So Young Issue Forty-Three

‘Cream’ by GG Skips Marco Pini

Issue Forty-Three welcomes the spring sunshine in with it. The brighter weather has us thinking of outdoor stages, so why not have a band on the cover who only write future festival anthems? Burnley’s The Goa Express are on the front and their string of singles will soon amount to something bigger. Ahead of imminent big news, we discuss the decision to sink a bottle of whiskey on the flight to SXSW, mixing with the village locals during a recording trip and not over complicating it.

Over in New York, Geese are preparing for the release of their much anticipated second album, ‘3D Country’. Via Zoom, we explore the band’s growth since their debut, discuss how they nearly called it a day, and dig into their ambition to break out of the post punk bubble. Staying in the big apple, cumgirl8 have just signed to 4AD. With their new “sex positive” music now being shared with the world, we touch on new single inspiration, Cicciolina, her importance to the band and more.

Brooklyn’s Water From Your Eyes have quickly become new favourites. Their recent singing to Matador Records seemed the perfect moment to reach out. They take our call to undergo one of their less chaotic interviews.

Model/Actriz are quickly becoming one of the most talked about bands from across the pond. Their London headline debut sold out in a day (maybe less) and they’re the band that everyone took home from SXSW this year. We catch up following the release of their debut album and ahead of a debut trip to the UK.

Wrapping up this issue’s love affair with New York are Slow Fiction. The band have recently shared their debut EP and we were keen to hear all about it.

The five-piece kindly took our call to chat about what they got up to at SXSW and their hopes to play The Windmill!

Heading home again, bar italia have been a long time favourite. Whilst sitting behind a no interview policy, the band have announced a new album. We dig into everything the band have done to date and tell you exactly why you should be excited for them.

London’s Hot Face are a new noisy favourite. The band will be releasing their debut single very soon and the 3-piece gave us the early details to get a feel of what’s to come. Monster masks are just the start. Staying in the capital, Miss Tiny is the exciting new project from Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground) and Ben Romans-Hopcraft (Childhood, Warmduscher). Ahead of the release of their debut EP, two familiar names tell us about their less familiar new music, salad recipes and the personal impact of living in London.

Preparing themselves for the release of their debut album are Island of Love. The Third Man signings are doing things their way, and who are we to question that? Vocalist, Karim, takes our call from a packed out train carriage to talk about the new record and their distaste for the world of post punk bands that surround them.

Nottingham’s Do Nothing also have a new album on its way. It’ll be the band’s first release outside of a lockdown! Overthinking, ‘Happy Feet’ and trying not to be whiny, are all on the agenda.

Finishing off this issue, we speak to Pittsburgh’s most exciting new band, feeble little horse and preview Brighton’s The Great Escape Festival. We can’t wait to be back on the beach for the So Young stage!

The road to maturity is treating Geese well. It’s often said that youthfulness keeps life exciting, and holding onto that youthfulness is the hardest part. The transition is fraught with difficulty, and clouds of confusion hang over you as you travel the winding road into that scary thing called ‘adulthood’. As they prepare for the release of their second album, ‘3D Country’, the New York quintet are embarking on that journey, but they’re doing so in a way that keeps a firm grasp on the carefree spirit that characterised their previous work. It’s startling to think that frontman Cameron Winter is still only 21 years old, as he speaks with the sagacity and knowledge of someone way beyond his years.

While debut album ‘Projector’ was a spritely yet often scrappy take on post-punk, it wore its influences proudly upon its sleeve and is best taken for what it is on face value – a band of teenagers figuring out their sound and having fun with it. With ‘3D Country’, the band have found themselves invigorated by a broader range of influences, and the three years since they recorded their previous effort have seemingly allowed Geese to evolve into a tighter and more adventurous group, squeezing elements of classic rock, Americana and gospel into a freewheeling odyssey of a record.

Since ‘3D Country’ has a lot of country themes, can you pitch the album to me as though it were a Western film rather than a record?

I guess we already made a Western with the videos we’ve put out for ‘3D Country’ and ‘Cowboy Nudes’, or the closest thing to it that we could afford. I’ll let that speak for itself. I think I went a little too far with the cowboy thing, honestly, but luckily the most ‘yeehaw’ songs are the first two singles we put out.

What made you want to touch on those themes in the first place?

The last record we did was very self-conscious and was very much about the thoughts I had in my own head at the time, and I wanted to get more existential and ambitious lyrically for this one. A lot of the songs are about that anger that I had, and I felt it was worth expressing. A little bit of my own thoughts will make it in there, but I was just drawn to it because it felt important.

From a musical perspective, what pushed you further away from the sound you had on ‘Projector’? There’s elements of you returning to your roots of being a proggier, jammier band.

I’m surprised you brought up stuff from pre-’Projector’ because nobody ever listened to that. ‘Projector’ was the most original thing we’d made up to that point, having made two or three crappily recorded projects. We were listening to bands like Preoccupations, Ought, Womenthat was our own version of that, which involved a lot of weed and synthesiser sounds. We over-produced the shit out of it, but in a good way. We rightfully got put into that post-punk bubble of bands that have the same influences as us, and while some of that is really good, it didn’t feel like what we see the band as. Our goal at the outset of this record was to make something that can’t be termed post-punk.

Prior to Partisan signing you, you were on the verge of calling it quits, right?

Yeah, we’d all been accepted into college. It was really the last possible moment that a change could have been made, and we got lucky and started getting offers.

With that in mind, how do you feel having made two records for a label has changed your outlook on the future of the band?

Oh my god, so many ways.

Words by Reuben Cross, illustration by Line Hachem

I knew nothing about the music industry three years ago; it was just this distant, fickle thing. We’ve come in with a lot of optimism and wanting to work hard, but we’ve also introduced money and stakes to our friendship, which is really poisonous and scary in a lot of ways. Back when we were in high school, I used to see successful bands breaking up and fighting - like you’re one of the biggest bands to exist, why would you ever give that up and stop fighting for your creative vision? I couldn’t understand it as a 16-year-old, but I totally get it now (laughs). It’s a lot, and it’s not the life some people want. The ups and downs are very extreme, but at the end of the day, we’re learning so much musically and that’s the most exciting part. What we do have is this blind and foolish musical ambition to make it really good and keep moving away from what we’ve already done.

Did the process of making ‘3D Country’ feel more free than ‘Projector’ did?

Yes and no - they both felt free. ‘Projector’ was super free because we didn’t have to answer to anyone at all, so we were free to make mistakes I guess. This record felt better in that we had definitely progressed a lot musically. Since getting signed and going in, we got to a point where we could make what we wanted to. We had an idea in our heads that we couldn’t really accomplish immediately. That was more freeing in a way. We also had people helping us - we could hire backing singers and a string section.

I’ve noticed that you’ve grown a lot more comfortable in your voice and sticking to a more consistent style too, why did you choose to move away from the variety of voices you used on ‘Projector’?

I just feel like there’s a lot of talk-singing at the moment, and while a lot of it is great, I get mad at it because it really doesn’t suit some bands like they might think it does. I got mad at the trend, and I wanted to do the opposite of that and sing way too hard. Now the singing parts are really overblown and exaggerated. I really like vocal affectation too - I know it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, but I find when it’s done right it can be really beautiful.

I have a lot of vocal inspirations like Linda Sharrock, Robbie Basho and Tim Buckley.

Is there a particular point in your past that was your ‘eureka moment’ for wanting to be in a band?

I’ve been thinking about this actually, there have been a few moments that clued me into different things. I remember being in eighth grade being driven to school and my dad put on the song ‘International Feel’ by Todd Rundgren. It starts with all these bleeps and bloops, but when it got to the chorus, it modulated down in a way that sounded so crazy to me that I never would have anticipated. It literally blew my mind, so I listened to everything he had ever done in a week after that.

Was music always a big thing around the house?

It wasn’t the be all and end all of life, but my dad would show me music when we were driving. There’s a part of him that finds it kind of pretentious to make music similar to what we make, but he does like it. During ‘Projector’ he was a real help because I’d take him early demos, and the ones that were bad he’d be really honest with me about them. He’s helped me grow, but he’s always been good as a resource to tell me when something’s shit.

Are there any people external from your family or the band that gave you that extra push?

We were in an after-school programme that put a bunch of kids with rock equipment in a room learning covers, and we had an instructor called Bob Jones. He’s now in the bands Pill and P.E. from New York. He was a huge help, especially when labels came knocking as he could give a lot of great advice. He’s been with us since we were 10. We took him out for dinner with our first advance.

How do you hope people will react to the developments in sound on the new record, and what do you think their takeaways will be?

I think it’s going to be positive, but I can never tell. People have responded better than I thought to the singles. There’s a few people who think it sucks, but I disagree. It’s a more representative direction and I just hope people like it. We tried our best.

Geese

HAZEL ENGLISH

TUE 2 MAY FOLKLORE

NURIA GRAHAM

WED 3 MAY ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

ALICE GLASS

WED 5 MAY

MOTH CLUB

CUMGIRL8

TUE 9 MAY MOTH CLUB

MAY

TUE 9 MAY THE WAITING ROOM

HAWA

WED 10 MAY CORSICA STUDIOS

GEORGIA HARMER

TUE 16 MAY

THE WAITING ROOM

BLONDSHELL

WED 24 MAY

MOTH CLUB

FLASHER

TUE 30 MAY

SEBRIGHT ARMS

THE BIG MOON

WED 31 MAY

ROUNDHOUSE

ANDY SHAUF

THU 1 JUNE

HACKNEY EMPIRE

BOYGENIUS

SUN 20 AUG

GUNNERSBURY PARK

THE NATIONAL

TUE 26 SEP

WED 27 SEP

ALEXANDRA PALACE

BC CAMPLIGHT

THU 23 NOV

O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH

EMPIRE

MOIN

WED 29 NOV

STUDIO 9294

LANKUM

WED 13 DEC

ROUNDHOUSE

The daunting task of the debut album is no easy feat for anyone. For a band with as extensive of a personal history and as large of an eager following as Do Nothing, it was a trial fraught with overthinking and self-doubt. The resulting album ‘Snake Sideways’ is an astounding exploration of many of the psychological struggles that come with a group face to face with the challenge. It is a brilliant, experimental study of an act taking that jump and landing on their feet. The signature wry humour of the lyrics remain, but the music feels like it has matured and blossomed in complexity during the album writing process. Ahead of the release of their highly anticipated debut to the world, we spoke to Do Nothing about how they made it happen and their feelings now it’s complete.

Your debut album ‘Snake Sideways’ is out soon and it’s your first new music since ‘Glueland’. How did you approach the task of the debut album and tackle the daunting nature of it?

Chris: It was a weird one because technically both of our EPs were released in lockdown. For the first one, we’d been playing the songs for a while and we recorded them just as lockdown was starting. That EP was released just as things were getting kind of weird. And then, obviously, it was still a lockdown for the second EP ‘Glueland’. It meant that we hadn’t been playing loads of shows where we could try out new material. Normally you have the songs that you’ve got released and when you write a new one you can add it to the setlist, even though nobody’s heard it, and that’s how you end up playing it a lot. But with the album it was more that we would write the stuff and then have to sit and just learn how to play it. You know, like, learn how to play it together in a room. It was quite a lot of time spent sort of fiddling stuff before we actually went into the studio, and then when we were in the studio, we were still kind of fiddling with things.

C: The guy who produced it is Andy Savours. Some producers aren’t open to having a hand in the songwriting in a structural way, but, for example, if there was a little section that probably didn’t need to be there, he would potentially raise his hand and say “that doesn’t need to be there.” Which was nice because unless you show your music to people a lot of the time you just release it and that’s pretty much the first time you get feedback. It’s nice to have, like, a wall of defence between us and the audience, I guess that was handy.

Kasper: He’d give us homework to do after a day session and we would stay in the studio. It meant that we were able to go in and sort of try writing new stuff that we were in the process of recording. There was some stuff that we spent like hours working on and the next day he’s come in and said let’s keep it the old way and other’s where he’d say that’s great let’s put that in

Having been away from those live shows for so long, did you feel like you were writing the tracks for a live audience or to be recorded?

C: I guess there are two different versions of writing. Sometimes you’re just writing and you’re focused on thinking about people listening to it on record, you’ve got that in your head. And sometimes when you’re writing it feels like it would be good live and you end up thinking, I can expand on that and make it really good live.

K: The album is a bit more like ‘Glueland’ in a way than ‘Zero Dollar Bill’ because we had a lot of time spent writing that wasn’t on the road. It feels like a nice balance of about half and half stuff that’s more geared towards live and stuff that’s got little studio bits going on. That’s one of the things that we really like a lot is just the little titbits that you can get on the record, that’s important to us, I think.

Words by Eve Boothroyd, illustration by Shunny Kim 8

How did the lead single ‘Happy Feet’ come about?

C: I think that was one of the later ones that was written. I think I started writing it and though “this sounds fucking stupid.” I stopped writing it because it sounded swung or whatever and we haven’t really done swung stuff before. And later I was sitting down with Andy and going through all my old bits to make sure there wasn’t anything in there and I think he was like “that was quite fun, you should probably do that one”… in the end it doesn’t come out completely stupid, it turned into more of a serious one. I guess it’s a testament that you can work out anything if you keep banging your head against it.

I wanted to ask because in a previous interview you said that one thing stopping you from writing a debut was that you “massively overthink” and it feels like on that track it comes across?

C: That’s funny because that’s basically exactly what happened

Do you still feel that now?

C: Well it’s done now. I mean once it’s fucking mixed there’s not much you can do.

Andy: But right up to the very end [Chris] was still agonising to the very last moment.

C: Oh yeah, we were still in the studio and there were songs that we were really trying to get over the line, and at some point you have to just be like, it’s not going to happen. So there’s stuff cut from the album that may return in the future, because we’ve done that and we’ve always done that, especially lyrically and stuff. There’ll be old songs that nobody’s ever heard and old demos and stuff that will get used and reincarnated in stuff. Literally today I was messing with one that we cut from the album and trying to do something new with it. So not all is lost * laughs*

C: I actually think that now the album’s done, I think that’s a specific hill we had to get over in a way because I just had a big thing about it. Historically we put a lot of emphasis on the first album and a lot of pressure on ourselves to make it good. And that fell into the songs themselves because most of the album is about like… kicking yourself really hard and also the tendency to kick yourself really hard, so it turned into a thing where, once you know it was an absolute nightmare to make, it probably makes more sense as a listener.

Oh definitely but I also think that lyrically it isn’t too overt, a lot of the imagery is quite abstract, so where did that imagery come from?

C: It’s about saying something in a way that’s not like super reach aroundy and cryptic and weird. It’s just like little direct lines of speech and stuff that represent a whole idea or are representative of somebody who’s in a certain headspace. So there’s lots of stuff in there about like, quitting a job or being fed up with your job, which is not something I have to deal with. But a lot of people can definitely relate being fed up with having a job and it’s sort of using that, but as a way of demonstrating my headspace in writing in the album.

C: I definitely didn’t want it to be whiny, like “oh I made a first album and it was so hard.” Like fair enough whining about stuff you’re sad about, I love that kind of stuff, but in terms of creative whining, I don’t think it’s very interesting to people a lot of the time.

K: To me it’s always kind of felt like the lyrics sort of seek to put together this much bigger picture of what a song is trying to put across. So we’ve had songs in the past where we’ve tried to use certain like, vignettes in the lyrics to express the overarching theme of the song.

C: Yeah, I think for the album and then this stuff right now, I [Chris] have a thing of doing little mini stories or mini scenes of people talking to each other, or like, just a dumb little fucking thought, or whatever.

You can almost catch the fumes of the hangover as The Goa Express wax lyrical of their recent trip to Austin, Texas for South By Southwest. “We got smashed on the way over, didn’t we Joey?”, questions frontman James Douglas-Clarke, “Was it a good way to spend eight hours?” The band’s guitarist quickly admits to getting a little over-excited on the nine hour flight, “Yeah I got a bottle of whisky from duty free and it was so turbulent we ended up finishing it off.”

Speaking over Zoom as we hurtle towards the arrival of a debut album, you could be chatting to any group of pals as conversation flickers between hikes in their nearby Peak District to processing the intense wave of hype that’s fizzed after their every move. It’s easy to see why the latter has been the case, since forming as a close group of pals scattered across the Calder Valley towns of North Yorkshire, Burnley and Manchester, the five-piece have taken the ride with a complete sense of abandon.

Though equally buoyant and carefree as the early material that won hearts, the recent single ‘Portrait’ takes on a more raucous and refined turn than anything they’ve dropped before, hinting towards their most impulsive and thrilling chapter yet. Against driving fuzzy guitars, Douglas-Clarke lashes out some of his most romancewashed lyricism to date: “You paint my portrait in the foyer of fancy bars / And write me love notes underneath the fallen stars.”

Perhaps most importantly, there’s a breezy, care-free spirit behind the bunch of pals that has always rippled through the sound itself, in-turn sealing them a force outside of anything else in town right now. Speaking to So Young for their first ever cover feature, the band are quick to explain how that ethos also duly cuts through in their impulsive psych-infused pop and why they’re proud to be part of a wider community keeping the North on the map.

How were the US shows themselves, it must have been surreal touching down in Texas?

James: We’d just come out of the studio so it was all a little bit strange. We got far too drunk before our first show because there was a free bar, it was a moment of realisation for us all. I was drinking cocktails before the show and then it all hit me at once onstage. We played with Been Stellar, we’re quite close with them, so it was ace to catch up with them.

So do you feel like you’ve made a few peers on that side of the pond?

James: Yeah, between us two definitely. They supported us on a tour once and we just got on straight away and clicked. It’s hard to know what impact you have over there, you play the shows for a week but then it’s all about the aftermath that spreads across the airwaves so it will be interesting to see. Both of our shows were dead busy so that can only be a good sign.

It was impossible to ignore the noise around you guys when you first cut through. Was that hard to process or did your rural stomping ground help stay clear from it all?

James: We’re pretty grounded. We didn’t pay any attention to what was going on around us, we just did our own thing to be honest. That’s been the case the whole way through.

Would you say that ethos bleeds through into the music itself then?

James: It sounds like an odd thing to say but I don’t pay much attention to what I’m doing lyrically. It’s kind of a first come first served process, as soon as it sounds right and good, that’s it, it’s done.

Words by Rhys Buchanan, illustration by Rozalina Burkova

It’s all essentially about growing up because that’s what we’re doing, I would be unable to write about anything else with as much clarity. That feeling comes through in our spirit, our vibe and our personalities and also lyrically, I think it’s about not overthinking.

The Goa Express have always thrived as an antidote to the mire of stark post punk, do you feel like that’s important?

Joey: That’s dead nice and really means a lot, there’s a lot of stuff to say without getting in your face and angry. We all try to remain as happy go lucky as we can. Life does drag you down sometimes, but a lot of the time that’s just the way it is and there’s not much you can do about it, so it’s better to pick yourself up and get on with it. Especially for us, everything is going so swimmingly momentum wise. We’ve just been to the US and have a careerdefining body of work on the horizon, why wouldn’t you look on the sunny side of things?

On that note, let’s dive into what you’ve been working on with a bigger body of work on the horizon, where have you been recording?

Joey: We recorded in a studio in Raglan just outside of Monmouth in South Wales. It’s this little village with one shop, two pubs, a fish and chip shop and a farm. It was lovely, we made friends with the whole town by the time we’d left. They kept calling us the pop stars as well in their thick Welsh accents. We got them all a card when we left as well just to say thankyou for being so welcoming. There was this woman who ran this farm, we used to go and see her every day and get fresh veg and milk. We’d be hungover walking around this farmland in our scruffy clothes.

How was the process itself then, was it a case of continuing everything so far sonically?

James: The recording process was wicked, we got everything down we wanted to and it went really well. We can’t wait to just get it out there now, it’s been rewarding seeing the singles dropping.

We went in with a clear idea of what we wanted, we did plenty of pre-production in our old Manchester studio which is no longer there anymore, that held a lot of meaning to us because we’ll have those old recordings forever. We were all prepared, we’ve been touring these songs for a while so it feels like a natural transition going into our debut record, we knew what felt good and what we wanted to put out.

It’s such a milestone for you guys, does it feel like it’s been a long time coming?

Joey: It’s super exciting, we’ve been a band for so long now, to finally reach the debut album is a huge achievement, we’re properly proud of ourselves for doing it and getting here. It’s what we’ve been working for since the start, it’s such a dream to have the backing and support of our fans. Looking back to those early days, I don’t think we ever thought we’d make it here. We played a gig at the start where I snapped three strings, Naham couldn’t play bass, Sam was on the Duke Of Edinburgh and James got too stoned so he couldn’t remember the lyrics. It was so bad, we nearly packed it in after that one, so in all honesty we’re not doing too bad.

It seems like that element of fun and cutting loose has been there from the very start - where do you see yourselves on the wider scene, do you feel like outliers?

James: It’s obviously guitar music and there’s other band’s making that and there always will be. What I admire about what we’ve been doing so far is we’ve just kept it really simplistic intentionally, we’ve made sure our chorusses were good, the verses were good, each part stood out and we didn’t overcomplicate it. I think that return to simplicity has put us in good stead.

Photo by Harvey Pearson, painting by Gavin Shepherdson

I’d say going back to basics undermines what you guys are doing, but I guess there’s a level of freedom that comes from keeping it down the line?

James: That’s exactly the case, it almost gives us the licence to just enjoy it. If we like the track, then we’re going to play it. We do it because it’s what we like listening to. I quite like pop music, so when I write I want it to be catchy but other than that there wasn’t really a thought process behind it. It just quickly started to make sense.

People understandably found comfort and nostalgia in your music with elements nodding to psych-infused Britpop, are those labels a help or hindrance?

James: We’re British and some of our tunes are poppy but it’s not an overbearing influence on us. We like it as much as we like anything else.

I don’t really pay attention to any of those tags, we’re all influenced by so many different genres so it’s hard to pigeonhole us to one thing. There are so many factors that come into play. We’ve never once had a chat about it, we’re not bothered about any of the tags, we kind of sound like everyone and everything whilst also maintaining our own Goa Express stamp. It doesn’t matter if those touchstones are eighties or nineties, it’s all just music that we love. It’s fun being able to cherry-pick from any different era or genre, we don’t feel tied down.

You’ve done it off your own back as well, part of a wider, well-documented group of band’s who’ve been written about in these pages from the North, surely that can’t be down to coincidence?

James: I’ve lived here my whole life and it’s always been arty and creative.

A lot of my neighbours are big hippies from the sixties and seventies, funnily enough Bill from across the road has just given me 150 of his old records to sift through. Some are fucked and super damaged but there’s some gold in there like Frank Zappa and some classical stuff. There’s a lot of good music here, obviously The Lounge Society, Working Men’s Club, I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but it’s strange how vibrant it is for such a small place. There’s a lot of magic mushrooms around here as well so maybe that has something to do with it.

Joey: Those psych influences run pretty deep with us as well, we’d spend hours going down YouTube rabbit holes of wild psych music.

We’d come into college wearing fucking kaftan’s and that. We’d be in flares and boots in Burnley running about. We just like listening to whatever we can get our hands on.

Finally, is there an element of pride behind that for you all especially as you head into such a bright future?

Joey: I think we’re all proud of where we come from. The whole reason we started this band is because there was so little going on in Burnley. It’s weird to see but it’s good, especially when it’s always been so London-centric historically, it’s refreshing to see, it’s beautiful.

The state51 Conspiracy

2222 & AIRPORT

OUT NOW

MUSIC FOR FILM: Tramps! & Women Against The Bomb

MEMORIALS

The new band from Verity Susman (Electrelane) & Matthew Simms (Wire, It Hugs Back)

12th May 2023

The state51 Conspiracy

INDEPENDENT MUSIC HOUSE

Many Londoners have a love-hate relationship with the city. Some are invigorated by everything it has to offer, others seek solace from relentless inflation and gentrification. This is the age-old paradox of capital cities – will you be pushed to find or lose yourself? It may be cliché but it’s also undeniable and it’s a dilemma explored on ‘The Sound’ – the first single from Miss Tiny’s debut EP DEN7.

Miss Tiny are Dan Carey & Ben Romans-Hopcraft – two names familiar to the pages of So Young and far beyond. Dan Carey is a seasoned producer, and the founder of Speedy Wunderground. Wall to wall, his studio shelves are piled high with musical equipment used by the likes of Slowthai, Heartworms and Fontaines D.C. to name a few. Yet, Ben and Dan are adamant on an anti-recording process – they refuse to record every stem written and shy away from using the surrounding bounties.

This stripped-down practice is new for Ben. Having played in larger bands like Warmduscher, Childhood and Insecure Men, the smaller arrangement allows him time to dive into each song and find a rawness that’s both difficult and vital to capture. Expressing loss, anxiety and existentialism is a big task, but Carey always reminds Ben to think about these feelings in their most direct form. This straightforwardness is Miss Tiny’s mission, and they’re clearly well underway.

Cast your minds back to the first time you met.

D: I was sitting here, you were sitting there.

B: No you were sitting here, I was sitting there…

When I was in a band called Childhood, I lived down the road at my Dad’s in Streatham.

I’d been looking for a local producer and when I found one, my dad asked if it was Dan. It turns out my Dad was saved in Dan’s phone as Rob Trumpet because they’d worked together. My Dad was singing Dan’s praises and he doesn’t usually do that about anyone in the industry. The first time we met we barely even talked about music – I heard he owned a guitar made from a Russian tank, so that was my starter question.

D: We then got into making complex salads with 3 pages of ingredients.

Do you remember any recipes?

D: There was one with barbecued cucumbers. You cut the cucumbers up so they get de-hydrated then rehydrate them in a lemon juice and vinegar dressing. That gives each cucumber great flavour when you put them back into the salad.

Regrettably we move from salads. The music video for your debut single ‘The Sound’ perfectly captures the anxiety and claustrophobia of living in a big city. London is a catch 22 in that way – it’s creatively stimulating and stifling. What are your thoughts on the city as it stands?

D: I find it stimulating. I love it. It’s massive.

B: When I grew up, it was and still is difficult to start as a young adult in London. I discovered how to live with basic means, but also be creative as my job. If you know how to use London well – and by ‘well’ I mean taking your ego out of what you think your place here is – then you can reframe this and ask ‘how am I going to use this city for all of its opportunities but live realistically and productively?’ I think a lot of people feel the need to go out because they want relief from the fact that so much of their life is going towards surviving.

Words by Poppy Richler, illustration by Mamo Kawakami

This self-reflection runs through the EP, especially in ‘Sailing.’

B: ‘Sailing’ is about London, but actually told through my grandma’s eyes. It’s reflective because it’s considering a past life in a different country. The idea of the song is literally running away from Jamaica to live in this metropolis and then realising you can never fully do that.

D: Never fully do what?

B: You can never fully run away from your own thoughts. London is good for dealing with or avoiding that depending on your courage.

Going back to your first gig at the Windmill last year, how would you describe those feelings compared to your most recent show?

D: The biggest difference is having Adele on bass. The band started off as just me and Ben having some fun. We wanted this to come across at gigs in its purest form – Ben on drums and singing, me on guitar. But when recording, we realised that bass made everything more symmetrical.

B: Adele’s style of bass allows the songs to breathe, meaning Dan and I can play with greater freedom. We smile more.

Do you follow the Speedy Wunderground rules in the studio?

“Recording of all records will be done in one day and finish before midnight. The recordings will be a snapshot of the day. Mixing will be done the day following the recording, also in one day only. This will prevent over-cooking and ‘faff’.”

D: I almost shouldn’t say this but I find the Speedy rules easy to enforce on other people, not myself. We must’ve recorded every part on ‘The Sound’ multiple times until we got it just right.

B: We wanted to capture how the song felt the first time we played it. That rawness was vital and we didn’t want to get ‘demoitis’ (listening to a demo too much then being unhappy with the final recording).

D: It’s difficult to follow a sound when you don’t quite know what it is. On the face of it, the song’s the same, but there’s something missing, so you’ve got to do it again.

This relates to your ‘anti-recording’ method.

D: If you’re on your own, you play differently from if there was someone watching. Similarly, subatomic particles behave differently if they’re being observed by a conscious observer. The particles will react differently even if the camera’s on and no one’s watching!

B: We ruined so many great things from hitting record. It’s better to do something great and not heard, than to be heard and do something shit. I remember the session when we worked out what we wanted the EP to be. Nothing had been landing with me emotionally, and the only impromptu thing we did at the end of the session was the most exciting thing we’d done all day. You have to relearn spontaneity because the world demands you to be too organised.

What did you want the EP to be?

B: Harshness and tenderness in their most direct forms. My grandma passed away at the time of writing, so it was easy to write because I had so many words from her. Dan always asks ‘what are you saying here?’ It’s true…I kind of know what I’m saying, but I’m not communicating it well. Dan, what’s that poster you have outside this room?

D: Shock them into focus with clarity of intent.

Miss Tiny

Sitting here in the Speedy studio, there’s a lot of technological temptation. How do you regulate this when recording?

D: That’s partially why we avoided getting into recording too soon. On the EP there’s one or two tracks where we use a modular synth briefly but that’s it.

B: A lot of people were saying “it’s interesting seeing you guys play for the first time because I thought you were going to make some kind of synth-laden frog-psych punk.”

As seasoned musicians and producers, many people will look to you for wisdom. But what’s one piece of wisdom that’s stuck with you?

B: Think about the present more. I’ve always struggled with that.

In band culture, there’s a pressure to have your eyes firmly fixed on the prize of success, even if you don’t want it to be there. Ultimately it stifles creativity and you stop doing basic things like writing songs and being honest. You’re just thinking about the chess match of being in a band.

When I was 25, I remember telling Dan that I wasn’t getting enough done and he replied: “Ben, you just have to not go out?” That’s good advice.

D: The part of your brain that processes melody and rhythm isn’t the same part of your brain that processes narrative. If you’re telling a story within music, it can be going completely at odds with the rhythm and tune of the music. If you take an acapella story from one song and put it on another, though it won’t work musically, your brain will still process it. That never occurred to me…

In the final days of SXSW, the dark, twisted, and irresistibly danceable industrial sound of Brooklyn-based MODEL/ACTRIZ, burned through the eardrums of the Brits that made the trek to Texas. Having never set foot across the pond, the group’s impact is timely and precedes a sold out, debut UK show at The Lexington in May.

Formed in 2016, the four piece, which now consists of lead vocalist Cole Haden, drummer Ruben Radlauer, guitarist Jack Wetmore, and bassist Aaron Shapiro, started life in the underground basements of the East and West coasts and quickly became known for their explosive live performances. Their debut album, ‘Dogsbody’, was released at the end of February to much critical acclaim and combines ugly, thrashing, and unnerving electronic beats with the seductive charisma of Haden’s poetic lyricism.

I caught up with the four piece midway through their US tour, after a show at Barbosa in Seattle in the hour before their journey up to the home of Prince in Minneapolis. Huddled around a laptop clutching cups of coffee, we broke the ice over patchy hotel WiFi and chatted through their first headline tour, the difficult task of translating their enigmatic energy to record, and the self-imposed hiatus which saw them come into their own.

Have you enjoyed the tour so far?

Cole: Absolutely. Morale’s high. All the shows have been uniquely lovely. This is the first tour that we really have the luxury of energy exchange at a rate that feels like we’re doing it with people.

And you’re coming to London in May. Have you played the UK before?

Cole: No, never. It’s sold out…

Your performances have been called intimate and confrontational. Do you think a London audience will be receptive?

Cole: It seems like they’re excited for us.

Aaron: It would be a shame if they sold it out in 24 hours and then just kind of stood there haha. But they bought the tickets, they can do whatever they want.

Cole: Yeah, we’re there for them. We’re at their service.

Ruben: What’s your take on British crowds?

They like to get involved.

Cole: Ok, I’m for participation. I think last night, the best way I could put it is that it was the right balance of people wanting to get involved without fully taking the reins. We never know what the energy of the room is going to be like until we play. When we played in Oakland, it was like many shows we’ve played where our job becomes protecting our gear so much as playing the show. Nothing bad happened but it takes the attention away from really harnessing the vibe.

Aaron: It makes Cole’s job harder and our job easier.

Cole: Yeah, I can’t really go out and confront people when they’re…

Aaron: Five feet above you.

Cole: Yeah, I was holding a shoe for much of the performance. Not just a shoe haha, a shoe attached to a body. I’m telling them don’t push them on here while I’m standing holding the gear…

Words by Natalia Quiros Edmonds, illustration by Estée Preda

Ruben: On our six-inch-tall stage. It was fun though.

Cole: It was fun. I mean the shows we started playing were in basements where there was no separation of crowd and audience. We try to keep that feeling.

The Lexington might be tame in comparison.

Cole: I’ll take tame. I like walking slowly, I’m not a mosher. If I’m riling people up, I also like dialling it back. So make sure everyone who comes to the show stays up all night before.

Aaron: So they’re all tuckered haha. Our perfect crowd is when they’re all tuckered out.

Cole: It’ll be our first [UK] show. So we can use the jetlag as an excuse to whip them into shape.

Do you know what to expect from your audiences?

Aaron: It’s hard to say because it’s our first time headlining. We’ve played a lot of the states but not necessarily in the role of playing our own music to our own crowds.

Cole: This is the first time that we’re really learning who listens to our music in a real sense.

Have you been surprised by your crowd?

Cole: I always like it when an older audience comes.

Ruben: For me, that was one of the biggest surprises. We’ve played a lot of stuff where it’s mostly people our age. But now there’s totally random people, especially older people. They’re there for the party, but they’re not there to party. That’s not their objective, which is refreshing.

People rave about your live performances. Were you daunted by translating that energy into an album?

Aaron: A big story arc of recording the album was not being afraid to not use the live energy as a tool on the record. We talked to Seth [Manchester] the producer a bunch, [he said] the live version will always be this thing that people should pay to go see but you have an opportunity to do literally anything on the record that isn’t that. And I think that was really hard to adjust to because we know that people resonate with the live show most immediately in this band. But embracing not doing the comfortable thing would be a more interesting take. It was really scary. But I think we’re all really happy we did it that way.

Cole: We took the risk with this album to make a studio document of what we sound like when we’re crafting a piece with a studio as our canvas rather than with the familiar comforts of the shows.

You formed in 2016 but took a hiatus not long after. How did that period change the band?

Cole: We went on a hiatus with no expectation of getting back together in a timeline sense. The kind of stake I’m putting in personally now is only possible because in that year I learned how to validate myself. This is the only band I’ve been in. I just had a lot of fear and self-doubt that was really standing in my way. Ruben: Me and Jack had a lot of conversations in that period, not necessarily about what we wanted to express with this band but I guess what music meant to us and why we were doing it. We were wanting to zero in on the more uncomfortable thoughts and emotions and use [music] as a vehicle, a creative space in which to examine our ugly selves and celebrate our whole selves and experiences. That was a big reason why me and Jack started working on random shit during that year.

Jack: It was also that we were just so young when we started off.

Cole: So Young.

Jack: Oh Jesus haha. It ended up being a break because we were pushing ourselves to occupy a space and we weren’t sure what the purpose of it was. We had to do it. And the time off, like Ruben was saying, gave us a lot of purpose and time to grow up individually and do our own things.

It sounds like a relationship break.

Cole: Yeah, and we’re in a much healthier relationship now.

Ruben: I think we were in a precarious place. All of our identities were too tied up in the band. I think we needed that year to establish adult identities.

Cole: It wasn’t fun.

Ruben: Yeah, it was intense at the end. Feeling so defined by this one thing. It’s no longer scary being identified with the band because we have a secure base of who we are and what our feelings and emotions and thoughts are as humans first.

Cole: We’re now living the mission statement of the band. Before we were more trying because we weren’t ready. We didn’t know how to actually attain the thing we wanted and the hiatus made it so that when we did come back we were actually…

Ruben: We weren’t projecting.

Cole: Yeah, we weren’t projecting. We were doing it.

There is something to be said for a band whose focus is the energy they bring into a room, especially, one who appears to navigate that undertaking with ease. As a trio born out of jam sessions, Hot Face’s repertoire has been built upon playful experimentation and creative unpredictability. With a predilection for spontaneity at the heart of their performance - it’s not rare for them not to know the direction of the show themselves. Existing in the realm of the erratic and adaptable is anything but uncomfortable for Hot Face, in fact, it appears to be where they flourish. From French monster masks to lonely Halloween showcases, Hot Face are making their way through the more arcane experiences of a band’s early days, and figuring out their sound while they’re at it.

With no releases and a sparse digital presence, the currently faceless figures behind Hot Face - James, Sam, and George - joined me in The Shacklewell Arms’ garden just before their set to go over everything that’s happened, everything that’s happening, and their hopes for what’s to come.

How did you guys all come together?

Sam: I was playing for an artist called Pixx, one of the guys knew George and James, so we ended up becoming friends by proxy really. It came about properly through us jamming together in the basement of a pub, that’s where it fully gelled.

James: That fateful night in Croydon

George: When we first met we had a set of acoustic neofunk songs. It was all very mellow and chill, but the first time we jammed as a band it stopped being so mellow and chill and started getting progressively louder and weirder.

You guys have been in projects before, when coming out of one project and going into another, is there any pressure to make something different?

S: I don’t think so. I think it’s just about not compromising on who you are as a person and not taking it too seriously. We care about it a lot, but it’s about being imaginative with it, we sometimes get people to jump on stage with masks on and stuff.

I was going to ask about that! I saw you at The Windmill last summer supporting what is now Miss Tiny. I assumed that the guy with the mask was supposed to be Hot Face, or is it just a joke?

J: Honestly, it’s just a joke! We wrote a song called ‘Monster House’ and Sam had the idea to get someone on stage dressed as the monster for that song, and then it became a thing we started doing regularly.

S: A few of my friends had said it would be fun to get someone in as the resident monster for that tune. I was at a party in this crazy château in France - I’d never anticipated being there - but the theme was mischievous creatures. There were a lot of interesting looking folks and I saw this mask there, no one was wearing it, but I knew it was going to be the mask. So I asked if I could take it back to London.

So it’s from France! You have a French resident monster? That’s pretty good.

S: It’s become the main mask we use and I couldn’t really ask for a better one. We’ve been making our own though! It’s a nice thing to do on a weekend or whatever. It’s likewhat do you want to do with your Sunday?

Words by Amber Lashley, illustration by Oyow 25

J: For us, at the moment the mask stuff gives you something else to focus on rather than just three dudes in a band. It’s a different focal point so you can separate the music from who we are. We don’t put too much thought into the theatrical thing. Sam will just come to the gig with a mask in a bag and be like…

S: …Anyone want to jump on this? And sometimes people will but sometimes people will be too scared.

J: You’d be surprised at the number of people who turn down dancing in front of a room full of people dressed as a monster.

I mean performing doesn’t come naturally to everyone - do you think performing came naturally to you guys?

G: I think so. We’re so comfortable with what we’re doing that when we’re playing it feels like it’s just us three. We try not to take notice of anything that’s going on other than us. How we play on stage is how we play in rehearsal.

J: We want people to enjoy it and that’s all we try to do on stage. Energy produces energy, so if you’re having fun hopefully other people will too - or they’ll stand there with their arms crossed with a very stern face on them. We did one at Fox & Firkin in Lewisham on Halloween where we all wore face paint and there were maybe ten people in the room. We were the only ones that were actually dressed up so that was pretty alienating.

S: The main thing that has changed is that the set has become like its own entity. That can be the joy of being in a live setting as well, there’s that sense that you don’t fully know what you’re gonna get. There are certain artists that will practice a set and then that’s the set they’ll play for the whole year. Whereas for us, we’ve got certain songs that we know we’ll play, but we’ll definitely mix it up - maybe chuck in a cover every once in a while if we’re lucky.

G: I think that comes from not having anything out as well. It’s a chance to hone down the sound and direction you want and to change things up. It gives you a lot of room to do that.

Do you think that relaxed energy comes from jamming? Are you trying to maintain that?

J: There’s definitely a jam element to it all, the old Hot Face lineup used to jam for way too long to the point that we wouldn’t know when the songs were finished. Before Sam joined we’d say “this section is just a jam” and then ten minutes later everyone is like when the fuck does the jam end?

S: I guess my half-German side just said “we need structure! Where’s the efficiency of the song!”. We’ve been trying to focus on whether we’re excited by what we’re doing. You have to care about what you’re playing, if you don’t then what’s the point? We could all be selling out and working a job that makes us loads more money than pursuing music, but if you’re gonna do it, then you might as well just…

G: …be completely hedonistic. I think we’ve all got a part of us that wants to freak out, personally, I’m quite introverted most of the time. Playing this kind of music gives me a chance to channel that part of me that isn’t always allowed to express itself, or doesn’t want to.

J: In regard to what you said about what Hot Face is, I think that’s what it really is. It’s not an actual mask but a mask that you can put on when you’re playing and writing music to explore parts of your emotional spectrum and say things you might not say to your friends. We sing songs about a lot of strange things, fucking aliens and haunted houses and people mutating. There aren’t many environments where you can ramble about aliens and people won’t just walk away.

You haven’t released anything yet, how would you describe what’s to come? What can we expect?

G: To put it simply, you’ll either love it or run from it.

J: I mean it’s better for them to run away than to be like, “yeah that was alright”. Even if everybody hated it, I’d rather them have an extreme reaction.

S: We’re not making music for someone to be like “oh that’s easy listening”. We were talking about how it felt first listening to the upcoming single…

J: …I was scared shitless when I first heard it!

In what way?

J: To be honest, it seems like every time you think you have a grip on the music, it changes into something else. Especially with this single, to make something that you think is one thing and then you hear it back and it’s not, it’s like fucking hell what’s gonna come next?

S: It felt like someone had just awakened the Kraken and it had descended upon us in a manner that we weren’t really prepared for. It’s one thing playing it and another thing hearing it back.

It’s almost like you’re spectating your own music?...

S: …Yeah! For the first time really.

G: The recording process itself was such a cool experience, to be in that environment with all that equipment. I remember saying to James when we walked away that I felt like a little boy who’d just had a mad science lesson.

S: It did feel like some evil experiment had just taken place, but everybody was so happy to be there at the same time.

J: It’s also made us realise that we can do whatever we want to do. There’s not really another song like this one in the set, and it’s a pretty extreme song, so it just feels like the dog’s off the leash.

W hen Rachel Brown (They/them) joins our zoom call they’re riding an uber from an impromptu job assisting in building a stage set. As we make small talk about the band’s recent trip to the UK, Rachel goes into detail about how London tubes seemed a lot smaller than their New York and European counterparts and must be difficult for tall people to manage. As someone who stands at 6’ 1”, I cannot wholly disagree.

10 minutes in, Nate Amos (He/him) jumps on the call from his sunlit Brooklyn bedroom. Armed with a cigarette and a Seltzer, he independently offers the exact same opinion on London tubes. Then, with the kind of frame-shifting camera work not unworthy of an art-house flick, Rachel alights her taxi, enters Nate’s apartment, ends her call, and the two sit down together in the aforementioned sunlit bedroom. Now the interview can really begin. In what, I’m told, is one of their “less chaotic interviews”, I can only assume It’s this mix of wildness and cohesion that gives this whole operation its undisputed edge.

To fill you in, recent signees to Matador records, Experimental pop duo Water From Your Eyes, at time of writing, have just completed a month-long tour of the UK and Europe, and are about to embark on something equally sizable across America. Their upcoming album ‘Everyone’s Crushed’, is the cause of this mass hysteria (well, in my frail heart at least) for its clinical blend of complex song-structures, captivating unpredictability, and latent joy that rises up from its struggle.

So, it sounds like things are quite busy at the moment. What have you been doing, what are you up to now, and what will you be doing next?

Rachel: I’m desperately looking for money.

Nate: I’m just trying to freelance as much as possible before we leave again.

R: I’m mostly figuring out if I have to move out of my apartment. I also have to do taxes.

There’s so many things about America that suck, but one of my least favourite things about America - besides obviously all the other terrible things - is that they just don’t tell you how much they want you to pay them!

They’re like, “Why don’t you get somebody else to find out how much you owe somebody, and then you owe them money, and then you owe us money, but if you do it wrong we’re gonna come and get more money from you down the line and ruin your life!”

So you’ve said what you don’t like about America. What do you like about where you live?

R: New York is awesome. We have diners. Other people don’t have diners. New York has everything. You can get any kind of sandwich at 4am.

So. there’s a new album, and it’s fucking sick imho. How “crushed” are you feeling right now?

N: Personally, not as crushed as I was feeling when we made it. Different kinds of crushed? There’s a lot more pressure on us now.

R: It’s really weird, ‘cause, my life is in shambles, per usual. But also, we have an album coming out, and people have said these really nice things about it so far. And we have all these tours happening. In that aspect everything’s going pretty good. So I don’t feel hopeless, because there’s a lot of things going on that are good. But, actually, everytime I look on Twitter, I’m like, wow things are getting really bad in a lot of places…

It feels like you’ve made a big step in terms of the ambition of the songs and the amount of ideas you’re packing into them. How do you see this album in terms of your musical development thus far?

N: It incorporates a lot more things intentionally than some of the past albums. At least from a compositional perspective, there are a lot of things that we were kind of trying for the first time. There’s a more academic approach to making these tracks.

Words by Elvis Thirlwell, illustration by AYAKA FUKANO

You’ve mentioned previously how you’ve employed techniques like microtonalism and serialism on the record. Is it a case of discovering these concepts and wanting to apply them to songwriting?

N: A lot of these songs were by-products of trying to make these concepts work, both in the context of pop music, but also in the context of limited tools - of trying to make microtonal content on software that isn’t designed to do that. There’s a lot of fighting the software; my computer was half dead at the time. There’s this kind of strugglestudy vibe.

Are you actively trying to create these difficult conditions to make things happen?

That was happening at the same time as a lot of serialism and microtonal studies. And when you have such a rigid approach to something like that, then it’s taking that out and figuring a way to make it fun. So it’s the clashing of those two ideas: rigid study and improvised fun.

I had a question about ‘fun’ actually. I’m listening to this record and they’ll be a guitar that like “ZYUUMMMMM!!!”, or a synth that’s like “NININNI!!!”, coming out of nowhere. Even if the songs can be quite dark or emotionally heavy, it actively sounds like you’re having a lot of fun making it.

N: The serious stuff becomes fun, and the fun stuff becomes very serious. Another thing that was a big difference between previous stuff and this, was, around the time that these songs began, I fell deeply deeply in love with the band Ween. If that’s one thing to be taken away from Ween, it’s that good drama comes from the entire spectrum of emotion, from tragedy to comedy, and the more you employ both of those extremes, the more each of them stick out.

Ween have this quality where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry at it. This bittersweet balance between something that’s silly or strange, but also done in a musically mature and articulate way…

N:Yeah! That’s when it’s fun. It was less of a sense of ”let’s make Water From Your Eyes” songs, and more reacting to particular things that were inspiring. For instance, ‘Barley’ and ‘Buy My Product’ came out of this month-long period of time when I was trying to recreate ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in different ways.

N: That’s something that can make art of any kind more impactful. Especially in the cultural climate we’re in, the ability to have fun and see lightness in the midst of darkness is a critical aspect of emotional survival.

You also mentioned that the album is your “most collaborative album ever” How do things become more or less collaborative?

N: In the past the lyrics were more 50/50 but this time Rachel set the tone for most of it.

R: Somebody wrote an article that was like “multiinstrumentalists Nate and Rachel”, and I was like, “I can barely play an instrument!” I’m not a musicians’ musician. I have my own solo project Thanks For Coming but it’s not reinventing the wheel or anything. There’s not much going on except my love for 90s Indie-Rock…

N:...and just really high levels of songwriting. Don’t undersell yourself!

R: My knowledge of music isn’t very theoretical. I couldn’t look at a guitar and tell you what note any of them are. I feel like this project is a collaboration, but Nate is the musical genius and I’m just the one with the microphone.

N: You’re the critical counter-balance! That’s why this project works really well, because I can get lost in this headier compositional part of it without getting too far down the rabbit hole. The way you react to the music, knowing that you’re gonna be singing on it, and that your conceptual touch is going to be added to it has a huge effect on how I’m going to approach it.

R: We used to be in a relationship, and this is the first album where that’s all in the past. It allowed us to collaborate in a way we hadn’t been able to, because it’s like, normal now, just hanging out, goofing around.

It’s like being each other’s best friends, without thinking about the way it was before. It’s easier to write lyrics, it’s easier to write personal things without it being about us anymore, which was a big hindrance at the beginning of the project. We just work a lot better now.

N: To me this album is a lot more unmasked. It’s much more vulnerable and raw conceptually.

R: Not to bring the pandemic into this…but it mirrors society, that things are more unmasked at this point; it’s a lot more obvious in terms of where the faults lie in our structures and institutions.

N: For me personally, a lot of this album was made when I was having some health problems, struggling with addiction. There was a weird sense that a lot of society was cracking, and at the same time, I felt my body beginning to fail. It comes back to vulnerability again, and, it sounds so dramatic to say, but I was searching for lightness and darkness in a rough year.

After hogging the spotlight for more than a few years, London and Dublin have flourished with explosions of new artists who straddle the lines somewhere between indie and punk, peppered with cameos of pretty much anything else. But, eventually, a new city is poised for the director’s seat. Perhaps our gaze should be cast across the pond to New York, a contender sure to secure a nomination. Amidst this electrifying scene, we find Slow Fiction, a five-piece steeped in the sounds of late nineties/ early noughties guitars.

Starring Julia Vassallo (vocals), Paul Knepple (guitar), Joe Skimmons (guitar), Ryan Duffin (bass), and Akiva Henig (drums), the band release their eponymous debut EP, a raw and unfiltered expression of the twisting path through life’s trials and tribulations. Slow Fiction’s self-titled EP is a moving and beautifully raw indie rock record that transforms caricatures of the band’s inner conflicts into mesmerising cathartic soundtracks.

Hey, Slow Fiction! Thank you for joining me and for getting up so early! What have you got planned for the rest of your weekend?

Julia: We’re working on a zine that we’re putting together, detailing the past few months and everything that’s gone on with the release of our debut EP. Then we will use some footage we’ve gotten from hanging out, and recording, and we will create a mixed media piece. Off to see Why Bonnie later on too.

You just played SXSW in Austin; how was that?

Akiva: So much fun. It was nothing like we’d done before.

J: There was always something to do or someone we hadn’t seen. There was a full day of just seeing UK bands that we’ve wanted to see for so long!

Joe: Heartworms were so good. We played four shows throughout two days, the first time we played multiple shows like that in one day. Also, we celebrated the EP release away from New York and tested a bunch of new songs.

Did you get to meet a lot of interesting people too?

J: Yeah, we shared the bill with Humour at the Sahara Lounge. It was so surreal because I had been listening to their EP for the past few months commuting to work, and then they were onstage playing after us.

Ryan: After that, we kept seeing them around. It gives this great impression of being this very tight-knit communal event which is great to be a part of.

Joe: Akiva played with THUS LOVE!

A: Their drummer hurt their shoulder. They’re super nice.

J: There was a guy from the UK who came up to me at someone else’s show. He saw us play in New York opening for Sports Team, then said a bunch of really nice stuff. It’s crazy thinking about someone hearing us and making a personal connection like that.

Paul: One of the best parts of being there is just being around so many bands you wouldn’t be able to meet. One night after the show, we went to a house party. There were a couple of locals, two bands from New York, two bands from the UK, and one from Washington in this random house in Texas.

Words by Will Macnab, illustration by Lucie Lučanská

I feel like I’m waiting for the punchline here. And so obviously, the US is such a vast place; when you travel to the other side of the country, like Texas, how do you feel music translates between different states or cities?

P: Certain areas of the country have their own specific thing going on, but within that, certain bands can transcend that quite well. I think that’s the goal as a band, to have your music not only exist in the space you’re in.

R: People talk about how our influences are heavily New York-based, but that doesn’t mean we need to be confined to that scene. Anywhere you go, you should be able to find people who are willing to listen and engage, regardless of the dominant scene.

A: I like playing smaller towns if anything. There’s a more communal vibe to it. New York feels almost like people don’t give a shit about anything.

Where’s on the bucket list of places to play abroad?

All: The Windmill!

R: When I was there, I hit up the rest of the band and said this venue feels like it has us written all over it. It’s very much the vibe that we enjoy being able to capture. Cheap beer too.

J: Ireland, Scotland, Germany would be sick. Berlin is somewhere I’ve always wanted to play.

When you started, did you imagine even discussing going to these places?

Joe: We just wanted to play a show in New York. My goal was just to play The Mercury Lounge once, and now we’ve done it about five times.

R: We were trying to write it on New Year’s Eve 2021. We spent a couple of hours really chipping away at it.

J: No way. Is that true?

R: Yeah. We played it for the first time at a live show, maybe two weeks after, to get a feel for how it would translate. We’ve been really lucky with opportunities to play songs live first. It really influences the form the songs take.

Each song comes from the perspective of “characters” which are almost exaggerated extensions of yourselves. What made you opt for this kind of writing style?

J: I once had a writing teacher say that everyone who writes, tells lies. Even when you’re telling the truth, there’s no way you’ll be able to capture 100% of everyone’s objective truth because it’s coming from your perception. Telling a story that happened in our lives, no matter what, it might not come across as the full truth, so why not just make it even more of a lie and then slap some imaginary characters into the mix? It’s a really fun way to challenge yourself to write because it’s so easy to tell a story like it is, but it’s more fun to tell it like it isn’t.

There must be a great sense of freedom in writing through the lens of somebody else, especially when they don’t exist.

J: Oh, my gosh, it’s so freeing because I can express anything. Maybe I want to write about feeling like I want to do bad things. I don’t want to actually say I’m feeling that way. So, imagine writing it through the lens of somebody who would feel comfortable saying that. What would their voice sound like, and how would they write about that?

P: I don’t know if any of this will ever not be a surreal feeling for us.

I wanted to congratulate you on your EP as well. It’s sick! ‘Madman’ is my favourite.

Nick Cave feels like another artist that’s so good at that.

J: I love Nick Cave as a writer. He’s really interesting in being able to put on different perspectives whilst writing. I talk about David Berman and Stephen Malkmus a lot.

Recently I’ve been thinking about Fiona Apple too. I think she has a really interesting sense of perception in songwriting.

Joe: Who’s the poet that the title comes from?

J: It’s from David Berman. Yeah, he has a book of poems ‘Actual Air’, in it there’s a poem, ‘Imagining Defeat’, and one of the lines was, “in the distance, where it doesn’t matter”. Every time I feel in a specific emotional state, I go back to that collection of poems.

Alright, well let’s finish this off by coming up with a new character for each of you, go as wild as you like!

J: I could name everyone I want you guys to be. I want Paul to write from the perspective of an old 85-year-old shoreman on a ship, writing by candlelight. He’s been at sea for years, and he’s trying to get home. An Ancient mariner kind of vibe.

Paul: I’ll take Ancient Mariner.

Joe: I feel like Michael Jordan would be a good one. Like he’s just retired, but he wants to come back.

A: I have no idea.

Joe: I could see you at Woodstock.

J: Or a guy working at the snack stands at Woodstock. What would he be writing about?

R: Oh, man. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a monk. I don’t know what writing a song would look like from that perspective, but it seems like it would be a really interesting lifestyle to empathise with.

J: Maybe I will use all of these as inspiration for writing exercises. Maybe like the apple Adam and Eve bit into. How did that feel afterwards, as an apple?

R: Big spoiler for what the next EP will be then.

As we begin to enter that craved festival season again, the sun is starting to shine and Brighton’s ready to get brighter for the welcome of The Great Escape 2023.

Spread across 30+ walkable venues between 10th - 13th May, the seaside leaves behind its bucket and spade to embrace some of the world’s most anticipated upcoming artists, as well as the return of some crowd favourites. The shore is prepped and decorated with over 500 musically gifted talents, making it the perfect location to kick off 2023’s summer celebrations.

Claiming the Spotlight Shows this year are two of the UK’s most dynamic, female, contemporary singers, Arlo Parks, and Maisie Peters, and also the chart-topping British rapper Unknown T. Parks, 22, and already a Mercury Prize winner, delivers a particular angst message within her music as she sings about substance abuse, being in love, and trying to navigate your 20s in today’s society. Indeed, not an act to miss as we expect to see tunes from her upcoming album ‘My Soft Machine’ before its release on 26th May.

Peters, 22, a previous TikTok sensation, known for her love letter of songs, grabs the attention of a similar audience as she sings about dealing with troubled relationships and getting over breakups. Her music compiles the deep sadness of a well-deserved cry and the beautiful realisation that everything will be okay. A feelgood moment of the weekend is ensured.

Unknown T, 23, grabs the last spot of the headline shows with his versatile drill style, channelling personal anecdotes from his upbringing and his dalliance with crime. His music is easily one of the most influential sounds of rap to come out of East London today and is an excellent showcase of the genre’s evolution.

Although the roster for the weekend is well and truly packed to the brim with flair, there are a few that have already caught our eye that we’ll undoubtedly be in amongst the crowd for.

First up is a string of acts from the renowned indie scene of Glasgow, featuring the rising quartet Spyres as they set out to teach the beach about the life of a Scottish teenager, and soloist Dylan John Thomas, appearing with his trusty acoustic and some of the most infectious head-bopping tunes.

Across the waters comes Ireland’s post-punk five-piece, The Murder Capital, once they’ve ‘returned their head’ from a recent Coachella debut. From Leeds, we’re excited to hear the synth-y guitars of So Young favourites, English Teacher and the poetic sounds of Liverpool’s female-led Picture Parlour. Yet closer to home there’s a dangerously good lineup from some of London’s most notorious bands like Sorry, Heartworms, FEET and Deadletter.

With what already promises to be a real party in the sun (fingers crossed), we’re thrilled to announce our return to the shore with a stage on the beach. Kicking us off on the Friday are Teeth Machine as they infiltrate the earlier hours with a melancholy style of grunge, easing us nicely into the night ahead. Next up is Oscar Browne, a seamless contrast from the previous act as he brings along a unique, ethereal sound of experimental folk and hazed indie, creating a superior feeling for a day in the sun.

As we reach the middle, Nottingham’s quartet Divorce joins the team, sharing an alternative view on country music, with a twist of filth hidden amongst cynical lyrics. Their discography contributes as a story to the band, exploring the vulnerability within their juvenile selves and also showcasing a great sense of humour to foot-stomping tunes. Dear friends Humour follow, throwing some menacing screams from the Glaswegian punk crew across the sea, sure to draw the attention of the heavy-hitting riot listeners. Then finally we close with London’s Fat Dog, fuelling the stage until the very last second with ultimately classic rock ‘n’ roll melodies and rapture.

So if it’s a chance to see one of your favourites out in action, or you’re looking for an excuse to hear some good new music, then a trip to The Great Escape 2023 isn’t one to ignore.

Words by Alicia Tomkinson

I t’s around one in the morning upstairs at Brighton’s famed Hope & Ruin, and rushing onstage fresh from a stressful drive down from the capital, Island Of Love arrive by summoning a wall of ringing distortion, signalling seasoned industry folk to quickly pull out their earplugs. This was the scene at the London four-piece’s arrival at tastemaking epicentre The Great Escape last May, and well, life hasn’t changed all that much for these ramshackle trailblazers intent on hacking through the mire of stale post-punk offerings up and down the land.

All respectively from hardcore and heavy backgrounds, they’ve got the chops to do it. It’s not hard to see why the band were signed to Jack White’s legendary label Third Man moments after a headline show opening a new location just off Carnaby Street. The band have more in common with Stateside alternative heroes like Dinosaur Jr or Husker Du than any of their UK contemporaries, perhaps something that’s helped them emerge through the noise.

Recent single ‘Fed Rock’ made no bones about their thoughts on the wider guitar landscape as crashing punk melody paved the way for barbed lines: “But they all sound the same I don’t know how they get away / They’ve all got shit names mark e’d hang his nits in shame.” With a debut album on the horizon, the band have pulled together a body of work that backs up their unease, flitting thrillingly between weird alt-rock and acoustic balladry.

Crammed uncomfortably in-between carriages on an over-packed evening train from Paddington down to Truro, vocalist Karim Newble is in surprisingly good spirits for a lengthy chat as we tear through such matters and what we can expect from the band this year.

How’s everything going in the world of Island Of Love at the moment?

How was the process when it came to making the record?

It was all a natural progression, the whole thing is us wearing our rock and roll influences I guess. We got really trigger happy with the album and went insane. Moving forward we’re trying not to do as much crazy stuff and shredding and everything. It was really cool though, we did it with Dev from Fuzzbrain Studios in Walthamstow who is essentially the fifth member for us, he’s just as involved in the sound as we are. We all pretty much met through that studio.

Is that space something of a home away from home for you then?

It literally is, especially when lockdown hit towards when we could start going out again, it was really nice to just go and escape and go write some weird ass shit. It was important for us to make the record there, every other option presented to us was a no-go, we said from the start it was always going to be made there. Having Jack Shirley mixing was unreal as well. It was always a pipe dream, we never thought we’d be able to achieve that so when we signed to Third Man we stayed on the same road, we did it the way we always said it would.

You mentioned being trigger happy, I love how those explosive elements burst through…

You can expect plenty more of that on the record as well, there’s so much weirder stuff than we would usually do. There’s more actual songs on there, but also there’s weird skitty tracks and acoustic bits. I think we tried to do a bit of everything, it’s kind of all over the place. Someone described it the other day as feral and drunk which I love.

It’s really about trying to keep busy I suppose, we’ve been doing plenty of live dates and just keeping everything moving. We’ve got a bunch of tours on the horizon, we just wanted to get about as much as we can before the album drops because as soon as it does, it’s going to be hectic and I guess we won’t actually be able to do as much on our terms.

Your journey has been by the book and completely old school, getting out and playing shows and being picked up, is that at your heart?

Massively. We all come from playing in hardcore bands, so the only way we knew how to grow bands was just to do everything yourself. It was cool when people started paying attention to it but we were just going to do it anyway to be honest.

Words by Rhys Buchanan, illustration by Hannah Robinson

I wanted to ask you about those roots, do you think having that heavier background set you apart on the guitar scene? I guess there’s the knowhow and discipline of being able to shred out a wild riff when needed.

It’s weird because it doesn’t feel like chops to us, we just grew up watching all these guitar YouTube videos and stuff with loads of snobby people showing off. So it’s kind of hard to even take it seriously just from a self-conscious level. Like I’m going to really feel out this solo, it’s quite funny really. A lot of it’s more fun to play and we love that sort of stuff. It helps that we’re able to just throw a cool melody on top of it and make these standalone things work.

You had to settle a few scores recently with the meaning behind ‘Fed Rock’, it’s clear that you guys aren’t going down the usual post-punk route that’s for sure.

We always said that we come from a place that plays really ugly, horrible and gross music with people who are growling and screaming. The people making that stuff are really good people and they have really solid intentions, they’re not doing it for money, fame or sex. A lot of the people nowadays making music perceived as punk are actually at their core really ugly people trying to present this modest and sweet product rather than what they actually are. I can’t stand those regurgitated riffs as well.

Interesting, do you think Island Of Love caters for that heavier audience as well, perhaps you’d be as at home at The Great Escape as you would a Download?

I think massively, when we wrote this album we wanted it to sound like a metal record but also have these pop songs buried underneath. I think generally, as far as being onstage goes, if they’ll have us then we’ll play. We did that Hammersmith show and I remember we walked out to a few minutes of feedback ringing from guitars. It wasn’t received very well there and people were holding their fingers in their ears and stuff so we’ve kept that intact.

It must be surreal to be signed by Third Man as well. In a world of TikTok and algorithms are you proud of how romantically that came about?

That meant so much to us, the label are really accommodating and they really understand that we’re pretty stubborn and set in our ways when it comes to how we do things. We’re probably really annoying but they don’t make us feel like we are. They’re really good people.

What are your memories from that night right off the back of that in-store?

It was just mad, all of our nearest and dearest were there, I don’t feel like the set went amazing but it was a lot of fun. I remember running down to my brother and girlfriend who were all there, it was so lovely. I remember not being too big into the set but then we got called downstairs and got told about it which was pretty crazy. Then we just went out and got pissed to celebrate it. It was really fun, it was all pretty much a blur because we had to drink a bit to get over the nerves, it was pretty strange for us. I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way to be honest, when something like that happens organically it feels like it’s meant to be.

There are more parallels in the music to stateside garage and punk giants than anything on the UK scene today, do you wear those influences with pride?

I think that’s a lot of it for us, all of our friends play in these really talented, crazy cool bands that are forming this really interesting scene around the UK at the moment. There’s a lot out there but generally it’s all quite different. You’ve got band’s that sound like Spacemen 3 or old English stuff, we’re definitely one of the more American sounding band’s kicking around, maybe that’s what separates us, perhaps in America we wouldn’t have done as well.

I guess a lot of those Stateside influences like Dinosaur Jr had the talent and chops to shine through the noise?

I love a lot of those band’s and how they let those melodies shine, so I’m glad it comes across that way. A lot of it comes from us starting on an acoustic, then we go out and make it as loud and noisy as possible. ‘Fed Rock’ is definitely one of the older ones on there, it came from us talking about some shit post-punk band and us saying, it’s rock music for the Feds. It all just kind of spawned from that idea and was written on the fly. There’s another song on there called ‘I’ve Got A Secret’ which is about getting a message from your ex, it’s the most ridiculous song, stuff like that is us having fun.

Exciting times for sure, how are you feeling on the run up to the record then?

It’s surreal, I don’t know how it’s going to be recieved or if anyone is going to like it massively but it’s something you’ve got to do isn’t it, you’ve got to put the record out and whatever happens happens. We’ve already finished writing album two and everything is moving forward constantly for us which we all thrive off. It’s going to be strange knowing that your stuff is out there in shops that people go out to but we’re all massively excited and ready for this next chapter.

With tracks like ‘Answer’ and ‘Pluck Me’, cumgirl8 have made a name for themselves within a sometimes hostile punk scene. Having spent the past few years being compared to The Slits by music journalists only slightly lazier than myself, their sound is both immediate and classic, their fashion both homemade and high-brow. Emerging out of the Lower East Side, their new single ‘cicciolina’ barks out affirmatives behind saw-tooth synths, and champions feminine sexuality in tandem with political change. I caught up with them in between rehearsals (they’ve got a busy festival season; Green Man and Primavera to name a few) and they spoke with enthusiasm about the world of cumgirl8.

You’re called cumgirl8, but there’s only four of you. What have you done with the others?

Chase: Ate them.

You’ve said in previous interviews that your music is ‘an outlet for a lot of repressed and pent-up emotions, and it felt like there wasn’t really any space to be just starting out or not to know what you wanted to do yet’. Are you glad to have gotten the ‘starting out’ out of the way?

C: yeah, I think we know everything now.

Lida: I don’t know about that…

Veronika: I feel like there’s a lot that we’re learning, but I never wanna stop learning, that would be boring.

C: Isn’t it the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know? Either way I think we’ve accepted that we’re out there, in the ether.

V: It began way before that. When we first started playing shows we were making our own sustainable clothes. The idea of Cumgirl is this world beyond just one medium of art, and over the pandemic we had more time to actually put together a proper collection.

C: You know how you’ll lose one sock and be left with another, or the same with gloves? Well we all brought in our left over pairs and Veronika made this amazing piece out of them. It kind of unravelled from there.

Not literally I hope. Do you have a plan for another collection of clothing?

V: Definitely, when we have a little more time, as it takes ages. I’d love there to be eight of us, that’d be ideal.

On the subject of fashion, if you could stop a fashion trend, which one would it be?

V: I’m in this cringe phase where the things that used to bother me the most are my favourite right now.

C: Yeah! I wanna see more rockabilly-burlesque hybrids. Let’s bring steampunk back.

V: I have this pink dog with me right now, and I’ve been getting a lot of reactions where people are either obsessed or disgusted by it. That’s how we want our band to be perceived, where you either wanna fuck us or kill us, and we’re like that with fashion too.

As a band, you have two fashion collections that are handmade by you guys. How did that come about?

C: If it’s not making you feel something extreme then it’s not good. Band guys that are in black t-shirts and black pants, or anyone that’s trying to fade into the background is aggravating, to me anyway. Especially if you’re on stage and underdressed. Black shirt fashion, as a backing band member, I hate it.

You’ve just signed to 4AD, and your new single - which I was lucky enough to hear - sounds great, how did it come about?

C: Jamming. It came about when we played some shows in Paris, we got there and they didn’t have a backline so we had to improv some shit. I think collectively we had all been obsessed with Cicciolina, the Italian porn-star that became a politician and offered sex to fascist terrorists in exchange for them to not murder people.

V: I feel like we had the chance to explore our live shows more, which is always fun.

C: But then we definitely gave it some structure when we got to the studio, cause when we first started playing it it was different every time.

What is it about Cicciolina that made you want to write that song?

V: I think she paved the way as a progressive and sexual woman who was like ‘I’m going to be respected no matter what I do or how I act.’

C: It’s about making a mockery out of not being respected for being a sexual woman and just going for it anyway, and showing how far you can get as long as your motive and spirit is in the right place. You can use that in cultures where they’re even more misogynistic, and it’s still powerful, feminine sexuality is so powerful. It’s the ultimate troll, to be like; ’Yeah, I know pussy rules the earth, now let me use this alongside what you think of me to make the world a better place.’ And her style is lit.

L: She’s an icon and unapologetically who she is. She’s as sexual as she is and also has respect and power, which was especially rare when she became famous. And she was super radical with her politics…

C:…with the green policies. She speaks very poetically, she’s in her own universe and unapologetic about that too. That’s kind of what cumgirl8 is about; creating a world and living inside of it acting and dressing how you want, and she did that through the way she connected with people and even talked. She spoke in the world she wanted to live in, and got other people to live in that world, which is very Cumgirl behaviour.

I hope she gets to hear the song!

Unison: We’re trying!

C: If you know anyone…

V: …or if anyone reading knows anyone then please do get in contact with us about that, we need to meet her.

Would you describe your music as sex positive?

C: Absolutely.

L: For sure. Do you have any advice for those who may be cautious to share their sexuality through their music or art?

C: It feels way better if you do it! You’re not going to regret it, and if you do it’s because the people around you suck.

V: It’s a part of life, and art is all about turning your life into something else that’s tangible for others. I would recommend it. And I’d recommend not being afraid to talk about it with people.

C: The more of us do it, the easier it’s going to be. We make our own context. It’s just like any other revolution, if you build it then it stops being abnormal. People used to not want to say our band name and now they do, that’s indicative of needles moving.

Words by Charlie Brown, photo by Dana Boulos

L: It’s getting there…

C: There’s a lot of haters still, there’s a lot of people that won’t send an email with our name in it. The more people that aren’t weird about sexuality and gender, the better. Especially while people are getting hurt or murdered over it.

What’s the worst thing about being in cumgirl8?

C: Being so hot that it’s hard. What’s that line you say Veronika?

V: ‘Being this hot is a threat to society.’

L: It’s a benefit and a curse, but it works for Cicciolina.

V: Yeah, one thing I do want to mention is yes, it’s about being confident and saying yes, but also if something bothers somebody you should hear it out, try and understand and compromise with them.

Totally. We all have guilty pleasures, but do you guys have creative influences that you feel guilty about?

C: No, I think guilt is something we need to get rid of, it’s the opposite of hot. No guilty pleasures, only pleasure.

L: Cringe things are becoming hotter, or sexier. It’s more authentic.

That brings me onto my last question which is about your Instagram presence, which is hilarious, there’s a lot of shitposts and cringe inducing memes on your feed. Do you get any pushback from your management about what you post?

L: No actually. But there was one instant where a friend of ours was like ‘Why are you posting this shit?!’ It was Marlon from La Femme.

V: (Laughing) It was a photo of a hot dog in a cream puff, and I think Chase posted it five times in a row, Marlon just wanted to show his friend where we were playing in Paris.

That’s all the questions from me, anything you guys want to add before we wrap this up?

C: Come see us at The Moth Club on May 9th. We’ll also be in Leeds on the 12th May.

C: He got out the taxi and said (in a French accent) ‘What are you posting? It’s a piece of shit - nobody knows where your concerts are!’ I guess he had a point, but we haven’t stopped.

Following the completion of their debut album ‘Hayday’ in 2021, the four members of feeble little horse dispersed across the state of Pennsylvania. While Jake (drums) and Sebastian (guitar) remained in Pittsburgh - where the band first formed- Lydia (bass/vocals) moved to Mechanicsburg to study Studio Art, Ryan (guitar) three hours away to Washington DC. Rarely in the same room together, theirs is a long distance creative partnership: files traded back and forth online, rehearsals infrequent, writing sessions together invaluable.

While the slight self-deprecation of the band name suits their shy demeanours, and the wallflower introversions that twinkle in their songs - the nod to noise-pop progenitor Sparklehorse is relevant too - it’s a moniker that wholly contradicts the full-bloom strength that new LP ‘Girl with Fish’ withholds. Tingling with the sensitivities of shoegaze, dream-pop and folk, it’s a music at once as light, fluffy as lemon meringue, yet as hearty and lavish as a…blended-up roast dinner?

If you had to describe your music as a meal, what would it be?

Ryan: What came to mind for me - and it’s inspired by Lydia, is a blended up, thanksgiving meal. Everything all blended together - gravy, turkey, mashed potatoes. blend that all together and drink it like a smoothie. That’s what I’m thinking.

Why has Lydia inspired this?

Lydia: Well, there was a phase of my life where I could only drink things that were smoothie’d, because I couldn’t chew.

It just got kind of gross by the end because I still wanted to get the food that everyone else was eating.. I was sick of not being able to chew, because I broke my jaw. I still can’t really chew hard food. But I eat a lot of cake, it’s great!

Is there anything that tastes surprisingly better when you blend it?

L: Baked beans!

Okay, now we’re talking! Moving on. I was reading up on you guys and heard that was a point where you thought you’d have to stop the band due to the logistical issues of all being so far apart?

L:. Before we ever played a show, in the group chat, Ryan said, “I guess. Maybe we just can’t be a live band :(“ And I was like, no! We can’t not be a live band! We have to try! And even though I didn’t know how to play bass or anything, it was just like we gotta do it! And then we figured it out. But it was kind of stressful at first.

What are some of these logistical issues, because you obviously can’t meet up that often. How often do you actually spend time in a room together?

Jake: One weekend a month, every two months, something like that? Sometimes it’s more frequent.

R: Usually when we see each other, it’s for a show. And then we practice the day before. We rehearse like what, twice a year probably!?

Words by Elvis Thirlwell, illustration by Yue Zhang

The new album ‘Girl With Fish’ has a lot more subtlety and prettiness than ‘Hayday’, which is noisier and more lo-fi. I wonder if there’s anything to do with the fact that, because you had moved so far apart, you had more time to go away and think about the songs in your own space?

R: We definitely did take a lot more time with this album. It totals probably like six months of work. I think Sebastian just wanted to make it sound cleaner and more Hi-fi. He’s continuously improved as a producer and mixer, so I think like with every subsequent song, it sounds better and better and more professional.

Do you have a favourite line of Lydia’s that you want to embarrass her with by saying how much you like?

J: All the lyrics in ‘Freak’ are sweet. They’re very funny.

R: I really like ‘Paces’. There’s a lot to latch onto, I don’t even know what Lydia wrote it about or what the meaning is. I don’t think it really matters, because everyone will take what they want from it. I listened to it and was like, “Well, this is how that applies to me” which I think speaks to Lydia’s strengths as a lyricist.

So, let’s talk about the music scene you came from. You all met in Pittsburgh, right? What was it like being a musician there?

L: I grew up in Pittsburgh and I’d go to shows and no one would really be there. It would be really lame. I would have gone with a friend to have a good time and it’d be hit or miss. By the time I started making music on my own, I was just in my dorm room, freshman year, at Mechanicsburg PA, which is in the middle of nowhere. So I feel like it’s not really about location as much. Obviously location has an impact, but I feel like it’s the internet that really inspired me: finding artists on my own; having no friends, but finding that there’s people who are making things that I would want to make; getting obsessed with them, trying to copy them. then finding these few people that also want to do [the same thing] and then showing them what you found on your own.

It’s kind of a lonesome thing. So then it’s cool that it, at least for me, came from a lonesome place. But now, we play these shows for all these people! It’s cool to gather people with something we made out of loneliness.

R: We all come from slightly different points of view. I Think Jake really brought us support from the people that he was friends with in Pittsburgh. And I agree with Lydia. I was a fan of music and had a hard time finding other people who also liked [the same things]. And then I met Sebastian. And then when Lydia came into the fold, she already knew all of it - one of like, probably the 2000 people who are these bands’ Spotify monthly listeners. She was right there in Pittsburgh, which I consider to be very fortunate. It kind of existed over the internet until I met my pals.

It’s interesting, you have the traditional notion of a ‘music scene’, where you have a certain group of people who gather around specific places in a specific city. But then, I guess the internet can allow these connections to be made remotely.

R: I’m too shy to go into venues that regularly and meet people in person! Jake’s not, but I am.

J: I go to too many shows. I think, honestly, there’re so many great bands in Pittsburgh. I think there’s always something for everybody.

You have discernable shoegaze influences in your music. So I wanted to know what’s your favourite pair of shoes you’ve ever owned?

J: [brandishing a pair of baby blue Vans from under his desk] Ryan gave me these right back in December. So I think they’re my favourite.

R: [brandishing a pair of Birkenstocks] These sandals that I got, they’re Birkenstocks. They’re my inside shoes. I wear them with socks. They’re just like the most comfortable slippers I could ever want. I wear them all the time inside.

L: It’s so hard to decide! I’d say probably the winner, because they don’t make me taller, (which is good because I’m already very tall) are my little black ballet flats. They wrap up my leg and I can tie them in a bow and I really like them a lot. I got them for sixteen dollars from ASOS for my 16th birthday. And they were ‘Lydia shoes’ And I was like, “Oh my gosh! it’s meant to be like! I’m about to turn 16 and they’re called ‘Lydia’ and they’re sixteen dollars. I have to buy them!” They still hold up. I don’t know how. They have no support whatsoever.

Wait, Sebastian’s here! What’s a good question for me to ask Sebastian at this late moment? How are you! How are you, Sebastian?

Sebastian: I’m Good. That’s probably a good question.

And how do you feel about the new album?

S: I’m super proud of it. I think it’s a good one.

What are your favourite shoes?

Sebastian: One time, I got a pair of Nike Zoom Flys from a thrift store. They were brand new. Super cheap.

J: What were those sneakers you found in chicago. Were those Pumas?

S: Yeah Pumas. Those are cool.

Never before have a band worn such an effective prophylactic to protect themselves from the external world. bar italia, a London based trio consisting of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi, and Sam Fenton, have chosen to endeavour down the increasingly un-trodden path of a no-press policy. They conduct no interviews and produce no band bios. For them, their music is the only voice. How refreshing! After all, pop culture has become so saturated by big, boisterous personalities, often renown increasingly for what they have to say, rather than what they provide creatively. bar italia are fundamentally uninterested in the tiresome back and forth of contemporary music promoting. What they try to promote is a reliance once again on music as a neutral aesthetic, rather than a corporate and inauthentic concession.

Fittingly, therefore, this group are not interested in concealing their huge catalogue of music. Having previously released two full length albums and one EP on Dean Blunt’s World Music label, the trio now announce their signing to Matador Records AND their new record titled ‘Tracey Denim’. bar italia recently shared with us their wonderfully deadpan faces (the sort of ‘cool kids’ who you don’t say hello to at the Shacklewell Arms kind of faces) in a video for their latest single ‘Nurse!’. Their anonymity as musicians even filters through to their music: “A mask covers your eyes as you move like crazy to your favourite song”. It is precisely this allusiveness which makes the group so alluring. They have created their identity through a kind of non-identity, a myth rather than a reality. The three of them create the perfect contemporary grunge-rock enigma.

Their second single in this recent campaign, ‘Punkt’ is much more engaged. Not only do we hear verses sang by all three members of the band, but we also get a lovely lip-synced accompanying video. If we were to keep the noir colour palette from this video, throw these three in a lake and call the record ‘Spiderland’, I’m sensing we wouldn’t be too far from what ‘Tracey Denim’ might sound like… Yes, that was a Slint reference, and yes, I know it’s overused.

Every track I’ve heard so far sounds so unfinished, almost like a demo thrown together in a couple minutes. bar italia have developed a very particular style of composing music where typical boundaries are bypassed, making way for something which genuinely feels authentic and within an arms-reach from the listener.

Their music nods to The Breeders, Sonic Youth, and even Sorry (for those of you who’re suckers for an FFO).

Nina’s vocals echo that warm and hazy feel of a Cocteau Twins track – interesting because you can only understand so little of what is being said. Nothing here is made obvious. The other thing which compels me to this group is how short each track is. Their music isn’t self-indulgent or exhausted, and the listener is continually drawn back to the plethora of alternative, catchy riffs which they can no longer remember exactly where they were heard.

Any fan of Wire’s short and snappy record, ‘Pink Flag’ will have a new favourite band in bar italia. However, unlike the repetition of a punk record, bar italia’s music all sounds vastly different not only in style but also in production. Nevertheless, a familiar vein runs through every single track across their discography which ties the group together and awards them with a firm and unwavering identity.

Whilst there is of course a frustration beheld by music nuts with the lack of social personality behind a particular group whom they love, in the case of bar italia, I think the message is that nothing should come between your experience of the music and how it makes you feel. There are no distractions, no characters to base your assumptions on. There are only blurry videos of the three of them sitting at a café in the rain, or miming to themselves in the woods…

Cue 2033: “All three members of Bar Italia have entered the Big Brother house…”

Words by Leo Lawton, illustration by REN

Editors

Sam Ford

Josh Whettingsteel

Writers

Sam Ford

Reuben Cross

Eve Boothroyd

Rhys Buchanan

Poppy Richler

Natalia Quiros Edmonds

Amber Lashley

Elvis Thirlwell

Will Macnab

Alicia Tomkinson

Charlie Brown

Leo Lawton

Printed By

Ex Why Zed

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Artists

Gavin Shepherdson

Josh Whettingsteel

Marco Pini

Line Hachem

Shunny Kim

Rozalina Burkova

Mamo Kawakami

Estée Preda

Oyow

AYAKA FUKANO

Lucie Lučanská

Hannah Robinson

Yue Zhang

REN

Cover Photo

Harvey Pearson

Photos for Collage

Harvey Pearson

Dana Boulos

Simon Mercer

Holly Whitaker

Kyle Berger

Ariel Fisher

Holly Dyes Shepherd

Micah E. Wood

Sid Simons

Lily Frances

Special Thanks

Al Mills

Jamie Ford

Cameron JL West

Jack Reynolds