Winding down their current US concert tour, London based indie band PREP performed a sold-out show at the Echo in LA. Fans were treated to an impressive 75 minute set of R&B, soul and jazz-infused pop. A capacity crowd hung on every note frontman Tom Havelock delivered, emulating his stage moves throughout the concert. Havelock’s charismatic stage presence, fueled by his bandmates, Llywelyn ap Myrddin (keyboards), Guillaume Jambel (drums), and Dan Radclyffe (guitar), seamlessly merged to give fans memorable concert from a band that is on a trajectory to become a musical presence in the pop indie scene.
Touring in support of their latest singles, “Over” and “Love Breaks Down”, PREP has begun work on the release of their impending studio album later this year.
“Both of our singles are doing well,” says Havelock. “We’ve done a lot on work of the new album writing new material and getting it to a certain point. The plan is to release the album in the fall and tour around that.”
“This will be our first album after about four years since our first EP release,” said Myrddin. “We feel this is significant now, like, it’s album time. Everything steps up for us at that point and it’s a lot of work. I mean we’re doubling the number of songs we are going to have out.”
Influenced by a variety of legendary artists PREP originally envisioned merging the musical styles of both Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, before the took on a sound unique unto itself.
“I want our music to be a combination of an uplifting experience of getting carried along with this kind of frothy joyous feeling,” says Radclyffe. “But also recognizing there’s a more complicated world of emotion in there that can keep you coming back to it.”
Enjoying a significant following outside the U.S., it is only a matter of time before American audiences propel the band to imminent popularity on multiple continents.
“Asia is where things have blown up for us first,” says Radclyffe. “We have become a popular part of popular culture in some Asian countries, and that’s what we want to do everywhere. The whole idea is to end up on pop radio in America. It’s all how you work your way up the pyramid. So we’ll see what happens.”
“People know all the words to our songs,” says Jambel. “We literally went from playing for 100 to 1,000 people in less than a year in the Asian territory.”
“Feeling the rooms getting bigger is really exciting,” adds Havelock. “We’ve had this strange experience where things have gotten quite big in Asian territories quickly. So that was the first place we were going to play a lot live. We’ve played big festivals over there and headline shows as well for a lot of people that are genuinely really excited.”
