Littlehampton-band Absuma are making their Festival of Chichester debut with a gig at Havana Bar and Venue, 3 Little London, Chichester, PO19 1PH on Thursday, June 26 at 7pm.
00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers and also Chairman of the Festival of Chichester.
00:08And it's fantastic that making the Festival of Chichester debut this year is the Little Hampton Band, Absuma.
00:15Now, Simon, from the band, you and your colleagues will be playing on Thursday, June the 26th at 7pm at Havana Bar,
00:25which is a venue that's popular with you. You've played there a lot, haven't you?
00:30Yeah, I think last year we played there pretty much every month or two months, almost like a residency, really.
00:38Not like the residency of the days of the Beatles where it was like every afternoon, but we played there once every so often.
00:47But this year we sort of decided to, I don't know, focus more on practising at home and then, you know,
00:55maybe just have a more of a special event there and get everyone to come to one of them, really.
01:04So we've got this one for a Chichester festival.
01:06Fantastic. And coming out this year is your, will be your live album.
01:11Now it's available in a slightly homemade form at the moment, but you're working towards the finished product.
01:16And it's a live album, which you were pleased with insofar as I'd capture the essence of the band, doesn't it?
01:23Yeah, it definitely captures what we've been up to at the Havana.
01:26It's from a gig we played on the Black Friday.
01:29We called it, you know, it was like a Black Friday gig because it was on Black Friday.
01:36And we just, you know, we've always struggled to try and capture the sort of the vibe and energy of our live performance in the recordings.
01:47We do like the recordings, but there's always a bit of a disparity between what you hear on Spotify or if you play on Bandcamp,
01:57what you hear on there compared to what you'd expect at one of our gigs.
02:01So with this live one, you know, you can actually just see what we've been up to, really.
02:07And I think it will probably make you want to come to one because it's quite funny.
02:10You know, there's mistakes on it. There's all sorts of things.
02:12And it's all been mixed by Jack in our band, really, who sort of is a master of all things or Jack of all trades and master of a few of them as well.
02:24Fantastic. It's an important chapter, a new chapter of the band, isn't it?
02:29And an important year for you. You're really pleased that you've got a sort of victorious later this summer, haven't you?
02:33Yeah, we got we played a gig over in Portsmouth in a place called it's back to the Belgrave.
02:45It's called the Black Balloon Sessions, a guy called Johnny and a guy, very friendly dude called Nick came to see us.
02:53Well, he was just there, I think. And he puts on stages at Victorious.
02:58So we managed to get a slot on on Victorious Festival on a Friday morning, which is really cool for us.
03:06And actually, it worked out really well because we're all quite busy.
03:09We're actually going to another festival as like punters that weekend.
03:13A few of us, we go every year and Simon and Sophie and the band are playing like a wedding the same day and their duet.
03:20So we're doing Victorious. Then we all go off different ways doing that.
03:24So it's really good for us. And we played some other things already this year, like Foodies Festival.
03:30So we're used to a bigger stage now. And it took a little bit of getting used to it.
03:35But I think we're very excited to be able to play something like prestigious like that.
03:42And, you know, just play loud in a field to a lot of people that hopefully want to hear it.
03:47Fantastic. Well, it all sounds like it's all heading in the right direction.
03:50In the meantime, you are at the Festival of Chichester, Bounders of Tuma.
03:54You are on Thursday, June the 26th at 7pm at Havana.
03:59Simon, good to speak to you and really chuffed that you're part of the festival.
