Aniimalia Interview – 29.04.23

@alpaca.presents By Brandon van der Berg @vdb.brandon I had time to sit down with Marshall artist “Aniimalia” before their headlining slot at Alpaca Presents’ Crofters Takeover event to talk about their past, present and future. Check them out on Instagram @aniimalia_uk or on their Spotify Read below. You’ve just gotten off tour with Seek Harbour how was that? (Kira) Nice yeah, it was great to have a really good band to play with, you’re always looking to have not only good performers but good people but it just makes it so much more fun and luckily they were really nice people so we enjoyed the whole tour, its almost like having a little family for the weekend. What would you say your biggest mistake is as a band so far? (Kira) At first you’re a bit too nice, you allow yourself to be taken advantage of and you allow people to assume that because you’re a little band you should expect less, but you realise pretty quickly that you’re putting all of these hours in, all this effort and all of this travel people really respect that, but there is the odd person that’s like “oh we don’t fancy paying you” (Ben) As we go along there’s little stuff where we go “aw we should have done this, should have done that” but we’re learning loads. (Kira) I think because we won The Deal and that was very quick. For us as a band we prepared for it to take a long time, and then it didn’t, and we were suddenly like “there’s a lot of industry things we need to learn very very quickly” so that kind of ties in, starting off kind of naive but now we have an amazing team to work with. Is there anything that scares you about the success you’re facing? (Kieran) I think for a lot of us it’s the pressure, isn’t it? Sending in the demos and going “What do you think of this” and they’re all sat there like :/ (Max) The biggest fear is it going away. (Ben) Yeah, we all have jobs so we can’t put as much time into it as we’d like, but it’s like at what point is it imposter syndrome, do they really like it? How would we know? (Kira) At first, we had the honeymoon period of being on a label and afterwards we were like… (Max) We’ve gotta do our bit now (Kira) You have that little worry after a while about how much of this is real or temporary. We’ve noticed more recently that we have to put a lot more effort to keep it going, because at the end of the day its what we all want, its what we’ve been pushing for and we’re going to keep pushing for years and years. (Ben) Its only gonna get harder, its daunting but at the same time incredibly exciting. You guys found out you won the Kerrang competition the night you played Marble Factory, what was that first conversation like? (Kira) We all went to Kieran’s house I think, all rushing to get there and- (Ben) Yeah! That was it we had an email like “Just a quick chat, quick call just to see how youre getting on with the competition”. And I was thinking, nothing else has happened so I was like, what if? And I didn’t want like, that voice in your head I was like “naah keep it to yourself”, and then we were talking to Sophie and she drops it. We were screaming. (Kira) I love the way that you worded it at the time you were like “Wait, why would they put us on the call to tell us that we’ve not won?” We were like, Ben, we can’t get our hopes up. Trinity Centre, Marble Factory and Crofters Rights you’ve played before, kiss marry kill? [Collective sounds of deep thought] (Max) I know what mine are already. I would marry Crofters because I come here all the time anyway, Kiss Marble Factory and I’d Kill Trinity off. (Kira) I think Trinity was a very early gig for us. We didn’t have the same equipment; it was an amazing opportunity but it was very early on. But I think Marble Factory is my Marry, it was the first taste of a really big gig and a really huge opportunity. I do love Crofters though. (Max) I love it as a venue, it’s got everything going on. (Kira) Kiss Marble Factory, Marry Crofters and Kill Trinity. What surprised you most about working with Marshall? (Ben) {Intrigued ooo!} (Kira) I would honestly with Romesh especially, it was just how calm everything was. Because we were so- (Ben) He was like “4 Days? We could get a whole album done in that time”. (Kira) We expected it to be different because in studios quite often you can be up until midnight if the producer will allow and we were fully prepared we were like “We’re gonna get no sleep, we’re gonna be up all night, we’re gonna be on our A-Game” and then we went in and firstly, they had faith in us to do it- (Ben) Yeah that was the biggest factor. (Kira) People in the Marshall offices listen to our music. We were on a call once and our PR guy at the time Tristan comes in from the hall, opens the door and he’s blasting our music in the other room. They actually have faith in their artists. You have been a band now for 3 or 4 years, what is your favourite memory as a band? (Max) you all have to agree with me on this one, its gotta be when we had the call with Sophie. [Collective yeah!] (Ben) Shrieking, Jumping. (Max) I think that was the first and last time we had a group hug haha (Kira) I love that you’ve never confirmed me being in the band to this day (Max) I made a joke about that at download, I said she’s still on her trial period haha. (Kira) We have a lot of good memories and even when it gets stressful we really appreciate what we have. (Ben) Staying at yours’ [Max] for the night and you’re a festival go-er aren’t you so I pick up the water bottle and its just pure vodka. Do you have anything you’d like to talk about or promote? (Max) Our tour with Crystalline @crystallinebandofficial coming up. (Kira) Yeah that’s in June, mid June I think. Really excited to play with them like I was talking to the guys, I actually had a song of theirs saved before I knew anything about them before we ever even talked with them, so to get speaking with them is amazing. Its bands that you already like and that you know are good that get you really excited, its four days back-to-back which is always… interesting? (Max) Four days is just about the most I can handle back to back. (Kira) I’m surprised we handle each other for that long. (Ben) We’ve got Kingsfest like this time next Month. (Kira) that’s a festival in Wales that looks really good, we’re headlining the Saturday. (Max) And towards the end of the year we have Burn It Down Fest. (Kira) We’ve known that kind of since late last year and there are some amazing bands on that bill.