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Those of you lucky enough to have got tickets for ATP Pitchfork will know full well that the festival was a total heat wave of brilliance. Gigwise was privileged enough to not only get up close and personal gig action with the band, but to catch up with Luke, Mitch and Steve on Camber Sands’ beach front (see photo gallery). An interview with Born Ruffians on the beach? The perilous journey we go through for you guys… we do this so you don’t have to (yeah, right).

We ask the band how they are finding their ATP experience. Mitch replies, “It’s probably the best festival we’ve ever been to.” Luke adds, “It’s cool because when we book shows normally we’re drinking or hanging out at the bar before we play. This is like hanging out at our house and then going to see a band down the road.” The boys like the set up of the festival and are excited about several bands on the bill like Dirty Projectors (who they’ll eventually leave us in favour of) and Caribou, who they recently supported on tour. So how was the tour at Caribou’s side? Luke says, “We supported them for about 6 weeks so we got really annoying at the end.” Born Ruffians have supported some monster bands. We ask who their favourite band they’ve toured with is. Luke says, “Well, Hot Chip are staying in the chalet next to us. That’s the funny thing: a lot of the bands we’ve toured with are here right now!” Steve adds, “Hot Chip gave us a big break by taking us on tour with them so we won’t forget that. The Caribou tour was more extensive and we were more in the same boat. We were both in bands staying at the same hotels so there was more bonding.” Luke adds, “Hot Chip were really standoffish to spooning!” Stand offish to spooning? Gutted!

The band tell us how they have spent the previous evening’s festivities taking sanctuary in the safe confines of their chalet, addicted to ATP tee vee. This afternoon, they took leave of the TV to take part in some weird shenanigans with a rocket launcher. Steve tells us, “We made up this awesome game with this giant foam Frisbee, but then we shot a rocket to hit it and we roofed it. Dave from the Dirty Projectors jumped up to get it. I felt really bad because I thought he was going to fall and it would be at our expense because we were acting like little kids shooting things on the roof.”

Taking of teenage idiocraty, BR’s most recent single, ‘Hummingbird’ was featured on teen cult UK TV show ‘Skins. We ask the band how this came about. Steve says, “We didn’t even know what it was when we were asked to do it. Our manager was like ‘you should do this’. So we watched the first couple of episodes and were like ‘oh cool.’”. Luke adds, “It wasn’t filmed in a real club. It’s some kind of a loft where people live upstairs. They throw parties and sell tickets every Saturday. I think it’s legal.” We ask if they think ‘Skins’ has helped them expand their fan base. Mitch responds, “Actually we heard people at ATP making fun of us! This guy was like ‘well they’ve been on Skins so they must be good right! Like the OC factor.” We discuss the perils of affiliation with certain TV shows and the ‘OC factor’, which despite the show (the OC that is) being shocking bad and saccharine (IOHO) had the best soundtrack (hailing the likes of Death Cab for Cutie). We talk about how people on Facebook actually have ‘Skins parties’ and that ‘Skins’ is now the standard by which us Brits’ parties are measured. Luke laughs, “Oh now we have to break up!” Steve jokes, “I bet I get a Facebook invite from you (us here at Gigwise) saying ‘come to my Skins party, we can recreate Series 2, episode 9!” We tell him it’s a date! Steve laughs, “That’s basically a verbal contract right there!”

Their much anticipated debut album ‘Red, Yellow and Blue’ is released on May 26th. We ask how they feel about the new album, and if they faced any challenged in recording it. Luke responds, “Time was the biggest challenge, I guess.” The band were working with Animal Collective’s ex-producer (who worked on ‘Sung Tongs’) on the album. “Sung Tongs is one of my favourite records ever, which is definitely one of the reasons we chose to get him on board! He does really good stuff. We’ve received a lot of praise about the sound of the record because he’s so great at mixing and mastering. He didn’t take over though. Everything was written before, but he really developed the tone and sound of the album.” Steve adds, “It’s hard for us to hear the album the way others do because you’re so close to it. I hear drums. A lot of people have mentioned the production and I’m glad because he’s put a lot of work into it.”

We talk about other bands that sound a bit similar to Born Ruffians, such as Black Lips, who don’t seem to put as much emphasis into the technicalities of their live performance as BR do. When the band play live they are very tight musically, which other bands in this genre do not always do. Luke tells us that his favourite bands are ones that don’t just spontaneously ‘jam’, “Battles are one of my favourite live bands. Those guys really know what is going on. They are super tight. I guess we just prefer bands who are really tight and play close attention.” We ask if this impacts on their music. Luke says, “Probably because we’ve played shows with people who are very tight on stage (musically), we feel we have to play to the same standard.”

See the band in action and on the beach at All Tomorrow's Parties below (pics by Gary Kelly):-