Barry Hyde, on lead vocals and guitar in The Futureheads, was a little worse for wear when I caught up with him a few hours before his headline slot. He'd only had 3 hours sleep after getting up to mischief with his five musician housemates in their vicarage house in his home town of Sunderland. "It's just a house of improvisation, exquisite speech and parties – it's good." Wow. He told me how excited the boys are to headline the Bizarre Ball and all about the new a cappella Futureheads' album in the works...
"It's really hard to do a cappella because it's fucking hard to sing in tune, it really is. Live – we'd sing a cappella, it's part of our thing, but live, it's gone. If you're in tune or out it doesn't matter ‘cos it's gone. But when you record something people are able to listen to it again and again and again so it has to be at a much higher level so if some of the tracks there's like 160 vocals one particularly didn't go at the same time and they've all got to be perfectly in tune, and that for four hours trying to do that you go insane, because it requires so much mental concentration and muscle control, and it basically fucks your mind."
So, do you have someone on drums, someone on guitar..?
"No, it's going to be nothing but vocals and body sounds, clapping hands, stamping feet, beating chests."
Who inspired you to do that?
"Do you know Kelis?" – Yeah - "She has this song called a cappella – * sings * 'Before you, my whole life was a cappella'. We did a Jo Whiley Live Lounge and part of the deal with that is you have to do one of your own songs acoustic and a song which is currently in the charts which is stylistically at odds with your own… I like singing songs sung by girls using the same perspective. I wouldn’t change it so it sounded like I was singing about a girl. Does that make sense? A girl’s song should be kept intact and then sung by a boy it gives a very unusual quality. We do a version of Hound of Love by Kate Bush right?" – Yeah, love that. – "And like, obviously a boy singing a girls’ song it automatically makes it slightly unusual and interesting. It doesn’t guarantee that what you’re going to produce is going to be good, but it’s just the angle. So we’re doing a lot of songs by girls. And I’m currently working on a solo project which is going to be an album of Billie Holiday covers, just me and my guitar. Like a jazz album with a difference, modernised."
He's working on a film production company aiming to make audiences uncomfortable in their conditioned states, he plays piano in his brother's band Hyde and Beast, and he likes putting his friends into meditative states. There's a lot more to Barry Hyde than The Futureheads, though he's still very much in love with the band. I asked him how he hooked up with Bizarre for this gig as, although I love the band as a long running fan, I wouldn't immediately place The Futureheads as suitably quirky.
"I made friends with Alix Fox [A beautiful and bubbly punk fairy, front section editor of Bizarre, and host at the Bizarre Ball] after she interviewed me last spring, it was the best interview I’ve ever done. I think she’s great company, Alix, she has a particularly unique perspective on life. If you walk down the street with her you get the sneak peek into what it’s like to be a beautiful woman in the real world. Every single man either looks at her like she’s and alien or an angel. It makes me feel insignificant, and I really like that because I think it bothers me if I’m too significant."
The Futureheads followed tough act Kunt and the Gang, – a joyful Super-Hans character with more controversy than Prince Harry at a fancy dress party – but the crowd received them bouncing, clapping and singing along to anthems such as Decent Days and Nights, The Beginning of the Twist and Skip to the End.
Behind the stylised masks and costumes shone a depth reaching everyone in the audience. Anti-establishment, anarchy, and most importantly, Joie de Vivre; which is what these parties are all about.
The Futureheads’ album The Chaos is out now.
