| Be Unsatisfied! | - Nine Black Alps play D:Percussion on Sat 6 Aug at 3pm, before rushing off to London to play at Mean Fiddler
- Nine Black Alps' Unsatisfied is out on Mon 8 Aug
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You’ve got a really hectic schedule at the moment. How are you keeping up? "I don’t really know. We don’t really sleep much any more. We flew in from America on Sunday and immediately started in Leicester the next day on zero hours sleep. We hardly ever get back to Manchester either, so it’s living out of a bag and not really washing our clothes ever or sleeping. I think we’ll be broken men by Christmas." How was America? "It was alright. It was a lot of driving. We had a tiny van; we drove across America, played to ten people in Philadelphia, drive miles to the middle of Iowa, stayed in some random motel from three in the morning and set off at nine for somewhere else I’ve never heard of. But it’s cool, it’s like a free holiday." You’ve got some gigs coming up in odd places…
 | | Nine Black Alps |
"There’s one at the Royal Society For The Blind in Sheffield. I don’t really know what it’s about! We just turn up at these places and try and play. The record company wants to push the single, so we’re doing twelve gigs in eight days which is fine. It keeps us busy." Why did you choose Unsatisfied to release next? "I think it’s the most melodic one on the album. I think it could be a 60s song, but we’ve added the usual distorted guitars. It’s one of those songs you can play on an acoustic guitar and I really like the start of it where all the guitars come in." Do you like playing your songs acoustic? "Yeah. They’re usually written on an acoustic anyway. Usually when you’re hung-over, first thing in the morning, before you can think properly. We’re not a jam band. We don’t all turn our guitars up to ten and make a song out of jamming because we’re not actually that good." You’re playing D:Percussion. Have you been to the event before?
 | | Nine Black Alps (photo: Ged Camera) |
"Never, but I’ve heard lots of good things about it. But it’s cool because we haven’t played Manchester since May, so it’ll be nice to be back and be able to wash some clothes!" You’ve got a massively loyal following in Manchester now. Do you consider yourself Mancunian now? "No, because there’s nothing worse than people pretending to be from somewhere where they’re not actually from. But I don’t think we could have done any of this without being in Manchester, because that’s what allowed to play our kind of music without having to be overly fashionable. It’s home now, it’s where I’m from now, but I don’t really think about it too much." What do you think of the city? | "I don’t think we could have done this without being in Manchester... that’s what allowed to play our music without having to be overly fashionable." | | Sam Forrest on why Nine Black Alps came to Manchester |
"It’s brilliant. It’s the reason why I moved here. I moved to Manchester from York two years ago. I didn’t have a job and I thought ‘right, I’m going to move to any city in England’. Manchester seemed like the only choice. It has a cool attitude about it that you don’t get in ‘hip’ places like Leeds and London, which is pretty much another planet anyway." Everything Is has got some fantastic reviews. How do you feel about all the praise? "I honestly don’t read any magazines or anything, because it all stops making sense as soon as your photograph appears in a magazine. It’s just that suddenly you realise how shoddy the process is, you realise the process by which bands get in magazines and it all becomes some weird game. Also, with the reviews, if they’re nice, I don’t believe them and if they’re bad, I go into a massive depression for a month, so I think it’s best to ignore everything." You’ve played everywhere from the Star and Garter to Glastonbury recently. Are there any gigs that stand out? "The Star and Garter, our album launch, was fun, because I always try not to play too drunk, so that was fun because I was hammered and we had tons of balloons. At the same time, we played a gig in San Francisco and there were tons of people there that really liked us and I was really surprised. It’s usually the drunken ones where chaos happens that are the most amusing." Like playing Akoustik Anarkhy… "Yeah, playing their kitchen is always good. You know you can get away with more there because you know there’s not going to be any press people there or any hip scenesters trying to check you out. It’s just more fun. You can play stupid songs and be who you really are." | 
