Artist: Spon

Venue: The Star

Town: Guildford

Date: 21.7.25

Spon have arranged their own mini UK Tour, which is no mean feat as they haven't toured England before and used the power of social media to pull the dates together, an impressive effort as they reside in Lille, France.

All 5 of the members including the Tech Guy called Niels are living with their instruments in a van and finding a bed for the night, be it a new friend made on the night with a room to spare or camping wherever feasible. You have to take your hat off to them....

Romu - Lead guitar and Singer

I popped into Guildford to take some photos the day before their gig as they had arrived there that early and were more than willing to spend time to pose for some promo shots. The enthusiasm of youth is in abundance with this band and you cannot help but be drawn in to their world. We had a drink in The Star and I asked a few questions, though there was a minor barrier of language, lead singer Romu did speak pretty good English.

Return To Sound: “How is your mini tour going so far?”

Romu: “D'accord. So we've been in Gillingham first. Yeah, it was amazing. It was our first show in England. That was Saturday. And so it's going to be our second show here in Guildford…... Fabulous. Gillingham was so cool”. 

RTS: “How about a round of introductions?”

Romu: “I'm Romu and I play guitar and I sing”. 

Deborah: “Okay. My name is Deborah and I play the bass guitar in the band”.

Felix: “My name is Felix and I'm the second guitarist”

Niels: “I'm Niels. I'm not in the band, I'm in the crew. I'm the guitar tech, the sound guy”. 

Clovis: “My name is Clovis and I'm a drummer. C-L-O-V-I-S. Or Duracell”.

Romu: “His nickname is Duracell because at the drums he's very speedy. He's speedy. Yeah, he's fast”. 

Felix, Romu, Clovis and Deborah

RTS: “Brilliant, so what genre do you say you fit into?”

Romu “We're punk rock. I don't know. We say skate punk but it's not really skate punk. I mean, it's a bit of everything. We're pop punk, we're punk rock.  

I don't know, It's just joke songs sometimes, anything on the day that suits.  

But at the end we're punk”.. 

RTS: “You're from Lille, is that correct?”

Romu “Yes correct”

RTS: “You said there's a bit of a scene there. Are there other bands like yourselves?”

Romu: “There's a more hardcore scene.  

There is quite a good community of hardcore punk. But music like ours, we feel like we are on our own”.

RTS:”What do people listen to in Lille? What type of music is the most popular?”

Romu: “A lot of DJ sets, dance music. Drum and bass". 

RTS: “Do you guys also like dance music?”

Spon: ”Not that much”.

RTS: “Where do you see yourselves getting to in your careers? What artists would you like to emulate?”

Romu: “Our favourite band is Blink-182. We want to push the band as far as we can. We try to do the best we can.  

But there's no limit. We'll see in the future”.

RTS: “Blink-182 is a big influence on all of you? any other bands?”

Spon: “Also The Descendants. 

Do you know No Pressure?  No Pressure is a punk-hardcore band from Newport. A new band from now, from California. We play a California punk sound. We do gravitate around the US”.

RTS: “ Why and how did you end up playing over here?” 

Romu: “I've been messaged to play in Gillingham, They messaged us to come and play a show. If we were coming to England, we said let's do a tour we're not coming for one show. From there, I tried to ask some contacts. Punk Facebook groups”. 

RTS: “Have you all been to England before?”

Spon: “We've been with school first. So you did a bit of the touristy stuff like Canterbury”. 

RTS: “I'm impressed that you've managed to pull that together. How many gigs are you doing?”

Romu: “Six gigs. With Gillingham on Saturday there were a lot of punk kids. It was very cool, I feel like there's more people in England that enjoy our music and show up in bars for music. Like in Lille, it's always... Yeah, we don’t come if you don't know the band. So we have a community in Lille, but they came because it's us and we formed it. Next we're going to Stockton on Tees? Then we're going to Newcastle Under-Lyme and Sunderland".

 The gig at The Star was hectic, noisy and raucous with a lot of the songs in French it was a different experience and totally enjoyable. The band are young and still need a little fine tuning but that will come, so for now let's applaud them for there joie de vivre attitude!!

This show was promoted by https://www.jasta11gigs.co.uk/