Interview: Is Tropical

Escaping into the wonderful world of “Is Tropical”, who “don’t attack the sea” but rather “make love to it”…

by Christina Burger

“Is Tropical” is the next best masked thing coming out of the squatting fields of the concrete jungle of London. Knowing one of them I found an entrance into the rabbit hole of their world and asked them some questions. It goes as follows…

Why the name and why the cloth-masks?
Our whole band centres around escapism. The name alone is very distant from the life we lead. London ‘Isn’t’ and ‘Tropical’ it ain’t. The masks are a visual form of this escapism. They detach us from the audience and set us aside as performers, and this allows any connection made between us and the fans to be built on an appreciation of our music, not just a pouting frontman. some people hate it, others love it. We’re not about to change because of someone disliking an aspect of our show.

Saw a picture of you riding bikes with animal masks on, why was that?
thats the kind of thing we tend to do when we dont sleep enough

Does and if so how does squat life influence your music, lyrics?
Living for free just allows us the chance to free up more time to concentrate on the band, due to not having to work mundane jobs to pay the rent. Our life styles aren’t depicted in our songs, more a complete fantasy of how we’d like to be living.

What kind of audience do you have?
It varies quite considerably which is great. It’s import for your music to have enough depth to it to appeal to a broad spectrum of people.

How would you describe your sound?
a bit shoegazey, lo-fi, drum heavy bass driven bedroom stadium pop

Who designed your cool band T-shirts? How does the image on them refelct the philosophy of your band? Who was responsible for the cover artwork of your CD?

we designed the shirts ourselves, and the sleeve for the record with a little help from ben from hit club who helped us check everything over and get it produced perfectly. we feel it’s important to have control over every aspect of the band, and making the artistic and design related decisions is just another area in which you can get your ideas across. the volcano image ties in to some of the images we project while we play live, but volcano’s are just really cool so maybe nothing that philosophical behind it…… maybe that humans are way less powerful than volcanoes and we’re lucky volcanoes aren’t sentient and mad at us otherwise we’d be doomed….

What music are you personally listening to? all-time favourites and current favourites?

d: all time fav’s at the moment are Creedence and DAF (Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft) though I realise they are really really different… current favourites are Age of Consent and Death to the Throne, the latter simon Djed the other day and thought they were amazing. I also like Neon Indian and Beach House right now…. and I like Women alot alot…

I have read that you are trendsetters for the “Nautical”-look, is that so and if so why did you chose that look?

What’s the nautical look, like Jacques Cousteau? If so that’s really good but I don’t think we are aware of this fashion, but since we’re already trendsetters for it I guess that we will continue to fly the flag for Jacques – “Alot of people attack the sea, but I make love to it.”