Never before has Hertfordshire offered the world a band as colourful as My Passion. I met up with the brightest new stars of new waves front man Lawrence Rene before their gig Ipswich’s Steam Boat Tavern to talk about genre defying music, corporate vultures and burning tour buses. These D.I.Y. superstars have achieved an impressive, ultra-dedicated fan base without the help of music labels, radio play lists or rave reviews. But after touring Europe with Kill Hannah why are My Passion still playing the toilet circuit?

MD: You recently toured with Kill Hannah how did that compare with other support shows you’ve played like Jeffery Star?

MP: Well, Jeffery Star isn’t something we’d ever do again because with him the music is only a facet of what he does, he’s a celebrity first and a musician second. With My Passion we like to focus on the music more than anything else. Jeffery Star was our first tour with someone well known and it was after that we first met Kill Hannah.  They’re a fantastic band who’ve been around for a while so they looked after us when we toured with them. It was our first time outside the UK and on a tour bus too, so everything was a new experience to us. Some of the shows we played were the biggest we had ever done.

MD: How well did you go down in other countries?

MP: It was great playing other countries, everyone seemed twice as excited. The UK shows were really busy and the audience was really excited but the European shows were doubly energetic. It’s probably because they don’t get to see as many shows over there, which makes it twice as special, I guess. We were well received all over Europe. Holland and Sweden were great but Scandinavia was exceptionally mental!  They went crazy for us and we built up a really good fan base over there. It was great to make such a strong impression on fans who hadn’t even heard of us before.

MD: Your tour bus burnt down towards the end of the tour though, what did you learn from your brush with mass destruction?

MP: We learnt the value that clothes don’t have! We lost all of the clothes, laptops, IPods and personal items that we had taken with us which was pretty much everything since the tour was over a month long. It was quite a big trauma at the time and we had cheated death a little bit. Unfortunately we had to cancel the last couple of shows on the tour but we didn’t just lay down and let it defeat us, as soon as we were back home we were playing more shows. It was such a great tour that although the fire was bad at the time, it didn’t over ride how much of a great experience it was for us.

MD: You’ve come a long way without much in the way of media exposure, but recently you’ve been appearing in some impressive magazines.

MP: Yeah, we’re at the stage where we hoping for more media exposure, we’ve just had an article in Big Cheese and a massive two page spread in Disorder which was really exciting for us. We’ve also got an article coming up in Rock Sound, which we are looking forward to as well.

MD: You’ve achieved a lot without the help of a label.

MP: Yeah, we’re very DIY, we release everything on our own label “Style Suicide”. We decided it was the best way to do it because record companies aren’t as eager to hand out cash like they used to a few years back. Especially not to groups like us, we are very self styled and do things our own way. A weird band like us wouldn’t be understood by a fat cat in an office. We thought it would be best to start our own label so we can make our records sound the way we want them to and look the way we want to, and just do the things we want to do really. We made our own fan base and managed our own press coverage, we’ve worked hard to build the foundations of our success and we’re going to get the full benefit of it to. One of the main incentives for doing everything ourselves was that we didn’t want anyone else getting a slice of our pie.

MD: Synth rock, Dance punk, Electro thrash, whatever you want to call it, its coming back in a big way at the moment. Do you think that its help contribute to your success?

MP: There are a lot of great bands at the moment with that kind of sound. But I don’t think it’s helped with our own growth, we don’t fit in anywhere really. We set ourselves apart from the scenes both musically and with our image.  British acts like Late Of The Pier, Hadouken! and The Ghost Frequency are probably the closest there is to us but we are definitely out there on our own. We make music for ourselves from a wide selection of influences.

MD: One great electronic band that you’re supporting soon is Inner Party System, what can you tell us about that?

MP: That’s happening in January and February, they are one of our favourite bands at the moment. They’re very much electro, whilst we also have a rockier side to us, we try to bridge the gap between all our influences. Middle Class Rut who we like a lot are also supporting them so it should be a really good tour.

MD: Your debut album.  What can you tell us about that? Is it finished?

MP: Yes, it’s finished and it will be released early 2009 although we don’t have an exact date yet. It’s a mixture of loads of sounds, there are a couple of new tracks on it that we haven’t played to anyone yet, loads of live favourites and reinvented older tracks. We released a single called “Winter for Lovers” ages ago and we’ve completely reworked that for the album. Our latest single “Crazy and Me” is very rocky and guitar riff based but that’s no sign of things to come. All the songs pretty much stand for themselves, the only real connection between them is us. There’s a lot of electro, some metal, some punk, a little bit of pop and even some nursery rhyme. We like to keep things mixed it keeps everything so much more fresh and exciting that way, like our live shows. It’s pretty mixed theme wise as well because we like the dreams but we also love the nightmare too, so we try and do them both at once. It’s a really fun album but there is some darkness in there too.

MD: You’ve named the album “The Corporate Flesh Party” is that a comment on the ethics of other bands?

MP: Calling it “The Corporate Flesh Party” is a two fingers up to the music industry. It’s a punk thing and it’s also a play on words. It’s a comment on how bands are treated, and all the people that will try to make money out of you. It’s inspired by people that we’ve met along the way and how we’ve done all this without any corporate arse licking. The artwork is almost finished, it’s got business men with vultures heads picking at our organs, its quite dark imagery but its fun and ironic to.

MD: You’ve got a strong fan base and have played with some big bands at some large venues. But you play tiny venues like this one on your own tours, why aren’t you playing bigger venues?

MP: Well, we didn’t get to play places like Ipswich on the Kill Hannah tour, so we wanted to get to all of our more isolated fans. We come from a small town (Hitchin) with only a small music scene, so we understand what it’s like for places like Ipswich. Our fan base is constantly growing and we’re trying to push things to the next level. Everything is starting to come together for us at the moment, we recently sold out a show at the Camden Barfly, which was awesome. I think next year, when we release the new album and get a bit more media attention we will start playing some larger venues.

MD: Apart from the new album what else does My Passion have planned for 2009?

MP: There’s the Inner Party System tour, which we are really looking forward to. But we’re also planning more headline tours.  We’re touring Europe with an Austrian disco punk band. We’re also hoping to get back to Scandinavia and play some more shows there. We’ve got some festivals already lined up, it will be the first time playing mainstream festivals but we’re going to play some smaller ones to like we did at Underage Festival last year. It was Red Bull who got us on the stage at Underage last year after we won their bedroom jam competition, they’ve been really good to us and we’re going to do a tour with them to. It’s going to be a really hectic year for us, our busiest yet. We hardly ever take a day off.

www.myspace.com/mypassionmusic