WHO needs to go to London, or for that matter Manchester or Leeds?
Huddersfield’s Negratempo are proving that everything an aspiring rock band needs is here in town.
As they prepare to release their second EP Solar, frontman Richard Heeley said pretty much everything about the project had been achieved with local resources.
“Apart from the actual making of the CD which is done in the Midlands then virtually everything is from Huddersfield,’’ he said.
“My guitar is handmade by a local man called John Pollard who does it as a hobby.
“He’s a very talented lad. Because he’s made it, I can just give it back if there’s a problem.
“All the music is original, all the practising and recording is done at GN Studios in Paddock.
“(GN boss) Kerry Hughes understands us so he does all the production as well.
“We design the artwork ourselves and it’s all done by Royds Hall printers at Quarmby.
“Then we did a video with a local chap Darren Evans and we’re hoping to do another at Sleepers.
“Even the amp is made in Sowerby Bridge.”
And Negratempo’s pride in Huddersfield also extends to the live music circuit.
“Considering it’s not got the glamour of a big city, we’ve got a fairly good history of bands here,” said Richard.
“We’ve got a quite a few bands still kicking about who made a little bit of an impact back in the day.
“We’ve got a lot of decent bands playing live music covering a massive spectrum.
“The more variety you’ve got, the more chance you’ve got of something being interesting out there.
“There’s quite a few decent venues and they’ve been surviving for a long time so they must be doing something right.”
Launched three years ago, Negratempo are a three piece band with a difference. They have a drummer, Matt Washington, and two guitarists, Heeley and Adrian Pygott, with both on vocals.
Richard added: “We’re basically trying to take the usual guitar thing and make it slightly different. With a lack of bass player we’re going for a more laid back feel with harmonising rather than the noisy rock approach.
“We’re all of an age and we’ve got quite an eclectic range of musical preferences so hopefully we’ll bring quite a lot of interesting things to bear.
“We try and keep it simple as possible. None of us are into the rock/metal very technical guitar work. We prefer the songwriting to speak for itself.
“And rather than it being something multi-layered that we can’t achieve live, we try to do something that we can reproduce live.
“We don’t want there to be a big difference between what we record and what we perform.”
Check out the band at: www.myspace.com/negratempo and www.facebook.com/negratempo
