April Towers on their FIFA 16 Soundtrack Appearance

Back on 25th September 2014, Alex Noble and Charlie Burley uploaded the first April Towers single, Arcadia, to the BBC as part of Radio 1’s BBC Introducing day. 45 minutes later, DJ Huw Stephens had listened to the track and Fearne Cotton had played it on her morning show. Within a fortnight, the pair had played a full set at the Nottingham Contemporary as part of the Hockley Hustle. “It is when it all exploded a little bit,” says Alex, “so it was from then that we really kicked on.”

It’s been a whirlwind two years for the Nottingham pair. A stream of live gigs followed, including a sell-out headline set at the Rescue Rooms, and their singles – including the terrific new record Silent Fever – have racked up over a million plays on Spotify.

The pair were originally part of local guitar group Frontiers, and while they are ostensibly a synthesiser band, they have retained many of the guitar elements. It’s a journey that plenty of successful bands have taken in the past.

“I was late to electronic music,” admits Alex. “I started writing stuff in that vein on keyboards – I had never written on keyboards before, always on guitars – and that was the start of it. Tears for Fears started out as a rock band and you look how Joy Division became New Order. It was a breath of fresh air… to do things more electronically and more dance-oriented.”

Having written and recorded their first track, Tel Aviv, the pair uploaded it to SoundCloud where it racked up a few thousand plays over a weekend. Alex says, “We thought ‘oh God, what are we going to do now?!’ People were asking us when we were going to play live, when the next stuff was coming out.

“We’d literally just recorded it in a wardrobe – not an exaggeration – and we were left with all these people saying ‘Can you play this gig?’ We got together, got some rehearsals done, and did our first gig about four or five months after we put the first track online.”

Not quite pop, not quite dance, not quite indie, it’s hard to say exactly what genre tracks like No Corruption and Modern Pysche fit into. “If you listen to individual elements of our tracks – for example, solo the drums – it could be a house track,” says Charlie. “If you solo the synths, it is quite dreamy; and if you solo the vocals, Alex’s voice has a darker side. Some of the guitar lines sound as if they could be from an eighties power ballad. It’s a weird mish-mash, but it’s working at the moment.” Alex agrees, “It’s the best thing about it, as it’s allowed us to play Dot to Dot, which is seen as an indie festival, and we’ve been able to go out to Ibiza and play out there. It’s been nice to have that coverage – from dance to indie, although we’re essentially a pop band.”

After their appearance on Radio 1 and increasing word of mouth from their gigs, the band then had a huge breakthrough when their track A Little Bit Of Fear was selected to appear on the soundtrack of the huge video game, FIFA 16. Alex takes up the story: “It’s a weird process. We were told by our manager that we were on the shortlist. You get excited, but at the same time you wonder how many artists are going to be on that shortlist. We forgot about it really, and then a few months later we got a call to say that we had an offer through for it.

“There were still some stumbling blocks to get through as they don’t make the final decision straight away. We didn’t know we were definitely going to be on it until late July and the game was out in September. The implications for an unsigned band to be on that game – it’s almost unheard of. Even before the game was out and they released the soundtrack, we picked up forty or fifty thousand plays of our song just on that day, and now we’ve nearly racked up a million. It’s led people to check out other songs of ours and the video on YouTube is about to hit half a million views.

“To be on the soundtrack is unbelievable. That soundtrack has been iconic for years, and I’ve discovered bands because of that game. The impact has been ridiculous. We were the special guests at the Future Sound of Nottingham final in June and we played that song last, and you can see people getting their camera-phones out when that song starts… and that’s cool.”

Back in the old days you got success by having your song on the radio, or perhaps in a TV show or, the holy grail, on a movie soundtrack. In 2016, it’s all about video games and the playlists of streaming services – so is the modern way helping a band like April Towers?

“You have all this access to new songs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that if someone listens to your song and likes it, that they’re going to like your band,” says Charlie. “That’s what we’ve discovered. People may know the song, but not necessarily know the band."

“Streaming has helped us,” says Alex. “We played in Estonia because the booker found us on Spotify. Being on the big playlists got us to number one in the iTunes charts in Kenya – it’s little things like that because it’s such a worldwide business.”

The pair readily admit that being outside of a huge musical scene like London or Manchester is helping them. “It’s nice to be doing things in your own scene,” says Alex. “The Bodega is now a hub for local music and Nottingham bands are now playing the Rescue Rooms which, in 2009/10, was not happening at all. Six years ago we [Frontiers] were one of three local bands on the Dot to Dot bill, and see how that’s changed.”

The next year promises to be a big deal for the band. They headline the LeftLion stage at this August’s Waterfront Festival, head to Alex James’ farm for The Big Feastival, and their debut album is expected to arrive in 2017.

“After the festival, we’re writing and just getting some form of a structure of an album together,” says Alex. “I imagine there will be tour dates announced in the autumn to promote some sort of other single release – and hopefully another Nottingham headliner."

April Towers, The Nottingham Waterfront Festival, Canalhouse, Saturday 13 August 2016, £10.

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