The indie/post punk Glasgow duo are back and with a new single on the way. Ahead of it’s upcoming release we caught up with the undefinable rock n roll mavericks.
Tell us about the new single?
The new single is called Mon Cheri, an experimental track channelling influences from a range of genres and has been compared to the likes of The Last Shadow Puppets. The song is dedicated to Christina’s grandfather Riad Haddad. It’s the kind of song you want to dance to, however it gives off mixed emotions of love, fun and heartache with the chorus “what a curse it would be to fall in love with me”. The artwork says a lot about the track as it features a picture of Christina’s grandparents Riad and Ilde from Lebanon/Italy at a masquerade party in the 1960’s. There were so many people involved in bringing this song to life and it features Scottish legend Martin Metcalfe (The Filthy Tongues, Angelfish, and Goodbye Mr Mackenzie). The song was recorded at Infinity Bus Studio by Simon Doherty, mixed by Robbie Gunn and mastered by Pete Maher who has worked with Lana Del Rey, The Pixies and Jack White to name a few.
How do you write new material?
Christina brings the ideas to the table, it could be a song title or theme, a couple of lines or a guitar riff then we figure out the best way to recreate songs live. Christina is always recording ideas on her phone or scribbling down on the back of unopened letters, just anything that’s there at the time! Often the ideas are usually a theme and imagery plays a big part in it evolving a small idea into a song, with artwork and music video. We started Run Into The Night as two best friends who love staying up all night listening to their favourite records from 70’s punk, disco, motown, blues and 80’s hardcore. It’s all about experimenting, dipping into genres and having no rules when it comes to creativity.
What are the challenges of transposing new material to the live stage, and vice versa?
This is the tricky part about being a duo however we really do love a challenge! Christina experiment’s with one guitar through two amps and uses various echo and octave pedals to make her guitar sound unique. Ellie uses a sample pad whilst drumming to trigger additional effects that we use on our studio records such as percussion, finger clicks, synth, organ and even radio static. Live shows is where we really come to life and aim to build up as much energy as we can between us and fire it straight into the crowd. We have fun jumping into the crowd, interacting, improvising at the last minute and getting carried away with it all.
What’s the motivation behind the band, what’s your story?
Christina has played in various punk bands and wanted to try something new and write experimental music incorporating garage rock, blues, 60’s pop, punk and many different genres. She asked Ellie to start a band with her even though she didn’t play drums and had never been in a band before. It was their friendship, shared passion for music and feeling that Ellie would go a bit wild on stage that brought together Run into the Night. We always listen to music and challenge ourselves learning new techniques. For example Christina is always sending songs to Ellie like “check out that drum beat”, “I wonder what guitar tone that is” etc. We want to learn and develop all the time!
“what a curse it would be to fall in love with me”
Mon Cheri
Best and worst tour stories?
We have been lucky and not had any horror story tours. On our first tour we came across a sound engineer who wouldn’t let us soundcheck as we were “just two girls”. He continued to talk down to us like we didn’t know what we were doing until we began to play. It actually turned out to be one of our favourite shows with a great audience dancing away to our music! The sound engineer definitely changed his tune after our set. One of our favourite stories which turned out to be a bit of a disaster was actually a photoshoot that we did in the highlands in Scotland. We went to meet the photographer at night, lost phone signal, ran out of petrol and had to chap a stranger’s door who gave us a little petrol to keep us going, haha. The photographer eventually drove past us, we had an amazing shoot however our car had to abandoned as there were in the middle of nowhere! Thank you Neil for taking us home!
Any bucket list goals for the band?
In the space of 2 years, we feel we have achieved a lot for a band that started in the spare bedroom of a tenement flat! Since then we have toured the UK various times, shared the stage with some of our favourite bands and performed as some really cool festivals. A big goal of ours is to tour Europe which is happening in April 2020 (more info on that soon) and we would love to release a 12” record one day. We currently release two 7” records with A + B sides however, as a big fan of album themes, we would love to record 8-10 songs and have some amazing artwork for it. Christina already has an odd theme for this record planned out. One day we aim to make it happen and bring the idea to life.
What’s coming up for Run Into The Night on the horizon
We embark on a UK tour in October with shows in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Whitchurch, Bristol, London, York and Brighton. We have also been writing and recording new material this summer with the brilliant Chris Marshall at 7 West Studios in Glasgow (Gerry Cinnamon, Baby Strange, The Dunts etc). New music will be out in the near future and you can also catch us on stage around European in 2020!
Final words:
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Mon Cheri is available to stream from Friday 23rd of August so check it out, get in touch with us via social media and we hope to meet some new faces on the road in October! See you on a dark night
– Christina Cassette & Ellie May
