Bad Times and good times on Big Time Quell’s debut

England striker Harry Kane, a lobster and questionable facial hair feature on Big Time Quell’s awaited debut EP Greatest Hits.

The five-piece are set to release the five-track offering on 9th September in a dramatic shift from their acoustic duo beginnings.

Jamie Hatch and Thomas Jones formed the band after Hatch unknowingly was booked for a gig by promoter Jeff Merrifield.

The guitarist and singer joined forces with Jones for a string of acoustic sets before pulling in Chris Cope on bass, Robert Balfour on drums and sax virtuoso Norman Willmore who is down studying music on the mainland.

“He [Norman] joined because he wanted to jam with somebody when he was up [in Shetland],” smiled Hatch. “He came along to our practice and he stayed against his will.”

Jones added: “Especially with these recordings I can’t imagine these songs without the sax on them.”

The new, beefed up sound has meant the lads have “gone electric”, something Jones said is “substantially different to what we were doing before” and according to Hatch has “changed the sound 100 per cent”.

Synths also feature after they both bought one each, unknown to each other.

Tim Matthew was the man behind the desk pulling all the sounds together, with Jonathan Rich mastering the EP ready for its release.

“I always hear good things about Tim,” Hatch said.

“I don’t think the EP would’ve turned out the way it has if we would have worked with someone else. He gets it and he knows what we wanted it to sound like.”

“It was really fun recording the EP in the same way it has been playing gigs,” added Jones.

The band’s quirky and humorous performances have gone down a storm in the local rock scene and the band are due to play at the Heavy Metal Buffet tomorrow.

They have also released a video for their song Bad Times at Suzy Wong’s which has already clocked up more than 3,000 views online.

Hatch said: “The reason I love being in this band is that you can have this ridiculous thing that happened to us…and go to a band practice and say ‘I’ve got this idea’ and they say ‘yeah this is not stupid at all’.”

“Yeah let’s immortalise this event in a song,” laughed Jones.

• bigtimequell.bandcamp.com

• For unrivalled coverage of the latest music news, including interviews with Adam Holmes and the Revellers, see this week’s Shetland Times.