Interviews

The Quietus • 30th June 2021

Interview: Terre Thaemlitz

As a musician, digital streaming platforms and marketplaces typically don't allow for much contextual specificity. Releases may be hosted in date order, but there's little control over who engages, and on what basis, with an album as likely to be sought out directly by a user as suggested to them by algorithms. For electroacoustic music producer, DJ, writer, and lecturer Terre Thaemlitz, AKA DJ Sprinkles, that lack of control actively stunts the sociopolitical discourse driving her work.

Dork • 14th June 2021

Interview: Folly Group

As far as origin stories go, London four-piece Folly Group have a pretty simple one. “It was just me and you, Lou, on the tube,” explains vocalist and drummer Sean Harper. “You sort of went over to me, and into my ear, you slurred the words, ‘Band? Stupid not to really’.” For a group seemingly named after a shared fondness for foolishness, it was a pretty smart call. “I can’t remember the journey,” shrugs guitarist Louis Milburn.

Dork • 16th November 2020

Interview: Sinead O'Brien

In her creative life, Sinead O'Brien often faces a choice between two options. Fortunately, she's a dab hand at having her cake and eating it too. By day, she's is a senior designer for endlessly renowned fashion provocateur Vivienne Westwood, while by night she's a post-punk poet, drawing acclaim from everyone from John Cooper Clarke to Speedy Wunderground's Dan Carey.

Dork • 28th July 2020

Interview: Crack Cloud

Crack Cloud are a far cry from your typical band. When the Canadian group first started gaining buzz in 2018 off the back of two supremely vital EPs there was a clear seven-person configuration at their core, but a lot's changed since then. Not only is their debut record, 'Pain Olympics' primed and ready, but they've cast an even wider net for collaborators, drawing in a wildly diverse array of artists with little concern for medium or geographical location. It's perhaps no surprise then that Crack Cloud have also been described as a cult.

Dork • 1st June 2020

Interview: LA Priest

Samuel Eastgate's best friend is a robot. In fact, for a period of time, it sounds as if his only friend was a robot, or rather a slightly cantankerous drum machine. With a creative process that sounds awfully similar to certain social isolation protocols, when Dork reaches him on the landline of his home in rural Wales, the current chaos all seems quite distant. "I live with my family in a really empty, isolated area. It's almost like I planned ahead... but I mean I haven't, I haven't."

Dork • 11th May 2020

Interview: Porridge Radio

Porridge Radio might make music that lashes out with a snarl, but they're big softies really (we say that with love, honest). Rising rapidly out of the DIY punk scene in Brighton, lead singer/guitarist Dana, keyboardist Georgie, bassist Maddie and drummer Sam make cuttingly candid songs that don't so much wear their hearts on their sleeves, as shove them down our giant collective throat.

Dork • 24th March 2020

Interview: Sorry

Sorry are a quiet, ambient grunge band. Or rather, they're a quiet band who play grunge loudly, before feeding everything back into an ambient loop (it's a lot less complicated than it sounds). Everything from their on-stage tendency to stand still, to their lack of inane patter between songs, and even the brevity of their press releases lends itself to this soft mystique. They're born choppers and changers.

Dork • 5th February 2020

Interview: HMLTD

HMLTD should either have exploded or imploded by now. Back in 2017, they rode in on a tsunami of hype, sending quick-penned journos into a frothy-mouthed frenzy of superlatives. The UK's most thrilling new band! 24/7 art project! Guitar music's greatest hope! The most shocking part? Their flamboyant genre-swerving output was worthy of the praise, if only because it was impossible to pin down in print.

Dork • 17th December 2019

Interview: Just Mustard

Just Mustard have had a strong year by anyone's standards, but chatting to Katie (vocals) and David (guitar, vocals) gives the impression it's all been taken steadily in their stride. Case in point: during our phone call the Irish five-piece are in Amsterdam readying themselves for a show at the Paradiso, and yet their easy lilt makes it seem like any other Sunday.

Dork • 12th December 2019

Interview: Squid

Even over the phone, Squid feel like a wriggling, hard-to-define mass. Less tentacled sea creature than many-headed hydra, they readily spill over one another with enthusiastic laughter and self-deprecating jokes. We've only got three of them on the line from a pub in Bristol, but it quickly becomes an amusing battle in trying to guess who's saying what.

Under the Radar • 27th November 2019

Interview: Dry Cleaning

As South London continues to pump out angular post-punk bands with all the regularity of a vending machine, such a well-populated landscape doesn't afford much room for differentiation. It's telling then that Dry Cleaning stand out effortlessly. Much has been made of lead singer Florence Shaw's half-spat, half-sang pithy poems about modern life, but peer beyond her lyrics and you'll find a band totally in-tune with one another.

hyponik • 27th September 2019

Interview: Wuh Oh

Talking to Wuh Oh, otherwise known as Peter Ferguson, you sense he’s constantly on the cusp of a revelation. His latest track ‘Pretty Boy’ is similarly elliptical. Its ever-circling central synth chords offers a premonition of cataclysms that might never come to pass, but that feel present nonetheless. It’s deeply anxious, and yet moments like the submerged female vocals feel ecstatic. In short, it’s pretty brilliant.

hyponik • 30th August 2019

Interview: Shygirl

There’s a desire for provocation at the heart of South East London industrial crooner Shygirl, better known to her friends as Blane Muise. It’s in her shamelessly blunt sexuality, in her darkly comic interpolation of grime soundclashes and YouTube soundbites, and it’s definitely in the moniker itself: put simply, a shy girl she is not.

Skiddle • 7th June 2019

Interview: Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett is on the cusp of a long slate of summer festivals with a truly global reach: Italy, Canada, Japan, Finland - the list goes on and on. When we discuss how this lifestyle has affected her conception of the mundane she laughs: “I used to be writing songs in my bedroom and working at the pub down the road, and it’s not better or worse - it’s just different."

hyponik • 6th March 2019

Interview: Deena Abdelwahed

My frank discussion with Deena on the serious plight faced by civilians in the Arab world inspires flashes of anger and humour in equal measure, unveiling a thread of dark comedy that runs throughout much of what she says. It’s laughter as subversion; satire as disruption. It’s a way of deconstructing the severity of the issues facing her ancestral home in Tunisia.

hyponik • 19th February 2019

Interview: Djrum

There’s something pointedly evocative about the weather as I sit down to call Felix Manuel. The slow rolling morning mist recalls the earnest sublimity of the Romantics, even as it's peeling off council house roofs rather than green pastures. It’s the kind of mood Manuel’s own music as Djrum delivers with a workmanlike consistency — small moments of rapture that are flecked with inner city melancholy.

The Ransom Note • 13th February 2019

Interview: Cosmin TRG

Since launching the fledgling Leeds imprint Hessle Audio in 2007 with the driving 2-step one-two punch of ‘Put You Down / Broken Heart’, Cosmin Nicolae has elided the draw of a linear career progression. His ensuing run of releases on labels like Tempa and Aus further mapped the direction of dubstep as the decade drew to a close, without ever feeling beholden to the larger trends and deviations of his peer group.

hyponik • 8th February 2018

Interview: Byron the Aquarius

In many ways Byron’s phone conduct is reminiscent of jazz. He freewheels between ideas without ever losing sight of the various balls in the air, and is capable of switching from contemplative reflection to humorous interjection with the tonal dexterity of a Coen Brothers flick.

Loose Lips • 2nd August 2017

Interview: Danny Lover (Blah Records)

As a musician who straddles both sides of the Atlantic, Danny Lover is a difficult artist to pin down. His lackadaisical, near passed-out delivery mixed with his hazey production style makes his music sound like a Xanax-induced dream state.