The Return Of The Others

2005 was a good, no great year for The Others. They were constantly in the media for their unusually dedicated relationship with fans, their ability to perform gigs up trees, and all this without actually producing anything. Granted there was an album among all this and a few singles, but their music was hardly a runaway success. Fuelled mainly by Pete Doherty hype the band clearly has one big thing going for them, in the form of Dominic Masters. Today the lead singer seems to be particularly happy as he strolls through a park chatting to Gigwise: "I've just bought a new pair of trainers because I'm going on tour tomorrow. I went to see a band called The Parkinsons play. It was their first gig in three years, so I went to their concert and by the end of it I had two holes in my trainers so I've just gone out and bought some trainers to go on tour."

Dominic appears to be extremely glad about this new purchase. Maybe he doesn't buy trainers too often or maybe he's trying to prove that, despite the reports, he does have a secret wad of cash lying around, either way he's proud. And of course he has a reason to be. A slight dip in popularity aside (apart from recently The Others have just released their new album which apparently sees the band move into different territories.  "What I try and do is tackle different subject matter so I've not covered topics covered in the first album, lyrically I'd say it’s got different topics I'm speaking about."

And you can really tell the difference from the band's previous recordings, with 'Truth That Hurts' making a vast change to the band's sound. So what prompted this? "We changed the producers which gave us a certain modern edge so the new producers helped us a lot with the sound that we're really happy with, really precise, really defined sound, at the same time we feel every bit of space on that album is filled up. So I'm really happy with the new producers. I'd say also the guitarist, the bass player and the drummer have worked really hard to make sure they can give 110%. So we've been most happy with this album, it took the longest out of the two we recorded. We spent five months recording it and at the same time it’s the most pleasurable album we've ever recorded."
 
The real truth is that a year down the line The Others are finding themselves to be in a very different situation. The hype has now gone, they are no longer the music weeklies’ wet dream and anyone and everyone are performing guerrilla gigs. On top of this, the band were dropped from Mercury Records, allegedly after multiple sackings and fractions throughout the company. Yet Dominic phrases it a little differently: "It was a few decisions that were taken out of our hands. First of all Alan McGee who took us through Poptones to Mercury lost his licensing deal so that was a major factor in us moving away from Mercury. Then the new boss that came in shelved 28 out of the 34 acts on Mercury Records."
 
Despite the switch from Mercury to independent label Lime Records, The Others have still kept their fans. The bands fans are so fanatical that they've created their own following titled the 853 Kamikaze Stage Diving Division who have their own meet ups and gigs with the band. Dominic still also writes his phone number on the band's flyers and regularly promotes his number in interviews, and no ones quite sure why but Dominic definitely thinks it’s important