Go to an OffTheRadar gig and you’ll leave smiling. There’s no two ways about it. It has something to do with their infectious harmony-driven pop that doesn’t just float from the speakers but glows from the musicians on stage. We’ll have none of that shoe-gazing sobriety, let’s have some flip-flop flinging fun instead. “It’s our 30 minutes to go and live” beams vocalist and bassist Tim, cradling a pint in an alcove of the Hobgoblin. Beneath the veneer of raucous sunshine lies a very serious band however, who have mastered their craft not just from campfire jamming but from endless gigging and tireless rehearsing. It’s only this way that OffTheRadar could gel says the affable Liverpudlian, the original songwriter when the band started: | "It’s all voodoo! If you play together a lot you have a weird connection." | | Tim, OffTheRadar |
“We became a tight band playing good songs really early on and one of the things I wanted to do was play around pubs in Oxfordshire until I felt something had clicked beyond getting a load of people together just playing my songs. It’s as much about the personalities of people involved as anything else.” And it’s this togetherness as a band, which has Daz on guitar and vocals and Panda on drums, that has spurred on their songwriting. Says Tim: “It’s all voodoo! If you play together a lot you have a weird connection. I used to write songs in my head and sit down with an acoustic guitar and make the arrangements. These days for the last two years it’s worked differently, I’ve got lots of stuff in my head and Daz does too and we turn up at the rehearsal set and we have a muck around and a jam, someone will just do something and it will just happen. You feel like there’s some ectoplasm in the room!” Daz and Tim met while enjoying a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle on the road around Europe as part of Sir Bald Diddly and The Wig Outs. There they had “a real blast” being treated as celebs, especially in Russia where they were collected from the airport by a 1950s black limousine and were emblazoned on the front of the Moscow Times. They discovered a mutual love of sixties bands such as The Sonics and decided to form a band on their return. They met drummer Panda along the way and so in 2001 the magic threesome were formed. While popular on the Berkshire circuit, and while they’ve ‘done’ London many times, OffTheRadar have taken rather a large chomp from the Big Apple. The band have toured there and hooked up with New Yorkers Aluminum Babe for gigs both there and over here. Having released two promo CDs, OffTheRadar in 2002 and Here It Is! in 2003, they now have a debut album out, which was recorded in a swift five days in the back of beyond at T-Pot studios in Path Of Condie, Perthshire. The studio belongs to Robin Evans, who is Sam Brown’s husband and who started out recording early Manic Street Preachers and has recorded Dodgy’s first two albums. The album is in line with the band’s love of natural performance. “We’re very much into our live ethos. We thought we want it to sound live so we’re doing this live.” Also Robin is a friend, as is the album mixer Chris Britten of Wired Studios and Velocity Recordings’ Sid Siddle who they licensed the album with. This very much in keeping with what Tim laughingly describes as the band’s “family cottage industry” vibe. “I’d like to go into a studio where we feel quite good about the place. We don’t want to feel like a client”, explains Tim. In fact, feeling good and having fun overrides any desire to join the musical rat race: “I’m not interested in getting on a band wagon, but just writing songs the way we write songs. It’s important to entertain people. Every interview you read it’s always about the music industry side of things, but I’ve been chewed up spat out by that business throughout the time I’ve been on the edges of it and involved with deals and that. He adds: “The music is about the music and the business is about the business. Most of the people I’d met in the industry hadn’t got a clue about music, what they did understand was about the business. If you let the business side of things leak into the music then there’s a danger of just completely destroying everything that you’re about. Recording this album, I wanted to record a great debut album, I certainly feel we have from my perspective. That was our goal, it wasn’t ‘let’s sell a million albums’.” But of course they wouldn’t complain if they did! To give them a head start, you can buy the album from their website www.offtheradar.co.uk. | 
