Gettothefront: Firstly, many people are intrigued as to why you chose the name ‘Ou Est Le Swimming Pool’, could you tell us the reasoning behind this?
Ou Est Le Swimming Pool: It all started with us wanting to join the Eurovision Song Contest. We had no songs, no name, but we did own an acoustic guitar and an accordion. Those instruments combined with some wine and terrible French brought us to the epic name that is Ou Est Le Swimming Pool.
GTTF: Can you tell us a bit about your new single ‘Dance the way I feel’?
OELSP: Sure thing. It’s basically just a track to get everyone and anyone dancing. No matter who you are, you hopefully can forget all your troubles and do whatever you like. We’ve also had some great producers working on it, Trevor Horn and Anders Kallmark, so it’s sounding better than ever recently.
GTTF: You have done the festival circuit this year, how did you find it?
OELSP: This summer has been pretty amazing for us. We’ve been really lucky to get on as many festivals as we have done considering this is Pool Year 1, so we’ve made the most of all of them. Obviously Glastonbury was incredible, but also some of the smaller ones have been great. In fact small festival so much fun…
GTTF: Did you get to catch any bands while being at the festivals?
OELSP: We’ve seen so many bands this summer. I never ever thought I’d get to see Spinal Tap live so that was beyond incredible. They’ve still got it! But there were loads of great bands. The Horrors, Dan Black, Steel Pulse, Q Tip, Animal Collective, Crosby Stills and Nash. The list goes on and on.
GTTF: We have seen that you will be doing a few University fresher’s week gigs, are you nervous about performing to a bunch of students? As we have heard what the University crowds are like and they are hard to please.
OELSP: We weren’t worried until now. I’d always assumed that they would be reasonably easy to please. Surely everyone’s in a great mood in fresher’s week? Well, we shall have to see. We’re all looking forward to the gigs so hopefully everyone’s looking forward to seeing us play. We’ll definitely show them a good time.
GTTF: What has been the worst gig you have done so far?
OELSP: Well we don’t really want to name names, but we did have an exceptionally bad time in Glasgow. I think the fact that it took us 12 hours didn’t put us in the best of moods. But we definitely only spent about an hour there. I’m sure it will be better next time though. We’ve been pretty lucky apart from that.
GTTF: You all have an interesting and unique fashion style, do you st
yle yourselves and where do you get your inspirations from?
OELSP: We usually just dress and style ourselves how we want to. We constantly get bored of looking the same for too long so we always find ourselves trying something new. But a lot more thought goes in to photo shoots and gigs. We get kitted out in some choice stuff by some great designers and then just beg to keep the stuff.
GTTF: If you had a chance to collaborate with anyone artist (past or present), who would it be and why?
OELSP: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins would be damn cool. Mainly because he’s bat shit insane, but also you’ve got to have respect for anyone who actually has a song called Constipation Blues. He spends the whole track making horrendous noises. Genius. So either him or Steps.
GTTF: What would you be doing if you weren’t in the band?
OELSP: I reckon we’d be a vigilante crime fighting force. Showing criminals that crime has consequences. Or we’d be bums…
GTTF: What new music would you like to recommend to Get to the Front readers?
OELSP: There is loads out there. Kid Cola, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Ellie Goulding, Dan Black, Japayork and Armand Van Helden and A-Trak’s collaboration “Duck Sauce” is definitely worth a listen.
GTTF: What would be in Ou Est Le Swimming Pools rider?
OELSP: We do like to pride ourselves on our rider. We are yet to get any of the cool stuff, but one day…
We’ve got Gary Coleman impersonators, life size Tom Hanks cut outs, inspirational videos of Kerry Katona embarrassing herself and obviously lots of champagne. The list is epicly long though so we’ll leave it at that.
GTTF: Can you give Get to the Front readers a unique fact about the band?
OELSP: We actually wrote the Thunderbirds theme tune.
GTTF: Finally, what is next for Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, for the rest of this year?
OELSP: We’ll, as you said earlier, we’re off on a fresher’s tour. Then we should be off on a big support tour before the end of the year, but I can’t say who that is yet. Apart from that, it’s just releasing a couple of singles, filming a video for our Christmas mega hit. Hopefully we’ll get to do some work with some other artists or get some remixes done.
Listen to Ou Est Le Swimming Pool at Myspace
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Many people were asking at the show ‘Who is Sliimy’, but it is clear to say everyone went away with the answer that he is the next best thing.
It seemed to work on most songs, but hits like Pure just didnt sound right slowed down slightly. However, I came away impressed by the set, I had forgotten just how many truly fantastic songs the Lightning Seeds had recorded. Songs like Sense, Life of Riley and Lucky You reminded us why this band are held in such high esteem.
