Worthing gig for Do Nothing as part of live music revival

It’s tempting to venture that Nottingham-based four-piece Do Nothing have had a pretty appropriate name for the past 18 months.
Do NothingDo Nothing
Do Nothing

“You certainly wouldn’t be the first to say it,” laughs vocalist Chris Bailey.

But, in fact, they haven’t been remotely inactive, coming up with their first two EPs during the various lockdowns.

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But they are certainly delighted to get back to the business of gigging which they are doing with a date at The Factory Live, Worthing on August 16, part of the Music Venue Trust REVIVE LIVE campaign.

Joining Chris in the band are guitarist Kasper Sandstrom, bassist Charles Howarth and Andrew Harrison on drums, with a sound which is “equal parts Roxy-esque art rock and Ze/Celluloid records no wave.”

“We have known each other for ages, for many years. We met when we were at school and we started playing together in different kinds of line-ups in different formats. We just did that until we started this new project three or four years ago.

“We were just doing various things around the Nottingham area until we decided what we wanted to do long term. It took us a while to make this weird transition. We were playing more ambient music before, and I got very bored of playing ambient music. We just took a year off really and played about with something else and ended up doing the exact opposite of what we used to do. It is more immediate. It is not as relaxed, not as nice. It is the opposite. It is more aggro. It is more straight up.”

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As for the name, Chris thinks he remembers seeing the words Do Nothing on a baseball cap with some other words.

“When you are looking for a new name it can take months and it is a terrible thing to go through, but I was looking at signs, at instructions, at things like ‘No standing’ or ‘No smoking’ and I saw this and I thought it would be a good name.

“I am sure it wasn’t the hardest thing we are ever going to experience but trying to find a name just sucks. There are so many names that have already been taken or just aren’t any good, and people say that it doesn’t really matter what the name is once your music is known, but when you are a new band, then yes, I think it does actually matter. And if you come up with a name that people recoil from, then you are already three-nil down. But the name is fine. It’s a name that we can live with.”

The past 18 months have been hard: “But we released two EPs during that time. We had just done singles and then the big Covid hit and everything turned to (rubbish). We had been gigging the stuff on the first one and we released it and then as the pandemic went on, we did another one.

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“I don’t think you can swing the pandemic in any way into something positive. It sucked big time. It was just unfortunate for us and for everybody. But maybe it did give us a bit of time to experiment. The second EP is a lot more experimental, a bit more out there. Maybe it did all give us a chance to scratch that itch.

“A lot of what we do is informed by the live shows by which I don’t mean that we are a crazy live band, but the live work is part of the process.”

And obviously, for the second EP, they simply didn’t have that live grounding: “So maybe that’s why it turned out a bit differently for us.”

They will be playing Worthing off the back of their first normal gig, “our first restriction-less gig with people standing around and not sitting at tables. We had done one which was socially distanced, but really I just shied away from that. I thought we would just wait it out until we could do it properly and we were a bit more back to normal. And so did this gig on the Isle of Wight, in Ventnor, and it was great. People were relaxed and happy to be there.”

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