What's on the horizon for Hammer & Bird?

Previously Durbeyfield, what was the catalyst for creating music under a new name?

It’s actually been quite a number of years since Durbeyfield disbanded. Me, Mark and Antonio were the three songwriters but only half the band, and we’ve all gone on to do different things since. There are a couple of old Durbeyfield songs on the album, but most of it has all been written together in the studio. The sound is to us is distinctly new. The new name, Hammer and Bird, is a reference to a favourite scene in the Michel Gondry film, “Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind”.

How has your previous experience in the music industry influenced your current sound?

When we were younger we were very rock band focussed, but since then we’ve all done a lot of different kinds of music, particularly in film scoring. Our music now is a lot more orchestrated and lush in its arrangements and more influenced by songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits.

Where do you draw your inspiration from when making music?

I’m always writing lyrics. The three of us have all sorts of different musical tastes and interests. As well as bands and songwriters though, we all love film composers. Ennio Morricone, Ryuchi Sakamoto, Michael Nyman, Jon Brion, Mark Mothersbaugh.

Describe your ideal song-writing environment for us.

Well I tend to write songs late at night in my back shed after I’ve put the kids to bed. Or a few work places I’ve had jobs at have had pianos that I can sit down at after other people have disappeared. We’re all individual songwriters on our own, but when we work together we write together in the studio. Sometimes someone will come with a song or a key chord progression to build off, but we do our writing in the process of production and songs can often grow out of arrangements.