Music Editor Alfie Warner interviews Birmingham-based band Heavyfocus, discussing their conception, their folky sound, and their first single, ‘Bedroom Mirror’
Heavyfocus is a brand new band on the Birmingham scene, manned by Harry Sampson and Dan Simpson. The band is an indie-folk hybrid, with new bandmates Ben and Joe rounding out the group. I interviewed the pair in January 2025, just after they had released their debut single, ‘Bedroom Mirror’.
History
Heavyfocus’ first iteration was born in 2021. After meeting at school, the pair went on to form a duo act; writing a few songs and practicing together, but nothing came of it. Simpson explained, ‘I don’t really know what happened – I think we just stopped; we just got lazy I reckon. But one night I went to the Night Owl, Harry was there, and we were like, “Why did we stop? Shall we just do it again?” And that was it, so we re-formed around January 2024.’
“The initial stages were all about finding their footing again
The initial stages were all about finding their footing again, and it took a sizable amount of time: ‘We wrote six or eight songs to begin with, but they were all a bit sh*t to be honest,’ says Sampson, ‘Well, they weren’t bad, but it just wasn’t the sound we wanted. It wasn’t until May or June last year that we wrote ‘Bedroom Mirror’. It’s hard trying to find that sound in a band, it took a while, but we’ve got one now.’
Recycling is the name of the game; not only had Heavyfocus been resurrected from their roots three years prior, but none of their old material was going to waste: ‘We’ve still got all our old stuff, there were some really good ideas there, we just need to rework it. ‘Waste No Time’ was a great one. We had another song, ‘Jenny’, that was very psychedelic.’
Aspirations and Inspirations
Heavyfocus isn’t worried about taking their time; ‘That’s our plan anyway, there’s no pressure; we’re not trying to “make it” by a certain age. I think you can rush things as well; we had a tune we wanted to record before Harry went away for the year, and we probably could have got it done in time, but it wouldn’t have been as good. The three songs we’ve got recorded are really strong.’
Speaking to their singles, the pair had a pragmatic approach, ‘It’s about finding the audience as well – in other bands we’ve been in, fast and loud goes down a lot better than slow and quiet. The songs aren’t rubbish at all, but if it’s fast and loud, people generally like it more. The slower songs, you need to find the right audience for that. But what matters most is that we enjoy what we are playing.’
“The slower songs, you need to find the right audience for that. But what matters most is that we enjoy what we are playing
‘Bedroom Mirror’ immediately explores this – it is by no means a heavy track, but there are moments of explosiveness in the track. The varied dynamics create a constant crescendo throughout the song, with a deliberate choice to have a quiet chorus. The musical style is reminiscent of Circa Waves early 2020 material; not taking themselves too seriously, but still achieving a high quality.
Speaking to their musical inspirations, Big Thief and Adrienne Lenker immediately came to mind, with Lenker’s song ‘heavy focus’ being the inspiration for the band’s name. Other names included Diiv, Horsegirl, Joy Division, Neil Young, and Courtney Barnett: ‘Quite dark and melancholy – it’s good though!’
Performance and Reception
When starting out, performing is a daunting task – having to consider ticket sales, advertising, support acts, all before you even consider your own performance. Their first show at The Dark Horse in Moseley sold a substantial amount of tickets, and their warm-up show at the Stir-Store in Stirchley went well. They had reservations about playing larger volumes, ‘We were sort of worried playing at The Dark Horse. Most of our music is so quiet, and we were worried you weren’t going to be able to hear Harry’s voice. It was alright though, it’s just hard to get the crowd engaged with folky music.’
“It is such a headache contacting people over and over again; it’s fair enough that they don’t, but it’s so frustrating
Promotion was scarce for the pair: partly out of knowledge, mostly because of the nature of promotion for small bands. When building up to releasing ‘Bedroom Mirror’, promotion was very touch-and-go, ‘The whole promotion side of things is hard; we just don’t want to waste money you know. Paying people to write about the song costs a lot of money.’
Simpson relived the frustrations of emailing their material, ‘I tried to email it to as many people as possible, but people just never get back to you. It is such a headache contacting people over and over again; it’s fair enough that they don’t, but it’s so frustrating. Once we released ‘Bedroom Mirror’ on Spotify, that really helped.’ It’s the harsh and shared reality for small bands that getting their name out there is a massive undertaking.
Despite the challenges, Heavyfocus are establishing themselves in the Birmingham scene, and we eagerly await their next release.
Heavyfocus have two more singles to release this year, ‘Gone Gone Gone’ on the 24th February, and ‘Do You See Me?’ in the early spring.
Read more:
EP Review and Interview: Doif – I’m All Ears
Comments