Crashface Talk About ‘Prototype,’ Touring Aspirations, and Playing to Three Men in a Pub [w/ Audio]

Crashface are still in their infancy as a group; however, they have a clear plan for what they want to achieve in their music. Refusing to define themselves by a specific genre and with a treasure trove of songs ready to go, it feels like it is just a matter of time before this duet could succeed in many UK artists’ dreams and break the USA.

Shortly after their set at Download Festival 20, we caught up with a sweaty Otto Bulfour from the genre-smashing duet (completed by Charlie Hinton) for a quick chat…

Hi Otto, how are you?

Otto Bulfour: “All good, man; sweaty!”

Oh, it’s boiling, isn’t it? Were you here yesterday?

“Yeah, man. We went to our Airbnb yesterday and just like chilled out, had a shower had some dinner. You know, we thought we’d be sensible, for once.”

I get that; I don’t do the camping thing anymore. I’m with you in the Airbnb community because you’ve got two choices, it’s either boiling in hot weather where you die and your tent or it’s horrible, Drownload weather and you wake up and well, you kind of swimming a bit.

“Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we’re doing both; we camped on the Friday night. Kind of didn’t sleep. Yeah, and we’re camping tonight so very excited to see Slipknot.”

That will be a great show. Did you catch Bring Me (The Horizon) the other night?

“Oh my God, did I! I had the best time, They were so good. Every single show is so different, and they just throw everything they can out there at their performances, and that’s so good.”

Now I think it’s actually safe to say that it was actually career-defining for them to be fair.

“Absolutely, I mean, headlining fucking Download Festival, man, like, whoa, that’s crazy.”

Anyway, enough about other bands because we’re really here to talk to you. I’ve just realized I’ve been waffling on about other things. Now, I believe you guys started in roundabout 2020. Can you tell me about your journey from where you started to where you are now? It’s quite an impressive escalation in such a short period of time, especially since the lockdown happened during that time.

“Yeah, we moved in together a few days before the first lockdown. Both of us were working bar jobs, and it was time to actively be paid to be creative, weirdly enough. So for us it was incredibly productive and incredibly creatively freeing. We just tried a load of things, and we’re just like we’re gonna stick to this, this is so cool. We throw a lot of things at the wall and we do everything completely independently. So it’s completely wild to see how things have progressed.”

You’ve recently released your second EP, were there any specific inspirations behind this latest creation?

“The whole idea of the EP, called Prototype was literally just trying to hone in what we want to sound like and the influences we want to take. It was all just throwing a lot of things at the wall. We listened to so many different types of music, we just thought it’d be really interesting to try and meld together genres in a way that we hadn’t really heard before. So that’s the whole idea of the album.”

Speaking of amalgamating, how would you describe your sound for the uninitiated out there because, again, you’re still relatively new on the scene and making a name for yourself so how would you promote it and what would you class yourself as?

“It’s really difficult but I’m gonna say we’re like the Prodigy meets My Chemical Romance meets Britney Spears and where that like weird love child in between. I’m not really into the whole genre thing.”

I was giving you guys a listen and it was like this weird techno thing but it works.

“Yeah, man, I appreciate it.”

Now, you’’re continuing to tour after Download, whereabouts are you going to be playing?

“We’re gonna be doing quite a few things in the UK. I want to make it out to Europe later in the year. Then, yeah, fingers crossed America next year.”

Where would you want to go specifically beyond America? Or what state in America? What area?

“I’d love to play in Manhattan. I love New York. New York has my heart. Tokyo, all over the world. Traveling is just such an interesting part of touring, especially around the UK, where we’ve mainly sort of cut our teeth. You just meet so many interesting people and see so many different things. So it’s just great to tour, I love it.”

You’re sort of transitioning at the moment from one of the smaller, unknown bands to something on a much bigger scale. How do you feel about that and the potential change in the size of venues because one of the things I’ve always got from bands is, especially the bigger lot, is they kind of miss the intimacy of the small venues. Is that something that might worry you about that transition?

“No barrier shows; they’re so fun. I find smaller shows more nerve-racking, because you can pick out individual faces. If someone doesn’t like it, you can genuinely make out their facial expression, whereas larger shows, kind of becomes more one organism that you’re trying to sort of keep afloat. It’s weird.”

Have you ever had any experiences like that, where you’ve caught someone just looking like they’re not enjoying it?

“Our old band. We played to three guys in a pub in High Wycombe, and it was all three geezers looking at the bar, and they just go, no, no, no, I think. It was great.”

Crashface ‘Prototype’ EP Artwork

Well, you’ve got to start somewhere, and at the same time, it sounds kind of fun. I kind of wish I was there just for the sake of it. Now what else have you guys got going on? You’ve got a bit of touring, you’ve played Download, is there potential for an album in the future?

“Absolutely. I mean, we’re writing conceptually for an album now. Take that whatever way you will, but yeah, we’re writing a lot. We’re throwing a lot of things at the wall, and we’ve already got like 30 or something songs that we really like, so we’re just trying to whittle things down and like keep exploring different ideas.”

I suppose what you could always do is just save them in the bank and then just saturate the market at crunch point?

“Absolutely, release one a day. One a day all year, that’s the plan.”

Now that’s pretty much it for me but thank you so much for talking to V13 today, I think you need to go and get some hydration. You’re looking exactly like me; you’re just dripping.

“I can feel it. I feel like a lobster; it’s crazy. I’m so red right now.”

For more information, visit the official Crashface website.