EIN: Enough about poetry and words, talking strictly about music, by this point math rock is no longer necessarily a new subgenre, but there are very few that persevered and have managed to surpass the initial gimmick of the style and be recognised by wider audiences as just being a ‘alternative rock’, which is a far less niche term to be associated with, for better or worse.

Either way, the TTNG sound is pretty idiosyncratic. Plenty of people have been inspired by it, and hope to re-capture it in their own music, but really there’s only one, two or maybe three bands that pull it off. Going all the way back to when you initially started introducing this more rhythmically complex, technically demanding and ‘busy’ sound into the songwriting, what inspired that? Was it the learning of a new technique, another band in particular, or a happy accident?

SS: I was lucky to have met a guy on my first day of Uni (in fact I think he was the first guy I met at uni) who had come from Grimsby, where (at the time) there had been a strong math/hardcore scene. He was the one who introduced me to Don Cab and Ghosts and Vodka, as well as a bunch of UK math and hardcore

bands like Stand, Andy, Glenn, And Ritch, The Jesus Years, and The Little Explorer. I instantly fell in love with its complexity and ability to capture and convey emotion in a way that the more mainstream bands couldn’t. That and the fact that Oxford itself had a really strong scene, helped my music education. Whilst none of us in the band were in a position to play like these bands, I think Tim and I both had a musical connection and a distinct idea about the type of band we wanted to be.

We loved the complexity musical complexity of a lot of those bands, but we wanted to write stuff that was recognisable as ‘songs’. I think when Chris joined the band we were then really able to push ourselves and find the sound we had in our heads. I feel like the songs we wrote before him joining are the sound of a band struggling to find themselves. To this day TTNG is the only band I’ve ever been in…we just rotated band members until we got it right (which says a lot given that I’m not in the band anymore ;-P).

EIN: Do you ever find being a math rock band, pioneering or otherwise, to be restrictive? I feel like there are songs across all of your studio releases that could be just as commercially successful as a long list of the indie rock that came from the UK between 2007-present day, but whilst you guys have obviously been hugely successful, you’ve not broken into the ‘mainstream’, is this something you’re consciously avoiding or is it something you’re still striving to achieve, if you ever were?

SS: I think we’re striving to make music we like. There is only so long you can stay together as a band playing music you don’t like. It’s testimony to the longevity of the band, that we’ve stayed true to the principle of playing music we like.

EIN: You seem to be a band that don’t shy away from their genre-affiliations. Having people such as Yvette Young and Nate Kinsella be involved in your recent acoustic rendition of Animals. That’s almost three generations of math/emo rock musicians collaborating on one record, and it’s beautifully done. Why did you want to make that record, instead of recording something new with Stuart singing?

SS: Ever since I left the band we talked about doing a ten-year anniversary tour of Animals (with varying degrees of seriousness). As the time approached, it became apparent that actually people might want us to do it. That’s when we started talking about re-releases and what that might look like.

We pretty much snuffed out talk of re-mastering Animals, or just doing it in another colour as cop-outs, that even we could barely care about let alone anyone else. Once we decided on a re-imagining, we ended up going along the acoustic route, but being conscious that a whole record of just me and Tim could get dull pretty quickly, we thought about how we could keep it interesting and that’s when we thought to contact friends the band had made over the years to help fill out the sound and add something to make it more interesting. I couldn’t care less about genre affiliations. The band have been fortunate to make friends with like minded people who share a passion for music, who are not only fantastic musicians in their own right, but they’re also really lovely people.