Hiya Kirk Savage, thanks for joining us in the virtual RGM lounge today. Grab a brew and take a seat.
It’s great to be here, thanks. Milk, no sugar please!
Thanks for joining us today… Tell us bit about where you are from and how you got into music?
We’re all Coventry, West Midlands born and bred. Andy Hall — our guitarist, vocalist — is currently waging a oneman crusade to get Coventry officially returned to Warwickshire. No one’s entirely sure why, but we’ve learned not to stand between a man and his sense of geographical justice.
Music has basically been the background hum of my entire life. My mum was (and very much still is) a punk, so I grew up with a household that was never, ever quiet. There were always records blasting in the living room, tapes in the car, everywhere. And it was never just punk: one minute it was The Cramps, the next The Carpenters. You can imagine what that does to a kid’s brain.
By the time I was about ten, I started hunting for my own music — the stuff that felt like mine rather than inherited chaos. That’s when I found Oasis, Kula Shaker, Pulp, The Verve… bands that felt familiar enough to click but new enough to feel exciting. Then, at fourteen, I stumbled into the world of American punk and hardcore: Rancid, Blink182, Agnostic Front. Those guys were all so cool to me. That was the moment I thought, “I want to be a guy in a band.” Not specifically a drummer, but a guy in a band.
Those two musical awakenings — indie as a kid and punk as a teen — pretty much shaped everything: my taste, my humour, my politics, even the people I gravitated toward. That’s how I found the rest of The Institutes, who have varying but similar stories of music capturing them in their younger days.
What’s the live music scene like in Coventry right now?
Coventry’s got that workingclass mentality of just finding a way. We rebuilt after the Blitz, we rebuilt after deindustrialisation—and the music scene’s done the same. For a while, venues and rehearsal spaces were dropping like flies, but Coventry did what it always does: it found a way.
These days, if you know where to look—and honestly, you don’t have to look that hard—there’s something happening seven nights a week. You’ve got guerrilla-style sets squeezed between vinyl racks at Just Dropped In Records; everything from hyperniche to straightup crowdpleasers at The Tin and The Arches; and for a while we’ve had the luxury of a proper midsized room in HMV Empire. They’ve got a knack for catching bands on the ascent—The Ks, beabadoobee—right before they blow up, and they’ve let locals get nosetostage with arena names like Wet Leg and Yungblud in a more intimate setting. All of those venues are vital to creating a buzz and a scene and gives local musicians a chance of playing in front of crowds and with musicians they otherwise never would have.
Anyone we should be looking out for (bar you, of course)?
This is always the dangerous question—the one where you’re guaranteed to forget someone brilliant. But here goes.
Senses dropped my album of the year last year; if you haven’t, please give it a listen—and buy it on vinyl while you’re at it. Suns Of Rest have new music on the horizon and one of the most intense live shows you’re likely to witness. Standard Sound Project are clearly gearing up for something cool—watch that space.
There’s a younger wave making noise too: What About Eric are reimagining shoegaze in their own image, and Banoffee have those effortlessly cool indie vibes that stick with you.
We’ve also adopted a few “local-ish” bands. We had an absolutely amazing gig with All The Young last year—they basically embedded themselves as honorary Coventrians by the end of the night and the mutual respect and love has only grown since then. And our years-long brotherhood with Siracuse speaks for itself. They’re brilliant. Honestly, just go listen.
Do you think its easy to become a victim of of our surrounds sometimes?
Sure. But the more interesting bit is what you do with that. We try to turn all of it—the work, the quirks, the limits—into something bigger than ourselves. We’ve been a band for a long time, musicians even longer, and we actually came together right before the strangest chapter in our country’s recent history: the pandemic. During that time, we wrote, we created, we got signed and somehow came out the other side stronger and more visible than we went in.
Getting out on the road helps, if not financially then definitely in perspective. We’ve played everywhere from Barrow-in-Furness, Aberdeen and Stockport to the Lower East Side in New York, Austin and LA. Every scene asks a new question of you. It challenges you to rethink what your music means to you—and what it might mean to someone hearing it for the first time in a completely different space. That keeps the compass moving.
What are your ambitions for the band?
We’ve packed a lot into our time together. We’ve played some of the biggest festival stages in the UK and the States, and we’ve turned up to just about every kind of room you can imagine. On the new record we found a producer who is undeniably our guy, Matt Terry (The Enemy, Doves, Wunderhorse)—in our eyes the best producer in the UK—and it feels like the perfect partnership.
The bucket list gets smaller, but the appetite doesn’t. We’re genuinely proud of this album. It’s been years in the making, and the one ambition now is simple: get it into as many ears as possible. After Colosseums, our debut, we wanted to push what we could do sonically without losing the DNA that’s served us so well. This one has more groove and more feel; it hits heavier where it should, breathes softer where it needs to, throws in a few unexpected left turns, and still lands with bigger, more anthemic moments. Crucially, it still sounds like The Institutes, but primed.
We’ve just released the second single, “The Mountain Song,” which nails the brief of what we set out to do. If Colosseums was radiofriendly shoegaze (which we absolutely love), album two is unapologetically Stompgaze.
Whats your favourite social media platform to use and why?
For us, it’s Instagram—no contest. I get that TikTok is the discovery platform, but the constant pressure to feed the algorithm, post relentlessly, and somehow keep your identity intact just feels like too much. I love TikTok as a user and massively respect the creators who are posting constantly—but it’s not my idea of a good time. We still service our profile but you won’t ever hear us asking you to say you’re in a band without saying you’re in a band.
Even with the TikTok-ification creeping into Instagram, it still feels like there’s more room to breathe. You can move at your own pace, be yourself, and build something that actually feels like you, not just what the feed is demanding that day.
We believe its essential to have a presence on Facebook, Instagram and X to introduce yourself to all the different types of audiences out there, what’s your thoughts on that?
All three platforms have been vital to our growth. As I say we grew out of the pandemic so it would have been impossible to achieve what we have without those platforms. We’ve connected with so many cool people (like yourself) through social media.
But if we’re honest, nothing touches what happens in a venue when the lights go down. The faces in the crowd, the singbacks, the chaos that turns into community, and the solidarity that happens during post-show beers. Social media builds the bridge but live music is where you actually cross it.
What’s your view on the Music industry today?
It feels like a snapshot of the wider world right now. On one hand, we’ve never had more powerful tools at our fingertips. You can demo in your own space, build a community on social media, release your music globally with a few clicks, and even spin up printondemand merch—pretty sure I saw printondemand vinyl advert the other day. There are so many creative ways to present yourself and get the songs in front of people who’ll care.
But then there’s the other hand. There’s a lot of wealth in music, and—like everywhere else—a lot of it sits at the top. We all thought that streaming and the fade of the oldschool major label model would democratise things. Instead, we’ve watched platforms and powerhouses—Spotify, Ticketmaster, Universal—monopolise the industry. It still blows my mind that three record labels can account for the lion’s share of the industry. That kind of concentration has a ripple effect that leaves too many musicians watching from the sidelines.
There are bright spots. The rise of independent artists (not just “unsigned”) is real and encouraging. The DIY infrastructure is stronger than ever, and that identity feels empowering. But the flipside is brutal: the cost of living—and creating—keeps climbing, which prices out far too many workingclass artists before they’ve even had a chance.
If you want someone speaking about this with real clarity, check out Ynes—originally from Coventry, now in Canada. She’s doing cool work and saying important things about the realities working class artists are facing right now.
Whats your thoughts on AI generated music?
It’s probably still too early to say exactly where all this is heading. AI might end up being the cure for the very monopolisation I mentioned earlier—the world where huge platforms try to manufacture “the product” in the cheapest, fastest, most efficient way possible. The catch is that when you strip away human experience and creativity, what you’re left with is usually the lowest, flattest version of the art. Ironically, that might open the door for independent artists to push their way back into the mainstream, because people will start craving something that actually feels human.
What fascinates me about AI-generated content is that a lot of its creators seem focused on the wrong things. I love AI when it’s doing the boring admin of life. Write a band bio? Great. Tell me if my email sounds accidentally passive-aggressive? Perfect. Suggest what to replace cumin with when I realise halfway through cooking that I’m out? Fantastic. It’s brilliant at that sort of stuff.
But art is art. And so far, every AI-generated song, image, or piece of content I’ve come across still feels… well, obviously AI. You can hear it or see it straight away. When I see musicians using AI-generated artwork, it honestly makes me a bit sad. To me it suggests either a lack of creativity, a lack of belief in the project, or maybe just a reluctance to collaborate. And collaboration with other humans is where the magic really happens.
For our new album, all the artwork came out of a collaboration with a local artist, Nocturnal Photography (Danielle), and the results are beautiful—things you’d never get by typing a prompt into a chatbot. That back-and-forth between people, that shared imagination, that’s the good stuff.
That said, I’m not completely anti-AI. There might be some interesting uses for it—demoing ideas, sampling, creating strange sounds you wouldn’t normally stumble across. So my rule of thumb is pretty simple: let AI be the secretary in the office and the drum machine in the studio. Just don’t ask it to write the soul of the song.
Whats the biggest thing you have learned recently as you progress with your music?
At the core of it all, it’s the brotherhood. We’ve known each other for years. We’ve had the highs—playing rooms and festivals we never thought we had a right to step into—and we’ve weathered our own personal battles since the first record, right through writing and recording the second. That’s what really crystallised how much this means to us.
I’ve been making music with Andy Hall (guitar/vocals) and Andy Lowe (bass) for a decade now, and those two have been playing with Alan (guitar) since school. It’s the kind of history you could take for granted—until something shakes it. When Reid (our former singer) left, it felt existential, like it might be time to call it a day. Then Kane arrived. He brought serious talent, yes, but also a fresh energy that reset the room.
Somewhere along the way, the needle shifted. We started out chasing the art and the experiences; now we’re doing it for each other, too. I’ve said before it’s both easier and harder than ever to be in a band. But that bond is what makes it all worth it.
What’s currently in your ears and on rotation at the moment?
Lately, I can’t stop spinning Turnstile. They’ve always been great, but what they’ve done on the last two records is just absurd—in the best possible way. Have you heard their recent cover of “Adored”? We used to mess around in practice with a mashup we called “Heart of Fools Gold”—the music of “Fools Gold” (The Stone Roses) with the melody of “Heart of Gold” (Neil Young). I was always a bit uneasy about it; The Stone Roses aren’t a band you cover—especially if you sound anything like us. Hally’s championed it for years, and I think we’ve only dared it live twice.
Hearing Turnstile’s take made me want to revisit it. They absolutely nailed “Adored,” and proved you can put your own spin on a classic without wandering too far from what makes it sacred in the first place.
As a band, we’ve also been deep into Slowdive, rinsing that new Senses album, and getting massively into All The Young. There’s just so much good music around right now
I hear you have new music. What can you tell us about it?
We do—and we’re buzzing about it. We dropped “Trick of the Light” last November and have just released “The Mountain Song,” both from the upcoming album. There are a few more singles on the way before the full LP lands, and honestly, if the first two tracks hit for you, the best is still to come.
“Trick of the Light” felt like the perfect way to return: picking up where we left off, but sharper for everything we learned last time. It’s an upbeat, anthemic indie belter—hooky as anything—and the lads even let me sneak in a sort of drum solo. From the first time we played it live, it was a single: people who couldn’t possibly have heard it before were singing it back like it already meant something to them.
Then there’s “The Mountain Song.” It was one of the first songs we wrote after Colosseums, and we were determined not to repeat ourselves. It’s built on a proper groove—a real stomper—then the chorus detonates. It wasn’t written with radio in mind, but it’s picked up some great national support anyway. This is also the track that crystallised the tag for where our sound’s headed: the stomp and groove smashed into the shoegaze wallofsound—“Stompgaze.”
What was the recording process like?
Recording this album was genuinely one of the coolest things we’ve ever done. We tracked it at Vada Studios—this rambling country manor turned creative bubble—with Matt Terry. In our eyes, he’s the best producer in the UK, and he completely gets who we are and what our sound is about. Every day felt like a VH1 documentary in the best way: he has this knack for pushing you without ever piling on pressure. I walked into that level of professionalism feeling like a total fraud, but Matt made it clear we belonged there. Every word, every take, every decision was in service of the song.
There was space—mental and physical—to stretch without it ever feeling laboured. I’ll be honest: the studio is usually my least favourite part of being in a band. But this time, it was the best experience we’ve had. We’re really proud of the result. Everyone in the band is performing on a different level, and the songs feel crafted as much as they’re written.
Would you change anything now it’s finished?
I’m sure that there will be given enough time and reflection but at the moment, we’re just desperate to get it out there to as many people as possible. We’re just really proud of it.
Is there anything else you would like to share with the world?
Wow that’s a big question!! I guess, if anything lingers, let it be this: support your local bands and venues, discover something new as often as you can, and come share a night that can’t be recreated in a feed. Stompgaze is here to stay. Join your Union.
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