HAMPSHIRE’S rising indie stars Blaenavon are to headline the world famous Scala in London on Friday, five years after their first public show at The Railway in Winchester.

Talented lead singer-guitarist Ben Gregory, bassist Frank Wright and drummer Harris McMillan, who are in their early 20s, have had an incredible few months playing Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, plus gaining Radio One airplay and taking in more than 35 shows supporting The Sherlocks, The Hunna and Mystery Jets, including two lively ones in Portsmouth.

Last week they signed to US record label Canvasback after making waves at this year’s South by Southwest festival and will play two gigs in New York next month.

“London is the next big one for us, it’s going to be pretty mad in an 800 capacity venue” Ben told The Southern Daily Echo. “The last few weeks have been really hectic, we’re all a bit worn-out, but we’re still alive so it’s all good!

“We can’t wait to show how far we’ve come since we were last there. It’ll be the first time to play live new tracks from our upcoming debut album and we’ve loads of mates coming up, so it’s even more exciting.

“Working with legendary producer Jim Abbiss has been pretty amazing. It gets harder and harder to make awesome and inspiring guitar music so to work with someone that was such a big part of seminal debuts by Artic Monkeys, Kasabian, Bombay Bicycle Club and Adele was brilliant.

“Those albums changed the way music was going and so hopefully what Jim’s done will reflect well on us too. He’s spent a lot of time making sure all our guitars sound fat plus encouraging me to build characters into the vocals of each song.

“We’re putting our newest tunes on the album. Our latest single, My Bark is Your Bite, a haunting song about jealousy and feeling inferior to others, was written just a few days before we went into the second recording session. We showed it to our label and everyone said it had to go on.

“With only three of us it’s fun to have to come up with live arrangements that carry the same effect as all the guitar patterns and layers we’ve laid down in the studio.

“Luckily, we manage to fill up the space that a fourth or fifth musician would take. Frank’s bass lines are way more complicated than one bassist should be allowed to play, and Harris is super frantic on the drums, so it always works.

“As a trio there is more space for us musically and we’re great mates too, although Frank and I have forearm injures from this batch of shows, so it’s putting a lot of pressure on Harris and our tour manager Rich loading the van!

“The Sherlocks are pretty full on about playing live and we’ve learnt a lot from that. A couple of years ago we weren’t doing enough, which we regretted, but last October with our Miss World EP we decided to get around the country at every opportunity as we want to do this for a long time.

“We’ve worked really hard, learnt a lot and are in a good place, which means this will be the best debut album we could have done.

“We’re from Liss and Liphook so Southampton and Portsmouth are like home coming shows for us. We loved headlining The Joiners in May and supporting The Sherlocks at The Wedgewood Rooms. For us it’s still all about touring, touring, touring. We’ll definitely be back in the south soon.”

Blaenavon headline Scala London on Friday with support from Toothless. Tickets £10 from scala.co.uk. Latest single My Bark is Your Bite is out now on iTunes and Spotify.