An Afternoon With Lost Valentinos

A couple of weeks ago we had the honour of having a chat with Nik Yiannikas from the Lost Valentinos.

Here is how it went:

Hey Nik, can I get you to tell us a little bit about the band?

Ok, we used to be called The Valentinos. Some people might know that, some may not. A couple of years ago we changed our name to Lost Valentinos. We’ve been together for four years. The current line up has been together for about a year. Simon is our newest member and he used to drum for Damn Arms. What else.. We have an album coming out in September.


As you mentioned you guys had to change your name from The Valentinos back in 2007. Can you tell us a little more about how that ordeal came about?

We’ll it was more like a pre-emptive strike kind of thing. We knew there was another band once upon a time called The Valentinos, and Bobby Womack was in it, so people did know about them. The Rolling stones had one of their first number ones covering one of their tracks. When we got back together some people were like… It’s probably a wise thing to change your name now, and avoid it becoming a problem, when you actually establish some sort of a reputation and lose some ground by changing your name.


So you didn’t receive an angry letter or anything?

No, no, we pretended we did cos it made a better story.


Lost Valentinos was the result. What other names were considered?

I can’t really remember. We always wanted to try and keep something to do with the word Valentinos because we always liked it. And we wanted people that had heard of us, to still make the connection.


You guys have worked with some pretty amazing people in your time. For Example: Kim of Presets fame, Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes and more recently Ewan Pearson. How did these relationships come about?

Well I guess the first couple you mentioned were all Sydney cats. So we just kind of got to meet them by being in bands, and meeting other people who knew them. For Kim it was early on in the game. He was still kind of getting into the idea of producing bands at that time. That kind of fell by the wayside when The Presets took off. Similarly for Nick and Peter. We kind of know them through mutual friends, and thought it would be cool to do something together.

With Ewan it was kind of different. Luke, who ran our old record label, sent out emails to a few English producers when we went over there a few years ago. Saying that we were going to be around if you’d like to hook up and do something. Ewan got back to us and he was pretty keen. He was coming to Australia pretty soon after that and we recorded that track 17 Deaths. We got on really well and Ewan mentioned he wanted to do the album. I guess the rest is history.


So where to from here? Who is next on the list of people you guys would love to work with?

I don’t know, we kind of have the ability to do it ourselves. The next thing we are going to try and do is to put something out that we have done purely on our own. You never know… Andrew Weatherall would be amazing. But I don’t know if that would ever happen. Maybe someone like James Murphy, or Soulwax.


You guys toured with Soulwax didn’t you? I guess you’d have a bit of an in?

Yeah, we did their tour when they came to Australia. It was amazing! They would definitely remember us, we would be able to start a dialogue. I’m sure a lot of money would need to be exchanged at some point (Nik says whilst laughing). But yeah they’re cool guys, working with them would be fun.


You guys have got an album set to drop around September. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, that’s changed a couple of times. It was pencilled in, but now they have written it in pen for September 4th. We’re releasing a single before that. It’s called Thief. We are actually doing a video for it in the next couple of weeks. Then touring for that in August.


Who are these releases coming out on?

EtcEtc, that’s where all our stuff in Australia will be coming out on I imagine. We are signed to them now and for the foreseeable future.


Can you tell us about some of the challenges you faced when making this record?

Well money was an issue. We basically funded most of the record ourselves, and it ended up costing us more than we thought it would. So every now and then we would have to set about making more money to get through the next phase. Doing gigs and what-not. But we got there. It took maybe a year longer than we thought it would. But I guess that kind of works its way into the record. It became a journey inside a journey.


What artists/producers do you find influenced this album, and your style in general?

Well we’re all really into stuff that came out of Manchester. Joy Division, then New Order and the the Hassiender stuff like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. The acid house stuff. We’re all big fans of the Liars, but I mean, every indie band is I guess. Love LCD Soundsystem and all the DFA stuff. Personally I’m a big shoegaze fan, into like and SlowdiveRide and that kind of stuff.

Andrew and Pat grew up in string quartets , so they’re into classical music. We all really like James Brown.


I’d like to talk about some of your previous work. You released “The Valentinos” back in 2005. Did you expect it to do so well?

I can’t really even gauge how well it did. We weren’t expecting much from it, no. We didn’t know what to expect, in the beginning we didn’t really know what we were doing to be honest. It was kind of like, oh lets form a band, oh lets play some gigs, I guess the next thing is to record, Cool people like it, Its on the radio, what do we do now. Nothing was planned.


I’d say it did pretty well considering it was your first release and it got radio play.

Yeah, I guess that’s part of the reason we are still going now. It was something happening in the beginning that we didn’t really expect. Some early momentum, which was nice.


Then you released another two records; Damn & Damn Again (2006) and Miles From Nowhere (2007). Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Damn and Damn Again was and interesting period for us. Towards the end of recording Jono had joined the band. Our old drummer Daniel left to join Midnight Juggernauts. And we weren’t quite sure where we were at. It was kind of an experimental, trial and error stage. Some things worked, like Rain. I guess worked pretty well for us. But maybe some of the other tracks not so much. It kind of added to our experiences, and helped us get to where we are now with our sound.

Miles from Nowhere was kind of weird. We’d been talking to the guys from Kitsune for a while before we actually put anything out through them. The EP which we ended up giving them was a bunch of remixes that we had had for a while. For about a year by the time it actually came out.

In the end it was awesome to have something come out on Kitsune. It’s a label we are all really big fans of. And it counts for immense credibility in Europe. More than we even appreciated at the time, Especially in Paris.

But at the same time it was almost a bit of an anti climax, as we’d had those remixes for so long. We’d kind of been building up to the release for so long, that by the time it came out, it was a bit like we’d already moved on.


What can we expect from your Splendor in the Grass live show?

We’re working on making it a bit bigger. We’re adding one, or maybe two extra members to the live show. Mainly percussion, so it’s gonna have a big tribal feel I think. Lots of toms.


How do Australian festivals compare to overseas?

We’ve got some pretty good ones I’ve gotta say. I’d say splendour is pretty world class. We haven’t really been to a lot of overseas festivals. I guess they are generally longer. A three day festival is pretty common.

In comparison to the UK festivals we have much better weather. That does count for a lot. Australian festivals are pretty comparable. We seem to get comparable artists.

In terms of playing them. The only thing I can say is that European audiences tend to really like the idea of getting into things they haven’t heard before. Things that are really brand new don’t seem to scare them. When in Australia, from personal experience, playing something to a completely fresh audience who have never heard anything you have done before can scare them off. Where as Europe is almost the complete opposite. They really want to get into this music they haven’t heard before.


Can you tell us about some of the more memorable shows?

We just played a show in Barcelona at this club called Razzmatazz which was pretty amazing. It had over 5000 people. The room we played in had a capacity of about 2000 people. It was just completely fucking crammed full of crazy Spaniards who were getting so into it. I mean, we played at 3am, which is pretty common. I’m pretty sure most people had no idea who we were before that night, and they were so up for it. It was definitely one of the pinnacles of the Lost Valentinos experience so far.


What are Lost Valentinos plans for the future?

We plan on touring before the album comes out. Then hopefully a bigger tour. We are definitely going back to Europe at the end of the year to play some more festivals and stuff. We’ve just put out a new track called Midnights on a European singles label called Dummy. It’s just started to get radio play. It’s been played on Radio One by Zane Lowe, who is like the UK king of indie. So that’s started to gain some traction. So I guess depending on how that goes. We could be extremely busy at the end of the year or just slightly busy.

Well a big thanks to Nik and the Lost Valentinos for the interview. I'm well pumped for their Splendor set, and you ahould be too! Here is a taste...



Lost Valentinos - 17 Deaths (128)



Lost Valentinos - Thief (Nile Delta Remix) (128)



Lost Valentinos - Midnights (Original Mix Parts 1 and 2) (320)



Lost Valentinos - Midnights (Fan Death Remix) (320)