An interview with a few of the Nuns from Runaway Nuns, by Andre and Luke of Dystopia
The Runaway
Nuns. A group of like-minded guys that got together and decided to form a
band after a certain well figure told them to. These guys have been cruising
their way through the Cape Town music scene for a while now, and following last
year’s release of Holy Collusion,
the Nuns have been hard at work to bring you this year’s release of Spit!
We had the opportunity to sit down with the Nuns to
discuss a few things, mainly their sound, musical developments, recording
process, influences and thoughts on the current musical scene. If you want to
check out the full video interview, the link is at the foot of the article,
along with other relevant links.
The following is a transcript of the full video
interview done by Andre and Luke of Dystopia, and PJ and Sihle of Runaway Nuns.
The interview:
What’s
up boys and girls, it’s Andre from Dystopia here and as you should know by now,
Runaway Nuns have released their newest album called ‘SPIT’. So, naturally, we
decided to ask them a few questions about it.
I believe it’s safe to say that Runaway
Nuns is one of the most influential garage-punk bands on the South African
underground scene at the moment. What’s your recipe? Where does the bands
attention lie between business and passion project?
PJ: Thanks for the compliment man, really appreciate it. Our
recipe, I think it’s basically that we just like best mates honestly, and we
get along really well. I don’t think it would have worked out if we weren’t best
mates. Sihle, Desmond, Noah and Sean, they went to school together and then I
just tagged along and that worked out for the best. Regarding between business
and passion, I’d say we basically like 80% passion. We don’t really care about
the money aspect, as long as we can just get covered on spending, doing gigs,
touring and stuff like that, so that it doesn’t really hurt our pocket. We all
are crazy for what we’re doing and we really, really enjoy it.
As opposed to your previous releases,
how does SPIT differ in the eyes of the creators? What sets this brand spanking
new release apart from the Nuns we know and love?
Sihle: I
think the main thing with SPIT is that it is exactly that. The Runaway Nuns
that people know and love. It’s got that same high energy, in-your-face
attitude that we had in the early releases, just now with a bit more technical
ability. But I think what sets it apart is us being ‘us’ at our best
It’s very evident to see your overall
sound maturing from release to release, what was the intended goal of SPIT? And
how if at all does this differ from everyone’s favourite; “Holy Collusion”?
PJ: SPIT is
a bit different, it’s way more honest, its loud and its fast, and that’s what
we love doing. As to our previous releases, we didn’t really know what we were
doing. Just a bunch of songs we had and just, like, taped it together and there
you had it. This one (SPIT) we really thought through and took our time with it
and we are super proud of this one. But yeah, we’re still the same band, still
the same people, and it’s just rock’n’roll dude.
The pandemic we’re all living through at
the moment is placing the music industry under far from ideal circumstances,
heartbreakingly forcing your Gauteng tour to be postponed. Do you have any
words of solace for the pained Hate and Snor City dwellers?
Sihle: Yeah,
fuck, I just wish we could have gone there. We’ve had to cancel a lot of shit
this year. The biggest bummer I think for us is having to postpone our Europe
tour, which was gonna happen in, like, less than three weeks, which obviously
all went to shit after this outbreak. As for Snor City, we’ll see you fucking
soon mate, don’t you worry! And hopefully Europe will follow soon.
This is my favourite part… Nerd shit!
Runaway Nuns is no stranger to sounding spectacularly full tight. Tell us a bit
about your recording process for this sonic candy from writing your first
singles to getting into studio to hearing your first masters.
PJ: The good
ol’ recording process. The one that takes so fucking long just to get something
out haha. So we’ll start work on the songs together, Sean brings the idea,
basically he makes the candy and we basically put the wrapping paper on it,
just to make it aesthetically pleasing haha. That’s usually just how we start. We
then record demos by ourselves, like we would get into our practice studio and
just mic up a few instruments and just get the general idea of the song, then
we’ll send it to Warren Fisher, who’s our manager, sound engineer, etc. He’s
everything, he’s like our dad. God bless him. He would then listen to it and
would produce some ideas and stuff, but he never pressures us. Then from there
we just practice it and then go to studio. After all the mixing and everything,
the masters then come. Then you’re all like, “Well, It was worth it.”.
As your sound develops your signature
traits become more and more apparent. What for you, are the old dusty pieces of
gear that makes Runaway Nuns sound like Runaway Nuns?
Sihle: 100%
Desmond’s Telecaster haha. That thing’s been with us since the beginning. I
think if I can pin out one piece of gear to encapsulate Runaway Nuns’ sound, it’s
that Tele. Sean and I tend to change gear quite often, I think me more so nowadays,
but the one constant throughout all the mess and whatnot has been Desmond’s
fucking Telecaster. I think that gear is the sound of Nuns.
Cape Town is seen by many as a creative
hub of South Africa. Do you feel as this has had a large impact on the dynamic
of the band? Are there any special someone’s out there we can thank for pushing
the Nuns in the direction that has broken South Africa in all the best ways?
PJ: Yeah I would
say it definitely has had a large impact on it regarding if you want to be the
tightest band on stage that night, but its good competition ya know? And I
would like to thank the people who push us in that direction to be the best we
can be, the number one person being Warren Fisher, second being Warren Fisher
and Thirdly Warren Fisher haha.
SPIT has been described as a collection
of internal conversations, please shed some light on this in relation to the
lyrical content.
Sihle: The
best person to answer this question would be Sean hah, but from my
understanding of it and through discussions we’ve had, it’s definitely and
internal dialogue between him and himself, and just him really wrestling and
getting to grips with his demons I guess. Which is what makes it such a raw and
honest album because I feel like for the first time he sort of embraced every
part of himself, the good and the bad, which created really rad music in my
opinion.
In an ideal world, where would Runaway
Nuns be right now in terms of location and feel of the music? Would you feel
that your most recent release materialised exactly as envisioned?
PJ: In an
ideal world, Runaway Nuns would have gone to Europe by now, played in Joburg in
Hate and Snor City, and the album would have been released sooner, but it doesn’t
really matter. Out of all this bullshit going around the pandemic, our album is
actually doing really well. But yeah, sometimes in a shitty situation,
something good comes out of it.
What are some of the cornerstone artists
that inspired your sound? What are some personal favourites we wouldn’t have
expected?
Sihle: Whew,
fuck haha. Okay, well the main one that actually got the band going in the
first place was Black Lips. We all had a deep, I wanna say love, but it was
more like an obsession with Black Lips in the early days. We dove deep into
that black hole. Them coming to Cape Town…
I honestly don’t
think that if Black Lips didn’t come to Cape Town, Runaway Nuns wouldn’t exist.
I can say that without any doubt in my mind. It was simply down to the fact
that we ended up having a conversation with the then guitarist, Jack Hines
about music, about life and what we walked away from is that basically he said,
“Dudes, start a band with your best friends. You all play music, do it together.
That’s the best you could ever do.” And in the following week, we booked a rehearsal
space. It was me, Desmond and Sean, rehearsing with no drummer, just cause Jack
Hines told us to.
So yeah, if
there was one band that’s responsible for us being who we are, it’d be Black
Lips. My personal influences, you might not expect, I’m a huge fan of Britney
Spears, especially Toxic. The production in that song fucks me up haha. Like in
anyone has not heard that song for some ungodly reason, listen to it now and
just listen to the guitarwork, the basswork, the vocals. It’s amazing.
Would there be one piece of advice you
would give to yourselves in the early days of Runaway Nuns?
PJ: Well, advice to old Runaway Nuns. ‘Dude, practice
more. Why didn’t you practice yesterday? I think you should go practice. You
should definitely go practice a little bit. Like you should put in like, 4
hours a day or maybe more’. So yeah, just, ‘Practice dude’.
The floor is yours. Any messages for the
fans, your parents or the local band scene as a whole?
Sihle: To
the local band scene, it’s crazy to see how much content everyone’s putting out
while we can’t do anything, it’s properly inspiring. I think all the bands
pushing their own individual capacities helps push each and every one of us and
my favourite thing about our particular music scene is how supportive we all
are on each other’s own musical endeavours. It’s a really special thing. It doesn’t
happen everywhere.
I think here
we’re just cooking on something special. I’m going to quote Kyle Hager of Holy
Wave, and his immediate perception of the Cape Town music scene is that “(We)
have this beautiful stew that everyone just puts ingredients in, and it creates
something special.” And I think we need to keep that stew going, even though we
can’t play shows. It just keeps the gees up, and moral up, which is good when
everyone’s going through a hard time.
For my
parents, I love you, so much. To the WAGs (Wives And Girlfriends), the Runaway
WAGs, the band would be fokol without the WAGs. One of them is filming this
right now, if that gives you an example of how important they are to us.
PJ: I just
really want to say thank you to all the fans for all the support they’ve been
giving us, throughout our music careers. Thanks for the support on SPIT,
honestly. We wouldn’t have thought it’d do kinda well. It’s doing good. We
really appreciate it.
We really appreciate the fans coming out to every
gig we have, even though we play like three times a weekend, like the same cats
will come to our shows and guys, we really do appreciate it, to all the moshers
in front, to all the people in the back. Yeah, it’s always a jol. Thank you so,
so much.
Hope you’ve enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed creating
it for you peeps. A big shout out to The Runaway Nuns for giving us their time
of day to do this interview.
Full
video interview:
Be sure
to check out ‘Spit’ at the links below.
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