{"id":4949,"date":"2014-05-27T21:52:07","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T12:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ezramag.wordpress.com\/?p=4949"},"modified":"2014-05-27T21:52:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T12:22:07","slug":"interview-stefan-from-the-midnight-beast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ezramagazine.com\/?p=4949","title":{"rendered":"Stefan [TMB] | Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\">House Parties and Shtick Heads<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hailing from south-west London in the U.K, The Midnight Beast have been at it again with the second season of their self titled series on e4 having already aired earlier this year and now they&#8217;re about to release a second album; Shtick Heads. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Producing and recording under their own label, it has given The Midnight Beast\u00a0creative\u00a0freedom to pretty much do whatever they want; and it&#8217;s working. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">With sell out shows around the U.K and an upcoming opera show on the Comedy Central channel in the U.S airing early next month, The Midnight Beast are the envy of <span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><a title=\"The Midnight Beast - Just Another Boyband\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J0mH5epMSp4&amp;list=PLD734E7E4858A1C09\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">all other boy bands<\/span>.<\/span><\/a><\/span> Below, we catch up with Stefan Abingdon, lead singer of the band to talk tours, house parties and musicals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Hey Stef, so you just finished up at the Dot to Dot festival, how was that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Incredible thanks. A weekend of incredible crowds, hells angels, stage invasions, Macaulay Culkin and horror films.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E:That sounds pretty crazy! So we hear you\u2019re releasing a new album soon? What was it like working on the songs together?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Yes, the first album was an amalgamation of old and new stuff since the beginning of the beast&#8230; With Shtick Heads apart from Friends For Never it&#8217;s all new stuff. I feel like Dru and I have learnt a lot more as producers so we got a chance to have real fun pushing ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Ke$ha - Tik Tok Parody \/ The Midnight Beast Ft ST\u00a3FAN\" width=\"750\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D4npUdfEmbQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Thinking back to the yesteryear of Tik Tok and the &#8220;Down&#8221; parody, you seem to thrive on doing things yourselves and having control over content and your music. Do you think not being signed to a record label has been a positive for the band? If so, how?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: It can obviously impact on how many people hear your music but if you&#8217;re lucky enough to have people watching your stuff and you know what you want to do with it, then it&#8217;s the ideal situation. We&#8217;re all control freaks, with the editing, mixing, producing, mastering, artwork, merchandise, choreography etc etc so I don&#8217;t think it would work any other way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Once the album releases, what else is in store for The Midnight Beast? In a recent interview you said you\u2019d possibly like to do some kind of musical, something along the lines of The Book of Mormon?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: That&#8217;s the dream. To be in one theatre in a never changing space that we can do stuff with would be amazing. We&#8217;ve got a modern day opera about a house party for now with Comedy Central US, out on June 10th&#8230; We&#8217;re taking steps!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Love Bites - The Midnight Beast\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QxwAz1HGXM0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: You&#8217;re getting there! So the new album &#8216;Shtick Heads&#8217; features \u201cLove Bites\u201d, an original. Where did you source your inspiration for that and what how did you go about planning the film clip?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Warm Bodies was coming out at the time, with our mate Nicholas\u00a0Hoult (who was in our video <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3PPnub_wyJ0\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Lez Be Friends<\/span><\/a><\/span>). We liked the whole &#8216;in love with a zombie&#8217; thing, Ash came up with the idea of songifying it so we knew we had to find someone cool to be in the video. We decided to get Kathryn Prescott involved after working with her earlier in the year. It just so happened to snow on the day of filming which was also my birthday so it looked incredible! We&#8217;d always wanted to do something a little longer than our usual stuff, the hardest part was fitting all three of us into the story!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: In a recent interview, you said that sometimes a song can feel great on paper, but when going to record it, sometimes it just doesn\u2019t work. How do you know as a band, that a song is ready? Does it have to meet any of your own, personal expectations that you have for your music?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Absolutely, we&#8217;ve had tons of ideas that make one of us laugh but not the others. Straight away that will never work, if we can&#8217;t judge it then who can? We need to know it&#8217;s going to stand the test of time no matter how stupid the subject matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Since we last spoke in March, Ash has released his own clothing line called Dead Lame. How\u2019s that going? Yourself and Dru model for the clothing line we presume? (Haha)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: It&#8217;s been going great for Ash and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/deadlame.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline;\">Dead Lame<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>. It&#8217;s awesome to be in the position we&#8217;re in, to release cool stuff like Ash did with Dead Lame. Yep, Dru and I are mere models&#8230; Ash hasn&#8217;t asked us to appear in a shoot yet. &#8230;Fingers crossed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Main One - The Midnight Beast\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DF_uvbTk7VE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Also since we last spoke, you have filmed and released season two of The Midnight Beast, played at various tours and now you\u2019re about to release an album\u00a0on June 2nd. Do you guys ever take vacations?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Funnily enough yes! Ash went to Mexico and I travelled to Jamaica for the first time, Dru has been happy enough meditating in Wimbledon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: If you could have any character (not actor) from a British television show feature in an episode of The Midnight Beast, who would it be and why?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: It would have to be David Brent from The Office. I don&#8217;t know what he&#8217;d be doing there, but I just re watched the series and it&#8217;s a changing point in British comedy. It was the first style of comedy the three of us bonded over and the Brent personality still runs strong in our veins.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Any news on season three of The Midnight Beast or touring in Australia? It hasn\u2019t been \u2018beasted\u2019 yet!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: We&#8217;ve just been so busy with our Comedy Central opera but we want to come and Beast Australia. I have so much family out there so I think we need to bloody man up and go sofa surfing with our laptops and microphones. Ezra do you want to put on a house party tour with us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"One Direction - You &amp; I Parody The Midnight Beast\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/05jwQt0cjMM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: Yes we&#8217;d absolutely love to! House parties are certainly the way to go (haha). So for someone travelling over to London, what&#8217;s your recommendation for the best place to relax and listen to some live music?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: For relaxation the electric cinema in Notting Hill Gate is the one, you can watch a film on a bed with good alcohol&#8230; What could be better? For live music it would have to be our festival scene, Camden Crawl is a really interesting inner city festival with some great new bands. I first saw Odd Future play there and it was ruckus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">E: And finally, if you could each live each other&#8217;s lives for a day, who would you trade places with and what would you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">S: Ash and Dru would trade with me no doubt, who bloody wouldn&#8217;t?! They&#8217;re always complaining about wanting to dress like a child but not being able to get away with it. I would be Dru, he has a sense of calm that I&#8217;ve never seen in anyone else&#8230;That and I could stroke his beard without getting funny looks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">You can listen to some songs from them\u00a0here: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCEvN7KlO5uXAVW2-6D_oOVw\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">The Midnight Beast on Youtube<\/span><\/a><\/span><br \/>\nFollow <del>stalk<\/del> them on tumblr here: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themidnightbeast.com\/\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">www.themidnightbeast.com<\/span><\/a><\/span><br \/>\nOr you can\u00a0catch the boys tweeting here: <span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AshleyNHorne\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Ashley<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/stefanabingdon\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Stefan<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/druwakely\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Dru<\/span><\/a><\/span><br \/>\nAlso to pre-order the album just visit:<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/gb\/album\/shtick-heads\/id804978129\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> iTunes<\/span><\/a><\/span>, out June 2nd.<br \/>\nOur past interview with all the boys from The Midnight Beast can be found here: <a title=\"EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW \u2013 The Midnight Beast\" href=\"http:\/\/ezramagazine.com\/2013\/04\/18\/exclusive-interview-the-midnight-beast-and-their-australian-announcement\/\" target=\"_blank\">Season One of The Midnight Beast airs in Australia<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House Parties and Shtick Heads Hailing from south-west London in the U.K, The Midnight Beast have been at it again with the second season of their self titled series on e4 having already aired earlier this year and now they&#8217;re about to release a second album; Shtick Heads. Producing and recording under their own label, it has given The Midnight Beast\u00a0creative\u00a0freedom to pretty much do whatever they want; and it&#8217;s working. With sell out shows around the U.K and an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[35,139,365,1055,1123,1124,1125],"class_list":["post-4949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-musicians","tag-2014-interview","tag-ashley-horne","tag-dru-wakely","tag-stefan-abingdon","tag-the-midnight-beast","tag-the-midnight-beast-interview","tag-the-midnight-beast-interview-2014"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Midnight Beast | Interview<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ezra Magazine caught up with Stefan Abingdon from UK band The Midnight Beast to talk about their upcoming album and what&#039;s in store for the band.\" 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