Listen to any of Apre’s music – be it Without Your Love’s shimmering, celestial bounce; the liquid grooves and clean lines of All Yours; or the widescreen pop cloudburst that is Don’t You Feel Like Heaven? - and it’s likely your first impression wouldn’t be that all these songs have their roots in the backroom of a West London chess club. But that’s exactly where Apre’s story begins.

Charlie Brown and Jules Konieczny were no strangers to making music individually, but it wasn’t until Sue who runs Ealing chess club (or, to use her full title “this legend called Sue”) suggested they should hook up and work together that the strands that make up Apre’s unique sound started to fuse together.

“She knew that we shared this passion for music and she paired us up,” recalls Brown, “we started playing together and found this love for the same thing.”

However, things didn’t quite immediately leap forwards from that moment to where we are today. Three years passed and Brown and Konieczn would spend their days playing in other groups, producing, working on other people’s material, making ends meet and trying to find their way in music. But something special kept bringing them back to t

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