WATCH: pink suits – ‘Are You Gay Yet?’

One of the first songs written, but the final single to be released from pink suits’ recent album Dystopian Hellscape, ‘Are You Gay Yet?’ has now been blessed with an accompanying music video, complete with all the riotous style that makes up the band’s signature impact on the punk scene.

The video is set in the kind of classic British pub that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever stopped for a pint in a small town. Union flag bunting is strung up above the bar and a painting of the queen watches over the punters. Other than rather muted blues and greys, the only pop of colour is the golden yellow of very manly beer as the old mate from school chuckles, “Are you gay yet?”

As the music ramps up and the band delivers their response, the video switches gear. With the rallying cry “Am I gay yet? Fuck yes”, the band infuse the drab, simple setting with vibrant energy and colour. They swap out a grey hoodie for a pink mesh tank top and fringed leather waistcoats and leap up onto the karaoke stage. As the song goes on, the crowd joins in, replacing jeans and jumpsuits with bold silk scarves, bright pink cowboy hats and an eclectic assortment of fetish-wear. The camera lingers on different looks, highlighting all the styles and identities that fall under the queer umbrella; making a question as simple as “Are you gay yet?” horribly insufficient in its goal of pinning a label on any individual.

Throughout, neither the setting nor the people change. But the way the band bursts unapologetically into the scene opens a door for everyone there to embrace their own uniqueness and individuality. It hammers home the unavoidable truth that queer people aren’t separate from society, but a fundamental part of it. Whether you see that at a glance or not, the only difference is how much they hide it from you when they’re not sure if you’re safe to come out to. By standing up and being themselves, pink suits take a bland heteronormative room, where it passes as a hilarious joke to suggest someone might be gay, and turn it into the party of the century.

As the video continues, the line “What will the neighbours say?” is delivered from behind a pink latex fetish mask complete with blond braids and a spiked collar. The answer is right there in the room: the neighbours are as wild as anyone else and have been waiting for exactly this permission to show off their authentic selves.

Of the inspiration behind the video, the band explain:

The video was inspired by a real conversation Lennie had in a pub in Manchester with someone they went to school with, as well as an awkward experience doing Karaoke in a bar in a small town in Colorado. The guy hosting the karaoke night had a toy guitar and would play all of the guitar solos, so Lennie did a song and on the solo got on their knees to play the guitar with their mouth and it made the guy absolutely freak out and lose his shit at having a bloke drop to his knees in from of him. It was a very uncomfortable end to the song!”

Watch the joyously empowering new video for ‘Are You Gay Yet?’ now:

Kirstie Summers
@actuallykurt

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LISTEN: GIHE on Soho Radio with Sing It Pink (22.07.2024)

For the July edition of Get In Her Ears’ Soho Radio show, Tash and Mari were in the studio spinning loads of new music from some of their favourite female, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ artists.

In addition to shout outs to festival highlights from Glastonbury and bands to look out for at Deer Shed festival, Tash spoke to The Pink Singers – Europe’s longest running LGBTQ+ choir – ahead of the release of a brand new podcast about them, Sing It Pink, which is out on Friday 26th April via Aunt Nell Productions. Plus, there’s some major gushing about Shania Twain…

Artists featured on the eclectic playlist included Planningtorock, Happy Accidents, Katy J Pearson, Los Bitchos, Ae Mak, Lex Amor, Sharon Van Etten, ARXX, Breymer, Little Simz, The Go! Team, John Glacier and more!

Listen to the show below:

 

We’ll be back on Soho Radio on Monday 19th August from 12-2pm
 Make sure you tune in via www.sohoradiolondon.com

 

Tracklist

Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy (Planningtorock Rework)

The Pink Singers – Leaping Lesbians

Jamie XX (feat. Robyn) – Life

Catbear – Rush

Jasmine.4.t – Skin On Skin

Katy J Pearson – Sky

pink suits – Are You Gay Yet?

Los Bitchos – Kiki, You Complete Me

AE Mak – Low Down

Kelly Lee Owens – Love You Got

Tom Rasmussen – Shugs (Live Wire)

Lex Amor – A7X

John Glacier – 2 Hot 4 This

Loose Articles – Are You A Welder?

Sharon Van Etten – Every Time The Sun Comes Up

Roller Derby – Silver Jet

Squirrel Flower – Full Time Job

Billie Eilish – Lunch

Happy Accidents – Infinite Possibilities

Little Simz – Woman

ARXX – Good Boy

The Go! Team – Ladyflash

Nana Benz Du Togo – To Be Free

Breymer – Darkness

Shania Twain – That Don’t Impress Me Much

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INTERVIEW: Tina Edwards

Ahead of Rhythm & Taste, a one-day jazz and food festival happening at Design District on Greenwich Peninsula this Saturday 20th July, we caught up with Tina Edwards who is going to be DJing at the event. Exploring beats as delicious as the eats, with a spread of New Orleans-inspired food, plus crate digging from Peckham Soul, sets from an eclectic line-up of great artists – including bassist and producer Marla Kether – in addition to Edwards, the event looks set to be a lot of fun; a perfect summer day out.

Find out more about Tina Edwards, her love of jazz and its pioneers, being undermined as a woman in the industry, and what to expect from her set on Saturday in our interview below. Have a read, and then make sure you have a listen to her luscious ‘Spitting Fire‘ jazz-filled playlist on Spotify!

Hi Tina, thanks for chatting with us! How are you doing today?
I’m very well, thanks! I’ve been away from home a lot over the last couple of months and this week’s been my first week home without looking at a suitcase! I’m feeling nicely rooted. 

Are you able to tell us a little bit about what initially got you into music, and into DJing specifically?
Although my Mum has a different taste in music to me, her passion for it was infectious. I’ve always been quite an introspective person, and music has always helped me to understand nuanced things about myself or the world. I got into DJing through radio, especially Worldwide FM. It was my first contact with CDJs, and so my curiosity naturally flowed into sharing music in a way that was new and exciting for me. I’ve been DJing now for six years but so many people around me have been doing it since they were teenagers. I still feel like a newbie! 

I was lucky enough to catch you DJing at The Roundhouse as part of Higher Ground Festival last year, and loved the uplifting funk-fuelled grooves of your set! But has there been a particular set you’ve played throughout your career that stands out as a highlight? 
Thanks! It’s really hard to pin down one so I’ll just highlight a couple from this year; firstly, my Glasto debut! I played Platform 23 and HMS Sweet Charity; both filled my cup in different ways. Secondly, I made my debut at Detour Disco—a nomadic festival which is held in different difficult to reach places every year. I warmed up for DJ Paulette and got to play a disco edit of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on a 3000km mountain, Piz Gloria, which featured in a Bond movie. We all sang at the top of our lungs. A pinch me moment! 

And how do you normally go about choosing what records to play? Do you have any particular go-to faves that you always play, no matter what? 
I focus on keeping my records circulating so that every set is different, but for sure, every DJ has their go tos that they know often go down well. There’s not a track that I ‘always’ play, but Onegram’s AEO (Slowly Dub), recently reissued by Jazz Room Records, is perfect for so many moments. It’s a euphoric, mid-tempo little ditty that works as a palette cleanser, a mid-set cool down or an uplifting closing track. 

And now you’re set to play as part of Rhythm and Taste festival at Greenwich Peninsula on 20th July, which sounds like an awesome day! Can you tell us a bit about how you got involved in this, and what you’re most looking forward to about the event?
I’m really looking forward to this, shout out to Matt Nightingale for inviting me down. It’s a treat to play for people who are arriving with open-minded ears, just open to having a good time. I’ll be bringing lots of latin and dance-floor jazz for this to try and coax out the sun. 

The event’s focused around jazz and its culture. How much of an influence would you say the genre has on you and the records you choose to play? 
Jazz is a thread that runs through a lot of the music that I play, but that could be in obvious ways or very subtle ways. Essentially, I value and celebrate black music — dance music is black music. It’s important for me to continually learn about and understand the origins of the music that I play out. 

Do you have a particular favourite Jazz artist? 
I couldn’t pin it down to one but right now, I’m really enjoying listening to and sharing music from Pharoah Sanders and Donald Byrd. 

And how much of an influence would you say the infamous women pioneers of jazz still have on music today? 
Not as much as they deserve. Music press and other structures have long thrown an invisibility cloak over female jazz musicians, in comparison to everyone else. And today, syllabuses in conservatoires are guilty of not under-representing female artists. A lot of jazz musicians I know, my age or younger, weren’t taught about the works of female jazz musicians. If we’re not teaching people about the achievements women, we’re telling them that it’s fine to overlook them. That needs to stop. 

Are there any contemporary jazz artists that you’d recommend we check out? 
A whole bunch! One of my Spotify playlists called Spitting Fire, named after the BBC One documentary I hosted in 2022, is full of artists that I recommend. 

As we’re an organisation that focuses on promoting women and queer folk in new music, how would you say the industry is for them at the moment? And how has your experience been of DJing in what can often seem like a male dominated environment? 
Often women’s knowledge will be undermined; I’ve had several sound engineers explain to me out of the blue how a mixer works — I already know, that’s why I’m here! Hahaha. Things are slowly changing and the likes of yourselves, He.She.They, Saffron and lots of other collectives are making positive differences. I run a night called Queer Jazz with Jelly Cleaver; we’re building a community of queer jazz artists and fans, and it feels really good to provide these talented musicians with extra opportunities to perform. 

And do you have any advice for young people who might want to get into DJing now? 
Visit open decks events, look out for workshops, and don’t be afraid to reach out to people for advice. No question is too basic or too silly. We all start from the same place.

Massive thanks to Tina for answering our questions!

Catch Tina Edwards’ set at Rhythm & Taste festival this coming Saturday 20th July at Design District on Greenwich Peninsula. And, in the meantime, listen to her ‘Spitting Fire‘ playlist to get you in the mood!

Photo Credit: Joe Magowan

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LISTEN: BCOS RSNS – ‘Turn It Off’

The second single from their upcoming debut album, ‘Turn It Off‘ by BCOS RSNS turns the post-punk band’s attention to conspiracy theories and capitalism. The song uses scuzzy guitars and dry, deadpan wit to draw a profound parallel between the ridiculous and the real, highlighting how easy it is to begin investigating genuinely dangerous societal concerns and end up diverted into truly absurd territory by conspiracists profiting off your concern.

The early verses start off with obviously silly theories that no one really believes – that Neil Armstrong was an actor, but that the moon landing was shot on location. Then the song escalates down that all-too-slippery slope to ideas you hear parroted by otherwise sensible, intelligent people. It’s a pattern you’ll be familiar with if you paid attention to the number of smart people echoing life-threatening anti-vax logic during the height of the Covid pandemic, for example.

The chorus hammers home the crucial point at the core of the track perfectly. It starts with fairly good advice, beginning “turn off your tv”, up to “turn off your smart home” (do you really trust what privately owned energy companies are doing with your data? They’re raising prices and announcing record profits, so it really doesn’t feel all that much like they’re passing on the benefit of that information to the consumer…), and finally pivots to “turn off your kettle” and “pull down your blinds”, which (unless you have a smart kettle and blinds that channel data back to the 1%, which thankfully is yet part of a dystopian future I personally am very relieved to have not yet seen first-hand) is a foray into paranoia. But the steps that take you there aren’t that illogical. In a few relatively short (and honestly very catchy lines), the song demonstrates how easily someone could be persuaded to veer off course from sensible precautions to wild speculation.

‘Turn It Off’ culminates in the direct, straight-faced third verse, where the character is dropped and the mission statement presented clearly and unambiguously. In a song about the way mis-information snowballs into tangible harm, the directness here becomes all the more profound. The verse describes the song itself as a “distraction”, and they’re not wrong. Satisfying the frustration of life on a dying planet with the temporary catharsis of a fun song doesn’t make any difference to the situation. The track doesn’t hide how difficult it is to even envision how to turn back the death clock at this late stage of the game. The singer herself, Abi Brady, even says of the song’s thesis,  “I don’t have any answers to any of it. It’s frustrating.“

But art doesn’t need to have all the answers, and with this release BCOS RSNS process the trauma of existing as a single powerless individual under the tyranny of late stage capitalism through an upbeat and playfully intelligent song, and invite you to purge your shared frustrations with them.

The eponymous debut album from BCOS RSNS is set for release on 22nd May – pre-order here. Catch the band live celebrating its release at The Cavendish Arms on 25th May.

Kirstie Summers
@ActuallyKurt

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