Get to know Childhood‘s bright, sparky soud – suffused with the kind of wistful dreaminess that makes it perfect for summer.

Childhood encapsulate the nostalgia of their namesake with their own brand of bright shoegaze-y rock. First single ‘Blue Velvet’ was enough output for the band to receive interest from every music blog worth reading and following a tour with Palma Violets and the release of their second single ‘Solemn Skies’, the excitement is rising high for a band whose output has been relatively little. Wonderland spoke to co-lead man Leo Dobson about keeping that element of mystery, the tastiness of nostalgia and recording on a lightship.

You talk of music as a performance based concept, what is the best thing for you about playing live?

It’s a mental and physical release, it keeps our abs looking pristine and our minds sane. It’s a great platform for trying out new things and an amazing feeling when you know it’s gone down well. We love rowdy crowds.

There’s not that much of your music online yet your few tracks are all held up all over the blogosphere in the highest esteem, how important is an Internet presence to you?

It’s important to let people know you’re not dead, but also to keep them on their toes. We don’t see the point of releasing demos all the time for the sake of it. We put a lot of thought into when we give people something new.

There’s a serious nostalgic sound to your tracks and with a band name like ‘Childhood’… Is this an important state for you, the deliciousness of nostalgia?

Well nostalgia is a very tasty thing. We like to conjure up feelings of nostalgia and longing through the melodies in our songs. Childhood as a concept means something important to everyone, good or bad. I was happier as a child because you were legitimately care free, and everything was exciting.

What track by any band conjures up this feeling of nostalgia for you?

For me it’s ‘The Boy In The Bubble’ by Paul Simon, my dad plied me with Graceland from the age of 4, I loved it.

You met at university in Nottingham, are you still going/have you finished your degrees there, what was it that inspired you to make music whilst studying?

All of us are done now which is great because we can purely focus on music, Uni held us back and we weren’t really a ‘band’ in the classic sense of the word, just some lost boys in an alien city making tunes on a laptop to take our mind off seminars. We made music to escape from the reality of why we were supposed to be there.

Nottingham is famed for its electronic music/DJ scene… What inspired you to be a guitar band? Especially when you were initially working with laptops?

Because Ben and me have always loved guitar music, it’s what got us talking in the first place and the bands we were sharing with each other drove us to do something of our own. We didn’t really have any idea what we were doing initially as neither of us had written songs before, but it worked out nice and peachy. Being in a guitar band is something we all dreamt of when we were younger, but never thought it could be a reality.

Is there a guitar band scene in Nottingham?
It seems to be thriving now, with bands like Kagoule and Kappa Gamma coming through and obviously there have been some big success stories from Nottingham artists, but at the time we knew no one, probably because we didn’t actively seek to find them. We liked the bubble we had created.

Are all your shows mad looking parties like in the video for ‘Blue Velvet’?

We wish! Our single launch for Blue Velvet was like that, but everyone stood about 20 foot away from the stage when we played Preston on our first tour. It’s a mixed bag but hopefully it’s gonna be pure party vibes from now on.

Childhood play X&Y Festival, 2000 Trees, Benicassim and Secret Garden Party this July. soundcloud.com/childhoodmusic

Words: Laura Isabella