Local band juice it up as they launch new ‘Mellon’ album

The sunny autumn afternoon and open air music attracted a crowd of onlookers as the group performed pieces from their album called Mellon.

The seven piece-band who come from the Dromore, Banbridge and Lurgan areas were all up until last year at Banbridge Academy together.

The line-up is Peter Close (Bass, Vocals, Mandolin), Matty Burke (lead guitar, Vocals) Sam Green (rhythm guitar), Andrew Cox and Zacc McGloughlin (the jazzy brass players), Keelan Brown (drums and percussion), and ukuleleist Conor Adams.

Conor Adams said: “It’s quite a summery album. It’s happy and cheerful.

“It’s good fun to listen to and it was good fun to make as well.

“I’d describe it as a sort of funk inspired pop and rock style.”

The members were all delighted to be performing at the Outlet.

“Considering we started in a church hall, we’ve come a long way with the album and gigs.

“We’ve played a number of local gigs including Fa’ Joes in Lurgan and Quinns Bar in Newcastle. We also performed at Eurofest in Dromore.

“It was really good fun and very nice playing at the Outlet, especially since we won the award at Buskfest that was sponsored by them.

“We had a really good crowd gathered and were really happy we sold nearly all 100 of our EP’s.

“We’ve also been asked back to perform”.

The boys chose a Spanish title for their band.

“We called our band Que Pasa? because it means ‘What’s happening’ and that just suited us so well because as a band no-one ever seems to know what’s happening” said Conor.

“The album was called Melon after a friend of ours - it’s his nick-name.

“He’s actually mentioned in track four - The Logic of Matthew Dickson, and we wrote the song about him because he is the most entertaining and interesting person we know. You’ll have to listen to the track to find out more about why we wrote it.”

The artwork for the CD was done by a friend and art student Ciara Carmicheal so the tracks are presented in a watermelon-style CD in a yellow cardboard case.

“Ciara designed the CD cover for us and put all of the band members faces in melons” said Conor.

Mellon EP is available at http://que-pasa.bandcamp.com/ CDs cost £5, or you can download it for £3.