New Sensations

Only officially forming in 2012, this dreamy group has already gained international recognition off the back of a small string of singles and two EPs – Leaflings and Black Mambo/Exxus. There's a maturity and understanding in their sound beyond a two-year relationship so it's not surprising to learn the story of Glass Animals actually goes back nearly ten years, when the band members, all around the age of 13, were attending school in Oxfordshire.

“When I first moved from Texas, I was the American at school… actually, I wasn't the only American at school,” says the gently-pouted Bayley, returning to Texas for SXSW. “Drew [MacFarlane], our guitarist was the American at school, and so the first person I was introduced to, being the American, was the other American. So Drew was my first friend in the UK, and he was friends with Ed [Irwin-Singer] and Joe [Seaward], the other two guys in the band. We all happened to have similar tastes in music – we all liked slightly left-field stuff – and we were into lots of new and young bands, so we'd sneak out of school to go and see them play shows at all the local club.”

Fast-forward a decade and the band gained the right industry attention from their very first show, with legendary producer Paul Epworth signing the band to his Wolf Tone label. “We just saw his name on the guest list – 'Paul Epworth' – and we were like, 'That can't be the real Paul Epworth'. I mean, that guy produced all these amazing records that we as teens grew up listening to – the first Bloc Party record, the Maximo Park record, The Futureheads, The Rakes, lots of fun albums that we really loved. We met him afterwards in a pool hall, got a bit tipsy and he told us about this new label he was starting up and he wanted us to be the first band he signed to it.”

Glass Animals plan to collaborate with some fellow artists at SXSW, and although their album is already finished, in the can and waiting on an official release date, “if something really awesome happens, or if someone wants to put a verse down on one of the album tracks and we're really digging it, maybe we'll go for it, we'll stick it on the album.

“I think it's still definitely us, but it's taken a couple of big steps,” he says of their evolution. “We just played a show in Berlin and there was this big guy in the crowd called John. He runs a label called Compact. He came up to us afterwards and was like, 'I was standing in the crowd hearing this big, West Coast hip hop, but I looked up and there was four skinny white boys making it', so I guess that's what the record sounds like. It's bigger. Definitely a lot bigger than what was there before… wilder, and hopefully better.”