Northampton may not be as glamorous as the SxSW festival or the "amazing" festival, as Stuart declares, that's located on an island in Tromsø in Norway but it's full of fans of The Longcut. The band is touring to promote the launch of their forthcoming album 'A Call and Response'. While they agree that "touring is the best form of practice", there is the sense that the band aren't simply touring because they have been called to. They do actually enjoy it.

After leaving their hometowns of Huddersfield, Maryport and Leeds respectively the band formed at the end of 2001 whilst studying at the University of Manchester. Whilst briefly discussing the collection of sold out EPs that has formed the imported Australian CD that I've purchased, I'm informed that '© Deltasonic 2002' does not mean that the songs were recorded in 2002. This results in me quickly adapting some questions without looking like a complete idiot.

The band gave up searching for a lead singer during its formative months; presumably they knew what their format was?

"Well we had a singer originally and it didn't really work out," begins Stuart, gently strumming his beard. "So we were an instrumental band for a while. It was working really well with the three of us so we decided to keep it like that for a bit. I liked the way it worked with the three of us," he continues. "It had a nice little dynamic going. So to kind of get someone else in might kind of mess with it a little bit though we did have some ideas to maybe get some other people in."

Instead Stuart provides the vocals. During a gig you'll witness him occasionally getting up from his drums to the front of the stage to sing and then sit back down. Did he therefore draw the short straw for singing?

"It was kind of like, something, that we were just going to do," he begins. >>