Even with the global music landscape continuing to become more cutthroat and competitive for indie projects to penetrate the wider market, four-piece PREP has steadily risen (and is still rising) the ranks to entice those who musical preferences lean to the cool over the hot, the laid back over locked in.

Over the past decade, vocalist Tom Havelock, keyboardist Llywelyn ap Myrddin, drummer Guillaume Jambel, and producer Daniel Radclyffe have finessed a distinct city-pop chill and feel-good groove that has enticed the likes of Dean, So!YoON!, Monsta X’s Shownu, Phum Viphurit and most recently Sunset Rollercoaster, to work together to put out projects. Ahead of the release of their most recent EP, “One Day In The Sun”, we speak to Tom and Llywelyn to learn more about their journey so far, and what being an Avenger group of various musical backgrounds can create, and how they intend to stride forward while maintaining their signature retro-futuristic charm.

Charmaine: Hi Tom and Llywelyn! How would you guys describe what PREP is about as a band in ten or less words?

Tom: Ten words? Okay. Let’s do one word at a time. I’ll start.

Llywelyn: Okay.

Tom and Llywelyn (in succession): ‘Driving is a pleasure when there’s PREP on the stereo.’

C: Mine is ‘it’s so hard to search for PREP interviews online.’ I just get a lot of articles and videos about interview preparation. [Laughs] But the way the both of you built on each other to create that sentence so spontaneously — that’s how PREP sounds like to me. Broadly speaking, it is city-pop. Which is kind of geocentric, but it is also not really tied to any one city. But all of you guys have really different musical backgrounds, and the sound that comes out of the four of you is both elusive yet reminiscent, something a lot of people can relate to and like. On a production level and artistically, what do you guys feel everyone brings to the table when you’re making music?

L: That’s a great question. Yes, we are all coming from a different kind of background. Our band started sort of when me and our drummer, Guillaume, just met. Despite the fact that we come from such different backgrounds — me from classical music and doing a few jazz-influenced projects and stuff — and him from a totally different direction. He’s a DJ that does house music, but he also plays the drums in various funk bands and stuff like that. We did however bond over some shared bands that we loved.

T: I mean, it’s interesting, because we used to be really aware of this. I think the fact that we came from these different disciplines, came out of these different musical worlds and and then, obviously, because we’ve been PREP for such a long time, I haven’t really thought about it so much until recently. But I do think it’s a real thing. And I feel like maybe one thing that all of our previous projects had in common was that we were kind of trying quite hard to make stuff that was super cool or sound really like aggressive or angular. I think about Dan doing songwriting for other people and there was always this real pressure for stuff to be like, super current and with whatever the kind of pop flavour was of the day.

With PREP, there’s a way in which we all come together with our disparate influences in our backgrounds, but we just sort of relax into it. We let things flow quite naturally. We’re happy for it to be music that just sort of gives you a kind of good feeling that you trust. I for one definitely did not think I was ready to make that kind of music before we did PREP. So we definitely enabled the potential in each other. That’s how we landed with this quite particular sound that the band has.

C: This leads straight into my next question because I was wondering if you guys ever felt the pressure or need to steer your kind of sound in a certain direction because of all the different flavours you all bring to the table. 

T: We’re constantly curious, and we’re definitely always listening to new stuff and thinking about where that could take our sound. But I think in response to what you’re saying, compared to other projects I’ve been involved with that, we don’t really have those sort of stressful moments where we wonder ‘what is this album going to be?’ Or ‘what are we supposed to do now?’

L: Yes. I feel like we have a sort of creative ebb and flow. The periods that led to writing this new EP, which we started about a year ago, was super smooth and easy. We wrote so much music in a few weeks. But then there have been other periods where we’ve got together, like in our the second album, where we just couldn’t really do it. For some reason. I think maybe it’s related to having done a lot of other music quite recently. Maybe it’s like you need to give a bit of time for ideas to bubble up, rather than force it too much. We tried write music like that but it doesn’t tend to work. So sometimes it flows, sometimes less. Then you just got to kind of ride that out and go into the next bit.

C: It really sounds like you guys really do submit to a more relaxed headspace and environment when making PREP music, and it really comes through when I listen to your music. I feel like it’s very joyful, the undercurrent — whether it’s from your first ever single or recent collaboration with Sunset Rollercoaster — is always bubbly. I don’t know how else to describe that kind of sweet mildness.

T: I think that’s the feeling we want to get from our music. So it’s good that it translates.

C: Yes it definitely comes across and lines up with the way you guys describe your creation environment. Personally, I got to know of your music after listening to some random playlists on Spotify, and realised that your music was the perfect kind of groovy to do all kinds of dance to. Where does groove lie in the hierarchy of what you want your music to have?

T: Very high up. Really, it is.

C: As compared to what other elements?

T: Groove is one of the key things. Two words that we always look to tick off in our music are ‘groove’ and ‘smooth’. Maybe because Giom is a DJ. He’s spent a lot of time playing records and sticking memory sticks into machines to get rooms of people dancing. He’s a proper sort of student of that magic and how one can make it happen. So he’s key part of our arsenal when it comes to that. It’s been really lovely for us to see these videos popping up of people doing amazing like street dance stuff to our music, and it makes us feel really good that that side of things is translating. People are feeling that need to move to the music.

L: Actually we’ve always had this thought of doing a video based around dance. Or at least be something we should explore at some point. Tom says we’ve had some amazing people sending us footage.

T: Right. With our cover Harry Styles’ “As It Was”, it went quite big on Tiktok. It was all about dance, people were sharing with dance videos. So yeah, it’s been a big sort of part of the story for us.

C: It’s really cool. I read somewhere that you guys were never really making music for the stage, but then you guys started to perform? Did that change how you guys approach your music-making or is it the same?

T: I think it did change. The kind of core of what we were always doing when we were just in the studio in London — without any clue that we’d be doing it on stage at some point — is still there, and we still broadly speaking use the same process to make our music. But the experience of getting on big stages in front of big groups of people and just feeling what works, feeling this moment is amazing. You just can’t help but get that feeling into your system and that inevitably informs what you then want to go away and write or make in the studio.

C: I bet it’s especially strong when you’re singing a song that you least expect gives you that kind of euphoric moment on stage. Some songs need to be sung to an audience to really come alive.

T: It’s really true. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where there’s a song that you think you really like, and then you play it to someone else. Then, when you press play, and even before you’ve seen them react, you just suddenly think ‘oh, actually, I don’t really like this.’ It’s all about hearing it through their ears. And when it’s your own music, I think you get an even more acute version of that. Just playing songs to people, people you know. But when you do it live, it’s on a whole other level. It probably happens a bit less now with the way that people release music, but across the whole history of bands and music, it’s a big part of how they become the bands that they are; the kind of crowd — that live dynamic — then informs everything.

L: Yes. There have been a lot of songs that we have virtually never tested out. Most of the songs we’ve played (live) haven’t been released, because we just hadn’t recorded them or whatever. But maybe we should do more of that.

C: I’m sure your fans will love that.

L: We still get messages people being like, ‘why don’t you release this?’ Maybe one day.

C: Hopefully. On top of all these diverse musical backgrounds and the added performance element, what’s been the most interesting thing you’ve learned from each other that you wouldn’t have learned about without PREP?

T: Really cool question. I’ve definitely learned a lot about harmony. There’s a lot of chords I would hear in music and think, oh, that sounds great. But I definitely never knew how to play them on a keyboard until PREP.

C: Like putting the sound to score and making sense of it?

T: Yeah. But maybe particularly hearing it and then being able to play it on a piano. Llywelyn’s done quite a lot of proper jazz stuff. Guillaume as well. Dan, I feel has studied that kind of harmony quite a lot. I initially had a sort of classical musical life, and then got into more pop and electronic music. But I’ve always loved jazz my whole life. The harmony of it. I haven’t completely understood it all, but I understand it a lot better than I used to because of PREP.

L: I feel like I’ve learned loads from all three of my bandmates. It’s a bit like going back to school. I’ve learned about a sort of different rhythmic approach from Guillaume. I’ve learned a lot about music production and harmony stuff from Dan, and making music from a songwriting approach from Tom. We’ve all learned a lot. I remember Guillaume was saying that he sort of took a break from making house music and then came back to it more recently, but it felt quite different. He was hearing some things quite differently, which is cool.

C: I really feel that as well. When you’re in a particular season of listening to a kind of music, the same thing can sound different when you move onto the next season. On that same thread, does working with different artists also help you guys see PREP music in a different light? Or treat it differently? How does the process go?

T: It’s a bit different every time. Although actually, it’s not that often that we’ve actually gone into a studio and started something from scratch with someone. We did that with Phum Viphurit.

L: That time jumps out for me as well, where we were all actually, yeah, right.

T: I think Dan had a little scrap of something in his laptop, which we started with. But that was maybe the only time where we’ve then gone on to release something where we’ve actually basically all been in the room, kind of writing the song together. It’s usually been, we get quite a long way through a process, and then we’re like, this, just needs something else. And often it’s just, you know, it’s then becomes a remote process. We send it to someone, and they do their thing and and then we get to hear it kind of freshened up, you know, which is always great.

C: So it’s always a music-first kind of decision? Or we should work with this person.

L: We wouldn’t have necessarily thought someone like Dean would be interested, but he messaged us saying he liked the music. I saw us as more of an indie project and he was more on the R&B side of things. But it was brilliant. It opened up doors to the other collabs that we got to do. It was really cool.

T: The first time we went over to Seoul and played these two little club shows, Dean was there. It was really exciting. We met him, and I think that helped to kind of give us a sense of how the future collaborations might work, and what a great thing it could be to make some music together. He was in this very particular, special situation at that time when we met; he’d been doing this music that became quite big on the Internet, writing in LA or something. And we could suddenly see how that might make sense for us. And then we had a drink with So!YoON! on that same trip, who took us to this bar in Seoul. That (collaboration) ended up happening. So it’s been a sort of organic process of just people popping up and it’s like, you know, why not?

C: I feel like that’s why, even if there’s someone like Shownu — who I did not expect — it all still sounds very natural to PREP. It’s not like you guys stepped out to accommodate something else. In fact, you guys really stayed true to your colour. That’s why perhaps all the collaborations are so interesting to me. I feel like it’s always PREP first, and then you’re spicing it up with an extra pizzazz.

L: Yeah, Shownu is interesting, right? Monsta X’s music is nowhere like our music. But his voice really suited our music. His kind of light, R&B style, which actually really fitted in.

T: No, it really did. Someone we knew from Seoul was like, Oh, they’re coming to London, and he really likes PREP. You should come and meet him. So Giom and I went to the show, and it was first kind of K-pop thing that we had ever been to. It was mind blowing. Then we went and met him afterwards, and he was just so lovely. We just got the vibe from him that it would really work. And it did.

C: Okay, one last question. Will you guys continue to make the same kind of album art forever?

T: We have done 10 years of it. So, why not? Our man Sam Colby, who has done stuff with us since our first release, just gets it. And the longer we longer we stick with it, the more it gets embedded into the PREP world ans identity. We know that fans really identify us with that artwork, and it does feel like it’s gradually and very naturally piecing together into this big collage of where our music sits.

L: Perhaps we should just combine it all into an art book.

T: With a coloured spine.