Asia is listening to PREP, and PREP is listening back

On the day PREP’s latest record drops, the boys are already in the studio, building the next one.

“We’re going to be working on some new music that won’t be out for months, maybe even years,” Tom Havelock, the lead vocalist of the group, confessed. 

The London-based indie pop band has been sitting on the four tracks in their latest EP One Day in the Sun for a while now, and they are eager for everyone to listen to this new offering. So eager that they admit they’ll be browsing through comments in between sessions with “light terror” of what people will say. 

The songs themselves hold no terror, only light. The four new tracks build on their breezy, marina-pop world. It’s vintage at its core, but now with glossier synths and jazz that feels more indulgent. They tap into familiar themes of love and longing in the lyrics, but with a newfound wisdom this time, offering advice about living life to the fullest in tracks like “Do What You Gotta.” 

Havelock says it wasn’t their intention to give advice to their listeners. On the contrary, he was “imagining a message being delivered to myself” while writing it.

“Do What You Gotta,” the EP’s lead single, features Taiwanese band Sunset Rollercoaster, continuing PREP’s long-standing artistic exchange with Asian artists. Previously, the band collaborated with famous Thai musicians Phum Viphurit and James Alyn, and even appeared on a remix collection of South Korean girl group Red Velvet’s viral hit “Bad Boy.”

“It’s just been very natural,” Dan Radclyffe, lead guitarist, said about these collaborations. Many have likened their sound to city pop, the genre that once filled Japanese airwaves in the 1980s. At the start, they admit they knew little about it, but it has since become a defining element of their music.

And it’s been paying off. For an English group, a chunk of their top listening countries come from Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan, with the band having collaborated with artists from the latter two.

So, can we expect a Filipino feature in the future? The band doesn’t want to spoil anything just yet. 

“There are a couple of artists from the Philippines we’ve been listening to,” Havelock said, with a cheeky reminder that they are working on their next album. “Our antennae are up for sure.”

A sonic getaway

Their creative relationship with Asia has become a cycle of influence. Because their audience comes from these countries, they tour there. Touring exposes them to new sonic landscapes. These sounds inevitably find their way back into their music. 

Llywelyn ap Myrddin, the band’s keyboardist, recalls being taken to a vinyl bar in Seoul where the band got to listen to Thai funk from the 1980s, a sound they never heard before and may have never heard otherwise. 

Guillaume Jambel, their drummer, says being in the country itself plays a crucial role in how the music influences them. “When you’re in the place where [the local music] is from and you can see people’s reactions to it, you can really get it. We’ve discovered some amazing music like that.”

Rappler introduced the band to budots, the viral, repetitive Filipino dance music genre that hails from Davao City. They searched it up immediately in the middle of the interview. 

“It’s already dad music!” Jambel exclaimed after discovering the genre originated in the late 2000s. 

They expressed interest in listening to it. The band was built on trying new things out anyway. 

The boys beamed with pride and clear affection as they reminisced about their origin story: the pub where Jambel and ap Myrddin first met, their mutual obsession with rock band Steely Dan, and the first track they worked on together, a piano-freestyle demo of “Futures,” a song that would make its way to their first EP of the same name, all polished and groovy.

They flirt with the idea of releasing it unedited someday. But they’re too focused on finishing their next album to even think about it. 

About the future

“Do you like country music?” Jambel inquires. The band has spent some time writing music for their new album in Nashville, which has pushed them to toy with acoustic guitars, an instrument they don’t usually employ.

They would like to get out of the studio soon, though, and meet their fans, particularly Filipinos. 

While PREP is yet to collaborate with a Filipino artist, they have featured their Filipino fans in a song. Tucked into the deluxe edition of their album, The Programme, is a live recording of “Years Don’t Lie” from their Manila show.

The band declares their Filipino fans are the real vocalists there, saying they usually sing “as loud as the music” in every performance.

While nothing about a tour is final yet, plans are being made. Promises, too. 

“We will be back,” Havelock guaranteed. “There’s nothing like a Manila PREP show.” – Rappler.com