Popular Music students Nocturne to play Bestival at Goldsmiths

The quartet tell us what it's really like to be in a band and do a degree at the same time

When the members of Nocturne enrolled onto the BMus Popular Music course in 2012, forming a band couldn’t have been any further from their individual career plans.

Bass player Naomi Le Dune was performing all sorts of music, while Catrin Vincent was busy “hitting [her] guitar, trying to be Andy McKee or Newton Faulkner" in hopes of being a singer-songwriter.

Jack Gilbert was also struggling to become a singer-songwriter at the time. But when he brought Catrin, Naomi, and drummer Max Doohan together as a group, he knew that was where he was meant to be.

Fast-forward almost four years and Nocturne have two EPs, are coming to the end of a string of final year degree show performances, and have played PureGold at the Southbank Centre, one of their biggest venues to date.

Alongside fellow music alumni Rosie Lowe, Rob Da Bank and Goldierocks, the band feature on the line-up for Bestival at Goldsmiths. We caught up with Jack, Naomi and Catrin ahead of the festival to chat about being at Goldsmiths, labelling your music and learning to do what you love.

How did you discover what sort of music that you wanted to create?

Jack: It just happened! That’s probably why we got so enthusiastic about it and did so much, because it was so easy. There are big influences from all over the musical spectrum with us. But we’ve always found writing quite natural in the group.

Catrin: Because we all jam and then we write from the there. So its not just one person going "here’s a song, here’s how we’re going to do it". It’s all collaborative and...

Naomi: ...improvised most of the time!

How would you describe your music?

Naomi: I think it can be a lot of things. It depends where you play it, how you listen to it. It’s folky, indie, [it's] experimental. It’s a lot of different things. I’d probably say ambient.

Jack: Yeah, ambient, spacious. I think of it as spacious rather than anything else.

Catrin: One of the things I’ve taken from this course is a kind of an anti-labelling attitude to music. At one point we were almost calling ourselves folk rock, but it’s really hard to label any music unless it’s specifically trying to be something.

Jack: You can sometimes limit yourself by labelling your own music.

Image credit: Ben Queensborough

Do you have a favourite song to perform?

Naomi: I personally like All Ends at the movement but then we always write another banger! There’s just a lot of space in that song and I think we all play where we need to. It’s quite well thought out.

Catrin: It’s quite an emotional one as well, you can probably tell that by the name!

Naomi: We wrote that ages ago and we hadn’t finished it off until recently. It’s been worked quite a lot and it’s really satisfying to play and hear it now it’s finished.

How did you come up with the name Nocturne?

Jack: It was weird one. Like most bands, we spent a long time trying to decide what to call ourselves and it was the only one that felt right.

Catrin: It’s a French word. I originally thought it was Latin word but I keep getting corrected by people! It means nighttime piano music. We’d always turn off the lights in the rehearsal room and play in the dark, so it just kind of fit the music.

Is there anything that you’re finding particularly challenging in the industry at the moment?

Catrin: I think London’s quite hard at the moment, I’ve heard from a lot of people that it’s quite hard to gig. A lot of promoters now say you should space out gigs, whereas it used to be that you could play as many as you want. Now it's about playing a few and getting as many people [as possible] to those gigs. I wonder how that’s going to work out in the future for bands.

Jack: We want to get a good manager, that’s what wereally need now. We’ve got ourselves as far as we can in terms of gigs and stuff like that, so we need someone who can take us to the next level.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned on the Popular Music course?

Naomi: In first year it felt like everyone was trying to find their place as a musician. It was quite an uncomfortable setting because you wanted to be the best at it. It's stressful because you're always comparing yourself and you go through these head battles thinking that you can't do it anymore. I learned that nobody can do what you can do better than yourself.

Catrin: Being at all the final year performances these [past] two weeks has really made me realise there is so much music out there. As long as I make music that makes me happy, that’s the most important thing.

Jack: Same, I was going to say that! Literally just do what you want. Take every opportunity that comes your way. Say yes to everything. Make the music you love. That’s all.

See the full line up for Bestival at Goldsmiths