Lyon Tide

A Profile

When three young lads took a seat in a college art class little would they have known that five years from that point they would be releasing their debut album and claiming the number one spot in their local Indie Charts. For Darren Barnard, Anthony La Pusata, and Girish Patel what started as an experiment in painting and the odd nude life sketch would form the ground on which the eclectic sound of Lyon Tide was born. However before that the lads would have few twists and turns along the way…

“….It started about five years ago, we’d gone through college, university together and had started to come together musically over that time, we sort of forged a sound inspired by bands like ‘Snow Patrol’, ‘New Order’, ‘Iron Maiden’, and many more because we’re inspired by very different styles, I love the kind of Indie pop stuff, Darren is a huge fan of the cheesy eighties stuff, and Girish loves his hard rock metal, so we had a lot of influences to help write our own sound, we even managed to put together an EP which we released on Spotify….” Anthony

A good start for the trio, wouldn’t you say? Sadly though, things didn’t quite turn out as they would have hoped.

“….The name we went under then for about two years was ‘Chord’, I wasn’t one hundred percent on it, just because of the amount of bands with that name or similar that are knocking around, but we stuck with it and dropped the EP, then we found that it was being put alongside several albums by another band called ‘Chord’ who were a, well, different style, very different, so it was hard to share our music without having to say but we have nothing to do with their stuff….” Anthony

So, this would mark a turning point for the band. However, and luckily for their future fans the lads refused to throw in the towel and decided to plunge forwards.

“….I’m not gonna lie, it did sort of knock us back a bit, but we were still enjoying recording and writing the music so just carried on but we eventually decided that we did need a name change, because if we were going to carry on it might be good to sort of go a

t it fresh….” Anthony

And as they began to search for their new identity as a band and would eventually find it in a somewhat serendipitous moment…

“….It came about as I was doing some research into my Great Grandad who was French and had the surname Lyon, so while researchingabout him and his surname I came across a phenomenon that occurs in Lyon, due to all the cell masts or a

erials every now and then they get a surge of a kind of magnetic wave that was coined as the ‘Lyon Tide’, and I just thought it sounded really interesting, also one problem with ‘Chord’ was the results that came up when you searched, but with ‘Lyon Tide’ its just us, which was sort of what we wanted….” Anthony

So with the new name firmly acknowledged and several years worth of musical craftsmanship taking up space on a hard drive Darren, Anthony, and Girish made the decision that would push this Birmingham trio from the shadows.

“….We’d got nearly thirty six tracks all recorded and ready just sitting on our computers doing nothing, so we thought maybe its time we actually started releasing stuff, but it was after listening to ‘Blind’ after months of not listening to it that we really thought, yes, we’re ready to re launch ourselves, there was just something about the track and listening to it made us think, yes, basically….” Anthony

So with the new year, 2021, Lyon Tide took the plunge and dropped their first single on 1st January.

“….Though ‘Blind’ sort of gave us the push to release our music we went with ‘Closure’ as our first single, mostly as it is a song about seeking and getting closure on a relationship but for us was also a sort of closure for 2020 and hopefully others would maybe feel the same, also on some level it was a kind of marker that also saw us get closure on being ‘Chord’, so really for us it held quite a layered meaning, probably not as layered for the listeners, but for us it made sense to release it first….” Anthony

‘Closure’ would spend ten weeks in the CoolTop20 Indie Chart, spending two of those weeks at the top spot.

“….’Closure’ entered the chart at around number nineteen or something like that and we were chuffed with that, but then each week we watched it climb until it reached number two and then went to number one and we were just, well, astonished, like I said  we were just happy with getting into the chart, so topping it was a huge bonus….” Anthony

Next up the band dropped the single that spurred them into life, ‘Blind’. Immediately it entered the CoolTop20 Indie chart and is currently still in the mix at time of writing. Unlike ‘Closure’ that swan towards the more atmospheric and indie side of things, ‘Blind’ took a leap back in time and pulled on the synth driven aspect of eighties classic pop.

“….Because of all our different influences our one hope is that all our tracks will differ enough so that anyone listening to the album will hear the start of a track and know that its this track, that track, I just think sometimes bands can get tied up in a tempo or style and even an EP can sometimes blend together, unintentionally, to a point where its hard to know which track is which, so we’re hoping with the release of the album we’ll have accomplished that, but we’ll have to wait and see….” Anthony

Luckily, we won’t have to wait and see for much longer as they plan to release their debut album ‘Beginnings of Ends” on 16th April. With the release you can expect a sliding scale of influences and the culmination of many years of crafting their sound and pouring their passion into each note. However, Lyon Tide are already looking to the future and it is looking bright for anyone that has fallen under the spell of their unique sound.

“….We had the first album recorded before the lockdown and have even got enough for our second album, so really the lockdowns didn’t effect us musically with recording and stuff, in fact it meant we can concentrate on releasing our first album and singles in a more relaxed atmosphere, and we’ve even got a little label/management firm, Open Productions, behind us helping to push our music as well, so who knows what’ll happen next…” Anthony

So with their ‘tide rising’ (had to make the joke somewhere) Lyon Tide are focused and yet humble in their intentions towards the music scene. Whether they continue to top charts or just merely keep entering it with each release the three friends from Birmingham are just happy to keep playing music and recording the results, and if something comes of it then its a bonus. In my opinion though the band have the makings of becoming a major player on the Birmingham scene as things open up and honestly it shouldn’t be too long until their own sound waves spread across the rest of the UK and beyond.

Pre-save ‘Beginnings of Ends’ here

Follow the band:

Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // Website

Listen to their music:

Spotify // BandCamp // SoundCloud // YouTube // Apple Music // Amazon Music