Stars of Love

When Prince Harry and his to-be Megan Markle visited a radio station on their second official royal outing last month, they talked about the kind of music they’d like to have at their wedding which will be held at the Windsor Castle on May 19. She reportedly said that the couple would like, “A little bit of house, a little bit of hip-hop.” 

The Suits actress always had a keen interest in music and she has even written about some of her favourite bands in her now-defunct blog The Tig, including the London-based English-Spanish electronic folk band Crystal Fighters. 

Though there’s no word yet about who’s going to be playing at the royal wedding, there are whispers about the possibility of the couple reaching out to one of their favourite bands or artists, maybe the Crystal Fighters even?

“It would be very exciting, and shocking to be honest, to play at the royal wedding. We would do our duty to the queen and country and play the show. And yes if Miss Markle is reading this: We will wear whatever you want us to wear and play whatever you want us to play,” says Sebastian Pringle, lead vocalist and guitarist, adding, “All we can do now is wish them the very best as they book whichever entertainment they seem fit for this magnificent occasion.” 

The five-piece band also includes Gilbert Vierich, Graham Dickson, Eleanor Fletcher, Louise Bagan and Daniel Bingham.
But let’s just say they’re chosen to take the stage during the royal wedding, what would be their set list? “I think it would have to be Love Is All I’ve Got because it’s got the message of love and it would appeal to the moment. Then we could do You and I, which is a dancey and upbeat number but again, it’s a love song. My cousin had a wedding recently and he played our song Everywhere for his first dance. It was really nice and sounded really good, quite romantic,” he says. 

Well, whether they perform at the royal wedding or not, you can always catch them live at the SulaFest 2018 in Nashik, which kicks off today. 

“I’ve seen some pictures of the previous editions of the festival and it looks very nice. It will be the first time we’re playing at a vineyard, so it’s exciting. I’ve heard there will also be a food festival, that’s incredible! We’ve heard from many sources that India has some of the best food in the world, so going to a food festival in India is very exciting,” says Pringle, adding, “We’re rehearsing and practising material for the festival, we’ve been tuning in to find out what the top 50 tracks on the Indian Spotify is. We’ve been fans of Indian music for many years, but more traditional music like the bhajans. They’re a repository of spiritual knowledge that we’ve been learning from so much,” says Pringle. 

Their music is inspired by a variety of influences including wonk-funk with 1980’s Spanish punk. “Laure Stockley’s (past member) grandfather gave us some books he wrote before he passed away. We tried to take the themes from the books for our music. They had a Spanish influence. We’ve been fascinated by Spanish music — their rhythms, beats, attitude and ideas. We just try to incorporate it in our music. Once we started doing that, we were invited to go and play in Spain a lot, so it became a symbiotic relationship between us and the audiences there,” says the artist, adding, “I think there is positivity that kind of embraces the mystery in a lot of our lyrics, which are about the incredible things we don’t know — things that kind of seem very obvious to us but can’t be proved, or things that can be proved but don’t seem to hold the same truth. That mystery, that tension is in a lot of our lyrics, though the genre of our music has changed over eight years.”

The band’s performances are said to be high-energy and unpredictable. Pringle tells us that the ‘unpredictability’ is a result of teamwork. He shares, “Having played with the same people for a long time now, being aware of the type of things we might do — there’s an element of randomness to our performances. I might jump down to the crowd or I might not, depending on the day. We predict and support each other’s randomness, it’s teamwork,” he says.

ST Reader Service
SulaFest 2018 is organised at Sula Vineyards, Nashik, on February 3-4