Give us a little background on the band and describe the “Ghotti Sound”.

     “Ghotti are Pat, Ugo and Howard and the sound is more to do with us all having our own vibe than any contrived or structured effort to sound a certain way.  We all write and we all play each others instruments so when a tune gets hammered out it’s tough to say who did what and why!  So long as we are feeling the tune, it works, so far as we are concerned.”


- - - INFLUENCES - - -
What are some of your major musical influences?

     “Our musical influences are more to do with writing than sound.  I love skool Motown but then I like Mr Bungle and Infectious Grooves too.  We are all pretty eclectic in our tastes - but basically, Pat’s into musicians, I’m into lyrics and emotion and Ugo is into anything interesting.  Right now I rate the Noisettes, 12 Stone Toddler, and the Goo Rarvey projects.”


- - - SONGWRITING & EQUIPMENT - - -
While many of the more recent tunes are more aggressive, an element in many of your songs that stands out to me is the patience you often have with your music, the willingness to let the song come gradually, to build at it’s own pace (Fallen and Filed Away are good examples of what I’m thinking of here).  This differentiates your songwriting a lot from much of the music I hear.  Comment on your approach to songwriting.  Can you talk about the lyric, melody, and songwriting?  Can you talk about the evolution of how your tunes come to be?  How does the band work to pull together a song?

     “It comes all different ways.  Some songs Pat, Ugo or myself will walk into the room with a pretty much finished track, then the others orchestrate and tweek until it works for all of us.  Some songs just appear out of a jam session, and others are bits of old songs that get reborn in new ones.  Who knows how it works?  We wrote a huge amount and try and keep the good and lose the bad.  Some songs we gigged 3 years ago I can barely remember now, but they will be revisited and sometimes they come back.  That way if a song isn’t working then we just leave it and do one that is.  Pat said writing tunes was a lot like cooking and I agree.  Some take time and need to slow roast, others you blow torch the fuck out of and see what comes out!”

To what degree does playing clubs change the type of music you write?

     “Playing clubs means you have to have an up tempo set that gets the room jumping.  You can’t go all EMO and shit when people have paid to have a good time and see a show which rocks their world.  So yes, it does change perspective, but like any gig - each crowd is different and you adapt to it.”

Can you comment on some of the equipment - guitars, amps, etc?  I really like the guitar sound.

     “Ugo switches his gear around.  He is constantly coming up with new sounds or effects - but, from memory, his constant companions are a line 6 tap delay, a cry baby wah peddle, a RAT peddle, and then it’s all Marshall head and cab (although he does use the Mesa occasionally).  His guitars are all about the pickups, so he has a modified Texas special and a collection of other guitars he uses for different sounds.  Pat has a custom Remo kit.  I use a Line6 Acoustix Variax for gigs and a custom made Stephen Hill nylon string for recording and writing. ”


- - - EP - - -
Plug your EP a bit if you like.

     “Rather not . . . . we have an EP you can buy if you like - but if I were you, I’d down load the tracks for free!  Oh - but you could do us a favour and go to Channel 4 and review and rate us (UK has only 5 main TV channels - so it’s a big deal over here).  The more who do, the better chance we have of getting cool shit like . . . . festival gigs, producers, etc are.”


- - - GHOTTI & THEIR MUSIC - - -
Of the songs posted on the UBW site, which one shows off the band the best, and which one is your favorite?

     “My favourite is “ASBO” right now, but that’s more to do with the live show and how much fun it is to play.  “Control” is like an old friend we’ve been playing it so long, and “Mayfly”, once the production and a few kinks get ironed out, is going to rock.  But over all, I’d say “Control” is the one to judge us by.”

“ASBO”    (HIFI, LOFI)

“Control” is the most popular tune by the band on UBW currently.  What would you like fans to know about this tune?

     “The song was one of the first we wrote together.  I normally do the lyrics and this one is about my brother who got spiked at a party when he was 19 and has had some pretty serious shit going on since then.  He’s seen the dark side of hell and still seems to manage to carry on.  The song was about his slide and how I recognized I could go the same way if I let myself - Hell, we all could.  So “Control” is really about any part of yourself, obsession, addiction, insanity, what ever . . . that you let out of it’s box and then can’t get back under control again.”

“This is better than Knightrider”    (HIFI, LOFI)