THE last time we saw Raygun, they were performing at the MTV World Stage at Sunway Lagoon Resort alongside The All-American Rejects, Hoobastank and Boys Like Girls.

 

Although not as popular in Malaysia as the other bands, these British rockers left a lasting impression on us
with their high energy performance, enough to ignite a Facebook campaign called 'We want Raygun in  Malaysia' to bring them back to town.

Aware of the campaign, Raygun themselves have joined in by tweeting, "If you want Raygun in your country, start a Facebook Group called 'We want Raygun in (put your country)' and get as many people as you can to join."

Currently, there are 1,158 Facebook members!

Made up of frontman Ray Gun, The Adj (guitarist), Ben Lyonsmyth (bassist) and Sam Embery (drummer), the  first thing that flashed across our minds was of course, the frontman's name.

The Malay Mail had the opportunity to voice our curiosity in a phone interview with The Adj and Ben, and found
out that the answer left us with more questions, although we did make some interesting discoveries.

Who would have guessed that rockers from a cool band actually dig Malay traditional music?

First, we’d like to know, is Ray Gun a real name?

No one's allowed to know his real name (laughs). He'll give us an icy stare every time we attempt to divulge his real name. It's like a James Bond kind of thing for him. We'll probably get killed.

Will we get killed too if we knew his real name?

Nah... he'll probably like you more than he likes us.

You were last in town for the MTV World Stage. Any plans to return to perform?

There's been a Facebook campaign getting us to return. If there is enough support, we'll definitely grab the opportunity to come back.Find someone rich to bring us back to Malaysia!

We’ll try. We take it that you really love being here. What was your impression of us?

Malaysia is an incredible place, full of people. There's a rich culture here. London has different cultures too, but
nothing like Malaysia. The food there is great, we haven’t eaten so much in our lives. Our favourite is probably
the satay.

When we were here for MTV World Stage, we had dinner at a traditional Malaysian restaurant with dancers and a band playing. It was really cool! We even recorded the music. It sounds like The Chemical Brothers.

The Chemical Brothers? Are you sure it was traditional music?

Yeah, we have the recording with us. Wait a minute.. (The Adj proceeds to take out his handphone and play
the recording. True enough: Malay traditional music).

We were really impressed.

It's the first time we’ve ever heard someone describe our traditional music by using Chemical Brothers as a comparison. Speaking of our music, what do you think of Bunkface?

Their sound is different from ours. But we like them. We checked them out on MySpace before performing
with them. Raygun’s very open when it comes to music and we love checking out other bands as well.

Your song Rocketblast is very high energy. Is that the music direction your band is going with?

Well, you can say that our music direction is very much energetic. One of our favourite things is to perform.
We love playing live shows and getting the crowd excited and on their feet. We want to make music that is
perfect for concerts.

What's next for Raygun?

Well, after a concert in Singapore, we'll be heading back to London to do the Christmas things, you know, spend time with our families. And if all goes well, there might be an EP coming out soon. Hopefully, we'll get to come back and perform in Asia again!

*Raygun was in Singapore last Saturday to perform for Hit Play! presented by HP Space which is shown
every Tuesday at 8pm on Channel [V] and every Wednesday at 10pm on Star World