Biffy Clyro exclusive

The band on why they are releasing singles long before the album

10 July 2008 - More than a year since their last studio album Biffy Clyro don’t have plans to release another full album until 2009, but have made the controversial move to release singles.

The Scottish rockers play T in the Park festival in Kinross-shire this weekend (11-13 July), where it’s inevitable that they’ll play their new song Mountains - which comes out on 25 August.

They told 6 Music why they wanted to release some new material rather than wait until the album was finished.

“We’ve been working on new stuff for the album for a while and we had the song pretty much together,” bassist James Johnston explained, “and we just felt that maybe we should put it out rather than wait a year for people to be able to see it.

“We didn’t want the song to get stale, sitting and festering in the practice room, so we recorded it last week and it’s sounding great.”

The band are thrilled with the response they’ve had to the new material at shows, as Johnston also explained: “It’s already a bit of a live favourite and we’ve only played it a couple of times.”

"We didn’t want the song to get stale, sitting and festering in the practice room, so we recorded it last week."
Biffy Clyro bassist

The Glaswegian trio’s bassist went on to explain why it’s important to them to show fans they’re still writing: “It just keeps people interested and shows them that the band’s still working and still producing stuff,” he said.

While it diverts from usual methods of releasing the single with an album, he reckons that it can only be a positive move to keep their output going.

“It’s weird that it hasn’t happened more in the past,” he said. “I think bands are catching onto it and it has worked well for a few bands to keep the ball rolling - it’s a good thing for us.”

With the music industry in flux and the rising trend amongst bands to give their music away for free – Biffy Clyro say they have more important things to concentrate on.

Johnston said: “I’m sure the record company will take care of how they want to sell it or whether they want to give it away free but I think for us the most important thing is to try and deal with the music.

“That said, that’s what we’ll be concerning ourselves with over the next couple of months - people will end up downloading it for free no matter what we do with the album.”

Georgie Rogers