From London
Recommended if you like Dean Blunt, Nine Inch Nails, Suicide
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Most London bands are so predictable. Oh, you make “jagged post-punk”? And reflect “the malaise and ridiculousness of life online”? Cool. Join the pile. Have fun playing Wide Awake festival this summer.
The London band RIP Magic, by contrast, present something genuinely exciting: snottily menacing vocals, sandpapery textures and a sound that splits the difference between 90s experimental electronic music, 2010s indie-rock, weird European cold wave and Nine Inch Nails – but even that doesn’t begin to capture their irreverence. RIP Magic haven’t released any music yet, but there was such chatter around a recent string of sold-out shows at the London dive Mascara Bar that even a friend from Australia was texting me asking if I knew anything about them.
RIP Magic is the brainchild of the DJ and sound designer Marco Pini – also a member of the London post-punks Sorry – and the visual artist Felix Bayley-Higgins, who have been friends since sixth form, when they “used to hang out in the art rooms” as much as they could, says Pini. During the intervening decade, Bayley-Higgins occasionally contributed to Pini’s solo music, but RIP Magic is a more intentional joint project. “[We said] let’s just go 50/50 and do a fully shared thing, strip it back, be direct and quick and agile,” says Bayley-Higgins.
That directness is a response to the kind of projects the pair have been working on over the past few years: soundscapes for the Royal Academy, ambient tracks, stuff that makes it easy to get “lost in the sauce”, as Pini puts it. “We just dropped the bullshit at one point [and decided to] make music that we want to listen to and want to have fun to,” says Pini. “Like, let’s just make some bangers!”
The pair decamped to Hastings, where some of Pini’s family live, to write and record demos. Theyhave since been back numerous times, always with the same original intention. “ People don’t actually do what they like – why not just make exactly what you like?” says Pini. Adds Bayley-Higgins: “There’s too many people trying to over-intellectualise music, rather than just let it be.”
This no-nonsense approach is clearly endearing to many: RIP Magic’s trajectory was accelerated last summer when Tyler, the Creator approached Pini and Bayley-Higgins during one of their DJ sets at the Standard hotel in London, asking if he could hear their demos. From there, they linked up with ATC Management (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey) and are positioned to become one of the capital’s next great hype bands.
Not that they seem too pressed about doing the industry thing. “We want to just keep doing it in a way where we have full control,” says Bayley-Higgins. Hopefully, they will release some singles in the spring; in the meantime, they want to put on weird shows – on a boat, for example, or in a boxing ring. “This shit should be fun,” says Bayley-Higgins. “Don’t overthink it.”
Source: theguardian.com
