Interview: Mikel Jollett of The Toxic Airborne Event

3:31pm Friday 21st November 2008

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Being in a band and touring the country may seem like a glamorous job, but try telling that to singer Mikel Jollett of hotly-tipped US band The Toxic Airborne Event.

To be fair to the instantly likable frontman, he sounds more relaxed than he has any right to be, especially seeing as we are chatting on day 21 of a 30 day tour which at its conclusion will have seen his band play each night in all four corners of the UK.

“I am not quite sure what the thinking behind the whole 30 gigs in 30 nights tour was,” he laughs, “if we knew what it would be like, we may not have even done it.

"But we are amazed to be here seeing as we are on a tiny indie label and the fact that our album isn’t out until the new year.

“A lot of the time on tour is quite monotonous but certainly not the shows. We have had some great times in some of the smaller cities and places like Brighton and Nottingham and Cornwall of all places.

"We want to make those experiences last longer and learn more about the places and the people.”

The tour is made even more remarkable by the fact that the band - Mikel, guitarist and keyboardist Steven Chen, bassist Noah Harmon, drummer Daren Taylor, and keyboardist and violist Anna Bulbrook - don’t even have a record out in the UK.

“We thought that the people in London may know who we are and our show there was sold out, as is the Glasgow date, but we just wanted to come here and play live.

"We see ourselves as a travelling troupe of musicians who really want to interact with the audiences. We’re all massive Anglo-philes so it is great being here.”

Taking their name from a section the Don DeLillo novel White Noise, TATE started out as a novel itself.

Mikel had intended to take out a year out to write a novel and during the early stages learned that his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he was diagnosed with a genetic Autoimmune disease.

“I had always wanted to be a novelist but I just found myself writing more and more songs.

"Sometimes something happens in life and it just changes what you do, like a 70-year-old woman suddenly taking up running marathons or something like that.

“I found myself wanting to write more and more music and that is how the band came about. The name is just something we chose to create a space for us to inhabit. It is meant to confuse.”

The Toxic Airborne Project play 53 Degrees in Preston on November 27.

Their eponymous debut album is released in early 2009.