In the midst of preparing the release of their newest EP, ‘Happy Days,’ The Ninth Wave has been nominated for the “Best Independent Album” category for the 2020 AIM Independent Music Awards for their LP ‘Infancy.’ American Songwriter had the pleasure of discussing these accomplishments with band member, Haydn Park-Patterson.
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Since they received this great news during quarantine, they were unable to be together the day the news was sent to them. Even though they were apart, it was still an exciting moment for the band.
“It was mental! I was actually running a half marathon at the time the message came through on our phones. I was quite close to the end and I had my phone in my hand to keep an eye on the distance and time. The message popped up on our band chat, I read it, I was still running, and I was like ‘Yes!’, says Haydn.
“It’s quite surreal to think that something we wrote quite a long time ago stands up against some of our heroes. It’s an honor.”
Luckily, the band was able to record their tracks for “Happy Days” this past March so that it would be ready to be released this summer. One track on this album, “I’m Only going to hurt you,” has already been released and can be heard on Spotify now. This song was derived from some poetry and it almost wasn’t featured on the album, but after playing with it some more, the band found a way to make it come to life.
“Almost two years ago now, I kind of thought about writing poetry instead of just thinking about words and the meaning of words in songs. Since then it has just kind of become a bigger and more important part of our songs,” says Haydn.
Since this EP is a little different from their usual sound, the band wasn’t sure how fans would take to it. According to Haydn though, their audience was happy with the first song released from this Album.
“The reaction was amazing. People really seem to like it.”
Even though they are based in Glasgow and play mostly in Europe, The Ninth Wave has also played in a few U.S. states. In order to still bring their fans music and focus on issues happening in the world right now, they decided to play on a live stream to raise money for BLMUK.
“The reason we did that is it’s hard sometimes to know how you can directly help such an important cause like that and we wanted to do something because we have a platform and a fanbase.”
“It was a nice thing because we hadn’t performed live like that before. That was the first proper live stream we did together.”
Since it seems as though live concerts might not be able to happen for a while, keep an eye out on their social media pages for more potential live streams.
If you haven’t heard it yet, check out the tunes:
