FIEVES * 2001
( One For The Future? You Choose… ) - Wednesday 13th December 2023
Words by Theo Darvill. Photography by Garry Jones. Thanks to Jessica Lamb.
Introduce yourself and describe your sound…
Yves: “I'm Yves, I’m the producer of Fieves and I’ve been making music individually for about 6 years now. The sound that I usually create is very UK garage, UK hip-hop and occasionally even a little bit of liquid drum and base. With Fieves, it’s definitely more of that UK hip-hop kind of sound. I grew up producing music more on the electronic side of things and looking back at it now, I like to think that it’s where I’ve been influenced the most, with acts like Disclosure being the main driving points for how I make my own tracks. Even within the hip-hop tracks that I make, there’s a lot of electronic sounds in there; it’s almost like an alternative side to hip-hop that you can dance to.”
Finnerz: “I’m Finn and I'm the vocalist for Fieves. I write everything and in terms of flow, I’m very much inspired by old school hip-hop. I take a lot of inspiration from people like Slum Village, as well as a lot of newer artists like Loyle Carner. I tend to go for a more laid-back approach when it comes to both my words and the way I deliver my bars and writing wise, I actually take a lot of inspiration from spoken word poetry. People like Benjamin Zephaniah have inspired me a lot throughout my individual career. I like to get creative with my bars; I always want to create an environment, story or soundscape inside people's heads that they can kind of delve into.”
What do you think makes you different to the other young up and coming bands of today?
Yves: “I think that what makes us different to others is just the way we’ve blended together the beauty of old school hip-hop with a lot of exciting but subtle hints to electronic dance music. Even with our live performances, Finn will be rapping while I'm playing the synth live and the piano live - I've not really seen much of that before, especially within the UK hip-hop scene; it very often tends to just be a DJ and a rapper. So, I think it’s having the crazy synthesisers alongside the elements that you would normally associate with electronic music being brought over to UK hip-hop that makes our sound unique - all of that, whilst also keeping that old school feeling where we can, especially with the word play and storytelling from Finn.”
What’s your story? How did it all start and what challenges have you faced along the way so far?
Finnerz: “So, we actually met a few years ago on a bit of a random one. It was summer and we were both up in Manchester studying; we got introduced to each other through a mutual friend and discovered that we were both studying at the same university, Spirit Studios – it was really exciting. We both had similar interests and the university that we were at wasn’t exactly huge, so we started linking up for sessions. Then, I think about a year and a half into making music together, Yves started to really push the idea of working together on a full project and that’s how Fieves came about. Not a lot of people get it, but Fieves is actually just a blend of our names, Finn and Yves.”
Yves: “Yeah, after a year or so of having the odd session together here and there, I released my own project. It had Finn featuring on one of the tracks and it turned out to be the most successful one on the whole tape. From that moment onwards, it all just clicked together perfectly - that was the start of our own unique sound.”
Moving forwards, what are some of your short-term and long-term career goals for the future?
Yves: “ We’ve both said it recently actually, maybe about a year ago now… we wanna support Loyle Carner or perform alongside someone like him or Frankie Stew & Harvey Gunn. One of those would be our dream support, a dream come true type of opportunity for us. We’ve also talked about festivals and stuff like that and I think for 2024 more specifically, we just want to keep expanding ourselves… outside of Manchester too and eventually work towards breaking boundaries outside the UK.”
Finnerz: “Yeah, we’ve actually been lucky enough this year to realise what our short-term goals are. We’ve been able to support a lot of UK hip-hop artists that we have both looked up to for a long time, something that was obviously really special for us to be able to do - people like The Four Owls and Coops. Also, signing a deal this year was amazing; it really feels like the start of something big - it's been a great year for us.”
Yves: “Very true, I feel like we’ve actually achieved a lot of the short-term goals we had at the start of the year, so we are always having to set new goals… which is a great thing to have to be doing.”
Talk to me about some of the unsung heroes of your music career to date. Is there anyone that you perhaps wouldn’t be here today without?
Finnerz: “Firstly, our managers, Luke and Richard for sure. They’ve always really believed in us and helped us elevate our music.”
Yves: “I also think that when artists a lot bigger than us take a shine to what we do, it really helps push us forward. People like Coops putting us on shows and spreading the word about us. People like Strategy and recently Verb T have taken a real shine to us as well as his DJ, Sammy B-side - it's amazing to hear that support. Also, our close-knit circle have always helped push each other forwards too - people like Sweets, DBL A and Treks. It’s just a great group of people to be around and we all help each other make better music.”
“All We Do Is Talk” by Fieves ft. Verbz
Finnerz: “It’s a sick one, our most recent release and it features the underground UK hip-hop legend Verbz - it was amazing to have him involved. About a year ago, I remember Yves showing me this beat and it had a crazy sample. I was having a bit of a shit time and I found myself walking around Manchester a lot, just taking in the cityscape and seeing how grey everything was and still is up here haha. Seeing everyone going about their lives, thinking about this idea that Yves had put me onto a while ago, called sonder - this realisation that each and every person you see is going about their own lives independent to your own. I wanted to write about that while also commenting on the way that a lot of young creatives feel about being in a competitive city environment; the rat race and the constant need to compete with everyone around them and just how much that can way you down sometimes.”
Yves: “Yeah 100%. I’d actually just discovered the whole realm of Tracklib and being able to actually start to sample things properly without having to go through all of the issues surrounding licensing. I was going through it one day, trying to find some cool tracks to sample and I found this sick vocal stem. I actually ended up playing the piano over the top of it and the chords I initially played we’re a lot simpler than the ones you hear on the track - I added lots of mini notes in between, which made it sound amazing but I do now regret adding them in because I can’t really play it very comfortably live haha.”
Favourite lyric from the track…
Finnerz: “The only phase that springs to mind is longing for the summer but your stuck inside the winter time, frost creeps up on my window, only getting high ‘cause I’ve been low, all we do is talk…”
Yves: “Yeah, at end of the first verse, the exact one I was thinking of. All we do is talk!”
