Hailing from Sittingbourne, Kent, four-piece Get Inuit may be relatively new on the scene, but they are already proving to be quite the connoisseurs of dirty, summery pop. Having been hailed as Record of the Week on Radio 1 and named as one of DJ Annie Mac’s One To Watch for 2016 after releasing a stream of critically acclaimed singles, it’s safe to say that we can expect to hear a lot more from the lads in the coming months as their star continues to rise. The band have since stuffed their summer with festival appearances in-between supporting hot newcomers VANT and Spring King and recording their debut album, so I caught up with them before their set at LeeFest to see what they’re all about…

How are you guys?

James: Good! But tired…
Rob: I’m feeling better than I was – we had a show last night.

How did it go?

Rob: It went well! It was in Corby, which is near Peterborough, and it was a bit of surprise…
James: We pulled up to a car park at a rugby club, which is what it said on a very dilapidated sign, and it was a pleasant surprise because we haven’t done a headline show in a long time, we’ve been a support band for most of this year. We kinda got there not sure what to expect but they had a decent system, nice room, nice people, and it turned out really well in the end.
Rob: But we didn’t get back until 3am…

Ouch. So you received a huge amount of support from radio DJs when first starting out. How did it feel to have that kind of exposure so early on?

James: I think we were a little bit confused at the beginning, but excited, really excited. We made a Facebook page for our band and uploaded a song to BBC Introducing in Kent, and the next day or the next week it was played on BBC Kent, the week after that it was played on Radio 1, and the week after that it was played on 6 Music.
Rob: I think it made Record of the Week the day after we put it up. Was it that short? I can’t remember…

Impressive! You’ve packed your weekends with loads of festivals this summer, what’s been your favourite so far?

James: So far might be Truck Festival, two weeks ago. I guess because it was really hot…
Rob: It just went off, that’s what I’m saying. IT. WENT. OFF. Which was nice, because we weren’t really expecting it. They were all jumping around, Jamie sang the wrong words though.
Jamie: I was corrected by the crowd! My self-esteem has taken a knocking.
James: We did Field Day which was also really good and we weren’t expecting it. We played in the Jagerhaus which is essentially a big wooden house with a bar upstairs. It was really fun and it was rammed with people – and some of them knew the words! It’s becoming more and more of an occurrence which is cool.

Do you find you get a different kind of reception at festivals than at normal gigs?

Jamie: I think people are much more eager to get involved at a festival. It’s probably because they’re all really tired, drunk…
Rob: I think it’s because they’ve already been doing it, someone’s already warmed them up for you.
Jamie: They haven’t had a day’s work and then had to get the tube or something like that, they’ve just turned up to enjoy themselves. Our type of music is festival type of music, it’s very summery so you just have to dance along. It’s always positive.

You’ve supported VANT and will be opening for Spring King in October, but do you have any headline plans of your own yet?

James: Next year there will be an actual tour I think. We’ve got one-off bits and bobs, one in Canterbury which is effectively our hometown show. There aren’t very many venues in Kent, so it’s pretty awesome that there is LeeFest at all really. The music scene is so spread out across the county, which is I think why the radio station work so hard to show off the talent that is here because spreading the word is hard.

But the tour IS coming. Your new single ‘Teriyaki’ is coming out soon, can you tell us a bit about it?

James: I think Jamie should tell you this… we lied to someone earlier.
Rob: We told them it was about the protein argument.
Jamie: Oh no, that’s just an anecdote for interviews, why did you say that?

So what’s it really about?

Jamie: Oh you want to know what it’s really about. I think it’s about an inner turmoil that I constantly have, which is that I try my best to be a good person, but I’m not. I wasn’t born a good person and it’s very hard for me to be nice to anyone, ever. The song is really about that, how I constantly try my best to be a moral person and it fails miserably almost all the time. But you wouldn’t notice because it’s such a summery, smash-and-grab, short pop song, unless you try to really dissect it you wouldn’t get that vibe.
James: It’s a lot to fit into two minutes.
Jamie: There’s a line about my brother who always makes fun of me for being a vegetarian and he’s a weightlifter, he’s 6’8″ and huge, so there’s a couple of digs at him.
James: But it’s all friendly!

You were recording your debut album earlier this year, how’s that coming along?

James: We’re nearly finished! It’s hard to say because basically, we’ve done our bit. So PRS and Spotify gave us some money which was amazing and really nice of them, and it meant that we could make an album without a record label – which is practically really difficult. It’s okay if you’re an electronic artist I think, because you’re already making music at home on a laptop. Our band is kind of written a little bit in that way, like Jamie will write a song and bring it to the rest of us, but actually recording a live band and making it sound as big and energetic as possible requires time – which is money – and expensive studio time and things like that.

We still kind of kept it in the family when recording – previously we produced all the singles ourselves and then we brought in a friend of mine who I’d worked with a lot already and these guys already knew so it was already quite a comfortable relationship, I work in a studio as my day job so I know the relationship between producer and band has to be pretty tight. If you don’t get on and you agree to do something before you know how you’re going to make a record, you have to still make that record because you’ve booked that producer for that amount of time – and getting that chemistry right is quite hard. The process itself was relatively easy, the hard bit now is knowing how it’s going to be released, where, when, who by and finishing it – I’ve deliberately left it open so that we can talk to labels and go back and forward about how they’d like it to be so that we can finish it how they would like. Which we’re doing all the time, there’s always conversations, but you know, you just want to get on with it at a certain point and release it. We’ve written the songs and recorded them, we just want people to hear them!
Jamie: If the album’s not out by the time this interview is, then I’ll be disappointed.

Wow, you better get moving! And finally, if you could collaborate with anyone on the LeeFest lineup, who would it be?

Jamie: Spring King always tease us and say we should do a song together and that would be really fun to do. Plus they’ve got a good slot so you know, we’d get some attention!
James: I’d love to hear Jamie singing with Everything Everything – you could hit those notes!
Jamie: [sings tune] Yeah I’ve got it, I just need the words, I’ve got everything else…

Get Inuit’s new single ‘Teriyaki’ is set for digital release on September 2nd w/ pre-orders starting Aug 19th – via Bon Nudity (Self release).

Angharad Bishop
@annielbishop