Interview with Laurent from Gold Key

Hey, how are you?

Hey! I’m good, I have a new baby kitten in my life so I’m currently in a great mood as opposed to the nihilist I usually am.

For those unsure on who Gold Key are, can you give us a quick intro?

We’re a band from Watford made up of close friends who all play in other amazing bands. Steve Sears sings, I play guitar, James Leach slaps the bass and Jack Kenny bangs the drums. Is that quick enough?

Perfect. Your debut album, Hello Phantom, is out in a matter of days. How excited are you to be able to unleash it?

We’re very excited, we started writing and technically recording the album last year, so it feels amazing to finally tell people it’s out now! Most bands would say it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to make their album but this record was a lot of fun to make and 100% stress free.

How have the tracks been going down live?

The set has been going down well. To 99% of the audience we’re a brand new band so I guess they don’t really know what to expect. People have come up to us after the show saying they’ve enjoyed the set so we’re obviously doing something right huh!? I’d be more worried if people said nothing!

Talking of that. You’ve been on tour with Arcane Roots. How has it been touring with a band of such high quality? Did you feel extra pressure to perform each night?

Not only do Arcane Roots write killer music they perfectly execute each performance. On top of that they’ve brought an amazing light show on the road. It’s impossible to compete with their show every night but at the same time we sound different enough to Arcane Roots that we still provide something fresh to the crowd. Everyone’s at the gigs to see them and they’ve totally smashed it on this tour. Wicked dudes, wicked band and they have Gold Key’s full respect.

You’ve got a couple of rescheduled dates to come at the beginning of November. Looking forward to closing out the tour? Getting a bit of closure on it?

Yeah totally, the tour has been a lot of fun and we’ve gotten close to Arcane Roots and their crew. With the postponed dates it means we still have the London show to look forward to which tends to be the biggest date on any UK tour. Of course it will be sad to say good bye to everyone but we’ll just beg Arcane Roots to take us on their next and even bigger tour!

Do you have any idea when you’ll be back on tour for those that missed you? You’ve got a couple of dates with Grave Pleasures as well. Is there a headline tour in the works?

We have our own album release show in the pipeline for mid November. More info on that soon! I think the priority for us is getting the record out there and then we can look at our headline tour. I’m not going to jump to the conclusion we’re big enough to tour the UK on our own just yet, only time will tell. Also we’re all huge fans of Grave Pleasures everyone check them out if you don’t know the name. They remind me of Joy Division meets Danzig!

Back to Hello Phantom, do you have a favourite track from the album?

It’s hard to pick favourite tracks as I love them all. Even though I’m in the band I hear new things all the time in the record. If anyone out there gets a favourite track please let me know via social media.

Finally, what are the plans going forward for Gold Key?

We’ve actually already started working on more music. Whether that will turn into an EP or album 2 we still don’t know. We’re very happy with the demos floating around at the moment though.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Any parting words?

Just a massive thank you to anyone that’s listened to the album and our amazing team at Venn Records, Deviate Digital, Believe and Devil PR. You’re all the best!

‘Hello Phantom’ is out now on Venn Records: https://goldkey.lnk.to/HelloPhantom