Your Favourite New Band: Fixers

With their mixture of avant garde art-pop moments and sky scraping choruses, we here at Gigwise are most definitely fans of Oxford band Fixers.

Their new singe ‘Swimhaus Johannesburg’ is on course to be their biggest hit yet, following the anthemic ‘Crystals’ and Beach Boys homage of ‘Iron Deer Dream’. We caught up with the bands lead singer Jack to get the low down on just what makes Fixers tick

Gigwise: Can you briefly describe to us how the band got together?

Fixers: We all knew each other from previous bands within Oxford. I wanted to do something new and fresh, I had a bunch of demos that had a thick Spector-esque wall of sound feel to them that I had cobbled together in my bedroom using one keyboard. We all loved the demos and realised we may as well have a go at playing them, we use a lot ofsamplers in our live show so we can utilise studio samples in a live setting.

Gigwise: Who are your favourite musical acts past and present?

Fixers: Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and Arthur Russell.Listening to some Burzum, Mariah and Whitney. As far as new music is concerned, its hard because there is so much that I’m listening too. At the moment I’m listening to a bit of Connan Mockasin and Ty Segall. I have their albums and i'm slowly drip feeding myself them along with about a thousand other things right now, its crazy cool.

Gigwise: Tell us a bit about your new single Swimhaus Johannesburg.

Fixers: Its got a Italo-Disco vibe. It just so happens we recorded it the same week we were all listening to a lot of 90's Dance music. I think it wraps up our obsession kinda nicely, we are all sick to death of Sash now.

Gigwise: Would you say the song is typical of Fixers style?

Fixers: We're like a "found-footage band" - I fall in love with sounds more than songs themselves and I think that reflects a lot of songwriting. We don't really abide to any style. We can have a demo that sounds like Phil Spector and when we finally come to recording it, if we're all listening to dance music then it'll come out sounding like dance music.

Fixers - 'Swimmhaus Johannesburg'.

Gigwise: Are you working on an album at the moment? If so, how far along are you and when can we expect to hear it?

Fixers: We are in the middle of working on an album. I don't like the unearthing of album details, it gives away all the magic and naivety. When I was a kid I used to think that when you heard music coming from a shop that there were actual musicians upstairs playing.

Gigwise: You belong to what some people might call an 'Oxford scene' alongside Trophy Wife, Chad Valley et al. Does it feel like a scene there or is it just lots of bands who happen to be from the same city?

Fixers: I've never been a fan of scenes. Oxford is nurturing a lot of bands within its walls which is great but to geographically define music is silly. We are friends with Trophy Wife and Chad Valley but the only time we really see them is when we are playing at the same venues or festivals. I think we still support and help each other out though which is cool. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs are cool too, we finally got to see Orlando's show in Nottingham when we played Dot-To-Dot festival together.

Gigwise: What is a Fixers live show like?

Fixers: It depends whether The Wolfman is present or not.

Gigwise: Finally, what are your hopes for the band? What's the big dream and where do you see yourself in twelve months time?

Fixers: In a years time I aim to be laying on a synthetic beach in Berlin sipping coconut water with my girlfriend, listening to Jason Warner's solo album.

Fixers new single, 'Swimhaus Johannesburg', is released on August 29.