Credit: Found On Internet

Polar Bear’s Seb Rochford and Leafcutter John are eating greasy fried plantain in their Hackney kitchen the day after selling out Brighton’s Komedia. John, who is their electronica artist and newest member, has just returned from foraging in skips for wood for the guitar he is making. Seb, the bandleader, composer and drummer of Polar Bear, is still a little jet-lagged from his New York trip where he put the final touches on their forthcoming album; the follow-up to their Mercury Award nominated ‘Held On The Tips Of Fingers’.
As of yet, Seb is still picking and choosing which label to release it on.

Seb and John make up two-fifths of the much-lauded Polar Bear who have been described as somewhere between post-jazz and punk-jazz. The rest of the band are Tom Herbert on double bass and Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart both on tenor saxophone. Seb explains that their unusual two sax set-up was something of an accident; “The reason I first called Pete was someone told me he played bass clarinet. When he turned up, he had a sax and told me he didn’t play bass clarinet.
But I just loved his playing.”

Unlike many bands who ‘put up’ with awards nights or don’t bother turning up, Polar Bear loved every minute of the 2006 Mercury Music Prize knees-up. “It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had,” says Seb. “It was ace!” enthuses John.  “Our table was next to Anthony’s (Anthony and the Johnsons). Just before the thing was announced I’d said to him, ‘good luck’. And he said, ‘You know what’s great about these awards? Nobodies like you and I get nominated.’ Then a couple of minutes later he’d won.”

Seb recalls the rest of the night with a mischievous smile. “They gave us a hotel room so we just partied in there until five and John ended up in Max’s (Pete Wareham’s wife’s) dress.” John elucidates; “I’d had a bit to drink. I thought we should decorate the room a bit. I also really liked Max’s dress. I was like, ‘this is really nice!’ and put it on. Then I thought it would be really nice to decorate. So there were all these nice big pot plants and I went wandering around and I bumped into Anthony in the lift wearing this dress with two pot plants under my arms.” Rock ‘n’
roll.