My Inspiration: Any Hot Drinks – 3223

Newcastle trio Any Hot Drinks release their debut album 3223, which was recorded at the soon-to-be-demolished Rocking Horse Rehearsal Rooms in Durham City. The album explores themes such as LGBT romance, individual spirituality and the impact of separation and each track will come with its own music video. Sonically, it’s an impassioned blend of metal, grunge and desert rock sounds with vocals that vary from tender and melodious to booming choral chant.

Here the band tell us more about what inspired it…

Jack (drums), Matty (guitar) and I have been rehearsing as a band since 2016. I’d known Matty since 2008 when he walked in on me and… actually, we don’t need to share that story here! What is relevant, is that we hit it off and messed around writing songs and jamming on and off ever since. We met Jack through a mutual friend. I was feeling a bit constrained in my old band and wanted to do something purely for fun with a couple of musically open-minded friends. 

People may question the length of time from practising to releasing the album. The answer is that we simply never intended to release anything. When we initially got together we would just improvise and make music for the sake of it. Over time the music just organically developed into tracks, and the tracks have led us to an album that we felt was worth sharing.

Jack was good enough to put his painting skills to use for the artwork, and I spent a bit of time trying hard to put together some videos that match the feel of each song. The music is a bit unusual, so we felt like a visual element was helpful to contextualise the sounds. Matty and I are quite fond of drone music, which has a similar approach to matching the auditory and visual experience.

We’re really excited to finally release the album on the 3rd of February. It contains 6 original songs that have a wide range of influences crammed in there. There are so many influences at work it’d be boring for a reader if I listed them all, but listeners may recognise the feel of artists such as Nick Cave, Slint, Mercury Rev, Thy Light, Can, IDLES and Mayhem to name a few.

Highline
Jack brought this bassline idea for me to play along with this really reflective vocal line about his time in New York. The line “all I thought about was you” hit me hard straight away, as anyone who’s travelled knows how hard it is to leave the people you care about behind. 

Dreaming the Myth
Deeply rooted in Matty’s pagan beliefs, I was really scared that I wouldn’t do justice to this track, as I had to improvise most of the bassline on the day it was recorded… I still don’t know how I played some bits when I listen back! We used vocals sparingly so that the listener could be transported by the instrumentals before Matty comes in with his big vocal to bring the listener back to reality.

Christ’s Pilate
I often wonder if the listener will notice that I play the same 3 chords in the same order throughout this one. I admire the repetitive baselines in krautrock and wanted to use the technique to create a hypnotic sound that changes its feel based on the sharpness of how those repetitive notes are played. Lyrics wise the song is very much about my personal experience of being a single dad and the difficulties that separation can bring.

Spirits Walk With Me
My relative was going through their end-of-life journey when Matty brought this concept of a song about the line between the real and spirit worlds. I like to believe that my gentle reflections about my relative moving towards the spiritual side of things are counterbalanced well with Matty’s powerful exaltations to the gods he believes in.

Truncheon Meat
Ah, our sexy song for the lovers out there! This is another time where Jack gave me a bassline to play around with and it became a song. I feel like this love song between a man and his policeman crush is a real melting pot where our styles came together to make something that sounds uniquely us!

15 Hour Day
A song I imagine that a lot of people can relate to… a really long and boring day at work. This was the first song we put together as a band. If Truncheon Meat was a melting pot, this is more of a tossed salad! The song has distinct sections that are very Mauro, Matty or Jack depending on where you are in the song.