English Teacher at SWX Bristol
English Teacher will perform at SWX Bristol on Thursday 21st November.
“Leeds’ music scene is the best in the world”, Lily Fontaine, English Teacher’s vocalist, guitarist, and synthesist declares without a blink of hesitation. Doug Frost, drummer, helpfully elaborates: “Even though it’s really small, there’s a huge jazz scene, there’s a huge classical scene, a big folk scene, a lot of techno. It’s got everything.” Lead Guitarist Lewis Whitling chips in too: “It’s so compact as well! There’s lots of music venues in a small space.”
“It’s a very incestuous scene,”, Lily, one-time moonlighter for fellow West Yorkshire band Eades concludes, “but that’s why it’s such a good place.”
Contemporaries at Leeds College of Music (now Leeds Conservatoire) who mingled at various house parties as students, English Teacher’s four working parts – completed by bassist Nicholas Eden – had each been tinkering on their own various projects before, at last, settling on each other’s talents. Lily, Doug and Nicholas were house-sharing when they invited Lewis for a front-room ‘rehearsal’, and began working on new material post-haste. ”Straight away when Lily asked me to come out and see what it was like, it clicked pretty quickly,” Lewis remembers.