Crux have established themselves in the local music scene in Newcastle headlining the Engine Room, The Globe, Little Buildings, HMV Newcastle, and o2 Academy2 Newcastle, playing in local festivals such as Scoop Festival, Afterlight Music Festival, and the Canny Fringe Festival, and have played gigs with upcoming artists such as India Arkin, Keiran Bowe, and Lizzie Esau. Crux have also received support from Tom Robinson on BBC Radio 6, Nick Roberts on BBC Newcastle, and have had all songs played on Amazing Radio. 'Save Me' is about how people in power have the authority to massively improve people’s lives and choose not to.
By Kamil Bobin
Discovered via Musosoup
Kamil) Hey Crux, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. What first got you into music?
Hi Kamil, thanks for having us! For me, it was seeing AC/DC at Tampa when I was 12 years old, I was in awe of Angus Young’s guitar playing and got my first guitar just two months after on my 13th birthday.
Describe your favorite and least favorite part about being a musician.
I love writing music, it’s just such a great creative outlet. I quite often struggle to put my thoughts into words, and I just find it very therapeutic being able to articulate my thoughts into music. My least favourite part is definitely the business side to it, capitalising on something so pure!
Your latest song is 'Save Me'. Can you share with us the background of its creation and did any unusual things happen during its creation?
I actually wrote this song quite a way back in summer 2019. At the time, we were presenting song demo’s to a producer and he advised we needed to write a song with a strong chorus, and I spent a couple of days thinking about this. Resultantly, I started humming the chorus to Save Me, and when I got back from holiday I added a verse, some instrumental parts and created a demo with it. A few different things got in the way of recording it straight away, such as covid, but we eventually recorded it in March last year. With its sort of reverberated ethereal sound, we went down to The Nave Studios in Leeds which is an old church and really used the acoustics to get the sound we were looking for.
How do you differ from most other artists?
I like to think we mix quite a few genres, such as grunge, post-punk, and progressive rock to create a unique sound. We’re also not afraid to sing about real world issues.
Where are you from and do you have a stable home or do you prefer travelling?
We’re all from Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. We love our home and regularly make references to our beloved home town in quite a few of our songs such as Bigg Market. This doesn’t mean we don’t love travelling, I’m sure we’d all love to tour the world with our music if we could!
How would you describe the music that you typically create?
It’s nice and easy to label it as Alternative Rock, but I think a more in depth accurate description would be a mix of grunge, post-punk, and post-progressive rock. I’d say Save Me even has elements of Chamber Psych.
How do you nurture your own creativity?
That’s a good question, one I’m not sure of myself. Normally I start with thinking of melodies, which can come at me quite randomly. Today I got distracted at work and spent 10 minutes trying to figure out a melody in my head on the guitar!
In terms of lyrics though, if I know what I want the song to be about I’ll try and wait until I’m feeling a specific emotion before writing the lyrics. For example, if the song’s quite heavy and it’s going to be about politics, I’ll wait until I’m in a really bad mood about the government to write the lyrics. And I’ll also try reading related poetry/literature. For instance, before writing the lyrics to Living in Dystopia I read related dystopian literature such as 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and some of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. It probably sounds all a bit ostentatious, but I enjoy this writing process!
If you could go open a show for any artist who would it be?
It would have to be Muse, our love of the band helped bring us together. We used to cover a lot of their songs when we first formed and I think their music has been a big influence on our song writing.
Who's your ideal musician to collaborate with and why?
I think it would be really interesting to collaborate with Nigel Godrich. I love his work with Radiohead and it would be really interesting to see what we would do in a studio if we approached him with a song we’d written, but one can dream!
What are your plans for the future?
We recently recorded four new songs with Sam Grant (guitarist and producer for Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs) which we’ll be releasing at some point this year. Before we release them we’re going to approach a couple of independent labels and see if they would like to help us with the releases with the view of potentially releasing an album. If we get pied then we’re thinking of releasing an album independently so watch this space!