We at GDIP are massively proud to be involved with the TELLISON album. Together in various incarnations since their schooldays, they've always displayed incredible songwriting prowess and promised to make a wonderful record. Contact! Contact! is all of that and more. Recorded in characteristically fractured fashion - in locations 400 miles apart, with two different producers, over a period of six months - the result is an album with the emphasis on the things their contemporaries often lose sight of while thinking up gimmicks: great songs, intelligent lyrics, massive hooks and vocals to make your heart burst. Stephen (vocals / guitar) submitted to our interrogation in the middle of university exams.

Can you give us a potted history of Tellison? Where and when did you meet and what incarnations of the band have there been?

The band first "started", if you can call it that, on the first day of school in September 2000. I met Rory (Andrew) who was our original bass player, that day and we decided to start a band. Rory knew Henry who joined on the drums in about 2001 and we were a three piece till the start of 2005, when Rory left and Peter and Andy joined playing guitar and bass respectively. That summer (2005) was probably the start of Tellison as most people know us; we had an almost entirely new set, started taking things more seriously and just felt much more comfortable as a band. As a three piece we released a split EP with a band from Northampton called Seven Years and did some touring with our friends in 10 Easy Wishes who are from Aberdeen.

I think we first started talking to Gravity in 2003, JT asked us to support Jetplane Landing at the Peel and after that Mark and Jane asked us to record some demos, which we did and then we effectively joined the Gravity "family". We spent the next two years trying to record an album as a three-piece. While Dave House was making " Kingston's Current" we were also recording with Danny Sloan. Rory left quite suddenly though and recording all sort of ground to a halt. Then we spent almost a year doing very little until Andy and Pete joined and we started again. Last summer we began recording "Contact! Contact!" with Robin Sutherland in Scotland and we finished up in the early New Year with Pat Collier in London.

It's argued from some quarters that lad rock pollutes the airwaves and the alternative music press focus on ridiculous trends and their vacuous purveyors. Your album could be seen as the antithesis of that. Was it a conscious decision to produce an indie rock album that goes against the grain in this way, or did it come naturally?

We never sat down and decided to make something that wasn't particularly fashionable. This is just the music we write. One of the great things about being in a band is the freedom to experiment, when we were writing the songs that ended up on the album we just did what we thought sounded good. We never set ourselves any rules or things we definitely were or weren't going to do. As a songwriter I particularly look up to people like Al Paxton from Stapleton, Devon Williams of Osker and Dave Bazan from Pedro the Lion and I guess none of them are particularly fashionable right now so perhaps that comes through in our songs. I don't feel we're particularly rejecting current music though, trends or otherwise. We all have very different tastes too so perhaps that added to the sound. Ultimately we've always just played what we liked the sound of.

There seem to be two camps of musicians in the current climate - those who make music to get signed and become famous and those who make music because they have no choice and are driven. Which camp would you put Tellison in? And what do you hope to achieve?

I think we'd definitely say the second camp. Getting "signed" and "becoming famous" are very much, to a massive extent, the exception to the rule. The idea of making music exclusively to achieve that seems bizarre. There are a lot of easier ways to make money than be in a band, I think anyone trying to exist as a musician at our level will tell you that. We enjoy being in this band a lot; we enjoy making music together and we enjoy going on tour, that's why we do it. It'd be great to achieve a level where we could just concentrate on being in this band without having to do all the other stuff one has to in order to exist but we're under no illusions. The music industry is a spectacularly unpleasant place and we're lucky enough to have been given the chance to work with people who really care about what we have to offer. What matters to us is making music that we can be proud of.

On the album, there are various references to hospitals, doctors and ambulances. Was it deliberate to have this theme running through the album, and can you enlighten us as to its significance?

A couple of people have asked about this and I'm sort of at a loss to explain it. It certainly was never an intention to have some kind of "medical" theme running through the record, in fact I don't remember really being that aware of using medically linked imagery to the extent that in fact we were. During the time some of these songs were written my father was in and out of hospital so that might have something to do with it. The three songs you're referring to are all about very different things though so in each instance the idea of hospitals or ambulances or whatever mean very different things. Part of it also I think is a general awareness of life and death as being all around us all the time. That cycle appears in everything, everywhere you go, you can never escape those constants.

One thing that stands out on the record is the quality of the vocals. What is the Tellison songwriting process? Is the music composed first of all, and vocals added at the end? Is it a collective procedure or does one person take the lead?

What usually happens is that one of us will have an idea away from the band and then bring it to everyone else at practice where we'll work through it as a group. Henry and I were living together while we were writing a lot of this record so often I'd work through things with him first, chopping and changing stuff until whenever Pete or Andy were there and we'd do some more until finally we were all together. I think our best songs were written when all of us played an active part in the process. "Gallery" for instance was a completely different song originally and we all messed around with it for months before coming up with it the way it is on the record. Part of the fun of songwriting for us comes out of our pushing each other creatively. We often seem to do stuff to a point where it's almost a joke, we're just being silly with ideas, only then we realise we like how it's turned out and we decide to keep it.

The quality of the vocals I'd put down to Robin definitely. You can hear it on the Avast! and Jacobs Stories albums too. He spends a lot of time on the sound of vocals in his recordings, trying out different microphones and set ups as well as really pushing you to sing to the best of your ability. So, he's to blame for all that. Generally we seem to write songs all at once, vocals and music together. Often Pete or I will have the basic song written with most of the words already and then it's just a case of seeing how it all works with the four of us together, cutting parts that don't work out and putting in new things, making it Tellison.

Your members are based all over the place (one studying in the States, for example). However, you seem to manage to play a lot of shows and generally keep active. What's your secret?

I guess the only secret is that all four of us care enough to devote our time, patience and effort into doing it when we can. We're based all over the place: Peter's at Uni in Oxford, I'm in Cambridge, Andy lives in Kingston and Henry's at Uni in Boston in America. In the past we've had stand in drummers for some shows and Peter, Andy and I have all played acoustic in various configurations. In a way it's a bit of a nightmare all of us being so far apart, but equally it means that when we do get together it's always exciting. It makes being together a lot of fun because we know we don't have all the time in the world, I think also that playing in Tellison is kind of a release for all of us from our day to day lives which helps keeps it exciting and keeps us wanting to do it too.

Tellison tips for the top in 2007?

I'm going to say Sam Isaac and Luke Leighfield for sure. They've both worked so hard in the past year I can't see anything but good things happening for both of them. Also people really should get last year's Avast! album as soon as possible, it's absolutely stunning. Dave House should go from strength to strength this year too. The newest One Toy Soldier songs are the best they've ever written so I hope they're released in some form and Jay assures me the TANAOU record is actually going to come out this year. I'm looking forward to new Stapleton and Jacob's Stories too.

Your favourite Gravity DIP release and why?

This is a hard one. The first Gravity DIP record I ever bought was Stapleton's "Icy You" single so that's up there. As is "Stranger's Stories" by Lucky Thirteen. I've probably listened to " Kingston's Current" and "Chez Chef" the most of everything though.

© Gravity DIP May 2007. Photo by Owen Richards.