GUISE have been dropping immense songs over the last year and have certainly carved a niche for themselves in the local music scene since they write and produce great songs and are extremely charismatic. We caught up with Jassy, Louie and Mike and riffed on such subjects as the merits of cheeky spandex, favourite bands and influences, and the importance of always aiming to be yourself…
Liverpool Noise: Congratulations on your sold-out gig for the 4 March at The Jacaranda! It’s a feel-good milestone, isn’t it?
Jassy: It’s honestly amazing; we were all aiming for a sell-out show, but we didn’t expect it to happen within three weeks! We can’t take all the credit for it though, couldn’t have done it without the support acts, they really helped push out the show too. Really looking forward to it, gonna be a naughty night!
Louie: Thank you! I’m honestly over the moon! We were aiming to sell out the show, but we didn’t expect it to happen in only three weeks! Our support acts really helped to get the word out too so we couldn’t have done it without them! It’s an incredible feeling & we’re so grateful to everyone that supports us. This is just the beginning!
Mike: It really is, we’re all looking forward to it, and here’s hoping it’s the first of many!
LN: It’s obvious that, to compliment the excellent musicianship, that image is important. I personally love the way that you take a certain look from a musical genre and give it a knowing twist, with an element of archness about it. Am I onto something, or completely wide of the mark?
Jassy: Personally, I’ve always dressed flamboyant, what you see us wearing in the band isn’t very far off what I wear to go out in on a Saturday night, but with all honesty, there are quite a few reasons for the outfits. Part is a bit of a nod to some older acts, I love The Sweet & KISS, all that type of stuff, I love the music and I’ve always loved their larger-than-life look. At the end of the day, I’m just some kid from a council estate, but I slap on some makeup, cheeky bit of spandex and what not, suddenly, everyone looks at me in a different light, strangers when I’m out and about in clubs, bars etc, they love it. They want pics with me and people I’ve never met before will come up to me and say how they recognise me, and all their mates love it when they see me, they love to see what I’ve got on, people seem to get this real positive buzz from it.
But on the flip side of things, it’s also a bit of a statement, as much as a positive buzz the outfits get, I get a lot of people telling me they wish they had the confidence to wear certain clothing, I guess they see me dressed a bit crazy and feel they can be open about it. I feel a lot of the problem stems from society expecting people to dress certain ways and label themselves, I think it makes it a lot harder for people to just be comfortable in their own skin, doing their own thing, whatever that may be. Hence the name ‘GUISE’, a lot of people are walking around, presenting themselves in some sort of guise, longing for that comfortability and acceptance of who they are, so the outfits we wear you could say are our own ‘guise’ and a nod to that struggle.
Louie: I’ve always been quite eccentric & loved bold, glamorous outfits so when I met Jassy & Mike we were already on the same page image wise! I’ve always loved experimenting with makeup too, especially with bright coloured eyeshadow & lipstick so for me, that naturally became a big part of my personal style within the band. Jassy is really into makeup too, so we often give each other recommendations! It’s a regular occurrence that one of us will get a new eyeshadow pallet & then the other one will end up getting the same pallet a week later!
Mike: No you’re definitely right, there’s nothing wrong with a band getting up in a t-shirt and jeans and rocking it out, a lot of my favourite bands are that way, but for our band we felt that with the heavy nods to 70’s and 80’s glam rock that it’s a fitting style and works for us, plus there’s just the fact of standing out in the very crowded pool of music available today, and of course there’s humour there, it’s all done in good fun but there’s a sincerity there too.
LN: I’ve heard that GUISE are encouraging people to “dress to impress” when they come to the gig – so acres of flowing locks, spandex, and killer heels?
Jassy: Now that would be an interesting sight, I’d be honoured if people decided to do that! With all honesty, I don’t want to encourage people to dress a certain way, wear whatever you’re comfortable in and makes you happy, if people show up and have a good time, that’s all I want.
Louie: For me, the main thing is to encourage people to feel comfortable in their own skin. If that means dressing flamboyant then awesome! And if that means wearing jeans & a t-shirt, then that’s cool too!
Mike: Of course, but just don’t make us feel underdressed!
LN: It is evident that production values are so important to the band. Do you have total control over these factors?
Jassy: Yeah, we produce everything ourselves, both me and Mike have been practicing recording and mixing for years, I even went to university for a couple years doing music production, so with the skills we’ve acquired, we can confidentially achieve the sound we want.
Up to now the process has been a session drummer recording their parts, sending over the stems to me, Mike recording his bass in his house and sending the stems my way and Louie recording vocals around at mine. From there I’ll mix and master it, but the rest of the band always has some input there too.
I personally enjoy us having complete control over it, we can spend as much time as we want getting everything perfect, as many takes as we want with no worry of time constraints, we really take advantage of that, backing vocals in choruses, a lot of songs can have up to fifty vocal tracks alone, wouldn’t be surprised if some had more! We take the time to double track all the lead vocals, I even go ahead and double track all my lead lines/solos in songs, some are even quad tracked, it can take a fair bit of time getting it tight, but it’s a big part of our sound, I love it!
Louie: Personally, I’m not really involved within the production side of things as this isn’t my forte. Although if I have an idea for something then I’ll always put it forward!
Mike: We do, we record and produce everything ourselves from home and put a fair bit of time and effort into it. Both Jassy and I have been into recording as a hobby for years so it’s only natural that we have a polished sound.
LN: What are your musical influences?
Jassy: My influences are all over the place, I love all kinds of music, it can go from Rose Royce, to Duran Duran, throw some classic metal in there like Judas Priest for good measure too! The likes of KISS, Rick Derringer and Van Halen are a massive influence. AOR music too, can’t be forgetting that, stuff like Stan Bush, I just love how melodic all of that is, it’s pretty much pop music with a guitar, it’s phenomenal!
Louie: I grew up with quite a mixture of music styles to be honest, mainly Country, Rock, Pop & Musical Theatre. My Dad, Nicky, was a country singer so I naturally started singing country first. The first song I ever recorded was a country cover of Fields of Gold by Sting when I was 11 which I recorded in my Dads living room! This was just for fun so the recording never went anywhere but it’s a wonderful memory! When I was 12, my Stepdad, Tony, introduced me to Led Zeppelin which was his favourite band. So, I think that’s where my love of rock music began! I started listening to more music from previous decades such as Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Journey, Joan Jet etc. but it wasn’t until I was about 18 that I decided that that was the direction I wanted to go in with my own music. As for more modern influences, I’m hugely inspired by Lzzy Hale from Halestorm. I just think she’s an incredible all-round musician and her vocals are phenomenal, so she is a big inspiration to me vocally
Mike: I love a lot of different music from much of the metal from the 80’s and 90’s to pop like prince and the beach boys but I think the old standby is a lot of classic rock like Aerosmith, Alice Cooper and Cheap Trick.
LN: If you had a chance to work with any music producer, past or present, alive, or dead, who would it be?
Jassy: There’s quite a few I’d love to work with, it’s quite hard to settle on one…. I’ll go with Mutt Lange, I mean, his productions are amazing, his work has helped influence some of the decision I’ve made when producing our tracks. I mean, ‘Hysteria’ from Def Leppard, what an album, more so, that production, one word, filthy.
Louie: I’ll be honest, I don’t really know many producers so I’m probably not the best person to answer this one! If I could work with any musician, it would be Stevie Nicks, it would be my absolute dream to work with her on a song!
Mike: Probably Bob Ezrin for the sheer number of classic albums he’s worked on.
LN: How do you see yourself fitting in to the local music scene?
Jassy: Honestly, I’m not even sure; maybe it’s too soon to really have a proper grasp on that considering this next gig will only be our second as a band. You know, there’s two ways to look at it, on one hand, I’d like to think people like & support the band in the local scene with our first headliner & second gig being a sell-out. The flip side on that though is a lot of local acts tend to only gig with bands that have a similar sound to them, obviously we’re not the most original band in the world, but locally, I haven’t heard other bands that sound similar to us, so I’m unsure of a scene that we can specifically fit into locally. I think with something like that, time will tell!
Louie: It’s only early days yet but I’d hope we’ll fit in nicely within the local music scene. Although, as Jassy said, I’ve not heard any local bands with a similar sound to us so it might be difficult for us to fit in any of the more niche scenes. Maybe we’ll create our own! Who knows?!
LN: What has 2022 got in store? The GUISE debut album perhaps?
Jassy: A GUISE album would be great, but personally I think it’s far too soon for that, but who knows what could happen later in the year, we have the material for something like that, a mystery album could get whipped out if we all felt it was the right move! All I know I can confidentially confirm, there’ll be a lot more singles to follow throughout the year, which also means more videos! We don’t have a date for it yet, but our next single & music video for a track called ‘Identity Crisis’ should be seeing a release in April.
Louie: As much as I would love to do an album, I think it might be a little too soon for us just yet. We’ve got lots of singles & music videos lined up for this year though!
Follow GUISE on Facebook and Instagram for updates and check out their YouTube channel for all their releases.
Steve Kinrade
