South East London’s Inheaven are one of the leading lights in the thriving UK shoegaze movement with their My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus & Mary Chain influenced compositions. Ahead of the release of their debut album and headline show at The Haunt I caught up with Chloe Little from the band.

Can you give us a brief history of the band and how it was formed?
James and I were friends who liked the same bands so decided to start Inheaven as a bedroom project but, as more songs were written, we realised it needed to be a full band. Jake was living near us in Forest Hill and Joe was introduced to us by our friends in another band. The band was born and we have never looked back.

How would you describe your music?
Fuzzy dream punk.

How old are the songs on the new album and what was the recording process?
It’s a collection of songs written over the last two years. James had demoed all the tracks to a high standard so we knew exactly what we wanted when we went in to record the album ‘properly’ at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with a lovely producer called Tom Dalgety.

Are you conscious of how the tracks will sound live when you’re in the studio?
I think from spending two years touring you start to learn what works well live and you sometimes have to adapt.

Can you pinpoint the influences from the album?
Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins was a big one.

Is there a particular process that your songwriting goes through when crafting the tracks?
For ‘Regeneration’ which was our first ever song, I made a 30 second looping video which James sat in front of and wrote to. However, the process is different for every track. James writes a lot alone in a dark room.

What does the next 12-18 months have in store for the band?
A lot of touring around the world and we want to keep putting out as much music as we can.

If you could work with any artist, who would it be and what would they bring to?Inheaven??
There are loads, but most of them are dead.

What music are you listening to at the moment? Are there any bands on your label that we should listen out for?
We like the new Lorde record. Also the new Idles record is cool. Bands we are digging right now are HMLTD and Dead Pretties.

Is there a particular ethos that drives you as a band?
We just want to tour as much as we possibly can and create great music for people to soundtrack their lives to. The only way to do that is by being super hard working, which is what we try to do everyday.

What is your relationship with the city of Brighton?
We love Brighton, we had one of our best shows ever there this year at TGE… we thought the floor was going to cave in.

Paul Hill

Website: inheaven.co
Facebook: facebook.com/inheavenband
Twitter: twitter.com/inheaven