Music’s latest hopefuls show us round their favourite spots.
Trophy Wife (singer Jody Pruitt, keyboardist Ben rimmer and drummer Kit Monteith) are the latest in a series of indie greats to emerge from oxford, the town that brought us Supergrass and Radiohead. “Kit occasionally teaches at Thom Yorke’s son’s school in oxford,” says Rimmer (apparently, he even beat Yorke once in a 100m sprint). The trio met playing in experimental pop band Jonquil, from which they then “peeled off” to forge their own brand of melancholic disco pop. Wonderland caught up with Monteith after a gig with Bombay Bicycle Club.
How do you find being the warm up act? It’s always quite weird because obviously people aren’t there to see us. The Foals Tour [October 2010] was amazing as we were quite well suited. We got people over to our side a little bit.
Do you have any pre-show warm up rituals? We wander around aimlessly and do vocal warm ups. On tour with Foals and Crystal fighters... their warm ups were just insane. They do a circus ring-kind-of cheering and weird shouting
and screaming. I think we more indulge in the contrast between the quietness back stage and then throw ourselves into it on stage.
Who would be make the best Trophy Wife? I always say Maggie Thatcher. Just the notion – amazing.
“It’s the only thing I care about. It is my only passion,” says Callum Wright of the music he crafts under the guise of D/R/U/G/S. Dropping out of a criminology degree in April of last year, the 22-year-old has since been developing a sound that straddles the genres of dance, chill out and minimal techno and has been bagging performance slots all over London’s east end. Joining the musician for a stroll along the Southbank, we find him on fine form and ready for anything.
What’s special about the Southbank for you?
Mostly the vibrance and the architecture. I grew up in London then went to university and came back to see London totally differently. you’ve got ancient buildings and the most modern buildings and all the landmarks. I find it so impressive.
Describe your sound.
I used to be into ambient music and that’s where the whole band came from. it was never an aim to make a dance sound – it just evolved that way. But I’m happy to be a dance act. Especially today when there’s so much that can be classed as dance that goes against the traditional, semi-embarrassing idea of that genre.
An EP is out in April and you’re going on tour – are you looking forward to hitting the road? yeah. it will be quite intimidating to go and play in Germany because so much of my favourite music comes from there – the whole genre of minimal techno pretty much started in Germany.
“I love being in my studio” says writer and producer Isa Summers. That’s just as well: the pixie-like songstress is currently involved in three musical projects, and must spend a lot of time there. her most recent venture is The Life, The Love and The Grateful (“The Doors meets Metallica meets Tinie Tempah,” she says) who will be taking to the road and releasing an album this year. Then there is ivan ink ‘N’ isa, who release a four track EP of dreamy, fairytale-esque tunes this month. on top of this, Summers has her continued duties for her most famous project. You’ve heard of Florence Welch? Well, Summers is “the Machine.”
How do you find the time to work on all these musical projects? I don’t sleep and I live in my studio. I basically am a work-a-holic but I want to get things
done and have hit records, like Rick Rubin.
Can you pick up any instrument and play it? I come from a hip-hop back-ground where I was programming drums and sampling
other people’s music. The Life, The Love and The Grateful is a whole band so I’m trying
to write guitar, keyboard and drum patterns and then get them to play all this stuff. It’s
a challenge!
What is your history with Florence? We were having boy troubles and going to the studio together. I always said to [Florence] from the first moment we made a song; “you’re going to be a mega-star. Go and work with everybody because you’ll learn from everyone, whatever happens come back and make songs with me.” And she has!
“I like getting up early and not wasting the day,” says Daniel Blumber, singer, writer and
guitarist of reverb-loving pop rockers, yuck. A stream of gigs and touring had been playing havoc on his sleeping patterns leading to an unhealthy routine of not getting up until 3pm, however he has since bounced back to a normal schedule, along with the rest of Yuck, comprising Londoners Max Bloom and Ilana Blumber (guitar and vocals respectively), New Jersey drummer Jonny rogoff and Japanese bassist Mariko Doi. Wonderland caught up with Blumber at Hackney City farm.
Where did the name Yuck come from? I came up with the name. I just thought it was a cool band name – it doesn’t mean anything.
How did you all come together?Ilana, Me and Max were born in London and me and Max have known each other from when we were about six. I met Jonny in the desert in Israel where he was working on a date farm and I was on holiday visiting some friends also working in the desert. We just met each other for a few hours and were talking about music. He was a drummer and when we started the band I remembered him and asked him to come. And Mariko is from Hiroshima in Japan but moved to London anyway so was around. It felt very comfortable, very quickly, playing together.
And what brings us to Hackney City Farm? We’ve been there before and it’s amazing. We want to do all our pictures with animals – they’re nice!
Toby Ridler created Becoming Real while studying fine art at Kingston University. After blogs including The Fader picked up on his futuristic tracks – inspired by classic Scifi and postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard – he decided to do it full time. His music – full of tinkling, crystalline synths and globulous low-end pulses, mixes the stealth and stride of dubstep with the drama of Vangelis. Wonderland meets Ridler at his digs in east London.
How long have you lived in Mile End? I wish I could say my whole life, but only three or four months. I really like it. It’s near Canary Wharf which is a pretty unreal place. It’s so futuristic but it’s now. I go there and walk around, and I try and take that experience and put it in a song.
How would you describe your sound? Icy. Something like that. As my production has come on it has become more about texture than a straight up dance track. I’ve taken influence from beatless stuff, like early grime days when Wiley was making ice cold synths and songs without any beats, just the bass. The more I push it the more I try to expand the sound and the closer it gets to weird classical music.
Is making music something you always wanted to do? I think I always assumed I would do music even when I was in rackety punk bands
when I was 15 and 16 years old. I don’t really know how to do much else because I put so
much time and energy into it.
Italian born Mauro Remiddi (who moved to London from Rome in 2000) has put out a steady stream of EPs under the name porcelain raft, creating bleary soudscapes from the comfort of his own bedroom. The home studio setup hasn’t proven problematic so far, but he’s just moved to a shared house in North east London, where Wonderland meets him. “My next songs are going to be really quiet,” he laughs from his new digs. “I like to hear feedback and experiment with
amplifiers, but I can’t really do that here.”
How would you describe the music of Porcelain Raft? I feel when waking up in the morning there is a precise moment where you don’t really know where you are, or remember your name. That second when your eyes are half closed is, I think, where I am focusing. Also I think I function very well when I’m exhausted.
Do you feel you have to exhaust yourself before you can start working then? It’s not like that. I’ll play a song non-stop until my voice is weary and everything is a little bit blurry and I’m like ‘ can do this again and again.’ When I listen back those tracks are the ones that I like – and the same happened to me when I was touring. Every day there was a gig, every day there was another city. [By the end] I was truly exhausted but the music felt more in unison with me because I wasn’t even thinking any more.
Michael Stafford, better known as Maverick Sabre, describes his sound as “hip hop-inspired
soulful folk music,” listing artists as diverse as Ben e King, Tupac and Bob Dylan as influences. you may already recognise his voice – he guested on professor Green’s single “Jungle,” but there’s more to come from this MC-turned-singer-songwriter in 2011. Wonderland met him at his local caff for a cuppa.
How did you come up with the name Maverick Sabre? I basically got a thesaurus and looked up two words that I thought matched my initials.
So I had Maverick – someone who thinks outside the box and I wanted to do that with my
music, and Sabre – with the meaning of someone who puts on a front of hardness to the through tough times.
How did you get involved on Professor Green’s single? A producer called Blue Bear on True Tiger recordings sent me the beat through my lawyers over a year and a half ago. I listened to it and then sent it back within a day with everything you hear on the track now. It was given to Professor Green and he recorded his part to it then I went and rerecorded my vocals and then it went on his album. It all came together quite nicely.
Any thoughts on the rise and rise of British Urban music? It’s a movement. A couple of months ago, the top ten was filled with acts from the UK
Urban scene – acts that have been influenced by Dizzee rascal and Kano and have come from pirate radio and mix tape days. I’m proud to be part of it.
ALEX CLARE
Ray Man music in Camden has served as a go to for 25-year-old solo artist Alex Clare. “They have so many massive instruments. Whenever you go in there for something really basic you end up buying something you definitely don’t need.” Though he’s been making music from the age of 19, Clare’s career has truly taken off, in the past 18 months, after his demo caught the attention of Island Records. His difficult-to-define mix of dancehall rhythms, catchy melodies and electronic flourishes has found him illustrious fans in club veterans Diplo and Switch of Major Lazer, who are lending their production skills to his upcoming debut.
Describe your sound. It’s a mix. There’s a combination of live instrumentation, orchestration, electronic beats,
live beats, distorted base and full synthesised sounds as well. It’s a real mongrel!
If you hadn’t been in music… I don’t know what else I would do if I wasn’t making music. I trained as a chef when I left
school but it’s too much hard work for not nearly enough reward, you know. You work 14
hour days and suffer burns and all for shit pay.
Any advice for getting a record deal? I don’t even know how Island picked those demos up, actually. I think I have a guardian angel out there who went “hey, listen to this” and then in a few weeks someone got in touch to
say “Do you want to make an album?” Then I was offered the chance to work with Diplo
and Switch and I would have been a fool to refuse.
[Originally published in Wonderland Issue 25, February 2011. Photography Robin Mellor.]
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