Just at the beginning of their career, Southampton’s Lost Focus are getting ready to release their debut EP while gigging, writing, and looking towards the future
Crowded around a small round table in mid-afternoon, pop-rock quintet Lost Focus talks enthusiastically about their new music, each member adding in details and comments. While they’ve only been together since October 2015, they’re already getting ready to release their debut EP very soon.
Based in Southampton, Lost Focus formed when members of two pre-existing bands found that they were a great match when brought together. Ever since, they’ve been writing and practicing hard to begin gigging around the area. Their first show was at The Talking Heads in mid January 2016 on which the band comments, “We got good feedback that we’re a tight band”, which shows that their regular practice sessions have been paying off. Since their debut performance they have secured a number of gigs, including supporting slots at The Joiners during February and a show at The 1865 on 25 February at which they’ll be supporting another up and coming Solent band, Ko_Plune.
Pop-rock is what the band’s Facebook page states as their genre, but the band laughs and explains, “We’re still trying to find out [our genre] ourselves, trying to work it out, which makes it sound really obscure. It has all that rocky kind of stuff but also has groovy funky bits incorporated in that changes it up a bit from just a rock band.”
The Artic Monkeys and The Vaccines are two of Lost Focus’s influences, but each of the members brings their own individual inspirations to the group: “We’re mixed with our influences, which is good because then we come up with our own original stuff when we’re all together.”
Guitarist Wesley Tetzner states, “Our sound I reckon is quite unique, all together tone wise, with some differences in the guitars. We’re not just a distortion over-driven rock band even though we incorporate that in there. Dan [Mounter] will incorporate some crazy drums. It’s very catchy, poppy, rock.”
Lost Focus takes pride in the fact that currently their set is made up of all original songs: “We don’t want to be locked in as a covers band because there are so many around Southampton at the moment. We have eight finished [songs] at the moment, but we have so many more ideas, a whole library to write more songs.” They try to keep their songs quite energetic, not straying too far to slow ballads or anything overly aggressive. “At least for the start we want to keep them nice and full of energy. When you go to gigs I always think you want to get into the band and get pumped up, not slow and mellow.”
The band has recently finished recording their debut EP and is in the process of mixing the tracks, which they are doing themselves. It’s as yet untitled and the band are perfecting it prior to release. “It’s a process and it’s taking time,” they explain. “As quick as we want to get it out, we don’t want to release it if it’s not ready. We want to spend time on it because we are production students and we don’t want to record something bad if we know it could be better. We want to take our time and when we’re ready, we’ll release it. It will be soon though,” they laugh.
Looking to the future, Lost Focus is hoping to release another single after the EP, quickly followed by a full-length record before the end of the year. Gigging is a priority and they also want to get involved in this year’s Common People festival. “Come to our gigs,” they request. “The EP is coming soon, we promise.”
Words by Kaitlyn Ulrich