Cassels

Name?
Jim Beck.

Where are you from?
Chipping Norton.

What do you do?
Guitar and vox in Cassels.

Describe your style in three words?
Cheap. Borderline scruffy.

You can make a record with anyone from history?
Probably Graham Coxon? I was obsessed with him growing up so it would be childhood dream come true. I’m not massively into Blur but still love his solo stuff. He covers a lot of styles across his albums so he also indirectly introduced me to loads of new music. Coffee & TV and You’re So Great are my favourite Blur tracks because they’re the ones he sings on. 

What’s the best show you’ve ever been to?
Impossible to pick just one, but Housewives at The Shacklewell Arms last year was up there. It was unlike anything I’ve seen before - completely unique and a little bit frightening.

What British music icons inspire your sound today?
See above (Graham Coxon), and I guess maybe The Smiths. Discovering them was a massive thing for me - up until that point I thought that to play ‘rock’ music or music with guitars you had to subscribe to a certain machismo; pelvis thrusting, foot up on the monitor type stuff. The Smiths made me realise that wasn’t the case, and I could essentially be the slightly effeminate and sensitive young chap I was (and still am today). The fact Morrissey wrote lyrics which weren’t just about fictional girls was a big influence, as was Johnny Marr’s guitar playing.

You can spend an hour with anyone from history?
This is pretty pretentious but I’ve just finished reading ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ so wouldn’t mind having a quick chin-wag with Nietzsche. A lot of his writing around ‘The death of God’ seems pretty prescient, so I’d like to get his take on the way the world has gone since he popped his clogs.

Which British subculture means the most to you?
Punk I suppose. We sometimes get asked about what punk means to us or whether we consider ourselves a punk band, and I have to say on the whole I’m pretty cynical about it as I don’t think ‘punk’ really means anything anymore. Equally, I’m not sure all the ideology people attach to it actually stands up to scrutiny. But if ‘punk’ is referring to angry music which originated in the 70’s, there’s no doubt that our band wouldn’t exist without it.

If you could share the bill with any British band in history?
Maybe Dananananaykroyd? Never got the chance to see them, and think we would work pretty well on a bill together.

What music did you listen to growing up?
I was one of those kids who religiously bought the NME and looked up every single band they wrote about. This meant I caught the tail end of that indie boom in the mid-noughties which spawned the likes of Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Futureheads, Razorlight (ha), Pigeon Detectives (ha ha) and Jo Lean and the Jing Jang Jong (ha ha ha). Then I was well into that short-lived ‘nu rave’ thing - Late of The Pier’s album and Klaxons first album are still great.

Noisy indie punk pop inspired duo hailing from Oxfordshire comprising of brothers, Jim & Loz Beck.

'Foreword' is a collection of all their EP's to date be available in Spring 2017. Cassels will also be recording and releasing their debut album in Autumn 2017.