Focus: Belasis

Who are you and where are you from?
Belasis are Mozo, Griff and Chud and we’re all originally from Billingham. We all met at school, and over the decades have kept in touch, even though Mozo moved to Ontario in 2005.

What is it you do?
We basically do everything, in house. Write the music, write the lyrics, play all the instrumentation and singing, self produce and record ourselves. We also do the graphic design in house and produce limited edition offerings for our fans on our Bandcamp site.

How long have you been doing it?
Mozo played in the local punk scene back in the late 70’s for bands such as The Lice, Blitzkrieg Bop, No way, The Commercial Acrobats. All the guys then had regular employment outside of the music industry but decided to come back together a couple of years ago to form Belasis.

What inspires you?
We take inspiration from anything about which we can write a good story, whether that be global warming, political ineffectuality or going for a drive with your girlfriend/boyfriend or sky-gazing. We are all massive fans of Bowie and his body of work, which provided plenty of inspiration for our album.

Tell us about your music.
We originally conceived the album as a “covers” album but decided to give songwriting a go ourselves. There is now only one track on the album that’s a cover (Bowie’s “Slip Away”), the rest are all originals. We wrote the songs without any preconceived ideas on the style of music so that we could focus on the creativity. We’d describe it, overall, as alt/pop although our manager, Jamie Sellers (Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Alesha Dixon) nudges us more to the indie side of the tracks. We’ve been told that fans are picking up influences as diverse as Oasis, T. Rex, Bowie, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, 21 Pilots and Jackson Browne. 

What have you got coming up in the future?
Our first single from the album, The Man In The Big House, was released on 21st November and we intend to release a single every 4-5 weeks after that. The album has had a soft release and we will be promoting it ‘round about the same time. Then there’s always the tricky second album to write – we’ve got to crack on with that!

Where can people find out more about you?
There’s our Bandcamp page – Wasters & Ne’er-Do-Wells | Belasis (bandcamp.com) or you can look us up on Facebook.com.

Kevin Moor has an excellent internet radio show on DH9 from Stanley and will respond to requests. A really top show.

Also, I can’t recommend highly enough Mike Ryan’s “Unsigned Music Show” on First Choice Radio (available on DAB, Alexa and the internet), for all unsigned artists. Mike’s a big supporter of Belasis and often gives us a play.

Sound It Out Records in Stockton have physical copies of the CD.