INTERVIEW: Post Punk heavyweights Ringlets on Influence, Wellington, the Future and more.

INTERVIEW: Post Punk heavyweights Ringlets on Influence, Wellington, the Future and more.  

 

if you have a functioning brain and any amount of taste, the music of Ringlets should need no introduction. i've spoken about them at length before and i'm hesitant to do it again. also, i've got a coffee date in 20 minutes as i type this and i haven’t taken a shower yet. below is my exclusive interview with Laszlo from Ringlets. another member makes an appearance by the end. read on.

First off, will you tell our readers who you are?

I’m Laszlo from Auckland. We are all from there. I play guitar in Ringlets. 

how did all of your members meet? my sources told me you all come from other bands, were you fans of your band mates early work?

We all met either through mutual friends or on the gig scene, or some hazy, deep-in-the-past mixture of the two.

to me, ringlets music sounds dense and uncompromising, while being spacious and lush at the same time. i can hear notes of bands like joy division, minutemen and gang of four in your sound. who would you say your main influences are and how did you discover them?

I would say the Jesus Lizard is my most direct influence. Also a year or two before we formed Ringlets, Leith and I bonded over XTC so they’re definitely in there. A compilation CD of their greatest hits was playing constantly when I was a child, but their body of work is so massive and so varied that getting back into them alongside Leith was very rewarding.

in recent years, there’s been a host of excellent post punk, goth and alternative acts populating new zealand. as the band i see as the most qualified to step up and lead the charge, are there any smaller, local bands you want to put people onto?

They’ve been around for so much longer but I saw Goya for the first time at the final Welcome to Nowhere and they were scary good. Dale Kerrigan are the best band in NZ right now. I wish everyone trying to make guitar music right now could watch those two bands and take notes. In terms of bands from our hometown, Mullbrain and Cold Ceiling are great, and Scran just put out an album. Listen to it. 

i’m someone who’s firmly planted in the lower half of the north island, i was wondering if, as “veterans” of the auckland scene, can you describe what it’s like for a band living up there, and how it compares to what you’ve seen playing across the country?

It’s probably harder for everyone to make it to band practice because things are more spread out. But that could work in one’s favour; I’ve seen Wellington bands that sound too well-rehearsed. The music school and everyone’s flats are so close together that you can end up squashing the possibility for pure, wobbly chaos to pour through. 

when i caught you at welcome to nowhere, a good third of your set list is unreleased, new material. Can fans expect a new album/ep soon? or are these deliberately live exclusive tracks?

We’re releasing our second album later this year. The first single will come out at the end of May.

 

would you say your music is more aimed towards freaks, or geeks?

We make music to satisfy our own taste. I’ve never been able to get nerds to leave me alone. I don’t know what they think I can do for them. You are a nerd Laszlo

 

finally, where can people find your music?

Our self-titled album is available on CD & streaming. It’s also on vinyl for those that are getting mad at all the disposable income piling up in their account.

POSTSCRIPT:

I’m Leith (the singer) and I don’t condone anything Laszlo has said here he is a liar and a fraud and NOT the mouthpiece for Ringlets honestly he can go FUCK himself.