STANDFORSOMETHING
Celebrating rebellious individuals, we asked four rising UK bands of various persuasions: what do you stand for?
WOZNIAK, Edinburgh
A post-rock collective from the fair streets of Edinburgh, Wozniak revel in ethereal fragility amid the power of crushing volume: true beauty from unfettered chaos. They are Sarah Cuthbert-Kerr, John Sinclair, James Urquhart & Simon Cuthbert-Kerr
We stand for making loud noise with walls of feedback. We stand for keeping going until there’s nothing more to give. We stand for the power of noise to take you outside of yourself and provide a release, to evoke feelings and reactions and to let yourself get lost in the chaos. We stand for being part of a community of people who feel the same way, and for supporting those who are doing the same thing.
We have to communicate what’s inside us. The sound of Wozniak is the combined influences and ideas of the different band members, brought together and expressed through our shared outlook. We don’t have a lot of lyrics, so we need to build our songs around a particular idea or reaction or mood using dynamics, momentum and noise. A lot of our songs are suggestive of moods rather than expressing things directly, but that doesn’t mean they’re vague – there are very tangible feelings of rage and sorrow in the songs. We’ve found that we’ve been able to connect with people who recognise their own sense of the world in our sound, and it’s exhibited in virtually everything the band does.
There’s an element of DIY to the band – we put on our own gigs and that gives us the chance to play with bands we like, and we’ve played for some brilliant promoters who work tirelessly to give bands exposure.
It might sound simplistic, but we really want people to continue to like what we do, and we hope that we can play with more great people in different places. We’re just about to start recording our debut album – hopefully that will be a fully realised statement of Wozniak’s sound.
HALFRICAN, Glasgow
The ragged rush of primal garage rock with two fingers to the mainstream. Glasgow's Halfrican want the world, and they don't care whether it feels the same. They are Sancho Büna, Choi Paul & Jet Jackson
The group stands for true independence. Sounds like a very clichéd value but with that comes confidence, and that breeds a more authentic artist – and in the run-up to the Scottish election, the idea of confidence is applicable to a country as well.
Halfrican was always meant to be an escape from Glasgow’s twee grey skies and damp air, however endearing and inspiring they can be. It began as a solo recording project, and quickly became a fully functioning band with the quick realisation that the influences and inspirations of the people involved were unlike anything that was happening anywhere.
The principle of a unique independent spirit is present in every aspect of Halfrican – looks, sound, licks. We take inspiration from the classic aspects of teams, bands and gangs, but the ‘click’ cannot be faked. We share an unrelenting thirst to better ourselves and to continually move onwards, whilst also being cautious not to leave anything behind. We are outsiders as a band and as individuals within the Glasgow music scene – each of us has burned a lot of bridges, and it makes it all even more dangerous and exciting. We never set out to get in anyone’s face; we’re just us.
A united front is the best weapon against people who try to be difficult, or who are (just by nature) pricks. Of course anything different and independent will face opposition, and it’s something you have to be ready to face if you truly believe the status quo is shite – and you want to make a change. In an ideal world, this philosophy and fearlessness would translate to everyone, the result being that people would be a lot more satisfied with their lives.
ILL, Manchester
Manchester's own ILL serve up art-damaged noisepop with heart and smarts. Provocative, prescient and proudly feminist; a thrillingly discordant racket for your sick pleasure. They are Whitney Bluzma, Helen Shanahan, Fiona Ledgard & Sadie Noble
We believe in being ourselves. We believe in creativity, experimentation and expression. We’re DIY; we won’t tolerate being told what to do. We produce our own recordings, make our own music videos and our own artwork. We believe in the power of subversion and disobedience. We believe in equality. We stand with queer and trans people. We own every aspect of what we do.
Too often the dominant culture sidelines the people who don’t fit neatly into it. When you kick against that hegemony and express yourself truthfully, you have a voice. Society needs to have dissent and diversity in order for people to be truly free.
We make a noise. A loud noise. There’s a lot of energy at our gigs. Our erstwhile percussionist Rosanne Robertson brought a lot of unconventional instruments to us: contact mics on vibrators, bomb shells, toys. That playful irreverence continues to inspire us. ILL can’t be pigeonholed into any genre. We’ll jump from a piano song about pinching Granny’s pills, to a full on noise jam, to a metal meltdown about meat. There’s total freedom.
It’s frustrating when people assume that because we’re an all female band, we don’t know what we’re doing, and patronise us. We get asked suspicious questions – “Do you hate men?”, “Are you a lesbian sex cult?” We mercilessly poke fun at these prejudices. We are fortunate to be able to say and do these things, to make songs criticising government, patriarchy, religious bigotry. We can be queer, loud, proud women. Globally, people risk arrest, imprisonment and even death for speaking up about these issues. In an ideal world, everybody would be free to love, sing, shout, scream and go around naked if they wanted to. And sound technicians would stop telling us what a decibel is.
ALPHA MALE TEA PARTY, Liverpool
All molten riffs and lurching time signatures, Liverpool trio Alpha Male Tea Party recently unveiled their latest album Droids – a veritable weapon of math destruction. They are Tom Peters, Greg Chapman & Ben Griffiths
Really, truthfully and honestly we stand for absolutely nothing. And that’s kind of the point – not everything you do in life has to have meaning or subtext or agenda. We started Alpha Male Tea Party because we wanted to do something that was ours, free from any stereotypical ideals of what being in a band is and ultimately to create something that is completely honest and without pretension, unlike this paragraph. None of us are under any illusion that we’re the most creative/innovative band going, we just like playing riffs in a sweaty room together and, more recently, playing those riffs to other people in other sweaty rooms across the country. It’s fun and we want people to enjoy the same level of fun that we do.
Often people struggle with the idea that we can be serious about the music we make but not so much about our image, or the way we come across through all the ancillary stuff. It’s always been a part of what we do, to have a sense of humour about things but in a way that isn’t just slapstick and stupid; there’s always a more sinister edge to it, especially our song titles. It can be frustrating when people pick up on the garish nature of our image more than our creative output and use it as a way to paint us negatively, but really that’s just what we do. We just get on with it and call them dicks while we’re driving around in our family hatchbacks. Music is as much about personality as it is songs and for us portraying ourselves through what we do, as punishingly pretentious as that sounds, is completely central to it all.
alphamaleteaparty.bandcamp.com
• This is an advertising feature which originally appeared in the September 2014 edition of The Skinny