Hailing from Manchester, Florin’s been grabbing the attention of fans both in the UK and across the pond with their fresh and unique take on the indie-rock genre. With their new single “Look Down” out now, Florin chatted to us about how their hometown has influenced the band’s sound, what the writing process behind “Look Down” was like, and what we can expect from the band’s debut EP.
What is the story of Florin? How did you all meet and decide to create music together?
Hayden [guitar], Rob [bass], and Doug [drums]have always enjoyed the same kinds of music, and have played together since high school. Jack [vocals/guitar] met Hayden at college, and managed to infiltrate the group after showing Hayden one of his original songs. It was then that Florin was born and we started writing our own stuff.
As a band from Manchester, how has the UK music scene and history influenced the music and style of Florin?
We’re really enthusiastic about the Manchester music scene and try to go to gigs as regularly as possible. We went to Strange Waves Festival not too long ago, which featured some great bands like Omni, Dead Pretties, and Parquet Courts. We’re particularly looking forward to seeing Gengahr and Jungle in the coming months. Obviously, the historic Manchester music scene is a massive inspiration, but we try to strike a balance between being influenced by past Manchester icons and doing our own thing.
Florin’s music is often hard to categorize into one single genre. How would you describe your music for those that may have not heard it before?
We’re always struggling with how to categorize our music. Our earliest songs got compared to The Strokes, David Bowie, and Arctic Monkeys – this doesn’t seem to happen as much these days (hopefully because we’ve started to find our own musical path). We each have our own musical interests and we try to mix things up as much as possible while we’re writing/recording, to hopefully drag us into a more original way of thinking. The artists we’ve been listening to most recently are probably Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground, and Car Seat Headrest.
What was the writing process and inspiration behind your latest single “Look Down?”
“Look Down” started as an acoustic song Jack wrote when he was 15, but had been long forgotten. The Florin incarnation of the track has a completely different sound, now that the whole group have been able to work their magic on it: part by design, part by happy accident, things just seemed to fall into place very naturally.
You’re planning to release an EP in the next few months. What can you tell us about the writing and recording process so far and will the EP’s sound reflect what we hear on “Look Down?”
The other songs on the EP are definitely distinct from “Look Down.” We had an incredible time recording at Edge Recording Studio, and the producer Mark Winterburn, was excellent at using his expertise to help give the songs a kind of shared atmosphere. We’re really happy with the way they all fit together. The EP will feature one of our earliest songs, as a kind of thank you to those fans who have been with us since the beginning. Hopefully, there should be something for everyone, and a few surprises along the way.
As a band, you are all relatively active on social media especially Facebook. Whether positively or negatively, how has social media impacted Florin since the band formed?
Social media is a difficult one… definitely a bit of a double edged sword. It has certainly allowed us to share our music with an international audience, in a far more personal way than we could have dreamt without it. But in a wider sense, it has also meant that record companies tend not to support developing artists in the way they once did, and this inversion of the old model has meant that investment needs to come from the artists themselves, which can make things tricky.
Aside from the release of your EP later this year, are there any goals that Florin hopes to achieve in 2018?
It’s hard to say what the future holds. We like to think that we will finally complete our verbatim musical adaption of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets or manage to appear on Celebrity Big Brother before the show is cancelled.
Follow Florin on social media: Facebook // Twitter // Instagram // Soundcloud
