build a set and be silly. And it’s like…
Katie: Yeah, “Do you want to come to a farm in the middle of nowhere and get in a lake and make a horror movie?” He was like, “Hell yeah, let’s go.”
Ali: ‘Laughter’ was fun. I ate so many tangfastics. I don’t ever want to eat that many tangfastics again.
RIL: So, you have the rest of the tour now. Any plans beyond that? Festivals?
Katie: We’re playing only one festival so far. In summer we’re playing Burn It Down Festival and actually we’re playing twice. We’re playing once as Slung and once as Limp Bizkit because Halloween last year we did a cover set where we played as Limp Bizkit and we sold out this venue. I was Fred Durst and everyone was dressed up. You (to Ali) were Wes Borland. We had someone being DJ Lethal on the decks. It was hilarious. And after that we were like, what do we do now? Because that was the best gig we’ve ever played. And it wasn’t as Slung, it was a cover set. So do we just become a tribute band? And then we actually ended up getting booked to play a festival from that as Limp Bizkit. And then we’re like, “Can we also play as Slung?” And they were like, “Yeah, OK then, fine.”
Ali: You’re going to get your Fred Durst cap out.
Katie: I spent a lot of money buying the official Fred Durst red hat, new era. But apart from that, future plans, gigs and stuff…
Vlad: Just more music and more shows.
Katie: Just vibing really. Just rolling through this record, trusting the universe, seeing what happens, just having a really good time.
RIL: So what can we expect this evening from you?
Katie: Ballads. Couple of ballads, couple of boogies. Maybe Ali climbs on something.
Vlad: Definitely Ali climbs on something.
Ali: Sparkly boots (holding a pair of sparkly purple boots).
Vlad: Sparkly boots.
Ali: Some pedals. Ravi is gonna drum.
Katie: Ravi does play the drums. We’ll probably talk a bit about our trip to IKEA that we took today.
Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Katie: Had some cinnamon rolls.
Ali: Hotdogs.
Katie: But you know what? You can expect lots of smiles. Yeah, genuinely, because I love doing this, and I think we all do. And I think we just have the funnest time. Even if we’re playing to three people, it’s immensely fun and silly to just get on stage and just yell and make noise and have everyone look at you.
RIL: Thank you so much for your time.
The performance was really special. Some of these songs feel stadium ready and to get that delivered in a small venue was amazing. There is an intuition between the four of them that will only continue to develop. Whilst Ali is quite laid back to chat to, he brings dynamic energy to playing guitar on stage. When he delivers the solos there is a real technical ability and an intensity. He does climb up on amps, lost in the moment. Vlad often plays in a stance where he leans back enough to make you worry about his knees and his balance. Ravi is incredibly solid behind the drum kit. Katie has the makings of a powerful frontwoman, someone who could give Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice a run for their money. They will likely come back with even stronger material given the constantly evolving understanding between them all.
‘In Ways’ CD: https://amzn.to/4fhI8Ms
‘In Ways’ vinyl: https://amzn.to/3H7hg4V
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