Chalk by Aaron Cunningham
WHO?
I’m Luke and I play drums in Chalk. Ross is our vocalist and works on the productions for the band behind the scenes, and Ben is our guitarist and synth whiz.
WHERE?
We’re from all over the island: I’m from Belfast, Ross is from Lurgan and Ben grew up in Monaghan, so we’re all bringing slightly varied Irish influences to the table I suppose.
WHEN?
We all started writing together shortly after we met at University, we were around 22/23 years old. The music was totally different then – plenty of art rocky stuff. Heavily Parquet Courts inspired I’d say.
WHY?
There’s a million bands, artists and filmmakers I could name here that have deeply influenced Chalk and helped us form the sound we’re working on now, from Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy to New Order and Mica Levi. However, honestly, Gilla Band was a big common footing for us. Movie-wise, we’ve all bonded over the likes of Wim Wenders, Jonathan Glazer, Chris Nolan and David Lynch over the years, and that’s definitely translated into our music
HOW?
Gilla Band also ties into the story of how the band formed: Ben and I knew each other first – we’d met during the first or second week of University and we’d established fairly quickly that we were interested in forming a band. I knew he played guitar and he knew I was big into my drumming.
At first we’d set our sights on playing covers like Courtney Barnett – History Eraser, loads of indie tunes really. Soon after though we realised that Ross, who was on our course but we weren’t yet close with, had a Gilla Band poster in his room. I think we were pretty set from that day on who we were going to ask to be our third member.
PAST?
We’ve all worked pretty standard hospitality or retail jobs in the past to get by, like we all have to, but we’ve also all dabbled in film; working freelance, Ben the most so. He’s worked as a Script Supervisor across a variety of projects; Ross in the camera department and myself as an AD. It can be rewarding but honestly I think all of our hearts lie more with music.
PRESENT?
We all struggle with putting Chalk’s sound into words, I think it’s an awkward question for lots of people but peers or listeners have often used words like industrial, gothic, noisy, punk, rock. ‘Bargain Rock’ was a funny one a while ago. Whatever you take from it is what we’re after really. These are all words that have crossed our minds when writing the tunes.
FUTURE?
It’s so exciting for us to share Chalk music with new audiences all over the world. We can’t wait for festival season too – we hope to see you at a show soon – come say hi to us if you’re gonna be there!
DID YOU KNOW?
I managed to sneak a trombone performance into Chalk’s debut single ‘Them’. I played trombone as a kid and Chris Ryan, our wonderful producer, thought it’d be great to get it in. See if you can spot it if you listen back with headphones!
WHAT’S NEXT?
We’ve plenty of new material that we’re going to develop this year, and for now we’re enjoying having another body of work out with ‘Conditions II’. Of course the live side is always at the forefront of our minds, and we’re off to Texas for SXSW and embarking on our second UK tour this month.
