Cat Garden duo release debut EP 'The Most Luxurious Escape'

For the duo of Jack Dawson and Toby Hawtin the six-track project is about the joy of creating music and escapism.

“The EP is called The Most Luxurious Escape,” explains Jack.

“The theme of the EP is escapism. I think that's what music means to us. Listening to music, the joy of creating music.

“I think it’s about escapism and trying to make people forget their problems - or things like that.” “It’s what music’s always been to us,” adds Toby.

“We want to reflect that and do the same for other people hopefully.

“We hope other people resonate with that same notion.”

The pair have been working together on Cat Garden since being pair together in a school music class as teenagers in about 2018.

They navigated coronavirus lockdowns sending ideas back and forth and played their first show together earlier this summer.

The Most Luxurious Escape features former singles Stargazing, Mosaic and Elevator Going Up alongside Doomed From The Start, Basement and Brand New Day.

“Since we started to make music together in about 2020 we had the idea of wanting to do an EP, explains Jack. “We’re self-taught so we’ve been learning as we go.

“The idea an EP has grown and evolved over time,” explains Toby.

“We actually lost a lot of tracks, we had a hard drive brake so we had a bit of a fresh restart but I feel that helped us along the way.

“We still had the ideas of the songs but our skills were so much more developed after those couple years of working on it.

“These were the ones that came about that we were dead happy with and the ones we wanted to showcase to people and get the idea across.”

Cat Garden’s EP sees the pair mix influences and genres - melding elements of alternative, pop, soul, grime and hip-hop across its six tracks.

The pair explain this was a deliberate ploy, pulling from their own diverse tastes.

“Why limit yourself,” says Toby. “I've been through different phases of music but I'm at a point where I will sit and enjoy anything.

“From George Michael next to Stormzy. All of the artists I look up to such as Prince and Michael Jackson - they’re pioneers of what they do.

“I feel that’s the first step - try everything.”

The EP also features former Northampton resident 2Miliion on the opening track who also joined them at last month’s launch gig.

Singer Jack explains one of the best things about Cat Garden is while the pair share common ground, they both have different tastes.

For Jack, it’s music from the 1950s, the Beatles, Muddy Waters and Frank Sinatra.

Toby adds US producer and engineer Kenny Beats as someone who’s been an important inspiration when it comes to recording music.

Asked to pick their favourite tracks from the EP, Toby chooses the record’s second track, Doomed From The Start – one which originated from a drum beat he recorded and later manipulated.

“I feel like it came about the most naturally,” he explains.

“I had gone out with my computer into a park and just made something and I didn't think anything of it. I brought it back to Jack who said it was something great.

“He started laying down some vocals and I think the song just happened really quickly.

“It was probably the quickest song we've made on the EP. We had the main base of it down within a day and it just carried that energy.

“It’s got a special place for me because it's got that kind of grime influence and so many different things have gone into it.

“I’d started with the drums - I usually start that way. There wasn’t really any instruments being physically played on there, I just messed with the sample so much to the point that it just had this EDM grime feel. I think it just felt like an ear worm, it scratched that place in your brain.”

For Jack, it’s Basement, a track which features fellow Northants musicians Lewis OGrady from Thistle and Lily On The Green.

“With Cat Garden we wanted to experiment with a lot of different genres,” he says.

“But I just wanted to have one song that would fit into the rock scene and people could maybe jump up and down to.

“We did a demo of it last February and we finally cut the track properly, I think just a couple of months ago.

“We recorded it all in one day because Lewis had to shoot off to France to do a gig with Thistle and then mixed it over the weekend – it’s definitely the most raw of all the tracks.

“Some we tried to get really polished, but that one is ‘meat and potato’ rock.”

Looking to the future, Cat Garden are supporting Lily On The Green at The Lamplighter in Overstone Road, Northampton, on Friday, September 20 and then headline the garden stage at The Black Prince in Northampton on Saturday, September 21 at 5.30pm.

Both admit while there’s lots of songs which didn’t make the EP, at the moment their priority is promoting it. However, new music may be released before the end of the year.

For more information, visit https://linktr.ee/cat.gardenn

Photo by Izzy Spencer.