Capital Punishment: Edinburgh's Underground Music Scene - Feature: The Shitty Limits Interview, February '08

The Shitty Limits Interview, February '08 by skidblue

I caught up with Ellis from the Limits last February, better late than never, as the saying goes! - The EP that is mentioned is now on sale, titled "Espionage" -

(live at Henry's Cellar Bar, January '08)

Hey Ellis, first and foremost, favourite J Church track?

J Church are one of my favourite bands, so it's pretty hard to choose. Let's go for 'Racked' this time though. 'Panama' 'Kill Your Boss' and 'Undisputed King Of Nothing' are all close contenders. For the record, we're not named after the J Church song though!

How did you guys get together, seeing as a few limits members were in various hardcore bands prior to this?

Three of us played in a band called Crash The Pose, but we were all getting bored of it. I never particularly enjoyed singing much and never did it very well anyway so it seemed the best thing to do was end it. Towards the end Tim and Louis started writing some new songs and kept working at it. The plan was for me to play bass (although I had never tried before) and Louis to play guitar and find a singer. In the end Louis decided he wanted to sing as he wrote the songs anyway, as well as the majority for all his previous bands and wanted to sing his own words for once. We'd all known Eddie for a couple years so asked him to jump aboard. We had a two practices, and played our first gig to fill in a cancelled slot at a La Piovra show.

What's up with Guildford? I was under the impression that it was a pretty sleepy town, seems like a pretty healthy scene!

Guildford's your average commuter town, pretty quaint. There's not an awful lot to do in all honesty. It's host of the 'Academy For Comtempory Music', which is responsible for churning out a great selection of musicians who dream of one day opening for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or someone similar. The venues in town are all either overpriced or block booked by the academy for showcase nights. But, we're pretty lucky in having a space in the form of the GYC. It's a homeless drop-in centre in the day time but we can hire it most nights for a reasonable price. There's no stage, no bar, nothing much except a room with bad lighting, in other words, it's pretty much perfect. We get the keys and get to run wild with the place. So we manage to get most of the kids from the surrounding cities to turn up to shows, get fucked up on their own drink and do pretty much whatever, and get away with it. It's not always great, I don't think I'll be forgetting the sight of a load of "punks" snorting ketamine off a pavement curb in between bands in a hurry. But it's still pretty much my favourite place in the country! Bands are few and far between, but keep an eye out for Grizzley Ends, The Knutsons, Capguns N Coke and The Sex Offenders.

Was the garage sound something you intentionally wanted to achieve?

Not really.

You've just got back from doing a few dates in Scotland, thoughts of the place? (don't hold back!)

Scotland was a great time. I'd never been there before, so was pretty excited to go. Shockingly as soon as we crossed 'the border' there wasn't haggis salesmen on every corner, but we did see someone in a kilt within minutes of getting to Glasgow. Glasgow was pretty grim. I can see why so many people are down on the place. Didn't get to see any Neds though, shame. The gig in Glasgow was a blast, definitely one of my personal favourites. Espically after hearing before hand that the gigs there can be kinda shitty, it's always awesome to be wrong in occasions like that. We went drinking afterwards in town. Glasgow at 3am is defintely an experience. We didn't see much of Edinburgh in all honesty, hopefully next time.

First 7" is already out of press, cunning ebay ploy by band members or plain old popularity?

No Ebay ploy I'm afraid! It's weird, I'm quite the record collector, and love trying to track down various varations of limited records and whatnot, but the idea of actually producing limited editions and stuff myself really leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Fuck knows why! But yeah, basically we fucked up and didn't expect there to be as much interest as there was. We're going to repress the 7" though to try and counteract anyone who wants to try and palm it off. We'll undoubtedly be left with 75% of them gathering dust over the next few years!

There are plans to record the next EP this month, how are the new songs sounding? Any surprises, perhaps a few covers or a sax?

New ep is recorded and ready to go once we've done the artwork. It sounds a bit different to the first two records but not a massive departure, only really so as the previous releases were written well over a year ago now, and I guess we've "progressed" or some other pretentious sounding shit. No real surprises though I'm afraid, just six more songs. Maybe next time we'll break out the full horn section and guitar upstrokes.

Worst place you've ever played?

Nowhere really leaps to mind. I guess we've been pretty lucky so far!

Worst band you've ever played with?

Oh, this I can answer easily. An 'up and coming' band called The Computers played a gig with us in Reading. They play 'garage rock and roll'. They had a band uniform comprising of black hair, shirts and trousers. They mentioned repeatedly about being 'Band Of The Month' in Rock Sound magazine. They gave 'props' to that piece of shit band Hearts Under Fire. They mentioned about 'shifting units'. They were shit. Other contenders are Children Of The Clegg, The Ruined, and The Fair Fight. No one in particular's been cunts to us though.

Who's pulled the most on tour?

We're all too either balding / fat / taken for any of that business. Ask Reality.

The shitties down south are receiving a great reception, have any of
you met/rode/been infected by Peaches Geldof?

Oh, one day. I truly hope so.

Drug of choice?

Crystal Meth. Brought by accident.

Are there any future plans for the limits to improve their mediocre Nintendo Wii skills?

I wish this could happen, but considering the only console we own between all four of us is a NES that doesn't always work, I think we're going to be luddites for the forseable future.