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It’s been an insane year for Gigwise’s favourite hardcore trio Test Icicles. Arriving on a bubble of considerable hype, their rumbling iPunke racket has enthralled as many as it has confounded. Of course, for all the highs, it’s been a pretty darn bumpy ride along the way. Despite its widespread critical acclaim, the band sadly haven’t shifted too many units of the fantastic ‘For Screening Purposes Only’, their live shows too have often bordered on the chaotic – most notably an Arctic Monkeys support slot where the lads were soundly booed off by the fervent and very hostile ‘Arctic Army’. However, such character building exercises have seemingly cemented the devotion of the sturdy, youthful Test Icicles fanbase who are out in force tonight at their final ever show at London Astoria.
Gigwise catches up with Raary and Dev in their dressing room a few hours before their ultimate show to get the low-down on their past, present and future. Sadly, just limited to a few minutes with the boys we’re going to have to keep it short and concise – somewhat aptly just like their career. Upon arriving, the notoriously distractible lads are handed a bottle of Ribena by their Tour Manager, which is as irresponsible as obtaining crack for Pete Doherty, but thankfully tonight the Attention Deficit Disorder kids do sit still for a moment to discuss all…
Cutting to the chase, we ask the boys just why they’ve decided to call it a day. Dev succinctly explains “We don’t like it”, before Rarry adds, “We said we were going to split up in October 2004 but then we signed a record contract afterwards. We thought we’d see how it went, see if we could comeup with anything decent on the record but it became a bit of a drag really. It was a little bit of fun between three mates but then we had to make a career out of it.” Was anything to do with the contractual obligations? Raary: “Not even that really, we told the label we only wanted to do one album. It was always a short-term project.”
For a supposedly short-term project, that was only done for a bit of fun, were they surprised at how well the record did, critically at least? Raary elucidates; “Not really, we’ve always been quite lucky and at the time it was going quite well though we weren’t really trying at all. I think now if we start trying it will probably go really badly.
Looking to the future and with Dev’s project with Tom Vek underway, we ask if they’re each going to go their separate ways or even attempt something different together at some point. Raary explains they only have intentions to work away from each other, saying “We are all doing different things.” Dev adds: “I’m doing a record. He’s (Raary) doing a record.” Interesting. We try and prompt Raary as to what his work’s going to sound like. He explains: “It’s a bit of a mix really; some of it’s a bit like this, some of it’s a bit slower with piano’s and things like that and it’s a bit circusy- its all in minors and waltz-time but it’s still early days yet.”
What do you have lined up for tonight? Anything special lined up? Raary: “We have another band coming on halfway through the set. They’re called Fake Shark, Real Zombie- they’re from Canada. We’ve done it the past couple of nights. It’s sort of improv.
Time desperately running short, we ask if they’ve got anything they’d like to sign off by saying? Dev: “Thank you.” Raary: “Thanks for putting up with us. Sorry there are no refunds now.” No thank you Test Icicles.
Photos by: Simon Leak
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