W/ Rachel June
Photos/ Greta Kalva
Passionate and iconic band Hot Milk serve the tea (with hot milk), by sharing their unique music and having a blast whilst doing so. Their sound differs from track to track, but has elements of old school heavy rock with a contemporary feeling. Songs that make you want to scream in the shower or thrash around at home with no care in the world. Hot Milk’s attitude is to make what they want. Their passion translates to hard-hitting and electric music that leaves you feeling energised and determined. Han’s impressive vocals fit perfectly between heavy drums, thrashing guitar and interesting harmonies. Upbeat, fun, and full of grit – Hot Milk are an exciting band and one to watch.
1.Who are Hot milk?
We’re Han and Jim from Manchester, England backed up on tour by our brothers Tom and Deller.
2.For someone that is yet to discover you, how would you describe your music?
Whatever the fuck we want it to be at any given moment. We’re inspired by everything from the Sex Pistols, to Fred Again, to Oasis. Our music is a tapestry of our lives and experiences, we just write whatever we feel. We use Hot Milk as a mouthpiece for our thoughts and feelings, political or otherwise and our live shows are an energetic, emotional journey.
3.What inspired you as an artist?
Frustration in our past jobs and lives. The want to say and do something useful on the world stage. I guess it’s following what we’ve always dreamed of and using that spark to push us forward. We come from backgrounds that don’t get to do this, we’re from small towns and our parents are builders and teachers but we’ve always had to mentality of someone has to be an artist, why couldn’t it be us?
4.What Is Your Pre-Show Routine?
We get together in the dressing room and try to get some party vibes going. Have a couple of drinks of tequilas or wine or margs (if it’s a special day), smack on some loud music, maybe some drum and bass or techno and RIP. Deller (our drummer) taps away on his tappy warm up pad, Tom (our bassist) does some press ups and makes us squeeze his arms, Han jumps on all the furniture and tries to wind up anyone she speaks to and Jim messes with the rig or plays on his phone.
5.Where do you feel you fit into the music landscape?
We’ve always felt a bit of an outlier, we do our own thing the way we want to do it. That’s not trying to be arrogant saying we’re better than others, but more like we try not to succumb to trends or be pigeonholed into genres. I feel like the UK rock scene has a really good thing going, like with our peers Boston Manor, Holding Absence, Nova Twins etc all paving the way in their own unique style. I’d like to think the UK is pushing the boundaries in the Rock and Alternative scene, rather than copying everything else that’s out at the moment.
6.What are your favourite musical genres, and are there any you dislike?
We love literally anything, at the end of the day, a good song is a good song. Obviously, our foundations were built in rock, but as we’ve grown older, our tastes have varied into different genres. We really love film scores, Jim’s written a few himself, it’s incredible how much sonics and notation can change the feeling or mood in a scene. We’ve always been amazed at the power that it holds over an audience and try to utilise that in our own music. We also have a keen taste in electronic music. We frequent Creamfields festival, Warehouse Project in Manchester and other club nights around the world to let loose and listen to house, drum and bass, techno etc. It’s nice to give yourself a break from guitar music once in a while so when you come back to it you have a set of fresh ears.
7.Is there a story behind the band’s name?
It’s a non violent/violent protest, in the UK instead of assassinating our politician when we disagree with them we through milkshakes. It’s our milky molotov built to agitate. It’s a dumb name but we had to call the band something. A name is a name until it’s not a name and we’re praying for the day it transcends that, so we can stop answering this fucking question haha.
8.What would you say is your greatest strength as an Band /artist?
Honestly, I think our energy and our ability to connect with our people in the show… that’s our bread and butter and where we tend to come alive. We live for the tour, we live for the night where we are it all and they bare it all back. We only ever expect what we put out to them, we only ask that they match what we have to offer. I think this makes a Hot Milk show a very special place to be, you gotta come and witness it for yourself.
9.What would you say is your greatest weakness as a Band?
Being able to turn off or feel content with where we are. We feel super guilty if we’re not working on the band in some shape or form so we end up blasting ourselves to burn out and then get really sad/anxious over small things as our mental and physical states aren’t in check. We’re such perfectionist and strive to be the best we can be, which I suppose is a good thing, but it often becomes a detriment when we start overthinking every single decision or action we take. We know it’s good to take a break and step back for a minute to see the wood for the trees but it’s sometimes hard to take your own advice.
10. What music artists would you say have influenced your work?
I mean what a question, we are sponges to the cultural world!! We love a lot of stuff from the 80’s/90’s… The Clash, Pistols even Motorhead at the moment! Han reads a lot of biographies and music docs and loves the past of rock n roll and all kinds of musical history. We also love the history of Manchester and what them streets have churned out over the years, the hacienda movement… the Buzzcocks… Oasis… Joy Division.. NEVER Morrisey soz not for us. Johnny Marr is fine. We love House and different kinds of EDM, this album we’ve massively been inspired by Sub-focus, Metrik and Chase and Status, especially on the interludes. We love how they move and make you feel. Bands we’ve toured with like the Foos have massively inspired our live show, we listen to their advice and we push ourselves to make every show better every night.
11.Who would you most like to collaborate with artistically?
Honestly most of them are dead but alive, we’d love to collab with someone from a totally different genre/world. I think that keeps it fresh and puts you into a new headspace, writing with different people from across the genre divide always leaves an impression and can change the way you work and move. I think right now we’d love to see what we could cook up with DUSKUS, what he’s doing is really cool and unique. What an odd beautiful pairing that would be.
12. Who’s on repeat for you right now?
We love a little band from the UK called Unpeople, they toured with us at home and we get them on before the show to hype us up and remind us of home and good people!!! We are also jammin DUSKUS, Bad Friends, Soft Play, MEARSY and LEAP. We keep it pretty diverse before a gig just to keep us all up on a tired day.
13.Biggest obstacle & how did you overcome it?
I think for all of us the biggest obstacle right now is missing home and battling burning out without the support of our significant others and little doglets. Being away from them for months when you just want a cuddle can be quite hard, we tend to support each other a lot though. We are a very affectionate band with each other, we are a family through and through and if that means helping each other on our toughest days by making that day easier for each other than that’s what we have to do. The strength of a band is in the relationship between the four of us, if that breaks the music breaks too,
14.What is your creative process when making music? Do you work with others or is it just you?
Hot Milk has always been us (Han and Jim) sitting in Jim’s studio and sometimes dabbling with some others to keep it fresh. Ultimately it is always Jim producing it at its core and collaborating on some songs with a lot of friends across the world. Ultimately it’s very important that it always comes home and that we keep it in the bedroom studio as I think thats what keeps Hot Milk, Hot Milk. The freedom and time you get at home rather than in a big fancy studio is important to Han as she suffers from anxiety working with others sometimes. Honestly, every song is different. Some come easily and just the two of us, some come with a collaboration.
15.This year, what can we expect?
A whole lot of shows around the world, we’re currently in America touring across the country, we’re going to Japan for Summersonic festival which is cool, a whole load of Europe festivals and some mega headline shows at the end of the year. Our album, Corporation P.O.P comes out on the 27th June which we’re super excited for everyone to hear and we’ll be playing a bunch of songs off said album, over the next year.
Check out their UK tour here.
