How has the recording process been and is there anything special about it?
Keke: It’s quite interesting. When you’re a band I think it’s different from when you’re a soloist. You write melodies and lyrics but you don’t have the whole vision of how you want it to sound. But as a band, all the instruments we’ve got are on the album and there are no additions except for one song where there are trumpets. But the bulk of it is exactly as you see it on stage and I think it’s nice for us because it allows us to change the music in such a way that come live that’s when people are like “put your money where your mouth is” but we try to make sure that what we can accomplish in studio is what we can accomplish on stage. So it’s been quite interesting because we play the music in the studio exactly how we want it to sound like whereas with the first one, we weren’t even sure what the album sounded like. We knew exactly what it sounded like on stage. But it’s nice to see the fruit come into shape the way that we hoped.
Simz: That’s where the magic is – live you want the music to sound a lot better. We wanted to tone down the album so that when people come to the show they have a really great experience.
What did you use as you inspiration for this album?
Keke: The album is called I’m Still Standing, even though it’s hard to do. Sometimes we achieve something and you feel like the people you know should be the first ones to jump for joy but sometimes people are not happy to see you move forward. But despite the bad vibes and people wishing you ill, you push through and at the end of the day, you’re still standing. In keeping with what we did on the first album, we’re trying to share our stories, what we experience. Now it’s been two years, we’ve had lots of experiences. When we started out [and] people said “This isn’t going to go anywhere, you’re wasting your time, you must go back to school” but we’re still standing. It’s hard work for us to be here but we’re here.
You’ve doing a show in benefit of Equal Education for All. Why is that cause so close to your heart?
Simz: There’s something special about education because when people think about education they think of a change in state of mind, teaching you how to be able to help yourself. But that’s not how it’s turned out. Everyone that gets an education turns out exactly like everyone else and that’s not the idea of knowledge. Knowledge, you’re supposed to enrich yourself and we believe that if you can give the kids sufficient knowledge and the right knowledge that can help them become better people in society but also in themselves. Education has always been close to our hearts because that is where we met and even though we weren’t studying music, we always had this passion because we all felt that through music we could change people so much more because music is nice and it has a message.
Photo: Eddie Mafa
