The end of “Inside Out”, the new visuals from Balcony come to a close with the south London foursome lying on the beach with the waves gently lapping away.
Such is the seductive and brooding quality of the band, who specialise in alt-pop bolstered with frontman Jamie’s arresting vocals.
And the latest effortlessly catchy track is no exception: with the trippy visuals following Jamie over the course of one night as he relives certain moments.
We caught up with Balcony and talked songs influenced by nights-out, dream collaborations and self-love.
How did you start making music?
Jamie and Jack started writing songs a couple of years back in Jack’s basement. It was originally just acoustic guitars and keys, but when Johno and Dave joined, we started recording ourselves and found a love for electronic music. We’ve now started to find a balance between the digital and the live elements.
Who were your musical heroes growing up?
Dave: It was whoever my musical obsession was that week, I wanted to know more than just their music, I wanted to know how they lived and who they were, the internet helped with that and social media is allowing artists to connect with their fans on that level now.
Jamie: My mum was a pop gal. She loved Whitney Houston the BeeGees, Bryan Adams and Michael Jackson. That pretty much wore off on to me, and we’d listen to things like Justin Timberlake’s Future Sex Love Sounds on repeat. I also studied classical music in school, which definitely shaped my taste.
Jack: The Stones, The Stones, Prince and The Stones
How would you describe your music?
I think we sit across a few genres, I don’t think it’s fair to assign a tag and say we are “this”, we can only write like “this”. Our sound is Balcony. The music we’ve released so far has definitely had a chilled vibe to it, but we’re going to be pushing things a little quicker with the next releases.
Where do you get your inspirations from?
Dave: Books and movies, life experiences, new songs that excite us. It all gets funnelled into our sound.
Jamie: We live in a time that’s pretty hard to not be influenced by things around you, so trying to find inspiration from myself and my background is what I am for at the moment. Saying that, the endless cycle of social media is ironically very influential. It’s not just the things we’re seeing on social media that influence, but the habit of mindlessly using it every day. We wrote a song called “Hope” that touches on that. Our next single “Girls” is influenced from a night out we had after a show, so it’s nice to draw from real-life experiences too.
Jack: to begin with.. everything
